Spanning 3 years, 23 countries, 45 cities, 31 flights, 15 bus rides, 5 ferry rides, and 9 train rides, this is the story of what happens when you learn you're never too old to run away.
From Croatia I went back to London for a day. From London I'd fly to Copenhagen.
I cried when I left London for the second time in two months.
This time it felt like home. It was easy to be in London. And it made me happier than anything had in months. From Hvar back to Zagreb I started to regain my sense of wonder. Everything was lush and beautiful, returning to London was like coming home. It almost broke my heart.
I cried when I left London for the second time in two months, but those tears made me smile. I was leaving a great friend behind, but leaving with the knowledge that she'd never be far away. I knew I could always return to a welcome home. They say that you can never go home again. And I believe that. But if your home is a constructed one, it's much easier to find your way back.
I stayed with Amna for a night and then lied to her. I said my flight was leaving from Gatwick the following morning. I'd have another full day alone in London, I'd sleep at the airport, and fly to Copenhagen in the dawn hours of the following day. I don't know why I lied. Maybe I wanted to be alone, maybe I didn't want to ask her to host me for another day. Maybe I just wanted to walk around in quiet.
I ditched my pack at the Marriott County Hall by saying I had a late check in and wanted to leave my bag before my room was ready (a trick I loved to employ.) I bought some Tesco peanuts and I pretended I lived there.
I took a midnight train to the airport and slept spread on a bench, quietly proud of myself for "roughing it" again.
I woke long enough to stumble to my gate, once on the plane I fell again in to an immediate sleep. I woke up in Copenhagen, ready to hostel again, ready to meet a new set of friends. LD and her boyfriend, and her sister Alex (coming from Canada) were joining me on the from Denmark to Sweden to Norway leg. Alex would arrive first. She'd planned our next two weeks, I didn't even pretend to offer (and after my disastrous planning in Morocco I think everyone agreed it was wise I sit this one out.)
Alex and I had two days before meeting up with the group. She'd booked us a private room (bless her,) and properly researched some of the photo-worthy sites. I followed along.
On her list, though not even on my radar, was a place called Christiania: a part of the city where all things were legal, no law was enforced, and not repercussions were possible. I've never watched The Wire, mainly because I am afraid of watching the destruction of human lives, but as I understand it they did something similar within Baltimore on that show.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I didn't have anything illegal that I wanted to do, specifically, in Christiania, but I certainly wanted to see it. Even though the premise scared the bejesus out of me. After a couple of over-priced meals (things are expensive in Copenhagen!) and an equal number of my own scoffing fits, I agreed to go to Christiania on our second night, where I was at least promised a cheap beer.
The place was far less hedonistic than I'd expected. For the most part people just stood around, smoked, and acted as they do in most other parts of the city. Maybe with a bit more openness. There seemed to be less pressure to do illicit things since every outpost sold drugs, and no one seemed out of control. We weren't planning to return to our hostel until late because there was a city-wide music festival taking place in the rest of Copenhagen and our hostel was ground zero, party-central. My preference for non-party hostels has been well documented.
If we were going to stay out it might as well be in the chill vibes of the lawless zone. Instead of joining the EDM concert in the street in front of our hostel we stayed in Christiania and watched some sort of drum show, chatting with strangers.
The next night we couldn't avoid the festival. It was actually wild, and completely contained, all at once. Every street hosted a different DJ. Zones had been established for selling alcohol, others were re-appropriated as massive outdoor toilets (where I experienced my first, and last, standing, cover-less port a potty.) People call Denmark the happiest place on earth. It's pretty great. It has a high living standard, high quality of life, high incomes (which help to explain the very high cost of simply everything,) and long life expectancy. Like Holland, almost everyone we met spoke near accent-less English, and also like Holland, carried with them blunt, unapologetic opinions.
Apparently people travelled from all over Europe for the festival we inadvertently participated in, and though I'd never make a point to travel back for it, those two days were surely worth it. I won't tell you that Copenhagen (or the other parts of Denmark to which I'd travel during later travels,) truly is the happiest place on earth, but I get what they're trying to do, and you gotta hand it to them; even in the middle of a 3-day EDM, drug fuelled, anarchic free for all, the streets were clean by the time we got up the next morning, and almost zero people were found sleeping on dirty cobblestones.
We left Copenhagen to meet up with LD and her boyfriend in Stockholm. We'd take a train through the countryside, rent a cabin in Norway, squat in the small town of Bergen, traverse through the Fjords, until eventually they'd leave me for home, and I'd keep going?
As we approached the longest day of the year, the days were even longer in this far north. The sun set sometime after midnight, and even when it was gone it was barely out of sight. It was disorienting and dream-like.
Even in the middle of the city, the outdoors seemed still and quiet, like the middle of the night, but the bright light shined over mountain tops, illuminating lakes as in daytime, even while most were in bed.
The air was still cold. The temperature hovered around the brisk feeling of early spring. It was mid June. It is easy to see how even in the sun, Scandinavian's embrace winter, fully.
Somewhere in Uruguay I'd lost my eye mask. At one point, near the beginning of my journey, I was fully equipped with ear plugs, an eye mask, noise cancelling headphones when necessary, my own sheets and pajamas options for various temperatures. Months later by choice or circumstance I'd abandoned or lost almost all of those things.
The light hadn't been a real nuisance, rarely impacting my sleep until I got to the North. Too cheap to purchase new things, (especially at Danish prices), and counting this 'sacrifice' as some measure of pride, my sleep seriously suffered.
