The Day I Fell in Love

Oh, I know, this will probably sound really very cheesy, wimpish, foolish, soft, you name it, but I don't care, because today is the day I actually managed to identify that sort of pleasant yet fluttering disturbing butterflyish feeling of something not quite graspable that makes you all giddy and weaklegged.

Like a bolt from the very clear blue it came to me when the subway made its way over the railway bridge between stations Slussen and Gamla Sta'n - eureka, this is it, this feeling of enchanted giddiness must be love! And the object of desire being nothing less than this wonderfully sublime city of Stockholm!

And I say this with a most clear and sound mind - no sunstroke or under the influence of any illegal Stockholmian substances - this is indeed love. I have very similar feelings when I touch down in Copenhagen, York or Edinburgh, but still in the every-day long run nothing really compares to the feelings of being complete at ease in one's own city. Domesticity indeed.

And even if you think you know your way almost everywhere, have your favourite places, your lovely spots - I so wish the Swedish word "smultronställen" could be translated into something more magical than that of lovely little spots. Smultronställen literally means places of wild strawberries - and I so think that word strikes a certain secret, magic cord deep inside. Whilst lovely little spots just sounds so flat and unexpressive -

there are still always new ones to be found, new secrets just waiting to be unravelled, magic to be seen and touched by here, in this city of quite natty, but never ever predictable, proportions.

Having had put a name to this, until today, hazy nondescript feeling, I now promise to take my role as the caroler of Stockholm a bit less serious *fingers crossed* and write about something more universally interesting. Perhaps musings about intriguing things like ballpencils, plastic bags, cable connectors, thumbtacks and paperclips. Oh, be still my beating heart.