This time tomorrow I will be just leaving German airspace, on my way to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. The sun goes down in Sweden in about an hour, and I’ll take off before it comes up again.

The last weeks have gone alternately fast and slow, and now time is both flying and crawling.  I didn’t get everything done (I never do) so now I am throwing in the towel and letting the final hours tick away.  But I am in Cafe Linné, where my Swedish life started as an exchange student, continued through my PhD and now ends.  It’s not the best coffee in town, or the most cosy, but it is one of my homes here.

I took a walk around, watched the ducks in the pond under the castle, ran in to work (and back out) and now I’m trying to ignore the nervous energy.

It is weird that in the last minutes I am totally lacking the resolute confidence I have had in the previous six months. Now I am looking at women pushing prams and couples walking hand in hand wondering why I didn’t just stay put, get a house and settle. I could spend tonight by the fire, ring in the new year tomorrow with friends – instead of 10 km up, somewhere over Central Asia – and I could know exactly which date my next pay check would be arriving on.

But there is money in the bank now, my new business has been set up, and everything I own is in the storage unit. It is sort of the point of no return… though there is no such thing – if I feel this way in two weeks I can always get right back on a plane and be in Stockholm or Seattle in less than a day.

Breath in, breath out.

Now – onwards and upwards! Let’s go adventure!

Hej då, Uppsala.  Eller… vi ses!