It was in Sweden in the winter.
It was -25 degrees. If I went out, I got cold on the inside of my cheeks.
There was a fair risk of me dying or getting severe medical problems if I had to walk home in only the dress I was wearing.
Then later my jacket was found, I hugged someone who I thought had contributed to saving my life and we went home. Took a cigarette on the way, as people do when they are young wild and have stolen too many beers.
Our cigarettes kept burning out from the cold and we had to relight them 5 times a cig.
Do you know how it feels when it's so cold that when you breathe the snot in your nose freezes with each breath? Or that when you've been to the shop to buy milk, it might have frozen by the time you've gotten home? Or that you can't use disposable cameras for five months a year because it's too dark in your country?
After living most of my life in Sweden, I can't still understand that people chose to live and chose to stay here in the winter.
It's not made for civilisation, it's working against logic.
Which makes it all very human.
Welcome up North.
Make sure to bring your long johns.
a frozen amusement park
Kungsör's own white house
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Maybe it´s nostalgia, but I do miss the cold winters up north, when living down in Malmö. Here the winters are grey wet and just as depressing, but in a way that lacks beauty and danger. It´s not that biting coldness that makes you feel exposed. I think about all those nights in my hometown when I´ve walked home from somewhere, drunk and sad and cold, but then around me - the empty streets, the trees and houses covered in white, enlit by the yellowish street light - it´s also cold, sad, still, and so beautiful. And it hurts cause you´re feezing, but it´s the beauty to it that breaks your heart. I don´t even know where reality stops and metaphor begins.
ReplyDeleteBesides, I like skiing. And I´ve realized telling a guy you´re gonna åka vasaloppet is a really good pick up line.