Author: Craig Davis, PhD

Odeshog, Sweden

5 June 2024: Wednesday

For the past two days in Sweden, I slept in blocks of time. Yesterday, I took three naps ranging from an hour to five hours. Last night, after the sunset just before 10 pm, I put down Dark Matter and fell into a warm sleep for about five hours until about 3:30 am. Just before sunrise, the sky was already lit up. I went down for coffee and my bag of breakfast, identical to yesterday’s. I ate and finished the book that I started sometime Monday. It was pretty good, but I am not eager to start on another one of his novels any time soon. I do look forward to seeing the series on Apple TV, though. 

Showered, packed, and headed downstairs. I bought a ticket on the tram downtown, had to switch trams after the first three stops. A woman was curling her eye lashes and applying mascara while on the tram, a far sight better than applying it while driving to work in the morning, like I have witnessed in the US. 

Seven more stops, and I was in downtown Stockholm. 

Stockholm Central Station was only about four blocks away. I sat down inside around 7 am and tried to purchase a ticket online. I thought better about it, tried to find a ticket booth open, failed, so I went back to the little curved wooden bench with my back to the escalator. I felt this was the safest way to put my credit card information into the app, hoping to keep my information free from criminal eyes. 

Unfortunately, both of my credit card companies rejected the $99 charge for the ticket to Odeshog. One bank is closed until 8 am DC time. So I called the other one. One hour, four customer service and fraud protection, and four rejections later, I finally got the charge approved. 

Whoohoo! 

Uncharacteristically, I managed to keep my cool and remain polite for the entire hour conversation. By the time, I got the ticket, however, I only had 25 minutes to find the track. First things first,  I needed a bathroom. 

I never get used to unisex restrooms. The first one I had ever seen was more than a decade ago in DC. And even today, they make me uncomfortable. 

I made it to the gate a good three minutes before the train rolled in. I boarded Car 5 in the middle of a dispassionate horde of Swedes. Although I had paid $20 extra for a free breakfast and coffee, I ended up with a seat with no breakfast. Perhaps, going in and out of the app in the various attempts to rattle some sense into one of the credit cards, I had clicked the wrong button. 

Car 4 was the food store. I bought a coffee and a muffin with a strange fruit in it. Back at my seat, I tried the fruit, but it was so bitter that I didn’t eat any of it. The taste reminded me of the one and only nisepero or common medlar that I had eaten 40 years ago in El Salvador, that didn’t agree with me and sent the rest of the day at regular intervals between the bed and the outhouse.

The rest of the muffin was moist, lemony, and delicious. Then suddenly, I got ill. Sick to my stomach, but worse, dizzy. I started to black out. I was 30 minutes from my destination. I closed my eyes, focused on my breathing, and tried to relax. For a minute or two, I experienced a state of darkness and physical weakness. Had I been standing, I am certain that I would have fainted. I lost consciousness for a very short period of time, and when I started to recover my senses, I still felt ill and dizzy. By the time my stop at Mjolby arrived, it took every ounce of focus I had to stand up, pull my bag out of the overhead, and advance toward the exit. 

On the platform, I walked slowing, thinking about sitting on one of the benches, but the fresh air helped. Inside the tiny station, I found a bathroom. Unfortunately, it cost 5 Krona, or $.50, and they didn’t accept cash. All the relatively complex instructions on how to do it were in Swedish. I asked a young lady, who was sitting alone actively communicating through her phone, if she knew how to do it, but she politely said, No. 

I finally figured out that of the two options, I could go to a website, set up an account, and pay to pee. So, I did. 

Over the next hour, I drank plenty of water, walked outside and sat on a bench, only to be driven back in by the cold wind. Even at 60 degrees, the brisk Swedish wind was formidable. 

I arrived at two possible causes for the dizzy spell. One was dehydration. I knowingly, had been drinking more diet drinks and coffee at the expense of water. I I know better. So maybe it caught up to me. The other possibility was that this tiny common medlar, the size of a grape, had caused an allergic reaction. 

In any case, Christian and his youngest son arrived and off we went to his home in Odeshog, a village about 20 miles south. The landscape is relatively flat and lush farmland. Beautifully tranquil and sparsely populated. 

We picked up where we had taken off nine years ago, when I last saw him. His son was excited to see an American (don’t ask me why). We caught up on his new business. He and two business colleagues produce and sell high pressure personal protective gear for spray washers 42,500 PSI. 

At his house, I immediately napped for about an hour. I felt better, but still weak, when I awoke. We talked, had coffee, and I drank plenty of water. Then we went for a short walk. His wife Hannah arrived home from work. She is an ordained priest for the Lutheran Church. This was the first time I met her. 

As a family of five, they live in a huge 4,500 square foot rectory. Hannah has decorated the home beautifully with Christian iconography, much of which she picked up while living and working in Palestine. 

A business associate arrived, and I took advantage of the time to nap again. I awoke feeling better yet. 

In the evening, we ate pizza, and I played a game of Ludo, or Parcheesi, with the kids. It was fun. The two oldest each performed a song on the piano and violin. They are great. 

Around 9:30 pm, I excused myself and dove off into sleep. 

Oseshog, Sweden

6 June 2024: Thursday

National Day of Sweden

Christian and I set up my bike. He gave me a spare front light, batteries, a lock, tools, and many other items. Then we drove to Jonkoping, 40 miles away, my first destination on the bike. In the car, we cruised there in 45 minutes. We purchased what I needed for the bike, including a pump cell phone holder, and some other items. I bought some strawberries for dessert. 

When we got back, we enjoyed a Swedish feast: Pickled herring, small potatoes (made by Hannah), Swedish meatballs (made by Adam and Esther), salad (Adam), and for dessert Isaac had made three pies, two rhubarb and one apple. It was marvelous. 

We all napped. Hannah went to church to deliver mass and later bible study. I rode my bike a short distance, attached the other items, and played Parcheesi with the kids. 

I fell asleep around 10pm. 

Stockholm, Sweden

3 June 2024 (Monday)

I woke myself up snoring three times before we left the ground at Frankfurt.  The other two men on my side of the Aisle 11 at the emergency exit didn’t notice. They were both sleeping as well. One was at least four inches taller than me. 

The man on the end was about my size and as soon as the seatbelt light dinged off, he was on his feet, digging into the overhead compartment to withdraw a black pullover. He sat down. Then got right back up and went to an empty seat three or four rows ahead. But no sooner had he got comfortable, than he returned to his original seat. 

I read a little more in Dark Matter, a novel I started on this trip. I started a History of Scandinavia, but about 20 pages was all I could take of such dryness. However, one thing I learned began to make sense as we flew over the archipelago scattered from the Baltic Sea up to Stockholm. The massive network of 30,000 islands, reefs, and skerries or rocky islands (I had to look it up) serve as earthen dalliances of narrow landmasses and clumps of stone rising out of the sea to gradually form southeastern Sweden. 

The European Union represents many contradictions for foreigners. On the one hand, I swept through an immigration check at Frankfurt, where a very kind young man chatted with me about riding my bike across Scandinavia for a few minutes. He seemed amazed that I could ride 60 kilometers (40 miles) or so per day on a normal bike. 

“In Germany, many people also ride that far in one day but on electric bikes,” he said.

On the other hand, there are no immigration checks when you leave the Stockholm airport (coming from an EU country). I rather enjoy that feature. 

Although, my overhead bag rode with me from Honduras to Houston, because I was in the last group, Group 5, to board at Houston (because I bought the second to last cheapest economy ticket), the United Airlines clerks used the old tactic to put us in our low class place. Ironically, I didn’t buy the cheapest economy ticket because I wanted to be able to take my bag with me.  

“I am in touch with the attendants on board,” a potbellied young man in a UA uniform told us, holding up his trusty walkie-talkie. “The overhead bins are full. You will have to check your bags.”

Of course, I knew this was hogwash, but I didn’t stress over it. And when I got on board, I saw all kinds of space in the overhead bins. But by then it was too late. My bag was in the underbelly of the plane. Nowadays, you don’t want to complain too much or you will find yourself on a no-fly list. 

So, as I stood there waiting for my bag at Carousel 5 in Stockholm, I wondered if my bag made it. It was getting close to 6:30 pm. Google maps told me I was 23 miles from my hotel. I tried to fight down the stress. I saw prices for buses to Stockholm city for about $20. But then I would have to take a train or a taxi to the hotel. Maybe another $20. I had no SIM card, so I only had internet while in the airport. 

Many people getting their bags and leaving, but several of us were still waiting. I wondered if we were all low-class Group 5 stragglers from different international flights. Interestingly, there is a yellow line marked about 30 inches away from and all around the carousel, behind which passengers are to stand. And more interestingly, customers honor the line. 

But then my bag rolled out. I had left about $150 in Honduran Lempiras in it, and I wondered if it would make it. But not to worry, everything was inside. 

I stopped at a counter where people were selling train tickets. I asked where I could find a money changer. They told me, but a man said, “Don’t change too much into Swedish Krona. People don’t use it.”

“Oh, should I get Euros?” I asked.

“No, we don’t really use them here.” Another contradiction. Indeed, all prices are in Swedish Krona.

“So what do I use?”

“We are a cash free country,” his female colleague said.

This naturally worried me a little. I have not had the best of luck with credit cards recently. The Arizona trip was a bit of a nightmare. But I plugged on.

First thing I needed to do was to get to the hotel, I figured. But I should have invested in a SIM card instead. I would suffer for that blunder later. 

At the information gate, after studying my hotel’s address and the various routes, the nice lady in her 50s told me, “There are three options.” Then she explained I needed to take one train to a certain station, walk a few blocks, take another train to another station, then walk a few more blocks. That was the most direct. In fact, there as also another, faster train option that was over double, and a bus option too. This train option would cost about $20 provided I left right now up the stairs to one of the two train stations.

“Can you write it down for me?” I had no idea what the stations were that she was talking about. The names were all in Swedish.

“Here,” she said, moving her screen around, “take photo. That is better than my handwriting.”

I took a photo. 

“Can I buy the ticket from you?”

“You are better off to buy it upstairs,” she said. “You only have six minutes. And if you miss that. The next train doesn’t leave for 30 minutes.”

“That’s OK. I can wait 30 minutes. But I am confused.”

Although I have visited or lived in more than 50 foreign countries for much of my adult life, I still struggle with so many aspects of international travel. I am better at technology than many, but I have huge gaps in my understanding. 

Two train systems (slow and fast). Unrecognizable names of train stations. No internet on my phone to track movement or stops or to call the hotel if I got lost. It was now approaching 7 pm. 

“Wait till about 10 minutes before you leave to buy your ticket” the clock is ticking. 

Well, there is a new wrench in my cognitive system. It makes perfect sense if you know where you are going and how to get there. If you are struggling to figure out which train to board and which stop to get off to and which direction to walk to get to the next stations and so on, that ticking clock merely adds to my anxiety. 

However, I left her. She clearly didn’t want to sell me a ticket. 

So, I walked on trying to find the slow train stairs, but I only saw the fast train stairs. After a few minutes of literally walking in circles, I just walked out to a taxi. There were about 50 of them stacked up and no customers. Probably because the taxi costs $75 to take people where they are going and the slow train only $20. 

The driver was Arab, I think, but didn’t speak very good English. And I couldn’t speak any Swedish, so we struggled. He didn’t know where the Biz Apartment Bromma was, and I had to look up the address on his phone. And I worried that my credit card wouldn’t work after all of this. And when we got to Bromma, he couldn’t find the hotel immediately. He asked me where it was. But with no internet to feed Google Maps, I was clueless. 

But we found it. He remained friendly. My card worked. And I got into my room without incident. 

Across the street is a big mall called Galleria. I walked over around 8 pm to get something to eat and an adapter for the European plugs. Just inside the mall is a telecommunications shop called, Tela2. The young man was closing, but still asked what I needed. I told him, but he said they can’t sell them to foreigners who don’t have Swedish ID cards. 

The mall was closing, so I walked back to the supermarket below the hotel. I bought some things for dinner and an adapter. Two knives for my trip. And some other items. 

The sun set just before 10 pm, and the rose at 3:39 am. 

I had slept only about three hours in the past 36 or so, I easily succumbed.

Stockholm, Sweden

4 June 2024 (Tuesday)

Stockholm is 60 degrees latitude, about the same as St. Petersburg Russia and Anchorage, Alaska (61 degrees). So, the nights are very short in early June, and get shorter as the summer presses on.

My alarm was set for 6:30 am, but I was up well before 4 am. 

I went down for coffee. I also bought another adapter I needed and a special cord to charge my iPad. The clerk was Sundaram, originally from Sri Lanka. He was a little cold at first, but soon warmed up. 

He gave me bag of breakfast, which included apple juice, a tiny apple, two pieces of bread, two slices of meat, a slice of cheese, some yogurt and tasteless granola—the type my daughter eats, so it is probably healthier than what I am used to—and some butter, jam, and cream cheese. It wasn’t bad. 

But by 5 am, I dozed off again. I felt guilty. Funny, huh? When I was in school and played hooky, I felt guilty when the Price is Right came on. Oh, I and I missed a lot of school my last semester. It is a long story but suffice it that I already had my credits, but was being rebellious for a variety of reasons.

Even today, if I take a day off through the week, I hate daytime TV, because I feel like I am playing hooky. On weekends, my 4:35 am alarm goes off, and I get up and start my research. And now, even on vacation, I feel like I need to be doing something constructive. And going back to sleep is a tiny bit sinful.

Understandably, I dreamt a recurring dream about needing to go back to high school to earn my diploma although I have college degrees. Guilt is a funny thing, isn’t it?

Back at the lobby, another man told me I would have to pay for coffee. Free coffee is only with breakfast. At 3 Euros a pop (about $3.3 for a tiny cup of good, strong coffee). I walked back down to the supermarket and bought 16 packets of dry coffee (that makes 16 cups) for about the same price of two cups. Back at the room, I made two cups. It wasn’t quite as good as the machine made downstairs, but it wasn’t bad.

I also finally activated Apple Pay, which allows me the luxury of contactless payments, which means that people don’t have to check my ID frequently when I buy something. Two trips to the grocery, for instance, required two ID checks.

At the Tele-2 store, a nicer young man than the first sent me to the small convenience shop inside the mall, where “you can bet on horse races,” he explained. There, a Lebanese man in his 50s sold me a SIM card ($4) and top up credit. I had to change dollars into Krona to pay for the phone credit in cash. 

“This company is strange,” he said. “You can buy the SIM card with a foreign credit card, but you usually have to pay cash to use it.” He registered my passport to get the SIM card and charged the phone. I texted Christian to make sure it was working. 

It was only 10:35 am, but I was hungry. I bought a POKE bowl at the food court. It was OK, but not great. Then I took the escalator upstairs to the sporting goods store. I bought three saddle bags that go behind the seat and over and above the bar between the seat and handle bars. I am trying something different this time, hoping that I cut a little weight and balance the bike in the process. All of my trips until now have had a very lopsided bike with my weight on the seat and then another 35 pounds or so in the back. I am hoping that these bags and my backpack are enough to carry everything I need. We’ll see. 

Back at the room, I read and napped and read again. Then I went downstairs. I had spent the better part of an hour on the internet last night and today, trying to figure out how to get from here to Stockholm Central Station. From there, I would catch a train to Odeshog to meet Christian. I had searched websites offering to sell me tickets and looked at maps, but I got even more confused. There is a train, light train, tram, and subway. Each of them have their own routes, naturally, like DC, NY, or any other big city. I rode the Marc Train to DC from Maryland each day, and then navigated the city by the metro. At first it was a little daunting, but at least I could read the signs. In Stockholm on Day Two, I had given up. It was too complicated unless you had done it once. I decided instead that I would drag my roller bag 1.4 miles to the next station that will take me to Alvik. But I wanted make sure that it was safe to walk alone in the morning. 

The same young lady who checked me in last night was working. She told me it was much simpler to just take the tram outside. I told her it was too complicated. 

“No, it is very easy.” She pulled out a laminated sheet of paper with the steps mapped out. Seemed like just about everyone wanted to go there. She helped me download the Stockholm app that allowed me to navigate transportation options, and then book and pay for the one that was best for me. Suddenly, a huge burden was lifted. I had a cell phone, adapters to charge my electronics, bags I feared I would not find in Odeshog, Apple Pay feature to pay hassle free, and now the apps and knowhow of a Swedish teen to move about the city. 

It was time for a cheeseburger. I walked down to Rockin Burger at the Galleria mall and ordered a spicy cheeseburger and came back to the room to eat it. I washed up my dishes, organized a few things for tomorrow, feeling like I was beginning to enjoy myself.