Swedish Experience

Our journey back to America began and we were on our way to Stockholm, Sweden for an overnight layover. Pieter had made reservations for a lounge at the airport and both of us were eager to lie down and rest after emotional goodbyes and a long trip ahead of us. Upon arrival to the Stockholm airport, we searched for the lounge and waited in a line to ask for directions to the lounge. Everyone around us looked exhausted too, so I felt like I fit in. The kind lady at the desk informed us that the lounge was closed for the day and we shuffled off to try and find a quiet place to rest for the next six hours.

“Sky City” would have been cool in the day, but it was just creepy at night. This was the shopping part of the airport with fancy restaurants and bars. We stopped at a round couch first, thinking we could settle in there. People were cuddled under blankets on every other couch. We moved on from there to a room upstairs where it looked like a quarantine from the prairie days, people in chairs under blankets, sort of just ‘done’ for the day. At this point, I was still sick from earlier that week. My stomach hurt and I was hungry. Pieter took good care of me and got me a sprite and some dinner. I could not get settled. The person beside us looked like she was dressed to visit the Arctic and when she started snoring loudly, I knew we had to find another spot to spend the night. Pieter went to scout the place out and eventually we found an empty booth at a small restaurant in the center of everything, but closer to bathrooms and further away from snoring eskimos. This turned out to be one of the longest and most miserable nights of my life. I sat cross legged on the bench while Pieter laid down to sleep. I got maybe a total of 40 minutes of sleep that night.

The next morning, everything was blurry. We searched for breakfast and ended up with a dry blueberry muffin and some water. Our flight from Stockholm to Copenhagen was very short. For the hour that we were in the air we both slept like babies. The plane rocked us both to sleep and when we landed, both of us wished the plane had just kept going all the way to America. We would have slept the entire way over the ocean.

We have become far too familiar with the Copenhagen airport by now. We found our usual spot to relax there and I curled up in an uncomfortable airport chair with an armrest poking me in the back while Pieter slept on the hard, cold floor. If it hadn’t been for two obnoxiously loud guys coming into this quiet room, I would have slept all the way until our next flight.

Tired of airport food and not wanting some fancy wafer sandwich at a European deli that was trying to hard to impress tourists, we went by a convenience store and got a sandwich and some cheese curls. Finding a bench near our next gate, we sat down to eat the sandwich that had red peppers on it and not tomatoes, so very misleading and gross.

By the time we reached the gate where the plane that would take us to America resided, I was exhausted, cranky, and so very anxious to be at home. I imagined hugging my family again, cuddling up in my own bed, making dinner for my husband when he arrived home from work, having popcorn movie nights together again, and settling back into the work routine. I was ready to get back to my life and responsibilities in America. I was tired of airports, pilots, and being in the air. I wanted normal back.