Stockholm 2017. We were bopping around in the midnight sunshine, drinking up the fresh air and blonde people like we had one life to live.

The 14 islands around Stockholm, that spanning archipelago, providing postcard scenes that matched our mood. Pure, simple, shimmery.

Jens Lekman in concert, singing about love, sisters, and hallelujah. In an outdoor sculpture garden.

The cardamom spiced morning buns – fika! – they called the whole experience. And the drip coffee we enjoyed lingering in a grassy park, watching the two little old ladies on the bench across from us chatter away. We thought – this is us in 40 years if we’re lucky.

We tried this schnapps there, with the pickled herring, and the smoke herring, and the baked herring. Herring three ways. It was late in the afternoon right before I dipped in the convent-turned-hot springs.

This schnapps – I’m not usually a fan or connoisseur of. But what was it about that time and place that made it feel so smooth? The warmth tracing from my lips through every capillary, expanding them, all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes, an explosion of…Sweden, really.

But what was it called?

Swedish schnapps? No, not that.

The one fact we later marveled about was that it might have been aged at sea. But did one of us make that up? Dream and sleep talk it? How is that possible? Or even economical? Who even thought of it? The alcohol mixed with the salt air and salt water, providing the perfect aging environment for the wooden casks? Was it just that we both loved the ocean and wanted to be aged on a ship as well?

All my googling paid off: Linie Aquavit