I honestly cannot recommend an
east-to-west, 7-timezone airplane ride to anyone, but 32 hours after
the fact, I'm doing pretty well. The first 10 hours were tricky,
jetlag has gotten more sophisticated since I last tasted it. I kept
getting second winds, feeling fine, looking forward to life, and
starting out on adventures. Invariably, I got halfway (just inside
the grocery door, to the apex of a loop around the neighborhood, up
off the couch for a glass of water) suddenly was quite convinced
someone was slowly but confidently pulling the
linoleum/asphalt/ubiquitous birch floor paneling out from under my
feet. Loss of balance was quickly ganged up upon by the sensation of
being pressed by about 60 pounds of wet sand. I felt cold, and flush,
and very very stupid. I'd persevere in a half-conscious sort of way,
accomplish X goal without any feeling of victory, and slump back
gratefully in stasis … only to get another second wind 15 minutes
later. I made it til 9 before I lost consciousness and feel very
very lucky that I could still say words by then.
Today, though, waking up was easy, and
besides a total lack of attention span, I feel happy and normal. We
walked through Stockholm, mostly the oldest island Gamal Stan, where
the streets are two-wingspans wide, orthotically cobblestoned, and
decorated with many antique and tasteful-tourist shops. It was a
look-but-don't-touch day, a get-lost-on-purpose day, a
oh-my-there's-skulls-under-that-dragon-statue day. I could hardly see
the architecture for the bricks, and look forward to visiting again
when peering into every window isn't so all my brain will allow.
There's a gaming store (a big one with fantasy novels, comics and all
kinds of geekphenalia) in which I'd love to spend an afternoon. It
has a shingle hanging above the door with a painting of a dragon
fighting a rocketship. Yay!
The city didn't smell like much besides
cold, wet stone and the occasional municipal construction site. The
buses smell like Sharpies. But outside boutiques and flower shops, on
the little stone sidewalks in front of bakeries and offices, little
fires were burning. Some were tea lights in colored glass jars, some
were tiny campfires in little iron cages, all merry and flickering.
These are mysig (say it mee-sig, with your tongue against your front
teeth, the cuter you slur the better, and its an adjective), a sweet
little assurance that the place within is Cozy. Friendly, nice, snug,
sitting-with-friends-by-the-fire-with-a-mug-of-glogg cozy. Sweden is
just about the cutest.
Now it is dark (has been since 4),
just above freezing, and we've finished a dinner of corn chips (a
brittle, super-finely-ground-corn local brand), home-refried black
beans (they came canned in a box!) and fresh salsa made as spicy hot
as we could handle. Somewhere winding through the neighborhood I can
hear the chiming of an ice-cream truck.
My vocabulary is growing, mostly
thanks to Engelsk Bildordbok (a Swedish-to-English dictionary done
completely in pictures – nouns are awesome!):
Svamp is your singular Mushroom (more
than one would be svampar)
Ren is Reindeer
Dogs say “Bow!”
And the word for Uterus is Livmoder
