Ferry

Just one of the ways I became intimate with the Baltic Sea

Nov 03, 2022

Somehow I blinked and my time away is almost over. I envisioned this trip as a yawning expanse of time, made up of slow discovery of different places — that has not been the case.

In many ways, I feel like I’ve been in a pinball machine; a tight chrome ball being launched from place to place. There have been much needed moments of respite, there have been new experiences that charge me up — but there has been very little time for reflection (and thus little time for newsletter writing).

So it’s with the benefit of hindsight that I can tell you about the early days of September, when I began my journey in Stockholm.

After a quick layover in Frankfurt, an express train to Stockholm’s central station, and a tunnelbana* ride to the end of the line, my dear friend Anita was waiting for me, kardemummabullar** in hand. We had a ferry to catch.

I ate this in approximately thirty seconds

*metro
**cardamom bun

We were on our way to Tranholmen, an island in the Stockholm archipelago, where she was staying while in town doing research. The funny thing about Tranholmen is Anita wasn’t the only brilliant academic in town for research. The island seemed to be full of them, and even the house where she was renting a room was home base to a handful of others. There was the DJ doing a post-doc in statistics, a PhD student who had used mammoth DNA to study population migration, and an astronomer. The best kind of nerds.

They were also the kind of nerds who, like me, love a cold plunge. And so, as soon as I set my bag down in Anita’s room, I changed into my bathing suit and jumped into the Baltic Sea. You see — this past summer, I crowned myself the Queen of the Cold Plunge. I now have an image to maintain. And so, I made it my goal to try and immerse myself in the sea of each country I visit on this trip.

When I left Canada in September, those countries were:

Sweden
Denmark
Israel
Portugal
Ireland

And so the bodies of water I could expect to encounter were:

The Baltic Sea
The North Sea
The Mediterranean Sea
The Atlantic Ocean

Early September blackberries and apples growing on Tranholmen

As the reigning Queen of the Cold Plunge, I developed a method for the optimal cold plunge experience. It goes like this:

Take a deep breath
Commit to getting in the water
Begin moving, do not stop until you are immersed (ideally jump in if you can)
Take deep breaths, count to ten
As you get out of the water, say aloud: “I am the Queen of the Cold Plunge!”
Wrap yourself in a towel, dry off for a minute. This is a good time to give your thigh a squeeze and notice that your flesh is so cold — like squeezing a frozen salmon filet
You’re now in an ideal state for a more perfect plunge. Your system has regulated a bit, you’ve recovered from the first plunge, but your body is still numb. You have about thirty to sixty seconds to get back in the water.
It’s time for the double plunge. Repeat steps 1-3
This time, the water doesn’t feel quite so sharp; what felt frigid a moment ago is now almost refreshing. You stay in a little longer.
When you emerge from the water, your mind is clear and your body feels electric. You say, “I feel like I’m on drugs!” as you wrap yourself in a towel and hop around. Eventually, you regain feeling in your feel and you realize you better put some socks and shoes on.
You take a hot shower (or, even better, a sauna) and sleep very well.

I stayed on Tranholmen for four days; I plunged on three of them. On Friday, Anita and I got up early for yoga and a cold plunge with her housemates. On Sunday, she booked us an hour and a half at the island’s sauna. It was well-timed; we needed to recover from the night before.

Going out in Stockholm when you’re staying on Tranholmen is a serious commitment. The last ferry leaves from Ropsten, the end of the tunnelbana line, at 10:15 p.m. If you want to stay out past ten? You’re going to have to use active transport.

On Saturday night, Anita and I went for dinner at Racamaca, a buzzy tapas spot in Södermalm (which many people told me is the “cool neighbourhood” and it was, indeed, cool). We then went to a bar called Riche Fenix, which I later found out was “where all the men in their fifties go to pick up women.” The stats postdoc/DJ housemate had a vinyl set there.

We met up with some of Anita’s other housemates and danced until they turned the lights up at exactly 12:55 a.m. and kicked us all out. Swedes take closing time very seriously. At the end of the night, one of the DJs says to two guys who were still hanging around: “Are you still waiting for your blow jobs?”

Four of us began the trek back to Tranholmen. After some obligatory late-night veggie nuggets from Max, a Swedish burger chain, we took an Uber to Stocksund, where there’s a passage to Tranholmen that’s only about 100 metres.

Here’s how you get to Tranholmen after the ferry stops running:

At Stocksund, there are five or so green rowboats, and one red rowboat.
If you are so lucky as to arrive early enough in the evening, you simply take a green rowboat and row yourself across the Baltic Sea. It takes about five minutes. You are now on Tranholmen; you walk home.
Once all the green rowboats have been rowed across, there is only the red boat left. The red boat must stay on the Stocksund side. And so, you row the red boat across to Tranholmen, tow a green boat back with you to Stocksund, tie the red boat back up, and then row the green boat back to Tranholmen.
The rower may be out of breath; the passengers may have gotten splashed. The air is cold and briny. But you are back on Tranholmen; you walk home.

It was just after two in the morning when we got to Stocksund. Red boat it was.

The water was still and the night was quiet, but for the oars dipping into the sea. I was tired and weary, and it all felt a bit surreal, but this was exactly the kind of experience I was hoping for when I first planned my trip. Nights that unfurled in unexpected ways, embracing chaos, letting the cold wind on my cheek be a kiss instead of a whip.

View of Stockholm from the shore of Tranholmen

Anita had booked the island’s sauna for us on Sunday afternoon, so we recovered from our night out the best way we could: running between the sauna and the sea. While we waited for it to heat up, I read aloud from Blue Horses, a collection of Mary Oliver poems I picked up in Toronto a few days before I left. I read “Angels” twice, struck by this line: