38% Would Like To Travel On Their Dreamday-But Where To?

Tonight I dreamt about Visby again. And of my flat in Gothenburg. I went through the familiar rooms and looked at how clean and empty it was when every trace of me had been removed. I dreamt of the sea surrounding Gotland, this night calm and blue, the other night stormy. I dreamt of my old desk at Riksutställningar. Not what it looked like while I was still working there, but clean and empty, as I left it the very last day.



I spent years in that flat in Gothenburg and months at Riksutställningar, still the image that I keep recalling is what it looked like for a fraction of a moment. In the space between me leaving and somebody else taking over. When everything looked the same way as the first time I saw them. I hesitated for a second before closing the door to my flat for the very last time thinking about all this. And from there I started to remember all the places I had left before and the feeling that never seem to change regardless of what I might leave or where I might go.


When I was a child we used to travel to Greece almost every summer by car. I must have been about nine months on my first road trip and after that this became the high light every coming year for me. But as much as I would look forward to the trip every year, something always happened to me on the night before leaving. A feeling of sadness would come over me. The flowers in the garden never looked as nice as they would that night. It would still be light when I would go to bed and I would hug my cats for the last time. And in that moment I realized how much I would miss everything around me. The things that I had taken for granted all year waiting for this big day to come.


The next morning we would get up before dawn to make it for the first boat from Helsingborg. And on our way there, somewhere south of Varberg, that feeling of sadness would slowly disappear. Three days later we parked our car just below the Akropolis where my grandmother used to live and by now Sweden was a distant memory.





A few weeks later it would be time to rewind. I would look at my grandmother waving to us as we drove off in our blue Volvo until she was just a little dot somewhere in the middle of Athens. As for my flat in Gothenburg, the moment I still remember the strongest from these holidays is this. Realizing my grandmother would stay while we would drive further and further away from her. And in that moment I remember thinking that everything looked exactly the same as they did when we got there. The sun and the heat and the traffic jams were the same. Life continued regardless of our presence and in that moment I was neither in Sweden nor Greece, but in a state beyond geopgraphy. Somewhere north of Athens my tears would dry and the image of Greece would fade. And I started longing for my cats back home.



Maybe it is this state of mind that made 38 percent vote in my Dreamday survey that they wanted to travel on their dreamday. Maybe it is not about where you are going or what you are leaving behind, but rather about moving to another dimension where life continues regardless of your existence. Where your feet are light since the only things you need to carry with you are the memories that you choose to keep.