Now listen to this

"No eternal reward will forgive us now

For wasting the dawn"

February at Hallandsgatan: the psychedelic depths of distant soundscapes, the lingering warmth of today’s lunch at Söderfamiljen, and the absurd hope that all will eventually be just fine.

Today, I had an extra class for the students who failed their second attempt at the statistics exam. Coming in, their dread was palpable; an hour later, they had conquered what they had once thought insurmountable. Moments like that are reason enough.

Lynx

Waking up to -15 degrees, the winter still holds Halland in the firmest of grips. Just outside the house: tracks in the fresh snow of what looks like the Eurasian lynx – a secretive nightfarer with thick fur beneath its paws, making the prints appear large and slightly blurred at the edges.

With the morning light, the lynx itself is nowhere to be seen, and yet entirely present – an encounter through absence that becomes impossible not to follow. A quiet assertion of sovereignty in a landscape otherwise claimed by dog walkers and Strava segments.

In forty days, I will trade this crystalline Halland morning for the open expanses of the deserts, where the possibility is its North American counterpart, the cougar. Long before that, rain will have turned the snow into slush. But for a brief winter morning, Halland belonged to something wild.

Fettisdagen

After running only 16 kilometres last week and being down with a cold, my legs felt fresh this morning as I went looking for the perfect semla across the bridges. Pacing 5:24 min/km with an average heart rate of 133 bpm, I stopped only to take a few pictures of ferries, high-rise hotels, and the occasional polar bear.

Once on the other side of the river, I made it to Alkemisten just as a fresh batch of semlor arrived. Apparently, the word “fettisdag” has been in use since the late sixteenth century, and this one was definitely worthy of the tradition.

Xennials

While perhaps a bit too early, I could not resist the purple morning skies and went for a run around the neighbourhood, keeping my 373-week-long streak on Strava alive.

Meanwhile, Sofi went for a dog walk in Örebro, past the old shoe factory where we used to live in the early aughties – a formative moment in time for the generation sometimes referred to as “xennials”. Those years somehow completed the transition from an analogue world without social media to the constantly connected and recorded world of today.

Even if one should be careful not to read too much into this kind of pop psychology, there is something to be said about this technological bilingualism: of having used both rotary phones and Reddit; of remembering life before Wi-Fi passwords and push notifications; of experiencing boredom and empty time in a way that the Millennial generation coming after perhaps never quite did. We learned to wait. To call from landlines. To knock on doors without texting first. And then, almost without noticing, we became permanently reachable, geolocated, and archived. Winter morning skies and a 373-week streak feel like fitting metaphors for all this: analogue legs, digital trails.

Cold snap

Waking up to -13 degrees, I read that yet another cold snap is on its way, with cold air coming down from Greenland by midweek. Feeling kind of miserable, all running is on hold, so instead I am spending this Sunday morning revising PowerPoint slides and indulging in a rather epic breakfast.

Having rebooked my hotels for California, I am still planning to run the 28k Billy Goat Mountain Climb in Silverado, as well as heading into the desert for a night under the stars in Anza-Borrego State Park. But instead of staying at the Manchester Grand Hyatt, where the conference is, I found a much more affordable Holiday Inn Express. So I guess it really is full circle to two decades ago, when my road trips with Gabriel featured stays at such romantic IHG locations as Andrews Air Force Base, with fighter jets constantly taking off overhead. At least I used the points well, staying at Coogee Beach in Sydney later the same year.

Circles

Eighteen years ago, I was on a flight from New York to Düsseldorf, looking forward to spending Valentine’s Day in Rome. Reality, however, had other plans, and instead of romance there was theology at the Vatican with a Catholic priest whom I had befriended a few years earlier in Vienna.

With Valentine’s once again proving to be a rough ride, my cold worsened overnight, and the day brought a series of small mishaps and forgotten gloves – only slightly mitigated by a semla in the brilliant sunshine. With the sun now climbing ten degrees higher than at the winter solstice, its rays are at least beginning to warm.

Talamone

Having already confessed my sartorial sins – and the very real risk of becoming a "returmissbrukare" – here is my latest attempt at reproducing the famous Talamone look. This time, however, all sales are truly final, as I ordered an Amazon Essentials piece for 29 USD directly from the US.

Otherwise, I woke up with a slight cold which made me skip my planned half marathon in Skatås in favour of answering student emails and preparing slides for my upcoming statistics classes. Feeling somewhat better in the afternoon, I popped down to the gym with William for some light strength training instead.

6-7

You know that internet memes die the moment 47-year-old bloggers start inserting them into every conversation. Still, tonight I regained at least a little respect from the kids when I showed them that I have made 67 trips in my current qualification year with SJ.

As for lore and inside jokes, a well-dressed fox at Hamburger Bahnhof yesterday certainly made my day. But now it feels good to be back in Gothenburg and settle into a few calm days before the next teaching dash begins.

Glyptoteket

With the kids having barely been to Copenhagen before, I took it upon myself to brave the elements and lead them past the city’s most iconic sites, including the Little Mermaid – surrounded by ice – and the white plumes of biogenic hydrocarbons rising from Amagerværket. Still, after five kilometres of brisk winter walking, the mood was beginning to sour, and an escape was urgently needed. And what better refuge than the palm trees and Roman sculptures of the Glyptotek.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Ludvig Beckman has taken a stand against the inhumane deportation of teenagers in Sweden by resigning from the ethics council of the Swedish Migration Agency. At a time when too many choose silence, every act of resistance counts. Just as the regressive elements of Danish energy policy need to be called out (for those wondering, Denmark’s emissions on this winter day stand at 217 grams of CO₂ per kWh – roughly five times that of Sweden), so does the idea that racism can be defused simply by speaking the same language (as the Danish Social Democrats have long attempted). That road is ultimately toxic to democratic politics and the very ethos of liberal democracy.

Lounge Tegel

Getting up at the ungodly hour of 4:20 am, the kids and I took the Regional Express back to Berlin Brandenburg well ahead of our flight up to Copenhagen. Having never flown out of the airport before, I did not quite know what to expect in terms of queues and, seeing that easyJet had a whole bank of morning departures, including one to Rovaniemi for those who missed the Santa season, I thought it better to be safe than sorry. Once at the airport, however, it took only a few minutes to check my bag, and we were through security in no time.

Having had my American Express Platinum card for a year now, the economics of it, compared to my former life on the frequent-flyer hamster wheel, still astonish me. The fact that I can book any ticket with any airline – in this case a €25 fare with easyJet – and still enjoy an abundant breakfast in the "Tegel" lounge for myself and one guest is simply unbeatable, especially considering that SAS was €100 more per person this morning.

Now, leaving the Vorpommersche Boddenlandschaft behind, we have twenty minutes until landing in Copenhagen, where the forecast promises heavy snowfall and weeks of cold winter weather. Later in the afternoon, we will take the ferry over to Helsingborg and then the high-speed train to Gothenburg – but first, time to see a bit of the Danish capital.