Right now, we celebrate Midsummer in Sweden and what better time then, to think about romance. I have a little secret in that department. If you're read my books, you might think you have a full grip of my love life, but not quite... Although, I've shared this in my blog some years ago, I think it's time to share it again.
In spring 1995, I was part of a team at the advertising firm I was working for, as a junior copywriter, making a magazine for one of Sweden's large dairy companies. We gathered recipes and made interviews with prominent chefs and went to cheese dairies and new trendy restaurants in Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Monterey, Sonoma and San Francisco, depicting The California Cuisine, and I was the one planning and preparing the whole project, given my good English as a former exchange student and organizing skills.
So. An evening in San Francisco, I had been to the Fairmont Hotel with Anders, the photographer's assistant, whom I travelled with for the project, a week before the rest of the crew would arrive. We went for steaks at a restaurant nearby, and stood for a while outside on Nob Hill, to admire the view. I said, I hoped that this would become the place I would be proposed to and get engaged at. Since Anders wasn't married either, we jokingly said like in the movies, that if neither of us would become so, we could always get hitched instead.
The moral of the story is. My dream about living in San Francisco, that I started working towards already the year after, as I set out to go on a couple of meetings at advertising firms to try my luck (and learning that I either would have to become an intern or wait until I could work as a Creative Director being a Swedish native), isn't just about the creativity, the design, the architecture, the organic and equality movements for peace, but also about the romantic atmosphere, that I don't even consider Honolulu to compete with. Hawaii to me, has always been a place to heal, or perhaps to go on a honeymoon to, but San Francisco, is where I see myself finding love.
I had planned on going there after finishing my Professional certificate or Master's degree at Hawaii Pacific University 2010, but since the university delayed the transfer of my credits and didn't sign for work-authorization that went with my visa, I didn't. And now that it's been ten years and I should be allowed to go back to the United States, is San Francisco the same, and is my unknown Knight in shining armor, still living there?
Photo of the view from Nob Hill copied from Wikimedia.
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