In October 2024, I left Sweden.
During my seven years there, I completed my master's and PhD at KTH and stayed on as a postdoc. The university was a big part of my life, and it was also where I met many of my friends.
People came and went. Some moved to other countries after graduating, while others stayed in Stockholm. We were of different ages and came from different backgrounds, but we would meet for meals, work out, play badminton and board games, or occasionally go hiking. None of this sounds particularly remarkable on its own, but over time it became my life in Sweden.
I first got to know my supervisor, Mårten, through his computer vision course and later became one of its teaching assistants. He has had quite a legendary career, but what impressed me most was how seriously he took his responsibility to his students. He prepared his course carefully every year and was always willing to spend time understanding the problems his students were facing. To me, he is not only a researcher but a true educator. Doing my PhD with Mårten was a genuinely enjoyable experience.
I moved a few times over those seven years, but always stayed in Lappis, short for Lappkärrsberget. I usually cycled to and from campus. Swedish winters are long, but as long as the roads were still rideable, I saw no reason to switch to another form of transport. I would only stop once the snow had been packed into ice and my tires could no longer find any grip.
On my way home from the lab, I often stopped at a sushi place in Lappis. After a while, I was no longer going there just for sushi. The owner would sometimes cook for herself, and I would join her for a little of whatever she had made. Looking back, this was probably my most consistent routine in Stockholm: leave campus, cycle back to Lappis, sit at the sushi place for a while, and then go home.
Of course, because I never much liked locking my bike, I lost enough bicycles in Sweden to summon Shenron by now.
I really did like Sweden itself. The winters were long and dark, and cycling came with the occasional fall, but the environment suited a night owl surprisingly well. Once it was dark and everything around me went quiet, I became much more productive. At one point, while working toward a deadline, I deliberately reversed my sleep schedule altogether.
Summer was the complete opposite. The sun came up shortly after four in the morning and there was still daylight at ten at night. Everyone suddenly moved outdoors. Winter and summer felt like two entirely different ways of living, and I liked them both.
Living in the Schengen Area should have made travel around Europe easy, without having to apply for a new visa for every trip. Unfortunately, much of my PhD overlapped with the pandemic, so I spent several years mostly at home. Once travel resumed, I still made it to Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Norway, the Czech Republic, Poland, and a few other places. I did not get everywhere I had hoped to go, but living in Sweden still gave me the chance to see different parts of Europe.
During my last month in Sweden, I was meeting friends, sharing meals, and saying goodbye almost every day. I saw many of them regularly, so at first leaving did not feel like such a big deal. But as the date came closer, it became harder and harder to go.
I also had plenty of uncertainty about what would come next. My work was finished and my bags were packed, but life did not fall into place quite as neatly. When it was finally time to leave, what I found hardest was saying goodbye to the friends I had made there.