Sleep Stories to take you around the World

13th May 2020

Sleep stories to take you around the world.

I recently listened to a podcast about how badly lots of people are sleeping at the moment and the increase in strange dreams. Quite honestly I was glad to see I wasn’t alone – it’s hardly surprising after all.

Quite early on into self-isolation I downloaded the app Calm, and I love it. It’s full of meditations, music, mental fitness exercises and sleep stories. At first I never paid much attention to the sleep stories, not because I didn’t want to, but because they were so good that I wasn’t awake long enough to listen past the introduction. One night last week, on a particularly annoying non-sleep night of stubbing toes, drinking too much water, and watching the comings and goings of the particularly active all night off-license opposite, I decided to listen to a story. They’d never failed before.

But they did that night. So much so that I listened to three. But the beauty of that was that I actually listened to them the whole way through. And they are so perfect for transporting you to different locations! First up was Steven Fry’s lavender fields of Provence. He only has to say ‘for tonight’s sleep story we travel to the south of France’ and I’m usually gone. Meandering lazily through the flower fields and sleepy villages of the south of France… I guess because they are sleep stories and there can’t really be any ‘action’ so to say, that the detail described is on such a minute level you feel you’re almost there. He describes for a very long time the exact tone of the buzzing of the bees on the flowers, the exact brick work on the houses, the smell on the wind.

And that’s only one story in one location. I didn’t just exchange the sounds of drunk people on a Berlin street (apparently that’s still allowed during Lockdown 2020) for the sounds of bees buzzing. I was also taken on a tour of a rainy day in Paris, where the city was brought to life in the most beautiful way through the eyes of a tourist looking for an umbrella. And from there straight on to a night in Shakespeare’s London where I followed a boy working at the Globe theatre as he chased along the streets of a partially familiar capital city.

Last night I started one to transport me along the ancient paths of Anatolia. But that one was so good I only got 12 minutes in. I’ve also just seen that there is a new one about a train journey between London and Paris, a bit bitter sweet story. Who knows when I will get to listen to that one in its entirety

So if you are wanting to be taken around the world by story, in the most soporific (both actually and stylistically) way possible, I can thoroughly recommend travelling with sleep stories.

You can try Calm for free but be aware that you will starting paying unless you cancel your membership.

Charlotte for the TripFiction team

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