Sweden

The winters in Sweden are super dark, which is pretty hard. But that leads into amazing Swedish summers. They are, like, so nice. The sun stays out, like, all night pretty much. Like, it'll go down close to 11 o'clock. So you gotta be careful. Make sure you know what time it is. So that you can get back to your apartment on time. So that you can get to bed on time. Um, but really, the summers are incredible. Crazy, crazy incredible, one may say.

As someone who loves the cold, Sweden ended up being a really big surprise because my first winter I didn't see any snow at all. I was down south in Lund, and then in the summer I was up farther north. I was in a town called Gävle, which is just north of Stockholm, and it was really hot. I was flabbergasted, I guess is the best word to describe it. So I definitely wasn't wearing tights. I was wearing short-sleeved blouses and knee-length skirts, and I was still dying. So don't let Sweden surprise you that way. I mean, well, it will surprise you that way. Don't let trick you into thinking that it's going to be cold all the time, because it's not. But hopefully you still get to see a lot of snow. My second winter I saw two or three feet of snow down in Västerhån, I guess. So hopefully you get to see all the things that Sweden has to offer.

The weather is pretty extreme there. The winters are really cold. If you're in the north, it's super cold in the winter, but in the south, it's not that bad, but still cold. So it kind of just depends where you're at. And it's dark like all day, which I thought was really cool since I'm from Southern California and it's always sunny. I loved the winter. I was not used to it, so it was really adventurous for me. And the summers, since I always had warm weather, I was just kind of numb to it. I was just used to it. But then when I came to Sweden, when after this long winter you finally have summer, you just feel so happy. And it feels so nice. I never appreciated sun until you have a Swedish summer where it's sunny all day.

It's cold in Sweden, really cold. I remember having my nostril hairs frozen quite a bit when I lived, especially in Uppsala during the winter. It's interesting, you know, there's such a wide variety of weather even in Sweden. On the southern tip of Sweden, winters were pretty mild, at least when I was there. It's more humid, more 40s, more rain. But in Stockholm and up beyond, you've got a lot of dark to deal with in the winter. Some places you never see the sun. I never had to deal with that. But I know some did. And seasonal depression is definitely a challenge over there because of the darkness. But I just had cold and lots of snow, lots and lots of snow. I remember one of my areas, and I don't know if this is true of everywhere in Sweden, but there were like no plows and it would snow and snow and cars would drive and pack it down. And when they turned corners, there was rally style, they just slide. It was cool.

The weather is way, way hard in Sweden because it's only light for three to four hours depending on where you are in the winter and that's if it's a day with no clouds in the sky or anything and on top of that it's not just dark it is cold and that can be way hard too. So I never lived in the snow before living in Sweden and then there are just piles of it. If you're way up in the north you're going to get so much and it it's always below zero it it's so cold and then more in the south of Sweden it's it's not as cold as it is in the north and there's it's more cloudy like gray days but the weather and the cold is definitely something that Sweden it has.

The dark weather during the winter, I mean, depending on how far north you are, you could have almost a full 24 hours of darkness during some of the winter days, which sucks. I'm not gonna lie, you're probably gonna need to be on sun lamps and vitamin D and all of that good stuff. Oh, and also, if you go far north, you're gonna see the northern lights. That's dope.

The weather in Sweden is all over the place depending on where you are and what season it is because it is just so long like it covers such a big area. So be prepared for really cold weather, really hot weather, really rainy weather, windy weather. Always carry an umbrella because sometimes it just randomly starts raining on you. Be prepared for no air conditioning in the summertime. Most places do not have air conditioning and it can get pretty hot. Never forget to take your vitamin D. If you don't take it, the darkness will really get to you and you will just feel dead inside all day because it's so dark.

Be prepared for some crazy weather. I can't tell you how many times we'd check the weather and it'd be like, oh, it should be a clear day today. And then we'd be going out, just like walking, and all of a sudden it would start pouring. Like when I say pouring, I mean pouring. And we wouldn't even have an umbrella with us. We'd be like, oh, okay, like, I guess it's raining now. The late spring, kind of early summer, always keep an umbrella with you because honestly, it's just going to rain whenever. Honestly, keep an umbrella with you all the time because it just rains randomly. I can't tell you how many times we were walking to the church and it just gets soaked. It's so fun though, I guess.