Stockholm Syndrome

Talk about reverse culture shock! I got off the plane in Stockholm and everything was sooooooo quiet. A few people were sitting in leather airport chairs, waiting for their plane inside glass-walled gate areas--that was it. I felt like my breathing was too loud! Not too many people flew from Mumbai to Stockholm, so the luggage coral wasn’t crowded; no one was pushing or yelling or screaming or haggling. Order. ahhhh. I purchased a bus ticket to bring me to Uppsala, which was ON TIME to the minute--no waiting for more passengers to fill the bus, oh sweet, sweet organization. The bus was perfectly clean, no one spoke a word the entire 25-minute bus ride to Uppsala. I realized it was 9:30pm and still light out, and the sunset went on forever! It was bizarre coming here after five months in Asia; looking around, all I could see was a perfectly tarred highway running along bright green pastures and forest area, well preserved buildings, flowers, cut grass, and cobblestone paths (not crumbling stone walkways). Pedestrians actually have the right of way and aren’t vehicular targets. There were no people walking in the middle of the road with their fists shoved up their noses or hawking loogies, no random animals/people relieving themselves chaotically, no trash, no cars honking! The silence was literally deafening—I was so confused!

Krister, a good friend of mine from High school who is working on his Masters at Uppsala University, met me at the bus stop and walked me through the little cobble stone town to his apartment. A narrow river runs through the city center and a significant amount of people walk or rides a bike for transportation (there are actually a ridiculous number of bikes throughout Sweden, the only place I’ve ever seen more was in Tokyo). The first thing I did when we got into his apartment was drink water straight from the tap and then roll around on the ground (not joking or exaggerating; Krister can confirm this) I was so excited and grateful to be in a country that entertains these liberties. It’s difficult to realize how lucky we are to have so many amenities and luxuries at our fingertips when they’re stripped away and your left w/ a dirty squatter and a little bucket of water to “wipe” with. First thing he did was bust out the boxed wine and start cooking while we caught up on each other’s lives since we hadn’t seen one another in about six years. We sat up talking, drinking almost an entire 3-liter (4 bottle) box of wine, and eating until five in the morning. At this point, I had pretty much been awake for 48 hours, so it was time to get some much-needed shuteye.

To be completely honest, my time in Sweden was pretty low-key. The country is painfully expensive; for example, the cheapest hostel I found was 25 dollars a night and I had to pay for SHEETS; I find it astounding that the poorest of countries give you your own bathroom, clean(ish) sheets, a personal room and sometimes a TV, when the better-off countries won’t even provide the necessities…and btw sleeping bags aren’t allowed, what backpacker has the luggage space to carry around sheets????? So, being that I was over eight months into my trip at this point, the funds were just not available to tour around the country. I spent most of my time at Krister’s; he was gracious enough to let me sleep on his couch and cook me food (quite the cook I might add—some of the best meals I’ve had in a while); I usually did the dishes as an attempt at repayment. I was really pretty lazy, which was quite a necessary change from the hectic on-the-go lifestyle I had been living for the past eight months. We watched movies and went out. He is quite the partier, so he brought me around to meet his friends and we went to different Nations to drink and dance. Nations are kind of like frats except everyone joins one of them and they're not as...well... childish . They have bars where you can drink cheaply if you have a student card. The first night we went out, they introduced me to Fish, which is this clear shot that tastes like Jaeger (vomit) however, I played champion and took them as long as they kept coming. We went to another bar after that and ended up back home probably around four am. It’s ALWAYS light out here. I’m used to being up around 6:30, going for a run and enjoying a full day, but here, the sun sets at about 9:30/10 but isn’t dark until midnight (if you even want to call that dark) and the sun rises at 3:30, so it starts to get light again around two, making it easy to go out all night and not realize what you’ve done.

After that night, I decided that I shouldn’t be drinking too much and start getting myself running and training for the race. I kept going out, but generally stayed sober. We also went to his friend’s place to watch Eurovision. Hilarious. It’s kind of like American Idol but the performers are all professional and from each European country; they are all competing for the highest score. Honestly, the costumes were ridiculous and the performers were overly dramatic, but it was highly entertaining. I suggest YouTubing this immediately.

Looking around the streets of Sweden, the people are exactly what you’d expect, Beautiful. Krister told me that I was probably going to be very average compared to everyone else (thanks, jerk); they all look like your stereotypical Barbie beauties; tall, thin, blonde hair, blue eyed and stunning. I wonder how you make people this pretty or if they’re aliens—maybe they’re manufactured? Anyway, I also found a gym to work out at, though I had to pay ten dollars a day (ouch), but it was highly necessary because I was completely out of shape for the upcoming marathon due to the inability to do consistent running in India; I only had two weeks to train for it! Krister was writing a paper for the first two weeks and occasionally going to class, so I spent most of my time wondering around the city. I went into an interesting cemetery, which was more like a Zen garden, and to the nearby botanical garden in the first few days. Mostly, I was enjoying the foreign concept of returning to the same place and not actually living out of a suitcase (he gave me two shelves to unpack my few belongings onto; what a host!). Though I appreciated the change; it made me homesick, desiring a career, my own bed, all my friends, the bartender that knows how to make me a Kettle/soda just the way I like it…what’s the word? Oh, Stability.