After nearly twelve hours on the road, we pulled into our own driveway just before midnight on Sunday (Google Maps is such a liar with its estimated seven hours, twenty-eight minutes driving time). I had been half-dreading taking such a long car trip with four kids, but it all went surprisingly smoothly. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised — when we went on the mammoth trip to Legoland two years ago, things went smoothly as well. Our kids are actually pretty good travelers, apart from Yrsa’s car-sickness. We did have to make more stops than I care to remember to clean up the kid and her seat, but other than that it was all pretty good.

Uppsala itself was nice, as usual. I miss it when I’m not there. Olof hadn’t been there in years and years, and everything was new to the kids, so we had fun playing tourist. We visited the cathedral, the castle, the botanical gardens, and the university (at least “my” part of it). I also showed them where I stay when I’m there for school, and of course we did some shopping and eating out. Probably one of the best things, in the kids’ estimation, is that we were there on a Saturday, which meant that they got to buy exotic Uppsala candy.

One of the best things for me, of course, was the Pet Shop Boys concert on Saturday night. Just before dinnertime, I bade my family farewell outside the train station and traveled to Stockholm. After a couple of wrong turns — unfortunately par for the course for me, even when I’m in familiar places — I made it to the venue just as they started letting people in. I had decided beforehand that I was going to content myself with whatever place in the crowd I ended up in, as I didn’t have the energy to jockey for position, so after a call to Olof and a trip to the restroom I leisurely made my way down to the floor.

I had forgotten to take into account the orderliness of Swedish concert-goers, however, and with no trouble at all I walked myself right up the the front row. I was at the very far right of the stage, which gave me a perfect view of the entire show. I was no more than twenty feet from Chris Lowe — who famously doesn’t move during the course of a show — and never more than thirty feet or so from Neil Tennant. Their performance was as flashy and bizarre and outrageous as you’d expect from them, and altogether I think it may have been the single best show I’ve been to. Paul Simon and Simon and Garfunkel were more meaningful concerts for me, but as far as energy and spectacle are concerned, I haven’t seen anything better than the Pet Shop Boys. They played my very favorite of their songs, Suburbia, and also Go West, plus a lot of other great ones. The only one I really missed was What Have I Done To Deserve This? (which, curiously, just came on my randomized Spotify playlist), but all in all, I left Stockholm very satisfied.