The Swedish Inn That Doesn’t Exist

 

Last night I went to Sweden. Not on a plane with my passport in hand, and not with my bank account weeping at the cost of airfare. I just… slipped there. Outside of time and space, while I was sleeping.

I stayed in a little inn with a big dining room full of travelers. I ate potatoes and fish, simple but perfect, alongside flatbread with an herb-cheese spread that might honestly have been the best thing I’ve ever tasted, even though it only existed in a dream.

It felt real enough that when I woke up, my hands and feet were buzzing, as though I’d crossed some hidden border and only just re-entered my body. Real enough that the memory stayed with me all day, even while I was chewing my way through all my "get it done before the weekend" tasks. 

I thought about it while answering emails, while juggling client deadlines, while doing all the mundane things that make up real life. I even made a couple of quick renders of the meal, just to hold on to it and remember how it looked, smelled, and tasted before I forget forever. Looking at it now, I almost believe it was a memory.

The Travel I Never Had

I’ve never really been able to afford to travel. At least not in the sweeping, glamorous sense of hopping on planes and visiting countries whenever wanderlust strikes. I dreamed of it when I was younger and fully took it for granted that I'd do it one day. I thought my adulthood would be full of stamps on passports and photographs of me grinning like a demon with a secret in front of landmarks.

But adulthood didn’t go that way. At all. Adulthood has been a never-ending parade of bills, financial worries, and the grind of survival. Trips abroad were always out of reach, filed under “someday” and then quietly filed away again.

So maybe it makes sense that when my subconscious wants to give me the gift of travel, it does it in the most magical way possible. 

Portals, liminal spaces, places you can only get to by stepping outside of ordinary time. When I dream of London, I arrive through a strange terminal full of glowing doors. When I dream of islands, they appear where no reasonable map would place them. When I dream of Sweden, I don’t book a flight. I just arrive.

Real Enough to Matter

What strikes me is how nourishing these dream-journeys feel. It's always more than just fantasy. It’s a profound sort of rest that I don't ever seem to experience any other way. It’s memory. It’s imaginary food that lingers on the tongue even after waking.

And it makes me wonder. Why do we dismiss these experiences as “not real”? Because they didn’t happen in the physical world? Because we can’t post a boarding pass or a photo of our feet on cobblestones to prove it? ("Pics or it didn't happen.")

If a dream can leave me feeling fed, rested, even changed, then it was real enough. It was travel enough.

A Different Kind of Passport

I'm getting old. My hips hurt. I'm tired all the time. I'm still, for all intents and purposes, a starving artist. So, I fully realize that I will likely never be someone with a passport full of stamps. Maybe the closest I’ll come to foreign inns and faraway meals will only ever be in dreams, or in the Midjourney renders I sometimes make when I wake up.

And maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s its own kind of magic.

Because the world is still wide, and there are more ways to see it than the official ones. There are more ways to travel than flights and itineraries. There are dreamways and storyways, portals that open wide and welcome you through when you close your eyes.

And sometimes they lead you to a plate of potatoes and fish in a Swedish inn that doesn’t exist. Sometimes they give you the gift of travel you never thought you’d have.

A Synchronicity at the End

A strange little aside, before I sign off to go write more practical things for clients with what's left of my afternoon. While I was drafting this, I had Richard Linklater’s Slacker on in the background, Criterion commentary and all. Right as I was writing about “the travel I never had,” Linklater started talking over a scene about characters who were discussing how “travel isn’t really worth it.”

I laughed out loud. Because maybe, in some ways, he’s right. Maybe the best travel isn’t worth chasing at all. Maybe it’s the kind that finds you. In your sleep, in a dream, with potatoes and fish on a plate that never existed.