He could have become a tango teacher.
But he became a foreigner.
Fortunately.
In his Summer, Bert Sundström, for 20 years SVT’s emissary in Moscow, offers both glimpses of his life – and his favorite music.
He has worked in a psychogeriatric clinic, he has been an English teacher in Buenos Aires – and he could have become a tango teacher.
If he had accepted.
Bert Sundström has many – and surprising – strings to his lyre.
Fortunately, he became a journalist and foreign correspondent instead.
For over 30 years, he has been a correspondent for SVT and with his calmness and from his safe, homely valley destination reported from trouble spots around the world.
Bert Sundström does not look exactly as you would expect from a he-man – but he has a number of times on behalf of the profession ended up in situations where he could just as well have died.
Like in the Congo in 2001, or in Cairo in 2011, where he was stabbed in the abdomen and back and flown home by air ambulance.
In his first Summer, Bert Sundström offers a look back at the past years, topped with a delicious potpourri of music, from .
He opens with the beautiful national anthem of Ukraine.
For the past 20 years, he has reported from Moscow.
On that morning of February 24 last year, Bert Sundström was in Kiev, just a few hundred meters from President Zelenskyi’s office – and was able to report directly on television just minutes after the first aircraft alarms and bomb explosions were heard.
Always ready, always at the service of the viewers.
Without a photographer – he had been stopped at the border – and without a protective vest and helmet – someone else had borrowed them.
He was ordered by the home editorial office to leave the country – it was too dangerous. At first he refused, then he realized he had to.
From Moscow, he continued to report on the war and Putin’s lies – from inside the lion’s den.
That’s exciting to hear.
It was in Russia that he found the love of his life, in Russian Irina, a music teacher and pianist, to whom he is today married.
But in the end even Bert Sundström had enough of Putin’s lied to Russia – today he and his Russian family live in Stockholm.
– In Russia, the truth is dead, he says – and symbolizes what he feels by playing a sad Portuguese fado.
Bert Sundström speaks from the heart when he says:
– Russia is too sick and a threat to the whole world.
FACT Summer with Bert Sundström
Name: Bert Sundstrom.
Age: 64 years.
Living: Born in Stora Tuna, south of Borlänge, now lives in Stockholm.
Profession: Journalist, foreign correspondent.
Previous participation in Summer/Winter: Debutant.
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check First sentence
“At dawn on February 24 last year, I was woken up by a lot of noise.”
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“I want to end with his poetic melancholy, ‘Mark how our shadow’, in a brilliant interpretation by guitarist Ulf G Åhslund and Cornelis Vreeswijk.”
check 3 typical song choices
“Shtje Ne Vmerla” (National Anthem of Ukraine) – Ukraine Glocal Orchestra
“Concerto For Piano & Orchestra No. 3 in D minor Op 30” – Sergej Rachmaninov, Eugene Ormandy, Philadelphia Orchestra
“O Holy Night” – Jussi Björling, Nils Grevillius, Royal Court Chapel
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