Travel is often a series of disappointments punctuated by small exquisite highs, if you’re lucky.

Our very first hour in Stockholm, I cried over a cinnamon roll. Crashing piteously after a glorious sunlit walk, dangerously jet-lagged, traipsing along cobblestones like Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality before she falls on her face, I bit into it, a Kanelbullar, the very thing in which I had placed all my Swedish happiness hopes—and found it was ready-made, like a McDonald’s pastry wrapped in cellophane.

I blamed Chris. He had hurried us into this particular café. We were tired, lugging backpacks, making our way on foot from the train station to our studio rental in Sodermalm, the renewing area south of the old city. We needed fuel, a “fika,” Sweden’s famed “little coffee break.”

Already, I had rejected a couple of perfectly nice café’s as I sought that mysterious alchemy of coziness, pastry choice and ceramic (not paper) cups that makes life complete.

Fika is a touchstone of my childhood. It calls to mind a happy, relaxed Mom at the kitchen table chatting with friends, or Grandma Orla, baking in the simple open kitchen at the cabin. It brings back swimming in deep cold water in northern Minnesota; pine needles carpeting the path to the outhouse when the indoor plumbing failed.

Mom drank her coffee black and paired it with a cinnamon roll, cutting off small pieces to preserve the appearance of a diet. The quality was important and debated; too sweet, too soft, too chewy? It never matched grandma’s cinnamon rolls at the cabin.

Getting the Fika wrong on day one our four precious days in Sweden felt like a disaster. My mother died a year ago. A fika taps into feelings so deep I can’t even sort them out. Poor Chris.

Fortunately, our Swedish friend Linda came to the rescue and we subsequently had two peak fika experiences.

The first, at Hembygdsgards Cafe on Vaxholm, an island an hour’s ferry ride from Stockholm. Rejecting a table loaded with treats, I ordered the house specialty, a fresh hot waffle, delicately crunchy at the edges, topped with a spoonful of sweet-and-sour lingonberry jam and a dollop of glossy cream. Chris opted for the fried herring sandwich—or what was left of it after a seagull snitched from his plate.

The peak fika experience took place at elegant, old-world Vete-Katten, a bustling, order-at-the-counter cafe. At the glass case Linda translated my questions into Swedish and we collected a twisty chewy kanelbullar with cardamom, a vanilla bun and a sockerbullar with a glop of vanilla cream in the middle, and settled into a cozy nook lit by lamps. In eyesight of gleaming self-serve silver pots, among a gentle clink of cups, we talked travel and death and birth, and debated the perfection of the pastry, as I cut and sampled small bites with a knife, just like Mom.