Spring & Midsummer Awakening🌸🌿

lihidinai
Jul 2
5 min read

I started my first road trip - in Sweden.

In two days from now it will be exactly 1.5 years since I officially started my move to Sweden. Since then, I’ve been on quite a journey, mentally and physically. I changed my home just two times since then, and that is very new to me, after being so much in movement in the last 5-6 years before that. I came to a moment of exhaustion from moving so much from one place or another, and I needed stability, especially after having so much chaos in my home country. I decided to move here to Sweden, and to start from Stockholm, where I know some people and I know the place a little. I moved to Stockholm, but with a dream of moving to the countryside one day, and maybe even soon. But out of exhaustion of so many uncertainties in so many levels - moving to a new country, moving before that through a LOT of places, publishing my first book, having w~ar in my home country, and also having lot of fear from all of these big changes - it all felt like a lot to digest, so I stayed, here, in my apartment of Stockholm. I stayed and curled myself as a snail in my apartment, tired and afraid to plan anything else. The Nordic winter of course just added wind to the sail of the bubbling inside (if it makes any sense to write it like this haha), and added more fears - how can I move further than Stockholm? It can be slippery! I am not practiced in driving on snow or ice in Winter. So I stayed in freeze mode.

A highland cow I have capture near my apartment in Stockholm (I just love them!)

But lately, with the spirit of the spring and the never-ending light of the Swedish midsummer, the ice of my own freeze is starting to slowly melt. I don’t have any answers, but I’m starting to grow more and more courage to at least explore, and not just be in my head. So I decided to move, with the decision to let go of big questions like where should I move and how should I live, and decided to get out into the wild a little, to see beautiful landscapes, to hear roaring rivers, and to remind myself the adventurer in me again - so I traveled with my car north. I pointed two goals, and planned my travel according to them:

The festive opening of the physical shop of Jonna Jinton, a famous Swedish Youtuber that inspires me so much, in Sollefteå (and that people from the whole world were coming to) - 490 Km from home.
A wildlife experience which I was waiting for so much and scheduled already like 5 months ago. - 365 Km from home

282 Km distance between each of my goals.
All together - approx.. 1137 Km

I planned to do a road trip and sleep in my car, but suddenly was really afraid of the idea, as it is not a van, and I’ve never slept alone outside, not in festivals, retreats, hostels or organized cabins. So I started with planning just one night in a camp site, somewhere on the way to Sollefteå, to see how it feels, and scheduled the next few days in different hostels / guest houses / B&B. I am teaching myself more and more to do things in my own rhythm, and in baby steps – if this is what I need to grow confidence – as much as I can without self judgement.

My first day:

I fixed the AC in my car especially before the drive, but I was too lazy to check the oil in the morning (don’t do that) - and I got the warning to check the levels of the oil, and was really stressed! Luckily there was a gas station not too far from that moment, where I bought 3 bottles of oil for the engine (learning from the road), and a person I met there was helping me to make sure I know what I’m doing. Since then I've been checking my oil level every morning before taking my car! Haha. I may need to check that in a car workshop when home, depending if it’ll be decreasing again or not.

I got to tell you, the Swedish highways are so different from what I know, they’re long and fast, and it always takes me time to adjust mentally to this. But there’s a moment where the biggest straight highway changes to more relaxed (to my experience) with much more beautiful landscapes. And then, after a few pauses in gas stations, one stop in a small lake to refresh my stiff body from the drive in a short cool bath, I finally took the turn out of the highway to the direction of my first night in the camp, which I knew was by a river. My jaw dropped. My eyes teared from the beauty of this countryside simple gravel road that was winding between the trees, surrounded by the mountains on the background, the simple Swedish houses, the uphill and downhill paths, the sun shining gracefully on everything, and the majestic river starting to show between the vast greenery of the woods around it. I drove slowly, and took some photos on the way, and just inhaled the incredible beauty of the Nordic mother nature.

My sweet car resting just in front of the lake

Finally, I arrived at my first destination, and it indeed blew my mind and expanded my heart. I saw some campervans, some tents, 2 cabins - one of them the kitchen/showers, the other - chemical toilets. It wasn’t fancy, but nature was. My soul was longing so much for rivers for a while, since Stokholm is quite flat, and has mainly lakes, and I longed for the movement of the water, for the flow of the rivers, for mountains in the background. With the beauty of the landscape though, with the evening sun, came also the wave of the small mosquitoes, called in Swedish “Knott”, apparently in English “Blackfly”, so I had to organize everything with a mosquito head-net on my face so I could breathe without mosquitoes in my nose and everywhere, actually. Those are annoying! I have bites of them all over my body till today (Wednesday, it was last Thursday), and they started to show I think just 2 days later. Anyways, I was happy that I had reservations for hostels and guest houses for the next few days, as I realized, it’s hard to sleep in a car! I haven’t thought it through - I didn’t actually have enough space for everything I have plus me sleeping in the car, so I made a tent to put my things in (Or to sleep incase it would be too stuffy in my car) - it was of course impossible to leave the window open - because of the blackflies. I tried to put a big mosquito net, but didn’t find a way to put it in my car. In addition ,it became extremely cold, even though it was above zero (like 9 Celsius degrees), and I was too tired from the long drive to even think about covering the windows from the light (the Nordic nights are always bright), but eventually I did fall asleep in my car.

The morning came, I took myself outside, made tea and drank it near the roaring river. With all of these challenges, I was energized, even though still tired, I was happy, and felt very alive, and grateful.