Usually I have the holiday plans ready for something like this year, but this is no ordinary summer. In a little over a week, my very last holiday will begin and it is not without that it feels a little strange. Next year at this time, I will not have to apply in February already for which weeks I want to be free because I will be a full-time pensioner.
But hand on heart: is it really necessary to have vacation plans? Aren’t the holiday weeks the time when you do not have to have plans, the weeks when the calendar is not filled with a lot of must-haves?
Of course it was fun when I as a child longed for summer vacation and had a long line of free days ahead of me. Plans were something the adults had to do.
I remember a summer in the early 2000s when one of my then co-workers had planned the holiday down to the smallest detail. First he and his wife would go and visit their respective parents, then they would go home and have guests for a number of days before it was time for the next trip and after the next visit from the countryside. This is what their whole vacation looked like, poor people, but they were – and still are – younger than me.
Sure, I admit that as a young adult I planned what I would do on vacation, but that’s a long time ago. And of course it’s fun to travel abroad during the holidays. Maybe I will do it again this summer, but not until I have my new passport in hand. It will take another week or so before I receive a long-awaited text message that the passport is finally ready. Until then, I can stay at home in Sweden. That’s good enough for me.
This is something I have also come to realize over the years: that the grass cursed me is not greener on the continent. Quite the opposite this year.
Although it is clear that a grand crème tastes a thousand times better at La Rotonde in Montparnasse than a similar coffee at the patisseries in Sweden. It probably has to do with the environment itself and I will probably take a trip to Paris before the summer is over – if only to enjoy the coffee at La Rotonde.
My holiday plans do not extend beyond that.
Read more kåserier by Eva-Karin Gyllenberg, for example about the beaten Jansson, the dish.