A Statistical Anomaly in Gothenburg

Gothenburg in May. We were there for Peek & Cloppenburg. One day spent in a studio. Then we drove two hours north to a national park near Lysekil. The landscape was strange. It looked like Milos, Greece, but as if the white moonscape had been turned greyish. Weathered. A version of paradise that had seen more rain and fewer tourists. It felt honest.

The Swedes have solved the cardamom bun. It is a completed puzzle. In the studio, the catering reached a level of quiet absurdity—fish with Béarnaise sauce, plated by a handsome Viking who looked like he could either cook a Michelin meal or raid a coastal village.

I even managed a run during the recce. A morning run. In this industry, that is a statistical anomaly. Usually, call times are an affront to human biology, or your body has become a collection of aching joints that view exercise as a form of torture rather than fitness. For one morning, I was just a man running in Sweden.