Home and Away in a Globalised World

Home is a peculiar concept. Is it where I was raised? Where I currently live? Where I feel safe and familiar or where I constantly want to go? Many places have been homes for me the last few years and I am by no means a stranger to living abroad or moving; Sweden, Glasgow, Buenos Aires, Sydney are all among the places I've called home.

So when dad, currently here for a short holiday visit, asks me if I miss home, it's not always clear what that actually means to me. To him, it means Sweden and the town I grew up, to which the answer unfortunately is mostly no. Sometimes I miss family, friends, certain places or memories that once were, but truthfully I generally not.

Today, however, when we escaped #SydneyStorm by visiting the Swedish-style café Fika Swedish Kitchen in Manly and enjoyed proper Cinnamon Buns and marvallous tea, listening to Swedish music and having an actual Swedish Fika - memories of good times, friends and my native country unexpectedly came back , drawn forward by the taste and smell of cinnamon buns and tea. 

What's so amazing about this all is how easy it is. My dad can come for a few weeks' vacation, this café can stock and serve a surprisingly large variety of Swedish products, friends, family and loved ones are never further away than a few buttons on my phone. This Globalised world makes distances shrink incomparably, and makes missing less present and so less painful; whatever I miss is never very far away, and so there's no reason to feel bad about it. 

I love the economic development and globalisation that makes all this possible - and I love studying it.