When I started this blog, my idea was that I’d write one post for every place I visited. Neat and tidy, it would provide a strict methodology to the chaos of budget traveling. But the past 24 hours have been too spontaneously vibrant and wonderfully weird not to write about. So here goes.

It all began with a delayed flight from Amsterdam. Initially annoyed, my mood shifted quickly once we were in the air. From 10,000 feet, the midnight sun spilled brazenly red over half the horizon. I had to turn my head to see the edges where pink faded to blue.

When we landed, close to 1am, it was still light enough to see the prickly silhouettes of pine trees fencing the runway. This was a welcome sight and reminded me of Hanover.

Baggage claim was easy enough: There were signs on the ground for everything. Stereotypical though it may be, the airport felt like a large Ikea (in the best way possible). I also quite liked that they encouraged travelers to refill their bottles from the water fountain as opposed to other airports like Newark where it feels all sources of freshwater have been hidden in order to pressure the dehydrated passenger to buy bottled water.

A short bus ride later, I got off at a bus stop in what felt like the middle of nowhere. The pine trees were back in full force, and after walking a bit through what felt like a Christmas-tree farm, I turned a corner and saw my hostel. It was a jumbo jet, lined in Christmas lights. The sky behind its humongous left wing still glowed pink.

I spent the night here, caught a train into Stockholm the next day, and dragged my suitcases through the old city, Gamla Stan, which lies on a small Island in the heart of Stockholm. The island is networked by winding cobbled streets and sandstone-colored buildings dating back to the 12th Century. My hostel is on the third story of a lovely old building with sloping hallways, big windows, and spotty electricity. I love it.

Shortly after arriving, I made a friend named Silvan, from Switzerland. We chatted a bit and decided to go out later in the afternoon to celebrate Midsummer’s Eve, a Maypole raising, courtly-dancing, beer-drinking, lox-eating, flower-crown wearing celebration of the solstice.

Before we celebrated, I went for a run. Stockholm, to me, felt like a prime combination of open space and intimacy. The waterways made the city breathable and vast. The 50 bridges connecting its 14 islands made it accessible. The stone buildings and rows of sailboats lent it a certain elegance. It seemed to me a quaint fishing village that had swelled perfectly with life over hundreds of years to lay out clean green spaces, efficient trams, and restrained maritime architecture built to weather the elements. It had the beautiful craftsmanship of most European cities, but with more breathability. Like Prague with more trees.

Somewhere between setting out past Stockholm’s Old Capital building in Gamla Stan, crossing a bridge into Kungsholmen, and dashing through a series of interconnected parks lining glittering waterways, I decided Stockholm was my new favorite city. Over the course of one run, I passed a beach, ran through a music festival, skipped and leaped along a rocky coast with sunbathers, explored a series of forested trails, and zigzagged through sightseeing crowds gathered before ornate historical buildings. I think what will stick with me most is the smell: Stockholm smells like both the ocean and the woods.

an early view of Stockholm: crossing the Riksbron in Gamla Stan

After I got back from my run, I went a 7/11 of all places, which is quite popular here, and serves fills a slightly higher-price convenience niche than in the States. I also bought vanilla mjukglass (soft serve ice cream) that tasted like Dairy Queen, but richer.

I met back up with Sylvan at the hostel, and a new friend, Dean, who is from New York but is living in Paris for the summer. We walked into Stockholm proper, hoped on the tram which the conductor, a manganous man whose answer to the question, “how much is the fare?” was “too much,” let us ride for free.

We got off at Scanzen, an outdoor-museum-and-zoo converted into festival grounds for Midsummer. After paying admission, we wondered the vast park until we found ourselves approaching the hyper-visible 50-foot-tall ivy-clad Maypole that lay at the center of the park. Once there, we watched some traditional Midsummer’s dancing, before being invited to take part in it ourselves. The dancing revolved (literally) around a series of concentric rings. You held hands with the strangers next to you, skipped with right or left together, and occasionally split into pairs to do a series of easy to follow movements. It was like doing a nine-hundred year-old version of the cha-cha slide, but with people of all ages, some of whom were dressed in traditional Swedish clothing (kind of like colonial wear). The melody of the Små grodorna (little frog) dance was derived from a militant march from French Revolution and is still stuck in my head…Kou ack ack ack, kou ack ack ack…. I can still picture hoping like a frog and looking over my shoulder at the Maypole, bathed in sunlight bleeding golden through its ivy leaves. This image is already fading pleasantly into memory in my mind.

After dancing, we met another solo traveler named Eric. We grabbed food. I got some sort of smoked salmon salad wrap creation that paired wonderfully with a light Folköl, the name for 3.5% ABV beer (higher alcohol contents require a license and are less common in public spaces). Silvan, Dean, and I explored the rest of Scanzen, where we saw reindeer, bear, and my personal favorite, moose, as well as a series of historical buildings. Around 10pm, we watched the sunset from a craggy outlook opposite Stockholm and pretended to be pensive (Dean smoked a cigarette!)

After departing, we grabbed an absolutely packed tram where the conductor, grinning widely, chuckled some words in Swedish and literally packed us together like upright sardines. We wandered back through Gamla Stan to a couple of bars, the last of which featured a joyously flamboyant dance party to what I’d best describe as “techno-pop.”

The whole night, the sky had never gotten fully dark. It hovered in that beckoning state of dark blue that immediately proceeds sunset for a few hours before breaking into day once more. Walking home at 2:30, the birds were already beginning to chirp.

I give Midsummer’s Eve in Stockholm 5/5 stars.