Växjö, Sweden boasts a beautiful lake, and Jess doesn’t know how to learn from her mistakes — so she went for another run.

A run at dawn sounds very romantic and healthful, though it happens to be a bit less desirable in locations where daylight breaks at 3:30am. But the seagulls had sounded the alarm, and I was stirring, so I laced up my shoes and headed out. I touched a 1,000-year-old rune stone behind the twin-spire Domkyrka (cathedral), then began my sporadic run-walk around Växjö Lake, pausing every 100 meters or so to take in the scenery.

The solitude of the early morning brought peace to my anxious soul as I gazed at thick oaks and cascading silver birch, pondered graceful swans and twittering coots, and stilled my heart and my breath under the forest canopy. I stopped to listen to the birdsong of a Eurasian wren and snacked on wild Swedish raspberries, smiling to myself as I fell again into a running cadence.

My heart was bursting with joy and rest and relief!

…and then I inhaled a bug.

A short coughing fit later, the insect was expelled and I was on my way, albeit a slight bit less exuberant with my toothy grin.

---

After four miles, a shower, and a 6:30a nap, I found confusion at breakfast – some thinking we were leaving at 8, some thinking we were eating at 8, and no one really willing to stay in one place to find out. I think drone footage of our little band would be a study in schooling fish.

We wandered around Växjö, visiting the local county museum and glass art installation – complete with singing handrails if you got too close – before exploring Utvandrarnashus, the Emigrants House. This last stop was a favorite of mine as we learned about the 1+ million Swedes who emigrated to North America in the mid-19th century, many to my neck of the woods, the so-called “Swedish Triangle” where the St. Croix and Mississippi Rivers meet (who knew that not everyone grew up with a Lutheran church in every town and a phonebook full of Larsons, Olsons, Nelsons, and Carlsons? You betcha!).

Next we gathered (on multiple street corners) to load the bus to ride to the historic Kosta Boda glass factory to see glassblowers at work. We were subsequently ferried through a large outlet shopping mall where we lost various group members, who generally appeared just as we sent a representative to hunt for them – an entertaining variation of Whack-a-Mole.

When we had finally herded everyone onto the bus, we began our 4-hour journey to Denmark. We crossed from Malmö, Sweden into Copenhagen by way of the Øresund Bridge, which soars over the strait for 8 km before diving into a tunnel beneath it for another 4 km. Road hazard signs shifted from blue & gold to red & white, and we were in our final country of the tour.

We arrived at at our edgy, party-styled hotel at 8:00 pm, the latest we’d checked in yet. But as the token “young people” from the tour, Julie and I went out to party the night away in København.

A couple months prior, we had learned that our aunt and uncle would be in Copenhagen for a week of global meetings during the time we would be in Scandinavia. We followed their shadow through Norway, but finally caught up in Copenhagen and they were gracious enough to hunt us down. Julie and I raised tour-members’ eyebrows as we hugged two “strangers” in a city parking lot, then set off to find some Thai food.

Our first restaurant stop was closing just as we arrived, so we tripped down the stairs to the Metro to catch a ride toward the city centre. After some delightful red curry, we traipsed over cobblestoned streets through the Christianshavn and Indre By neighborhoods, taking in twilight views of Frederikskirke, Kastellet, Amalienborg and the Little Mermaid statue. Walking tours at 10:30 pm mean you get to move around without tourists. ☺️

We rode the train back to the hotel and settled in by 11:30p, my feet happily regaling me of my 27,000 step/13 mile day.