June was the month of long days, boxes of Swedish strawberries stacked on fruit stands, mosquitos, city swimmers and sunbathers, TBE vaccination adverts, a heatwave, Aperol Spritz and lots of flowers.
Studenten is a celebration for students finishing secondary school. For several days of the month, trucks full of people blowing whistles cruise through the streets, blasting loud music. It’s not everyday you see a fabric banner saying “skip class and chase ass” roll past your apartment window.
Studentmössa are white caps with a school emblem on the front, and they are worn by graduating students. Several countries share the tradition but it’s not something we’d ever seen before moving to Sweden.
Newspaper headlines were covered in Nato news after Sweden announced its decision to apply for membership. We saw a demonstration from the SKP (Communist Party of Sweden) at Medborgarplatsen.
USS Kearsarge (assault ship) arrived in the Stockholm archipelago for Baltops 22. It was absolutely ginormous; this photo doesn’t do the scale justice. We walked down to Frihamnen and saw lots of other military ships — Kearsarge was too large to enter that area and had to wait outside.
The heatwave cooking most of Europe eventually arrived with us. Everyone seemed to be moving much slower than normal and the city shores were lined with people trying to cool off. At times like this, I feel especially lucky to live somewhere surrounded by water. We cycled to Tantolunden one evening and it was packed, but there are plenty of quieter swim spots closer to home.
Wild daisies growing along the water in our neighbourhood. The geese like to live on this patch during the Summer.
And that’s all for June!
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