Sweden Diaries: 5

this morning’s sunrise

Friday 15th November

I didn’t intend for so much time to pass from my last Sweden diary to this one. We’ve seen the start of autumn and our first snow fall; we’ve moved house once and will be moving again in a couple of days time; there has been much change.

Though it is not officially winter yet, the early sunsets and late sunrises make it feel so. It’s interesting how different a place can feel in the dark–my recent late afternoon walks have been taken in the last of the daylight, and I’ve caught the sun setting behind the frosted mountains many a time. I’ve stood on the shores of the man-made beach in Åre and looked out over the gently moving dark waters into the distance at the speckles of warm lights from the houses scaling the hills. There is a peaceful comfort to the knowing that when the sun sets and darkness cloaks over the town, the waves are still in motion and the wind still rises.

We’ve been in Sweden just under 3 months now, but I think that the emotional highs and lows that I’ve experienced, as well as the frequent moving from house to house to storage unit and back has made it feel like we’ve been here far longer. I’ve spent a lot of time walking–in the morning dew, the afternoon sun and purple dawn; in snow up to my knees and warm sun-kissed grass–and it feels like I’m coming to know her. The colours of the morning sky in dusty pink, apricot and peach, and sights of the tall dark mountains, now kissed with highlights of snow, make it feel closer to heaven. It is a special place and I pinch myself often that we’re here.

Mum and Dad have visited–they stayed for a little under two weeks and we showed them places we’ve frequented and places undiscovered. We visited a nearby waterfall named Tännforsen and saw the colours of the rainbow in the light through water droplets; we ate dinner around the dinner table each night, with glasses of wine and a feast most often made by Mum and me; we did the menial tasks of food shopping and taking the recycling out, which when doing so as an adult and with your parents manages to feel peculiarly tender; we went to a cosy local spot for good pizza one night, and a small family run Bangladeshi restaurant a few towns over another, where we ate panipuri, some great kala channa (my favourite dish of the night) and chicken on the bone. For breakfasts I made plates of toasted sourdough and homemade brioche, sweet tomatoes, cucumbers and avocado, and worked the cast iron to do fried eggs on demand.

Rob was due to go on a work trip a few days after they arrived, but on the morning of, he injured his ankle badly and was unable to go, so some more ‘firsts’ were ticked off in calling the healthcare services and visiting our healthcare centre (Mum and Dad came along to that, too). Though under unfortunate circumstances, our early drive to the health centre allowed us to see the glowing sunrise, with warm light flowing down from the tip of Åreskutan. He is well on the road to recovery now, off of his crutches and walking around near-normal again, which is good news considering we’re due our next spell of snow in the next few days, and this time it is here to stay–a.k.a ski season is coming.

I suppose the biggest change with me since my last update is my work situation, which has been the source of the emotional highs and lows that I mentioned earlier. After just a few weeks here, I got a job FOH in a bakery in town and it felt like things were already falling into place, quicker than I imagined they would. I would be lying if I said that I had dreamed of moving to Sweden and working serving customers, making coffees and heating up sandwiches, but it was a job, a way of meeting people and hopefully learning more of the language. Fast forward a couple of weeks and I found myself in another bakery, one that instantly felt like a bit of home, and I said to myself that this was the kind of place I wanted to work, with a preference of back of house instead of front. As luck would have it, they were hiring. I got in touch, not thinking that I would be considered for the role due to my lack of experience, but following on with the theme of things falling into place, I ended up meeting the head baker for a chat and was soon in the bakery doing trial shifts. Schedules began to clash with the other bakery I was working at, and in many ways I had mentally checked out of that job (and once that happens with something I struggle a lot to continue on with it), so I told them that another opportunity had come up and stopped working there. As has been the case in previous trial shifts in bakeries, I was immediately aware of the pace that I was working and my inability to do some of the things that the other bakers could. They tied three cinnamon and cardamom knots in the space of my tying one, and as with anywhere new I was asking where things went, where things were and so on near constantly, but that’s just the way things go in a new space. I like to think that I have a good sense of situations and people, and though I was being told reassuring words when I laughed about my shortcomings, I felt like something was off. A final chat with the head baker at the end of my last trial shift began and ended on positive notes, and while to another person that chat may have assured them that the job was theirs, I left with the sounds of doubt echoing in my mind the whole way home–and as it turns out, those doubts I thought I heard were not just my being pessimistic or wary. I didn’t get the job. Did I cry? Perhaps, though I know that it wasn’t just to do with the rejection, but rather the rejection plus the anxiety I had already been feeling about work and income and the general uneasiness that comes with moving country, to a place where you know no one and don’t speak the language. So I let myself cry and feel all of the emotions that had been bubbling below the surface, and then I moved on. I had wanted to write a diary update then, but knew I needed to leave some time to let my emotions settle.

Now here I am a little over a month after the fact and still trying to figure things out, but I’m focusing my energy on making food content on here and on my Instagram, and I’m feeling good about that. Truth be told, when moving here I’d hoped that I would be able to do just that–do what I had been dreaming of doing for over a year before moving and make content creation the thing that I ‘do’. I’d never been able to dedicate the time that that requires due to other work commitments, but now I have nothing but time, and have been spending most of my waking hours on recipe creation and writing, content creation, recipe research and so on. My brain is on food constantly, as it has always been, but now it feels more validated and purposeful, because I have a platform to share it on, and a creative outlet that utilises it. I have wished for this time for so long and now I have it and I am all in. You put in what you want out.

The comfort of stability is why so many people stay in situations; it’s why I stayed in my old job for so long despite hating it for more than half of my time there. But here I am blessed with being forced out of that comfort and I’m trying to do what I imagined I might. I could pour all of my energy into this for nothing to come of it. But if not that then what? I want nothing else right now. Maybe one day I will, but for now, this is it.