Now definitely Wednesday, just north of Scotland:

I couldn’t sleep. Sure I’m tired, but at the same time my body clock is certain. For the last four plus months, I’ve been in places where it’s only fifteen to ten at night now. Barely early bedtime.

So I thought I’d spend this last hour and a half before stepping onto Swedish soil again, not remenicing (because that will only make me sad), but listing things I have to look forward to.

The people goes without mentioning. I’ve slept too little during the last thirty hours or so to be writing anything profound. This is all about the small things.

Scandinavian dairy. Especially the cheese. I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to explain the wonders of the hard Swedish cheeses, the really strong tasting ones, to all these cheddar eating Americans. They just looked at me as if I was nuts.

Just in general, finding things in the grocery store that are NOT fat free, but that have no added sugar. (Seriously, I don’t get the logic – isn’t it general knowledge that sugar is bad, but fat sometimes even necessary for health?)

The Swedish public radio. Seriously, the dialects, the easily accessible new knowledge, the music. I’m really looking forward to starting to work at the archive again, sorting papers and listenng to podcasts.

Library books. Now that I have my recent airport purchases, I really won’t need to borrow a book for a very long time. But I think I will give the Stockholm main library a visit anyway. It’s one of my favourite buildings in the world.

Having my own computer. Because, what I’ve learned on this trip is that for a person who takes as many pictures as me, it is crazy to think you can survive without a device by which you can empty the camera from time to time. Luckily, I’ve met some really great people on the way: Frida, Diane, Karin, Lori, Miles, Leslie, Eric, Sarah, Sandra and Vladimiro have all been generous enough to let me borrow their computers. But I might not always be that lucky. Next time I go off spelunking in the world, I know I’ll have to bring one of those small laptops with me.

Being the boss of my own kitchen. I have been allowed to cook and use different kitchens during my trip, but it’s not the same. Not at all.

Stockholm in summertime. Swimming in the lakes.

Being able to WALK, bike or take public transportation to places.

It’ll be good to be back. I think. Hope. Wish.

Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on which time zone you choose to put me in, somewhere above the northern Atlantic:

People are talking Swedish around me. It feels strange.

Well, anyway. We got to the airport, I said bye to mom (we are on different flights), my bag was a little more than four pounds below maximum weight. That is, about two kilograms. That’s about five kilos that I’ve put on on the way. I say I’ve done a good job, considering that both Hanna and mom took part of my belongings in their bags too. This trip has made me a shopoholic.

The flight from Phoenix to New York was fine, I saw the desert change into mountains change into the circular irrigated fields of the center states change into the green forests and cities of the west.

At Newark Liberty Airport, I had two hours to spare. Of course, I ended up in the bookstore, picking up and putting down the first four books of A Song of Fire and Ice (of which Game of Thrones is the first) I don’t know how many times. I couldn’t decide if I should buy them or not: what if I didn’t like Martin’s style of writing? I don’t particularily like owning books. Most of the time, I prefer library books, and libraries in general. But I’ve had experiences with these English blockbuster movie/tv show-books and the Stockholm public library before. I had to wait ages to get hold of Pullman’s His Dark Materials in English. People go crazy for them, the Hollywood books. Better just own them myself, if I want to read them.

But then again. Money. I’ve reached the final day of a five month trip. It’s not as if I’m loaded. I can’t just go spending the little I’ve left on fantasy novels. Resolutely, I put back the pile of books and walked out of the bookstore. Just to walk right by the currency exchange place, where the sign told me in red numbers that one dollar was worth 5.89 Swedish Kronor. That’s scandalous. That’s like, nothing at all. Not shopping with that exchange rate would be pretty stupid, I’d say. So I went back and bought them. The four books. Oh, I’m so screwed.

The flight from New York was atleast an hour late when it finally took off. Traffic jam, the pilot said. But I’m fine. I’ve eaten dinner, had a glas of ginger ale and two of orange juice. Watched one whole and the beginning of atleast five movies. Now, I think I’m gonna try to sleep. We’ll see how that goes.

Three and a half hours left until we land in Stockholm. I have no idea how I feel about that.

My last night in North America. I’m sitting on Vladimiro’s top floor balcony, watching the non-existing skyline of Phoenix. The desert breeze feels amazing against my skin. I’m just wearing panties and a tanktop. And this is a uncommonly cool night. That’s how hot it is in Phoenix. In seven hours, we’re going to be picked up for the airport. If everything goes according to schedule, I will be landing in Stockholm in about 24 hours.

And for some reason, I feel terrified.

North America has been so much more than I thought it would be. I never expected to fall. I have learned so much. I’ve also lost small pieces of myself along the way.

I don’t want to leave.

I want to go home.

I’m sitting on the sixth floor balcony, letting the desert breeze run through my hair, listening to the crickets and the hum from a broken air conditioner across the street. The moon is shaped like an egg.

The palm trees sound like falling rain. The air is like a warm caress.

The life of a traveller is heart breaking. That’s just the way it has to be.

Just before I left home, my dad got a harddrive full of movies from a friend. Having just gotten a tablet for my trip, I thought filling it up with movies could be a good thing. You never know when you might need to kill some time.

And I was right. It’s not as if I’ve had time to see even half of the movies I copied onto my external harddrive, but I do have some good movie memories from this trip. Like Winter’s Bone and Black Swan, that I saw with Frida in Edmonton. At Time Out Farms, I mostly watched movies with the German twenty-one-year-olds. Water for Elephants and The Vow. Cutsie things. At Whiskey Creek Farm, I mostly watched Grey’s Anatomy and Community and Smash. At Duckworth Farm, I started being serious with the tablet. There, I saw The Way Back and Rachel Getting Married and a six hour series about Coco Chanel.

And for some reason, the movie watching by tablet got really serious here in Phoenix. In the last couple of days, I’ve seen five movies. The Boat That Rocked was awesome – I really do love the Brittish humour. And the music – WOW! Up was pretty cute, for being a Disney. Blue Valentine was heart breaking, but really good. But the biggest impact on me were given by the two Swedish movies I saw, I himlen finns inga känslor and Stockholm Boogie.

It is a perfect little thing, I rymden finns inga känslor (which translates as There are no feelings in space). Funny, endearing, just serious enough, and as a movie really smart. And it’s about a boy with Asbergers syndrome and his brother, something that’s not hard for me to realate to. Not that I’m an expert (between my dad the cineast and my best friend Kirke the movie maker, I feel like a complete amateur), but in my opinion it is a really good movie. And the soundtrack is amazing! Swedish music can really be phenomenal.

With Stockholm Boogie, it’s another thing. As a movie, it didn’t change my world. But it wasn’t a waste of time either. It was pretty decent. But, what really hit me was the scenery. Every single outside shot was on a street, a bridge, in a park and even outside a club where I’ve been – where I’ve actually spent a lot of time. It took place on Södermalm and Långholmen during one long summer night, and god, have I had long summer nights like that in Stockholm. Walking and biking through the streets of Söder, sitting on cliffs looking at the sun set, going swimming just when the sun rises with people that you’ve just met. Even the big party in the middle of the movie, set on Apberget with a view over the bridge Västerbron, is on the exact same spot as where Natalia had her birthday party last summer. There, Isak and Danne were DJ’ing and Natalia was dancing in her Christmas tree lights.

That made me ache for summer nights in Stockholm. The ones I’ve missed now, the ones I hear barely came this summer even for the ones who happened to be there. The rainiest June in more than a hundred years, I hear. But it’s the Söder of my memories, my teens and early twenties, that magic that never looses it’s charm. I felt so strongly that I was in the wrong place, this desert city full of cactuses and heat. I longed for home.

That feeling didn’t prevail, though, I managed to have lots of fun in Phoenix too. But still. It’s amazing how movies can make us feel. How easily moving pictures can reveal feelings we didn’t know we had.

Saturday evening: It’s raining in Phoenix. The day was hot, and now the rain fills the air with smells. It’s amazing, how one part of the sky is a deep blueish purple from the storm clouds, at the same time as the horizon shifts from a sinister yellow to bright pink and bloody red from the setting sun. The mountains are only shadows.

Phoenix is a strange place. I don’t know how else to put it.

They told me Phoenix would be hot in July. They were not kidding.

We made it down all the way through Big Sur to Santa Barbara and then up across the mountains and the valley and up some more mountains to Sequoia and King’s Canyon National Parks. Then, the day before yesterday, we flew from Fresno to Pheonix and here we are, just back at mom’s friend Vladimiro’s apartment after a two day roadtrip up to Grand Canyon.

The closest thing to a holy place a geographer with a weakness for geology can come.

What we’re doing tomorrow, I don’t know. On Tuesday, we start the journey back home. On Wednesday morning, I’ll be landing in Stockholm. Back to reality. It feels surreal.

Back at the present day.

Take a breath.

As always, I’m too ambitious with things. Finally, I’ve finished the retelling of our roadtrip. That was over more than a month ago. Now, I’ve already started the other one. With my mom. We are doing fine, driving down highway 1 in a bright yellow Chevrolet. Right now, spending the night at a hostel in Monterey.

Leaving San Francisco, though, felt awful. Saying it felt like leaving the love of my life would be wrong, because that spot will always be taken by Stockholm. But San Francisco might just be the one that got away, the place where, in another life, I really was meant to be.

So, you see, that’s why I want to do this properly. San Francisco deserves everything I’ve got. And so does Duckworth Farm, this wonderful oasis of tranquillity where I finally got rid of my last tensions and worries from the last three years of studying. Now I am ready for reality again.

That’s why, dear friends, I’ve decided to not write anything about them until I get home. There, I will have the time. As for now, I might write a few updates, but that’s all. The rest will have to wait until August.

Cheers!

13/6: Well, we were coming from the east and should have taken another route. But it just felt wrong. So we took a detour and arrived in San Francisco in style – accross the Golden Gate Bridge. With “San Francisco” by Hello Saferide playing on Hanna’s phone for the third time that day, of course.

It felt big. And life threatening. I couldn’t handle the traffic, we were about to get into serious collision related trouble twice on the freeway. Did I mention I just got my license in February?

But we made it. We even found the car rental office. The meter in our beloved silver Toyota Camry told us that we had driven 1448 miles. 2330 kilometers. Eight days of driving. It felt unfathomable. And now we were in San Francisco.

13/6: Early on Wednesday morning, we started driving back west again. In Mariposa, we stopped at the Happy Burger Diner to have breakfast. That was a really cool diner, man.

And the breakfast was delicious too.

And then we just drove downhill, non-stop…

(the closer we got to the coast, the intenser the traffic got – I was so happy I wasn’t the one driving)

… until we reached Berkley. There, we decided to take a fruit break, before we continued onto the last stretch accross the Bay. The grass in Berkley was lovely.

I wouldn’t mind studying there. Even though biochemistry might not be the most interesting field in the world…

Berkley seemd like a wonderful place. If I ever get the chance, I would love to study there – but when would that happen? I’m already set until grad school, and who knows if I’ll ever make it farther than that.

12/6: Travelling should be all about experiencing new things. And according to Leslie, mack n’ cheese is one of those truly American things that every American child eats and loves growing up. When she learned that we’d never had it, she gave us a package and told us to try it for ourselves. At the Yosemite Bug Hostel, we finally got the chance to try it out.

Really, it wasn’t anything special. It didn’t change my life. Kind of like ‘stuvade makaroner’, the Swedish classic, with some cheese on top. But I do like pasta, and it was perfect after a day of hiking in the heat.