Invincible Summer in Stockholm

I am sitting in a small bakery (Skeppsbro Bageri to be exact) watching the sun rise over Stockholm and slowly shedding the half dozen layers I came bundled into town with, including the noise-cancelling headphones I was using as earmuffs, the jean jacket that has taken the place of my newly-abandoned winter coat, and the pair of printed leggings that served as a second scarf. The socks I was using as gloves are drying on the radiator next to me. I had the brilliant idea of getting a cup of hot water to carry on my early morning walk through the -12 ºC city with me to keep my hands warm, only to discover it would splash and counter-intuitively freeze on my sock-gloves. I'm in Stockholm on an 18-hour layover between Tel Aviv and Thailand, though “between” isn’t really the right word from a geographical standpoint. I had initially read the time wrong and thought I’d be staying at the airport for the entire layover, but when I learned I had 6 hours shy of a proper DAY in Sweden, I immediately used my free Ben Gurion Airport WiFi (thanks, Tel Aviv!) to book a 5:10am bus and Google “What to do in Stockholm for 7 hours.”

You know I mean business when I wear 4 pairs of pants and flare my nostrils.

Despite the fact that I can’t feel 3 of my toes, this surprise trip to the arctic feels like heaven (partially due to the fact that this cafe gives FREE COFFEE REFILLS--a European first), and it’s giving me a chance to say one final goodbye to the eternal winter that has been my last 3 months, starting with a snowy Iceland in late September, and ever so gradually warming up and back down from London to Chesterfield to Belfast to Galway to Dublin back to Chesterfield and London to Paris to Amsterdam to Rome and finally to Tel Aviv—a trip serving as my official declaration “Christmas is CLOSED; winter is OVER.”* “Not so fast,” the Universe replied, “You’ve gotta see Sweden first!” (In the future I’ll link to the blog posts full of loving accounts of each of these cities I visited, but for now you can get a taste of my journey in the form of a run-on sentence.)

Free coffee refills in Europe?!?! Skeppsbro gets it.

Watching the sun rise makes me feel peaceful and productive in a way that not even over-caffeination can ruin. It reminds me I’m exactly where I need to be, sitting here in a pocket of warmth, hopping outside periodically to take another picture of the gorgeous color-changing sky. It’s funny calling my trip an “adventure” because I’ve mostly been finding new places in the world to feel cozy and settled. I’m practicing the skill of getting comfy outside of my comfort zone. This trip to Stockholm feels like a pop-quiz testing how well I’ve cultivated this skill—here I am making an unexpected visit to what is officially in the coldest climate I’ve been in with zero of my warm clothes. Even though the Arlanda Airport offers a luggage-storing service, I opted to carry all of my earthy possessions with me as a way of ensuring extra warmth in lieu of a winter coat. So far, I’ve only experienced walking around Stockholm in the freezing darkness, but I love it already. It’s reminding me of an Albert Camus quote I first read in Iceland that speaks right to my soul:

“In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.”

The coziness I want to find in the world is inside of me. I love the winter, the cold, because it encourages me to find my own warmth. The darkness draws out my light. Maybe it’s the sunrise talking, but man oh man I feel grateful to be here. I welcome this last-minute reminder of the gifts of winter before venturing off to “Tropical Monsoon” Thailand to discover what hot, balmy gifts are in store for me there.

*Tel Aviv is just like Los Angeles--I walked around basking in the joy of feeling comfortable with a light jacket, and was met with countless Israeli apologies about the "bad weather," which I initially assumed were sarcastic leading to accidental laughing at rather than with my new friends.