I’m starting to believe that I shouldn’t go on holiday. Committed readers will remember that my father was diagnosed with leukaemia shortly after I landed in Bali for Christmas in 2022. So there was, at least, a sort of poetic circularity in that the week he died, I was supposed to be in Sicily.
Holiday missed and break very much overdue, I had an idea. M— and I were already due to fly to Sweden in August for the wedding of a friend of mine from university; why not extend the trip? Sweden might not strike you as the most obvious of summer destinations, but I can assure you it has an extraordinarily beautiful and clement south coast, replete with orchards and white sand beaches. Skåne County is, as I described it to colleagues before our trip, the Cornwall of Sweden. Or, as the French half of our Airbnb host couple called it, the Provence of Sweden. Skåne is home to a high number of artists (including our hosts) owing to its open landscape and luminous light conditions.
But first, two nights in Gothenburg, the foreign city I’d wager I’ve visited most, owing to my university friend, who’s lived there since we departed Leeds more than a decade ago. (Bergen, in Norway, where one of my best friends from school lives, would probably be a close successor. Confusingly for all involved, these Scandinavia-dwelling pals are both called Becky.)
One of the most striking and enamouring of Sweden’s characteristics – and of much of Scandinavia – is that the design quality of public spaces is incredibly high compared to the UK: hold the interior of Victoria Coach Station in your mind, then google Gothenburg’s Nils Ericson Terminal, and you’ll get the idea. Everything is better in Sweden, became our regular sigh.
A second pleasing aspect of the national culture is that the Swedish take coffee breaks so seriously that they have a word for it, fika, which can be used as both a verb and a noun. More accurately, fika means setting aside time to enjoy a coffee, a sweet treat and good company. Often, this sweet treat is a kanelbulle or kardemummabullar. (If you find yourself in Gothenburg, I highly recommend taking your fika at Da Matteo.)
A third is that public transport is unbelievably reliable. To reach the wedding, which was held on Öckerö, one of the northern islands of the Gothenburg archipelago, we had to take a bus, a ferry and another bus. If you were to attempt such a feat in the UK, late at night on a Saturday, you would be turfed off the first bus when it inexplicably downed lights halfway through the route, miss your boat and have to wait until 5am for the next one, only to find the second bus route hasn’t run since 1987. (On this otherwise untroubled journey home, we did discover that some things are the same wherever you go: a load of drunk young men took to smoking in the enclosed bus shelter, which we just about tolerated. One then took a piss in the corner, which we did not.)
After Gothenburg, we picked up our hire car and drove four hours through rolling farmland dotted with houses so picturesque they barely looked real, to our Airbnb on the coast. The weather was perfect – the sort you used to get in southern Europe 15 years ago, a balmy 23˚C. Our home for the week, a converted farm outbuilding, was all whitewash and floaty curtains, with a little deck, surrounded by gladioli, which seem to grow very well in these parts. That evening, reclining with a book as the sun set over the golden wheat fields, I imagined what would happen if I never returned home.
Then, around 5am, the holiday curse struck once more – a stomach bug, necessitating that M— drive to the nearest pharmacy to gesture at the woman behind the counter and type “nausea” and “dehydration” into Google Translate. It turns out that while many things may be better in Sweden, vomiting is just as miserable. Still, there are worst places to be able to do little more than lie prostrate among sand dunes: indeed, I believe this is widely encouraged holiday behaviour.
[See also: Did Labour let down abused women?]
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This article appears in the 27 Aug 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Gentle Parent Trap
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