It’s Friday morning at Ana and Alex’s HOME all the way down in Nybro and it’s beautiful.
I don’t know, really, if there have been any NOT beautiful moments in Sweden. I guess we went to some gas stations, but other than that, our time here has been varied and Lovely in so many different ways, and I Love that arriving back at Ana and Alex’s current territory, after vacation spots and ski resorts and ancient cathedrals and boat tours, is not in any way disappointing.
Nybro is quaint and pleasantly NOT supersleek the way every other place in Sweden has been. It reminds me of visiting my grandmother’s Pennsylvania town as a child. Everything is old, but not OLD old, and everything’s been used, but cared for. Their apartment isn’t huge, but its spaces are, and it’s wonderful to be staying someplace where nothing feels CRAMPED. I’m eager to take a shower because it’s huge. Not LUXURIOUSLY huge, but more like “meh, we’re not going to build a SHOWER per se, let’s just subdivide the room!” Yeah, everything feels spacious not in a way that says the designer set out to build large airy rooms (which they are) but more in a way that makes you think they were just tired of making walls.
Who knows. I think Ana was saying these were the work barracks / apartments of glass factory workers once upon a time (there are certain safety appointments that point to more communal Living situations) and they knocked down some walls and remodeled it all and voila – light and airy rooms and huge showers in an otherwise very blocky, squat brick of a structure.
Yesterday was a ROAD TRIP. 11 hours or so in a car with a couple of stops, wending down (no roads seem to go straight here) from Idre, up in the mountains, where we’d daytripped to Norway, down here near the coastal, southern tip of the country. We’ve covered roughly 500 miles, ABOUT 1/3 of the country, but we’re still further north than it’s even POSSIBLE to be in the continental U.S. (we’re roughly parallel to the southern tip of Alaska) and the weather continues deliciously cool.
There’s not a lot that I’m missing from home. The cat, the gigs. I’m looking forward to the music. I miss ceiling fans and ice cubes and maybe even understanding the language of those around me, but I’d almost give it ALL up to keep these temperatures.
There’s far too much too type about and I feel rude every time I carve a moment out to write while I’m here, figuring I’ll go back through the (thousands) of pictures and stitch it into a narrative later, but I DID want to take a moment to talk about something very dear to me: restrooms.
I DO Love the restrooms of Europe. Everything is built with care. Though, contrary to my writings a couple of days ago, I HAVE finally found some things that feel like they were built cheaply, they’re still pretty clean and generally every WC is a private, beautifully personal experience – however – Ana and Alex’s toilet is the first one that makes any noise other than the rushing of water and it’s surprisingly homey. Most everything’s involved pressing a button. Big button, little button. One button that might stick at one cabin but generally speaking everything has been finely machined and mass produced with two exceptions.
The ”prison” bathrooms had something I was VERY excited to see : chain cisterns that were NOT merely decorative! I got to pull a CHAIN and that was thoroughly exciting every time – and here at Ana and Alex’s is a kind of ball that you pull UP and it slowly returns to it’s starting position making a pleasant sort of waterpipe whining sound.
And these, in addition to reindeer and friends and coffee and food and amazing weather and this very pleasant couch, are the things that are making me happy today.
1 thought on “July 5th, 2024. Nybro?”
Wow!