A beautiful Stockholm blue moon is the last I will see before moving back to San Francisco. My sabbatical is nearly over. I have been to a lot of incredible places this year, but I am not proud of how much time my body has been in airplanes. Despite being a conscientious vegan environmentalist, my carbon footprint is very high. Here is a map of the flights I have taken over the last year; it is astonishing to me.

The roads are quiet and many restaurants are closed. Stockholm in July is void of people. A very large number of Swedes go to their summerhouses, and the month of July is sacred – allotted solely for vacations. I heard that a big El Niño will bring California a lot of rain this fall. Here in Stockholm, the hope is that the rains will stop. This summer was wet and quite chilly, but still people have exited their city lives. Many have gone to the archipelago of thousands of islands near Stockholm. The sailing boats take eager Swedes out to the water, where they hope to enjoy the sparse sun and swim in the slightly saline Baltic Sea. I would also love to have a summerhouse on one of the islands, and although I get seasick, I can even envision enjoying a sailboat. I have become completely swedified, taking on the collective dreams of the society, and at this point, I can’t imagine a culture where people actually go to work in July.

Today was the Stockholm Pride parade, and suddenly the streets were full again. It is August, and like migrant rainbow birds, they are predictably returning. They say 80,000 people participated in the parade, and 5 times that many watched. Sweden is politically correct, and freedom and human rights are core beliefs. Over my more than 20 years in this country, Stockholm has gone from provincial to powerhouse; multicultural and multidimensional. With 10 million people in the entire nation, it is less than half the size of Delhi, but despite the long vacations, this is a society that works hard, and has a high quality of life. I believe that this is how much of the world could be if there were simply fewer people on the planet. Summer days in Stockholm are rare, but full of optimism.