Mid afternoon light on the Eastern shore in November.

This morning we woke up late, sleeping like teenagers on a Saturday morning. The sun woke me up, breaking through the cloud cover for the first time in days, shining through the heavy curtains.

“Wake up! The sun is shining!”

It was 10 a.m. and with the curtains thrown back the light poured, I mean, poured, into the bedroom like warm liquid joy.

Within an hour we were talking about getting in the car and getting out, seeing a little bit more of Skåne County. Coffee and showers and cat chores later, we were on the road, just as the clouds were beginning to reconvene. We headed North and East anyway, toward the Baltic Sea.

With a car, or a train, it is possible to escape the city in just a few minutes. Malmö stops abruptly and expansive farm fields takes its place. Modern wind turbines dot the fields, alongside the stout remnants of traditional windmills that once dominated the windy landscape. And when the farmland stops, thick Swedish woods gather around lakes and cabins. Then the woods gives way to orderly little small towns with modern cottages and red tiled roofs and Volvos parked out front, and then the whole pattern repeats itself.

River picked the music, his 90s Spotify playlist, and everything out the window began to look familiar, like little bits of Wisconsin, West Virginia or Pennsylvania, the places I spent time in the 90s.

We saw several apple stands, and I lamented that we had not brought cash, until we passed a self-serve, Swish payment apple stand. We turned around and bought a bag. That would not have happened in California!

This requires a moment of recognition for my US readers. In Sweden, an almost cashless society, there is an electronic money exchange system that works with smart phones. You just open an app, type in a phone number and money amount, and your payment is made. It is as fast as swiping your card and signing a receipt. And the beauty of this apple stand experience is that it was also self-serve. The farmer, based on traditional Swedish culture values and modern technology, set his bags of apples in front of his apple orchards with a Swish payment sign. In a small way it represents the best of Swedish culture – cutting-edge technology, local-grown produce, self-service and an expectation of honesty. Amazing!

We drove until we found a national park along the sea. We walked to the water, watched a family in winter coats and hats running along the sand, two little girls walking out in the waves in their snow boots, laughing when the waves chased them back into the shore. It looked so much like kids in Malibu in winter, wanting to be in the waves that are too cold to swim in.

When the sun went down, around 4, we began heading back home, promising ourselves to do it again. It’s good to get out.