To anyone who knows me, hearing me say “I like to travel” is like hearing me say “I like to breathe.” Duh, Meredith, thanks Captain Obvious, and so on.
My passion for travel comes from a couple of sources. First, it’s a big world. Second, I’m a deeply curious and passionate person by nature. When I get interested in something, that’s it, I’m gone. I don’t know how to like things halfway, and so it was only natural for my interest in Swedish women’s hockey to lead me out of my door and across the ocean.
*
My local airport is “international” in the sparsest sense. It serves the continental United States and a handful of North American locations, it has too many coffee shops crammed into two terminals, and moving walkways that only sometimes move. It also has poetry.
Stretched across the floor-to-ceiling windows at each gate are multihued panels, a cathedral’s stained glass for the modern world, each adorned with poems. The musings on love and flight from local writers soothe even as they hit deep in the heart of what it means to be a human. The airport poems bring me nothing but peace, because if I’m reading them then I’m going on an adventure, or I’ve just returned home safely.
*
My first impression of Sweden is stark. Greys, whites, and black smudges of trees paint themselves across the landscape. Early March in this part of the world means winter still fights for purchase against oncoming spring. I’m not gifted with the ability to sleep on planes; my eyes burn a little and being on the ground is a relief, because it means I’m that much closer to rest. I can’t stop smiling.
As usual getting through customs is a brief series of questions I try to answer as benignly as possible. The customs agent is a man around my age, in his early 30’s, pleasant enough. He asks me where I’m traveling to within the country.
“Stockholm, Linköping, and Luleå,” I answer.
He looks at me. “Those are very specific places.”
I shrug a little. “Hockey.”
His expression brightens, changing from bland to delighted in an instant. He tells me he’s a hockey fan, a big Luleå supporter who watches their games whenever he can.
I take it as a good omen.
*
I think about my father a lot when I travel. He died on Memorial Day, 2012. Every time I sit down in an airport alone I remember being in New York City barely five hours after he died, getting to my gate in JFK, and reaching for my phone to call him to say I made it safely that far. The realization that it was no longer possible hasn’t ever fully left me.
A lot has changed in six years. Would he be surprised to hear his only daughter packed her big red suitcase and went to see a new part of the world? No.
Would he be surprised to hear she went to cover sports? Yes.
Life evolves. I do, too.
*
Stockholm is cold and lovely. I’m tired and starting to get crabby, having been awake since I left the United States. I have my hotel’s address, some money, and an emerging back ache not helped by hauling my luggage around, so I get the first cab I can at the train station and hand the driver the address.
He doesn’t move. He looks down at the paper, then back at me.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
I nod. My feet hurt, I’m in an unfamiliar city, and I’m ready to rest.
He shakes his head and shrugs. After some more staring at the address he finally starts the van and drives, for approximately three minutes, before parking in front of a hotel that’s in VERY easy walking distance of where we just came from.
Oh. Well then.
“Seriously?” I ask, more to myself than to him. He nods and points to the fare.
There’s nothing to do but pay the man and laugh.
*
One of the things that never fails to amaze me about sports is the way it brings together people who otherwise may never have met. Take, for example, my friend Erik. We met on Twitter last year because he very politely corrected a Swedish-to-English translation in an article I wrote; we started a conversation, and it’s never really stopped since. That’s incredible to me.
I’ve been teasing that he’s going to get tackle-hugged when he comes to Stockholm to see me, and sure enough there are hugs and smiles and more hugs as two friends finally get to meet in person.
We joke that since I’m going to SDHL games to work as well as enjoy the hockey, then he’s my executive assistant. Our first outing is to Stora Mossen in western Stockholm to catch Djurgården and HV71. I’ve got two interviews lined up: the easy one is with DIF’s Lovisa Berndtsson about her goalie mask, while the difficult one is with HV71 Captain Riikka Välilä.
The difficulty has nothing to do with her, rather it’s my own nervousness at interviewing someone I really admire. Never meet your heroes, right? A little too late for that, as we sit on a bench outside the rink, listening to children playing in the halls and trying not to breathe in the smell emanating from the hockey gear piled on nearby shelves. Erik’s one bench over, silent and supportive.
Afterwards I breathe a sigh of relief. Now I get to enjoy a hockey game with my friend, and later walk back to the Metro station in the silent snowfall, freezing from the rink and the weather, but filled with warmth inside.
*
The next day we head southwest for another game, this time in Linköping against Göteborg. I learn I’ve been pronouncing the city’s name wrong for a year now.
Despite the predictable outcome it’s a good game. The way I watch hockey has changed since I started writing about it in 2016, but today I’m here to enjoy, not to analyze or interview.
It’s one thing to understand that women’s hockey all across the world awaits equal treatment and fanfare to the men’s game, but it’s another to see the empty seats in person and imagine what could be. The potential is here; some of the world’s best are on the ice in front of me and the seed is planted. It just needs a fighting chance and the proper resources to grow.
I catch an early train back to Stockholm after the game. It’s a dreary day and the landscape passes by without aplomb. Grey ceases to be a color in the sky; rather it’s a mood. On a day like this at home I’d be napping. Instead I stare, and I write.
*
I spend the next few days learning parts of Stockholm the best way I know how: by picking a direction and walking until my legs are sore. Maps, metro guides, and guesswork get me mostly where I want to go, but there’s a freedom in getting lost somewhere new and I’ve been here long enough to establish reference points like the train station and the 7-11 near my hotel.
(Yes, 7-11, as well as a Burger King, because apparently leaving the States doesn’t mean the States leave me.)
For an introvert like me, the freedom to walk unnoticed and completely anonymous is a delight. I relish the chance to spend some time with myself and recharge the part of my spirit that drains with too much human contact. I’m like any other stranger until I open my mouth and my language skills give me away; I get to be calm in ways that can be elusive at home.
*
The second-to-last day is reserved for an adventure within an adventure. One trip to the airport and one quick flight later I’m in Luleå, the furthest north I’ve traveled on planet Earth.
Sitting back home in the Midwest several weeks later, I’m struggling to find the right words to describe what happened up there.
It was good. God, it was so good. Energy, laughter, quality time with a friend, some tasty Pad Thai, getting to see the inner workings of a hockey club up close, coaches going above and beyond to welcome me, passionate fans singing and chanting for the women’s team in rousing raucous unison…it was unforgettable.
Also unforgettable? The Scarf. Yes, it gets capital letters, because even now I can’t look at it without grinning.
The ancient Manchester United scarf around my neck was purchased over a decade ago on a frigid day in London, not because I knew or cared anything about the team, but because I was cold. Once Erik and I get to Delfinen (always Delfinen, I learn later) I send out a tweet that anyone there who wants to say hello should look for the girl in black wearing the Man U scarf. A few minutes later I get an reply from a familiar face on Twitter telling me to fix that issue right away by getting myself a Luleå scarf.
Now, I’m a sarcastic thing, so I answer back, “You buying?”
“Sure. Go down to the souvenir shop and tell them your name, it should be arranged for you.”
My eyes get huge. Erik is with me, watching this unfold on Twitter and laughing as I get embarrassed. I was kidding! Totally kidding. Then he tells me that the man I’m tweeting is the team’s communications director. In other words I, a foreign journalist, just sassed someone with whom it’s in my best interest to foster cordial relations.
Oops.
I make Erik go pick up the scarf. I wear it proudly the rest of the game.
*
It’s inevitable that a business – because that’s what a hockey club is – has issues. There’s always internal conflict an outsider like myself isn’t privy to, and there’s always room for improvement. That’s true of any business across the world, sports-related or not. But, what I saw and heard up there gave me hope. Caring about women’s sports, genuinely caring, not just tossing the right words around a few times a year for a soundbite, has power.
Those seeds I spoke about earlier? In Luleå they’re being watered, and they are growing.
*
I’ll spare the details of my last night in Sweden being derailed by a swift and vicious stomach flu that followed me back to the United States. I’ll also spare cliches about gratitude and horizons expanding through travel, although I am incredibly grateful for the experience. Instead I’ll end with some of the airport poetry:
for these few moments
you float
with some small time away
from the matters you’re going to,
the places you’ve left behind.
Meredith Foster 