“I’m sorry,” I asked sheepishly, “Could you take my picture?” He was the fourth random person I’d asked in about 20 minutes of fjord exploring. There are only so many angles you can get taking selfies, as any good former emo would know.
I pushed away my flapping shrug- I was layered up today, in anticipation of the cold Norwegian sea air- and smiled. He pressed the button once. “That alright?” he drawled, handing the camera back to me. Another Texan. There were so many Southerners here. And Germans and Australians. I barely glanced at the photo- beggars can’t be choosers, and it looked fine to me- “Yeah, it’s great!” I exclaimed with what was hopefully a friendly grin, “Thanks so much!”
You never know how nice people can be until you travel alone. Whether they’re strangers offering to take your photo for you or temporary hostel roommates telling you their life story before they even tell you their name.
When I first started planning this solo endeavor, I got a lot of “But you’ll meet so many people”. I didn’t believe it and I didn’t care. I’m naturally a bit antisocial, more than a little shy, and awkward in spades. I’m the type of person who goes to concerts alone, museums alone, movies alone. While there are definitely frequent periods where I crave attention, and I hate knowing there’s a party going on without me, that doesn’t mean I’m not ok doing my own thing. That includes traveling.
But how many people have I met during this trip? There was the 35 year-old Mexican woman in Rome, traveling on her own for the first time. She went to Circus Maximus to cheer on Mexico in the World Cup on the big screen.
The girls from Montreal in Munich- I coincidentally met them at Dachau only to discover, oddly enough, we were hostel roommates. Their endgame was Paris, they viewed their traveling as a window for international partying.
Then the Austrian girl in Copenhagen, there for a conference to finish her Ph.D. She spent a semester in Maine and seemingly enjoyed it, lighting up when speaking about the hiking she did there. I remember she loved Denmark’s affinity for bike lanes.
Those Irish sisters in Oslo. One had just finished their equivalent of high school, the other had embarked on a new job in Scotland. Excited for a karaoke bar the first night I spoke with them, they planned on belting out ABBA, a band from Norway’s rival Sweden. One helped me find an international bookstore.
The Dutch girl in Bergen, explaining her study abroad term at university in Norway. The Americans who run the hostel, all Christian, all excessively smiley, all friendly, all with familiar Midwestern accents, out of Illinois. After answering I was a creative writing major back home, one asked me what I liked to write. I probably answered more honestly than I would someone back home.
These are only a few of the people I’ve spoken to, but can I name a single name? No, and none of them would know mine. I’m a traveler, a nomad, here today and quite literally gone tomorrow. Nothing ties me to these people besides exploring the same city, and even that only holds for a day, maybe two. They can tell me their thoughts, confide their feelings, because they know I have no permanence in their lives. I do the same with them, because I know the same thing. These people know my fears about graduation, they know what I hope to do with my life, they know my more immediate anxieties about where I am now, literally and figuratively. But not a single one could remember my first initial, if they even knew it in the first place.
The fjord tour boat we’re on approaches a spectacular waterfall, slowing to a stop in front of it for the best photo opportunities. These fjords really are too awesome for words, and I’m not going to cheapen them by trying to describe them now. I hold my camera to my face and smile, then repeat, trying again and again for a decent picture. In between my frustrated snapping, I make eye contact with a middle-aged woman. “You want me to take picture?” she asks in accented English, pointing to my camera. I hand it to her.
“Yes, yes I would. Thanks so much!” I smile.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Norge
I’m currently sitting in a train car, staring out my window at snowcapped mountains.
The power of them is overwhelming, the beauty is unbelievable. Mixed in with the patches of white are swaths of dark green scrubby grass, slate gray boulders dotting the landscape, and the occasional roof topped with vegetation, as if any humans habitation could exist here. Icy water rushes in curling lines throughout these valleys, their genesis unknown, likely from one of these grasping peaks.
I’ve seen mountains. I’ve skiied mountains. I’ve been to mountains in California and Colorado, Pennsylvania and most recently Spain. But these FEEL different, as if that makes any sense. These feel like home.
Wherever I lived in a past life, there were mountains.
Each meter we move on this train brings me farther from the earth’s equator than I’ve ever been before. I’m on my way from Oslo to Bergen, a completely new and different experience in almost a month, no, six months of new and different experiences. I’m starting to feel travel fatigue but then the scenery sent a lighting bolt flash straight through my system.
The train announcer crackles on the PA. First he says some things in Norwegian, and then pauses and begins in heavily accented English. The particularly white summit across this short valley from our train is a glacier. The ivory snow battles for space with the dark stone, all the while blending in effortlessly with whispy clouds that drift below the peak. The train stops, and I jump out quickly with a group of other people, strangers, all brought together in awe of the glacier. The cool breeze- more suitable for a Wisconsin early March than June- feels refreshing on my bare arms. It’s a relief to escape the stuffy train car for a few moments. I snap a few pictures- typical- though none in the world could ever do it justice. The whistle blows a warning, and I get back on the train.
I’ve been traveling for awhile now. Early June I left London for Spain, and ten days with my dad. I saw the Mediterranean for the first time, glinting between hills dotted with Spanish villas and the occasional forgotten castle. I marveled at the Alhambra, navigated the Jewish Quarter of Sevilla, sang along with Freddie to Barcelona. Solo, I left for Rome- I wandered the ruins of the Roman forum, climbed the stairs of the blood-baptized Colosseum, joined the faithful and the curious in the Vatican. I felt tremors of real anguish at Dachau and listened to the bells chime in Munich. In Copenhagen I wandered the clean streets, basking in Danish sunshine. Forward, always moving forward, became my mantra.
None of it prepared me for Norway.
Oslo was nice, but it’s a modern city. Bygdøy reminded me so much of Wisconsin, down to the same trees and similar houses. I could’ve been walking around Delafield. The countryside around Oslo was similar as well- the hills were a little it higher, making them mountains, and the lakes a little larger, but for all I could tell, I was on my way to Arcadia and the appropriately named Norway Valley to visit relatives on the farm. I could’ve been outside of Sparta or LaCrosse.
But this is beyond words. The mountains reached higher and we climbed to meet them, the scenery changed, the trees became strong pine until we soon advanced to high there were no trees at all.
I now know why so many Norwegian tales feature dragons. The overlapping boulders forming the mountains look like scales on a massive beast, the contours of the ridge naturally curve into a body. I wait for the snowy covering to lift as wings.
Every tunnel we pass through leaves me empty, yearning to catch another glimpse of the rocky crests. I know now why my favorite color since I could ever remember is green- from the glossy green of the trees before to the dry green of the grass and brush that fights to survive in this permanent winter.
How could my ancestors have left this place? How could they forsake this landscape for something similar, sure, and beautiful in its own right, but a cheap imitation of this world?
Ever since I made up my mind, Eurail pass in hand and split from my dad, that I was somehow going to make it to Norway before my European adventure was over, it’s called me like a dream. Rome was hot and sunny, Munich cold and rainy, Copenhagen a balance of the two. From there my train went through Sweden until it passed the border and the landscape seemed to shift for me, growing in beauty, before the announcer even came on and announced we were in a new nation. Norway’s been beckoning me for months. My aunt mentioned last April how she always wanted to go, and my mom’s been talking about visiting for years- just vague ideas, maybe for one graduation, then after that passed, maybe for another. It was always “next summer.”
I’ve always been aware of my Norwegian roots. My grandma collected rosemauling and spoke the language as a child. My family are almost all blonde-haired, blue-eyed giants. Whenever we take pictures of the cousins at gatherings, I’m the one who sticks out, with hazel eyes and dark hair, my skin not quite as fair and my height a bit shorter. I’m the least Norwegian of us all.
But this kingdom of snow and ice makes me feel a sense of belonging to a place I’ve never quite felt before. Sure, I feel like I belong in Wisconsin, for short stretches of time anyways, because I’m familiar with how things work there, I’ve grown up there. I feel a sense of belonging in New York City, ever since my first visit there with my mom in junior high, mostly on an intellectual level- my mind is in love with New York, because the pace is perfect.
But coming back to Norway, I can understand why people get so caught up in “their” land, about belonging to a certain landscape. Why Southerners never leave the Deep South, or Native Americans never leave their ancestral homelands. Because on a gut level, on a spiritual level, I BELONG here like I’ve never belonged anywhere else.
I’ve never felt like this before.
I’ve been to Germany, another place where I can trace my roots. My dad’s family came in part from Munich, one of the only places in the world where Wimmer is considered a somewhat normal name. But I never felt this pull, this sense of it being MINE while I was there.
Maybe it’s because I’m, ethnically, more Norwegian (half, along with a quarter Irish). Maybe it’s because I’ve learned more about what it is to be Norwegian-American then I have to be German-American. Maybe it’s because some of the Norwegians in my family haven’t been here as long. Or maybe it’s just all in my head, a product of too much time spent on the road, or, as the case may be, train tracks. I’ve been alone with little in the way of meaningful human contact for ten days now. That’s got to affect my psyche in some way.
But what if it’s real? What if there is something primal calling me here, something whispering that what I’ve been looking for hasn’t been some distant, far-off land from my future, but one from my past? Norway is part of what makes me, me. It doesn’t matter the generations that have past, my family still keeps in touch with the albeit distinctly American brand of Norwegian we’ve become. There’s something familiar here, like a half-forgotten memory struggling to break through the haze of my mind. It’s not just my contact-starved mind, or an idea I’m trying to make out of nothing. My family was in Norway for centuries, probably millennia- a few generations in the US can’t lessen the hold it’s had on our blood. And from the tenacity of the weeds clinging to a rocky surface, the unbending cliff faces, the sprinting currents of the rivers, the altogether eternal feeling of this place, there’s one thing about Norway that’s undeniable- it’s STRONG. Unshakable mountains and immovable valleys are a testament to the intransigence of this land. If there’s one place that won’t let go, it’s Norway.
We travel on, making our way to Bergen. I spend a few days there before heading to Stavanger. I stare out my window. I may keep moving forward, but something’s left behind.
The power of them is overwhelming, the beauty is unbelievable. Mixed in with the patches of white are swaths of dark green scrubby grass, slate gray boulders dotting the landscape, and the occasional roof topped with vegetation, as if any humans habitation could exist here. Icy water rushes in curling lines throughout these valleys, their genesis unknown, likely from one of these grasping peaks.
I’ve seen mountains. I’ve skiied mountains. I’ve been to mountains in California and Colorado, Pennsylvania and most recently Spain. But these FEEL different, as if that makes any sense. These feel like home.
Wherever I lived in a past life, there were mountains.
Each meter we move on this train brings me farther from the earth’s equator than I’ve ever been before. I’m on my way from Oslo to Bergen, a completely new and different experience in almost a month, no, six months of new and different experiences. I’m starting to feel travel fatigue but then the scenery sent a lighting bolt flash straight through my system.
The train announcer crackles on the PA. First he says some things in Norwegian, and then pauses and begins in heavily accented English. The particularly white summit across this short valley from our train is a glacier. The ivory snow battles for space with the dark stone, all the while blending in effortlessly with whispy clouds that drift below the peak. The train stops, and I jump out quickly with a group of other people, strangers, all brought together in awe of the glacier. The cool breeze- more suitable for a Wisconsin early March than June- feels refreshing on my bare arms. It’s a relief to escape the stuffy train car for a few moments. I snap a few pictures- typical- though none in the world could ever do it justice. The whistle blows a warning, and I get back on the train.
I’ve been traveling for awhile now. Early June I left London for Spain, and ten days with my dad. I saw the Mediterranean for the first time, glinting between hills dotted with Spanish villas and the occasional forgotten castle. I marveled at the Alhambra, navigated the Jewish Quarter of Sevilla, sang along with Freddie to Barcelona. Solo, I left for Rome- I wandered the ruins of the Roman forum, climbed the stairs of the blood-baptized Colosseum, joined the faithful and the curious in the Vatican. I felt tremors of real anguish at Dachau and listened to the bells chime in Munich. In Copenhagen I wandered the clean streets, basking in Danish sunshine. Forward, always moving forward, became my mantra.
None of it prepared me for Norway.
Oslo was nice, but it’s a modern city. Bygdøy reminded me so much of Wisconsin, down to the same trees and similar houses. I could’ve been walking around Delafield. The countryside around Oslo was similar as well- the hills were a little it higher, making them mountains, and the lakes a little larger, but for all I could tell, I was on my way to Arcadia and the appropriately named Norway Valley to visit relatives on the farm. I could’ve been outside of Sparta or LaCrosse.
But this is beyond words. The mountains reached higher and we climbed to meet them, the scenery changed, the trees became strong pine until we soon advanced to high there were no trees at all.
I now know why so many Norwegian tales feature dragons. The overlapping boulders forming the mountains look like scales on a massive beast, the contours of the ridge naturally curve into a body. I wait for the snowy covering to lift as wings.
Every tunnel we pass through leaves me empty, yearning to catch another glimpse of the rocky crests. I know now why my favorite color since I could ever remember is green- from the glossy green of the trees before to the dry green of the grass and brush that fights to survive in this permanent winter.
How could my ancestors have left this place? How could they forsake this landscape for something similar, sure, and beautiful in its own right, but a cheap imitation of this world?
Ever since I made up my mind, Eurail pass in hand and split from my dad, that I was somehow going to make it to Norway before my European adventure was over, it’s called me like a dream. Rome was hot and sunny, Munich cold and rainy, Copenhagen a balance of the two. From there my train went through Sweden until it passed the border and the landscape seemed to shift for me, growing in beauty, before the announcer even came on and announced we were in a new nation. Norway’s been beckoning me for months. My aunt mentioned last April how she always wanted to go, and my mom’s been talking about visiting for years- just vague ideas, maybe for one graduation, then after that passed, maybe for another. It was always “next summer.”
I’ve always been aware of my Norwegian roots. My grandma collected rosemauling and spoke the language as a child. My family are almost all blonde-haired, blue-eyed giants. Whenever we take pictures of the cousins at gatherings, I’m the one who sticks out, with hazel eyes and dark hair, my skin not quite as fair and my height a bit shorter. I’m the least Norwegian of us all.
But this kingdom of snow and ice makes me feel a sense of belonging to a place I’ve never quite felt before. Sure, I feel like I belong in Wisconsin, for short stretches of time anyways, because I’m familiar with how things work there, I’ve grown up there. I feel a sense of belonging in New York City, ever since my first visit there with my mom in junior high, mostly on an intellectual level- my mind is in love with New York, because the pace is perfect.
But coming back to Norway, I can understand why people get so caught up in “their” land, about belonging to a certain landscape. Why Southerners never leave the Deep South, or Native Americans never leave their ancestral homelands. Because on a gut level, on a spiritual level, I BELONG here like I’ve never belonged anywhere else.
I’ve never felt like this before.
I’ve been to Germany, another place where I can trace my roots. My dad’s family came in part from Munich, one of the only places in the world where Wimmer is considered a somewhat normal name. But I never felt this pull, this sense of it being MINE while I was there.
Maybe it’s because I’m, ethnically, more Norwegian (half, along with a quarter Irish). Maybe it’s because I’ve learned more about what it is to be Norwegian-American then I have to be German-American. Maybe it’s because some of the Norwegians in my family haven’t been here as long. Or maybe it’s just all in my head, a product of too much time spent on the road, or, as the case may be, train tracks. I’ve been alone with little in the way of meaningful human contact for ten days now. That’s got to affect my psyche in some way.
But what if it’s real? What if there is something primal calling me here, something whispering that what I’ve been looking for hasn’t been some distant, far-off land from my future, but one from my past? Norway is part of what makes me, me. It doesn’t matter the generations that have past, my family still keeps in touch with the albeit distinctly American brand of Norwegian we’ve become. There’s something familiar here, like a half-forgotten memory struggling to break through the haze of my mind. It’s not just my contact-starved mind, or an idea I’m trying to make out of nothing. My family was in Norway for centuries, probably millennia- a few generations in the US can’t lessen the hold it’s had on our blood. And from the tenacity of the weeds clinging to a rocky surface, the unbending cliff faces, the sprinting currents of the rivers, the altogether eternal feeling of this place, there’s one thing about Norway that’s undeniable- it’s STRONG. Unshakable mountains and immovable valleys are a testament to the intransigence of this land. If there’s one place that won’t let go, it’s Norway.
We travel on, making our way to Bergen. I spend a few days there before heading to Stavanger. I stare out my window. I may keep moving forward, but something’s left behind.
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