In the last stage of our journey home, we traveled north from Italy through Tyrol and the Alps, into southern Germany where the land flattened and forests gave way to plains and fields of crops. We had a marathon day traveling from Verona to Munich, Munich to Hamburg, Hamburg on to Kiel on the Baltic Sea. We took an overnight ferry from Kiel to Oslo, got haircuts in the city, then took one last train across Norway to Bergen, a stunning journey that becomes wilder and wilder as we go up through the mountains.
This journey by train and boat, across the European peninsula from north to south, the experience of this has been wonderful and thought-provoking. We wanted to do the journey without flying for two reasons–one was simply for the experience; trains are fun; trains are relaxing and romantic. And then, of course, the larger reason was because of carbon emissions. We haven’t yet done a full calculation to see what difference our choices made for our carbon footprint–when we do, perhaps I will go back and make a full post on this, but it felt significant. I hope it really was. We’ve been talking about what this means for our future trip planning. Of course, if we’re traveling home to North America, flying is the only practical mode of transportation. But when we’re within Europe, our plan is to be taking ground transport.
Back in Bergen, we were back on our home turf. We made it to a favorite restaurant just before they closed, walked around the harbor looking up the names of boats we saw, and then the final morning we caught a last ferry and bus home.
It’s a bit of a strange feeling, every time, returning here. By now, after six full years, it is so familiar. But without speaking Norwegian and without being integrated into the local culture, it is also disorienting. I speak German, and so our night in Keil felt relatively at home to me. Then as we take the boat to our actual home, I lose that ability to communicate freely again.
In this situation, one is always something of a stranger, and yet not at all a stranger–it’s an ambiguity, though, that is prompting me to make another attempt at learning Norwegian. I’m back to Duolingo, aiming for about a half hour a day. I’ve also been trying out a few language learning podcasts and having conversations in Norwegian with ChatGPT. I’ll try talking with colleagues too. I’m hopeful, this time, that I’ll be able to stick with it.
School is already beginning. I had a week here before returning to work, during which I worked on writing, we did some good cooking, and I began some preparations for the school year ahead. When the weather was good, I spent time outside. But with three days of professional development at the start of the next week, then students coming in on Wednesday night and a Thursday and Friday with new-student orientation, things are already busy.
Something I’ve been thinking about, with that feeling of being an outsider, is that the way I’ve gotten to know the landscape here especially in the last two or three years is closer than I did my home landscape in Minnesota. In Minnesota I didn’t know the names of many plants. I went hiking and foraging, but less frequently than I do here. I suppose there are different ways of knowing a place and being at home there.
I’ll end this post with two last images: a mushroom, which feels like a sign of fall to me, and then a photograph of red campion from the same hike, maybe my favorite of the wildflowers here, which was such a sign of the early summer, but is still here now, if a bit scraggly.
As we in the northern hemisphere head into fall, I wish you a wonderful couple of weeks,
Jimmy
Words like trees 