After two weeks in Scandinavia, it’s clear: we are both too Dutch for proper recycling. Secretly hoarding our trash to avoid a reprimanding from our AirBnb host as he hovers over his six-compartment recycling bin, we continue our trip from rural Sweden to Copenhagen looking for a public recycling station.

“Imagine if we got so nervous about doing it wrong that we ended up just dumping these bags by the roadside” I say to Anja.

“Do you want this problem to get smaller or bigger?”

“I still love you, but I’ll be doing it from behind this line.”

“Blaue Augen sind besser als braune Augen” (“Blue eyes are better than brown eyes”, 10-year-old brown-eyed German boy to his blue-eyes brother at the Okura Hotel breakfast bar)

I never get much reading done unless I’m sleeping elsewhere. Most often, I associate sleeping elsewhere with having time off, and having time off means I’m away from a computer screen. This frees up time for reading.

Anja had booked a suite for my birthday at Okura, and six months after I turn 33, Covid measures are finally so mild that we actually get to do it. It’s on the sixteenth floor, overlooking the Amsterdam Centre and West Side. We eat like royalty, and fall asleep watching the sunset from our California King. I’m feeling like a million bucks.

“Slept a little, had a midnight snack, went in for a bathroom break. Slept some more. Basically the life of a four-year-old” she says, and she tells me about her flight to Stockholm. She has been sleeping poorly lately; I say “lately” but I only met her last month, so I don’t know what her sleep hygiene is, although she says “it has improved since I began falling asleep in your arms”. I imagine how she sleeps on the plane, entertaining the other passengers, cabin crew, and pilots with her stupefyingly loud snores.