Morning on the ICE in Sweden
It’s a Sunday morning on the ICE. Were I in Sweden, it might have been possible to physically be on the ice, but here in northern Germany global warming has seen to it that there is no ice in early December. Instead the Inter City Express train shoots us through the flat, culturally-conditioned landscape. In Sweden we are still used to wildernesses. Here there are none. Still, there are mini-forests occupying small patches and straight lines dividing the fields, where man considers they should be.
In this land, the wind mills rise high above the earth in great clusters. Use of wind power is not a debate, it is a fact here, where the winds blow strong and unhindered across the flat landscape, and where people have recognized that it’s smart to go to the skies for power. In Sweden, people have debated about where to put the wind parks. Won’t they destroy our landscape? For myself, I think they are beautiful. Unfortunately, my back yard at home isn’t big enough for one. Perhaps this could be a suggestion for the king who lives across the road from me and has a bit more space in his back yard at Drottningholm.
At the train station I sat waiting for the ICE in front of a gigantic H&M billboard. Strangely, the models sporting the best of affordable Swedish clothing design looked Asian. I had expected that they would look more northern German, but it seems that we have come into a time when appearance frequently has nothing to do with nationality. Standing in a German train station where once the swastikas would have hung where the billboards are today, this feels like some of the most important progress we could be making as a species.
Out in the shopping mall next to the train platforms a young man outside The Body Shop entices women to try the latest body butter. It is interesting the way that global brands make you feel at home wherever you are. Whatever the challenges to local industry created by globalization, it is reassuring to know that humans can at times agree about tastes and smells. The globalization of this zone of life, tastes and smells, doesn’t seem to have reduced diversity either. Bratwurst, like smörrebröd or sill has simply been lifted out of its German, Danish or Swedish box into a globally accessible range of ideas about food. I like the thought.
As the ICE heads south, ice becomes ever less likely. Once we reach our destination, we’ll be somewhere at the Black Forest, just across from the French border. There I’ll be able to disembark and sniff at the air, hopefully to notice the smell of crepes from the cafes across the border.
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Wondering what to give a friend or loved one for Christmas? Learn more about Julie Lindahl’s prize-winning new book, “Rose in the Sand,” a memoir of a decade lived on a Swedish island. Order it now from amazon.com, amazon.co.uk , Author House, authorhouse.co.uk and many other online bookstores. Other books by Julie Lindahl available are: Letters from the Island (listen also to Julie’s podcasts from this site) and On My Swedish Island: Discovering the Secrets of Scandinavian Well-being.
Julie Lindahl is chairperson at Stories for Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to learning and communication through storytelling.
