My few days in and around Riyadh ended up being the best trip I've had in years, and I found that the lack of infrastructure for tourism — and the lack of, well, tourists — opened up a far more educational and joyful experience than fighting through the crowds in any particular tourist hotspot would.

My entire life I’ve been used to hearing phrases like “oppressive regime” when talking about Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia. This conjures images of a downtrodden populace trudging through life the best they can, accompanied by a desaturation filter and downbeat music for extra effect.

What I was greeted with was instead almost always the opposite; people happy to show off their country and culture, sometimes even showing joy at the novelty of a Western tourist. The cars at the show were decorated with velvet ropes and placed on beautiful carpets, their owners eager to show them off and have us follow them on their car’s Instagram accounts. One day we went for brunch at a nearby cafe, and the place was filled to the brim with families and groups of friends — both male and female — laughing and sharing stories together. These experiences were entirely normal, and entirely outside of my expectations.

I’m struggling to come up with a conclusion that doesn’t sound like a cheesy “turns out, we’re all just the same” TV special. My wife and I are English, and we moved over to Sweden nearly ten years ago now. During that time, we were given “advice” from friends who never left their birth town absolutely flummoxed as to why we’d abandon our homes, and from people with such wide world experience that moving from England to Sweden seemed like moving to the next town down the road. The most accurate thing I was ever told came from my father-in-law: “No matter where you go, people just want to provide for their families and laugh with their friends”, and this trip really drove that home.

I experienced a country at the beginning of a path towards a very large amount of change, in terms of both its capacity for tourism and something far more foundational within its government.

I'm very much looking forward to going back in the future to see how it works out.

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Botkyrka & Salem in Stockholm County, Sweden