Hey Everyone!!!
Man, oh man, where to begin? Well I guess I could
start with: Happy Halloween!! Of course it's quite
different here--practically non-existent, actually.
But there are some signs of it, since it was
introduced to Sweden (by candy and costume makers, I
suspect!) about six years ago, and is slowly gaining
momentum.
Karen and I are almost two weeks into our travels now.
We originally had tickets to fly on Swissair, but
then oops!--they ran out of money, nobody wanted to
fuel their planes for free (imagine that), and as of
ten days before we were set to leave, only 1 out of 4
legs of our journey were guaranteed. No worries, we
were actually able to get cheaper tickets on short
notice from British Air (and file for a refund with
Swissair) and things went smoothly after that...
Well, pretty smoothly--I discovered a new service they
offer, where some of your luggage gets held in London
until the next flight, meaning Karen and I could tromp
around Oslo with a somewhat lighter load while trying
to find accomodations, then they deliver the luggage
to your hotel when you're all settled. Okay, I think
the actual term is "Lost Baggage" but it wound up
working in our favor!!!
Oslo was fantastic--we decided to spoil ourselves with
a private hotel room Saturday night (rather than a
shared room in a hostel) and a fancy meal, justifying
both as a celebration of being in Europe and an
absolute necessity for recovering from an almost
sleepless night of travel. Having had a healthy nap
and a good meal, I explored Oslo's downtown night
life. I spent a couple hours hanging out with an
excellent street musician who made quite a pile of
dough playing classical guitar, and chatting with some
passing Osloites, or Osloians, Osloers maybe? Ah,
whatever--they typically spoke quite good English and
spotted me quite quickly as non-Norwegian (shocker).
The next day, we met up with a family friend, Hilde,
and explored some of Oslo's history in Viking museums,
checked out the Kon Tiki museum (remember good ol'
Thor Heyerdahl from the history books?), and the
docks. Hilde treated us to some Oslovian cuisine and
we finished the day with a visit to the Vigelund
Sculpture Park, a beautiful and amazing place
populated with hundreds of sculptures of nude human
figures in various poses, sometimes solo, sometimes
intertwined with others, and usually quite
interesting.
We then headed up to Molde, Norway, a town situated on
the bank of a fjörd, about 200 miles south of the
Polar Circle. We stayed with some of Karen's family
friends, and enjoyed unusually nice weather. The
scenery was some of the most breathtaking I have ever
seen--we awoke each morning to an awesome dawn
breaking slowly over the fjord.
The fact that the sun never climbed higher than 15
degrees above the horizon gave the effect of time
slowing down--it was as if morning lasted all day,
then you realized the sun was slowly sinking to the
southwest for another lazy sunset, and dusk seemed to
last forever. In another couple of months, Molde will
only get about 5 or 6 hours of light a day, much of
which is twilight, with the sun ducking behind some of
the taller mountains that edged the fjord as it skims
the horizon.
In addition to our lucky weather, we also were treated
to an amazing show of Northern Lights our first night
there, unusual for this early in the season, since it
is more commonly seen in mid-winter. Imagine a starry
sky shimmering with a faint, blotchy light that flows
and jumps towards the apex of the sky. It fades,
slows, comes back in a matter of seconds, some parts
are denser, forming streaks, other parts are faint and
barely noticeable. It was without a doubt one of the
more awe-inspiring natural phenomenon I've seen.
We're in Sweden now, see I've got funny characters on
my keyboard to prove it: ÖöÄäÅå (just don't ask me to
pronounce them). Karen found a fun new way to express
excitement: \ö/ hooray!! \ö/
There's much more to tell, but I feel I've gone on
quite long enough--suffice it to say that we've seen
the sights of Stockholm and Växjö (a small town in
Southern Sweden) at a leisurely pace, hanging out with
family friends Torbjörn, Lilleba, and Karin for a week
now. I'll save more on that for another email.
We've seen and heard of a tremendous amount of
sympathy from Scandinavians about Sept 11th--as the
street musician in Oslo put it: "The reaction that day
was as if it had happened here."
I feel so fortunate to be able to travel like this.
On to Denmark tomorrow, on a 9:15 train so we'll have
to get up EARLY for a change!! After that, we'll head
to Holland, then Belgium and France.
Attached, you'll find a poem I wrote that was inspired
by the Norwegian countryside, finding remnants of Nazi
occupation among gorgeous nature. (click here
to read "The Healing Hillside" in the Poetry
section of the website)
I hope this finds you well and I hope you enjoy
"travelling vicariously" along with me!! Please let
me know if you don't want future updates by replying
to this email with the phrase "you suck" in the
subject line.
Love & Laughter--
--Scott.
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