At the end of a long shopping day, we needed ice cream.

The sun never really sets during a Swedish July. Our first night in Umea, it was sunny when I opened my eyes at midnight, 2:00 a.m., and 4:00 a.m. The next morning, full of coffee and crazy resolve, I barked a grocery list at my husband, and he wrote down everything I said.

“Sunscreen! Sunglasses! Very dark curtains!” I was pacing. “Duct tape, so we can tape the curtains to the walls. And Doritos! Do they have those in Sweden?”

My husband thought we could find everything at the shopping center on the edge of town. So, we loaded the family into the rental car for our first Swedish adventure.

The kids chatted amiably in the back seat. They’d slept well, despite the sun and six-hour time difference. My own body clock had trilled at 4:00 a.m. and reminded me to let the dog out (even though the dog was in Ann Arbor, along with the darkness and my favorite pillow).

Vibrating with jet-lagged nerves, I gazed out the car window at our new town. We passed a street sign that said GNARP. We passed another one that said UTFART. We passed a yellow cautionary sign with no words at all—just a picture of a moose.

I spent the rest of the drive fighting an urge to assume the crash position.

The shopping center was perched on a picturesque riverbank. Swedish flags flapped in the breeze, and seagulls flapped around looking worried, like maybe they’d meant to be in Florida. When we pulled into the parking lot, I squinted at the stores, comparing them to my beloved Target back home.

One store was called MAXI. Another was called GIGANTEN. Surely we could get everything we needed there.

Maxi turned out to be like Super Walmart, except that all the signs were in Swedish. (If you’d like to get a sense of how disorienting it was, just imagine yourself in a Super Walmart where all the signs are in Swedish.) The first obstacles we encountered were the shopping carts, which were chained and locked together. Eventually, we realized that we needed a special key.

“It took us half an hour to get a cart,” I said as we gathered the children. “No way we’re finding the duct tape.”

We decided to divide and conquer. My daughter and I went in one direction, my husband and son went in another.

The enormity of both the store and my ignorance made one thing clear: We weren’t going to find everything we’d come for. I figured that if we just could just get a bottle of wine, we’d have really accomplished something.

So, my daughter and I pushed up and down the endless aisles—past interesting-looking products that seemed foreign but familiar; past beautiful blond people who were shopping with confidence; past big, red posters that announced REA! REA! REA!

About an hour later, I revised my expectations: If we could just find my husband and son, we’d have really accomplished something.

When they did turn up, near the camping supplies, my husband had a cart full of things that weren’t on the list. Also, he was holding an enormous jar of pickled herring.

“It was on REA,” he explained.

Time to check out. In Swedish stores, you have to choose paper or plastic before you ever get to the cashier. Then you have to grab a handful of bags, buy the bags, and bag your own groceries.

I didn’t realize any of this until it was too late, because my first look at the total cost of our groceries threw me into a panic. (Since the Swedes use a comma instead of a period to mark the decimal place, I'd thought our bill was $110,000.)

The kids and I pushed a cart full of not-bagged groceries to the curb, where my husband was waiting with the car. We loaded up all the stuff—thing by thing—and I lamented the fact that I had never found wine.

“You can’t get that at Maxi,” my husband said, explaining that in Sweden, you can only buy alcohol in government-run shops called “The System.” He said he'd go two doors down and get some wine, and I could pull the car around to pick him up.

When I slid into the driver’s seat, I was confronted by the first stick shift I’d seen since graduate school.

I was so tired that I couldn’t think of a crass joke to make, even though the situation seemed ripe with possibilities. I just put the car in first gear, let up on the clutch, and eased forward.

“I’m doing it!” I shouted to my daughter, but then the car shuddered and died. I glanced around. I’d stopped squarely in the middle of a driving lane.

Again. First gear. Ease up on clutch. Slide forward. This time the car vibrated even more violently, like it was a martini shaker and we were the ice.

Again. Dead.

Again. Dead.

Now, I was really blocking traffic. People were starting to gesture and honk, and I was starting to sweat. I wished, wished, wished I knew a few Swedish curse words, but all I could say was this:

"Back off, Sven! I’m doing my best!”

After what seemed like an eternity, my husband wound his way through the snarl of traffic and back to our rental car.

“I forgot how to drive a stick!” I moaned. “Stupid Swedish drivers have to be all cool with their standard transmissions and their blond hair!”

“Honey,” my husband said soothingly, “you just didn’t take off the emergency brake.” I looked down and saw that he was right. It was the brake that had kept me from going very far.

My husband drove us out of the parking lot, and I rested my feet on the dashboard. “Tonight,” I said, “I am getting some sleep. And tomorrow, I’m going to learn Swedish.”

Heather Heath Chapman is a writer and a mother of two. You may reach her at heatherchapman1@me.com.