MONDAY, JULY 15
WHAT WAS I THINKING: TRAVEL DAY
Yikes! That’s all I can say about my travel planning. I hope the reason I booked the 7:40 flight from Berlin to Stockholm was because I saved lots of money. Because it was a bitch!
It took us nearly two hours on two buses to get to the airport, and we had to be there at 5:40…so we were up at 3:30, before the sun, dragging our bags down the cobbled streets. Four flights of stairs…
FELLOW TRAVELER: HOOKUP
The hour and a half flight was uneventful, except I sat next to a man-spreading, tattoed man who wore his sunglasses the whole time, and leaned into my seat while he slept. Flying on Easy Jet is already a practice in body contortion since our knees touch the seat in front of us. Somehow Chloe was able to watch him text and scroll through photos of blonds on Instagram. He looked like he had come to the airport straight from an all-night binge at a Berlin club.
When we exited the plane, he started talking to this young, blond Russian woman who had been sitting in front of us. She was dressed in shimmer sweat pants and satin sneakers, a large jewel studded bag over her shoulder. We realized his texts had been to her! They walked down the airport corridor together, their conversation stilted as it is with people who just met. Hooking up on a flight. That’s new…or is it? Chloe overheard their conversation — she’s good at that — and picked up a new phrase from the young women. “The stupids” Maybe I’m one of those…
WHO ARE THE STUPIDS?
(Me?) I thought we were 15 minutes by bus to the Airbnb. Nope. We had to take a bus and a train and it took an hour, and then we had to drag our bags up a hill, and climb three flights of stairs. Stockholm looked ugly from the bus, and the people on the train looked depressed. Where are we? But the landscape from the airplane — small islands covered in pine trees and greenery that looked like giant sea urchins from the air — were beautiful.
As we rode to our new neighborhood, Johanneshov, on the outskirts of Stockholm, Chloe said, “Maybe next time we do this, you should take into consideration the cost of paying for transportation from our “neighborhood” Airbnbs to the city.” A bit of a reprimand, and justified. My planning skills seem to have faltered in my mad rush to book everything before prices skyrocketed for the summer. She’s right. It might cost the same to stay downtown once transport costs are added. But not in Berlin, since the train fare from Vienna to Berlin also covered local transit while we were there.
Most shocking about Chloe’s statement: “…the next time we do this….” Are we going to travel again for another year?
STOCKHOLM AT LAST
Off to the grocery store to pick up some food for lunch and then, guess what? Nap time! I went for a walk later in the day, and found a nearby wooded area. Sweden began to come into focus, people carrying bags through this forested park from the grocery store to home, the quiet of the streets, the order, the proximity of nature. The air so fresh. It reminded me of the air in Vancouver.
It poured rain all day. Chloe said it reminded her of our first day in Split, Croatia.
