I’ve come to understand something about myself over the years: I need to change environments often to keep me from getting bored. You’d think that when my creative juices are flowing, that I’d be more or less agnostic to where I am geographically. And there are times when I sincerely wish this were true.

Not because I’m restless in a destructive sense – but because movement sharpens me somehow. The logistical and social challenges that naturally ensue when I’m on the move.

If I stay too long in one place, even somewhere beautiful, my senses seem to get duller. Familiarity eventually becomes a kind of soft blur. But when I leave – even briefly – and then return, everything regains its edge again.

Even after close to 30 years, Malmö feels different after a few days away. The same has been true elsewhere, like in Kyoto this past November – where even a short day trip to nearby Arashiyama made returning to our tiny hotel room feel inspiring.

Yet it’s not about dramatic distances. Just enough displacement to recalibrate my creative senses. Like yesterday when I rode two almost empty trains from Limmared (near the border of Småland) to Alvesta (in Småland proper) and then down to Malmö (the capital of Skåne).

Somewhere between Alvesta and Älmhult is where the above wintry landscape was captured.

If I’m not flying somewhere farther afield, trains are my preferred way to travel. They give me something planes and cars rarely can: agency within motion. I can stand up whenever I like. Walk through the car. Sit in a restaurant with a coffee and watch the countryside slide past like a real-time documentary. Also, I get to use a bathroom without performing logistical gymnastics at 10,000 meters.

There’s dignity in the kind of mobility a train offers.

And yes – let’s be honest – the experience varies. The bathrooms on Swedish trains are about as far from those on Japanese trains as you can get in terms of cleanliness and thought-through engineering.

A Shinkansen restroom feels like a small, immaculate spacecraft, whereas most Swedish train bathrooms are so old and rundown that they feel more like an antiquated afterthought. But even that contrast becomes part of the texture of travel. Part of the story.

What trains give me, above all, is transitional space.

And when I eventually return to whichever place currently serves as my base camp – Malmö, Kyoto, Nice, or somewhere else entirely – I feel the quiet click of recognition. Ah. Here you are again.

Leaving makes arriving meaningful. All aboard!