EST. 2023
2022-2023
Location:
- Oxie, Sweden
-
Venice, Italy
- Bergen, Norway
- Reykjavík, Iceland
- Helsinki, Finland
- Killarney, Ireland
- Edinburgh, Scotland
1. Oxie, Sweden
One of my favorite things about living in Oxie was the one mile walk to the grocery store from my house. We were outside of Malmö, surrounded by rural landscapes, and this walk during the summer and fall was absolutely gorgeous. Colors changed rapidly, depending on how the light was hitting. I felt like I was in a Hayao Miyazaki movie.
Southern Sweden had plenty of beautiful nature reserves that offered miles and miles of walking trails. We would spend the weekends looking on Google Maps and picking a random nature reserve to go to. This became an essential activity for us during our time there. As it got colder and darker, we sank deeper into depression (both of us, unknowingly, at the same time). We missed our friends and family back home, and we missed the comfort of going to places where there was a possibility of walking into people we knew.
Living in Scandinavia had been a dream for both of us, but we severely underestimated the toll of doing such a huge move in your 30’s. We both had established lives back in California and we didn’t really leave because we hated living there. We were hungry for something different, after living in Los Angeles for over a decade and then not quite finding our footing immediately in Northern California. We were also disillusioned by our lives in the US after the pandemic and political turmoil of the last few years. We were exhausted and needed a break.
Our long walks in nature reserves became a practice of gratitude. We spent this time reassuring each other that our decisions weren’t permanent. That we can go back if we really wanted to, that our friends are still our friends, that our family will welcome us back warmly, and that we were extremely privileged for all of it. We had these talks so often, almost every weekend as we tried to process the difficult week we had just faced.
We were plagued by different things. He had accepted a position as a teacher in an international school (where the children held more power than the adults and knew it), and I had quit my very stable job for the last almost six years. He was dealing with an intense and demanding job, and I was unemployed and idle for the first time in more than a decade.
During the week, we found it hard to articulate to the other the many different feelings of uncertainty we were dealing with. But on weekends, during these long walks in Swedish forests, we found our words. We comforted each other and helped each other recharge for another difficult week ahead.