21 October 2015

from Saguenay to Øresund

21 October 2015

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Wednesday 21 October 2015--Coffee and croissant at Kaffihús Vesturbæjar. The walk back to my room should take about ten minutes, but I detour down a side street to photograph some houses, then detour again, and again. A half-mile walk becomes two miles. I really don't want to leave. But I eventually end up back at the guesthouse, where I pack up and head out. I'm leaving earlier than I might, out of worry for delays at the airport caused by the public employees' strike. A Flybus van picks me up at the Hotel Borg, and I transfer at the bus terminal for the airport. On the way, we pass through Hafnarfjörður, which looks interesting. I recall that Win and I dropped a couple of hitchhikers there on our first visit in 1999, but I don't really remember the place, and I haven't been through it since. Something for next trip.

The airport is virtually empty when I arrive. There is plenty of time to get some lunch and do a little shopping. I pick up a copy of Jar City by Arnaldur Indriðason, crime fiction set in Reykjavík, featuring Inspector Erlendur. It'll pass the time on the flight. The customs check goes quickly--the policeman filling the agent's role is being rather cursory. Nobody wants to hassle you when you're leaving, I guess. If they find anything amiss, they'll just have to keep you longer.

My flight, one of two departing for Boston a half-hour apart, is little more than half full, and I have three seats to myself. Inspector Erlendur keeps me well occupied. There are fine views of Greenland on the way, east coast and west. Two fjords crossing at right angles on the west coast remind me of the Nordic cross on the flags of Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the Faroe Islands, Orkney, and Shetland, among other places. Ironically, Greenland, an independent country within the Kingdom of Denmark, rejected a Nordic cross flag in a referendum in the '80s. Too colonial, I suppose.

Bobby meets me at Logan Airport and delivers me home. In the next weeks and months, I will process the photos and journal for this trip, while simultaneously mulling over plans for next year's trip. Some year, I know--it could even be this one--there won't be a next year's trip. I've been to Scotland eighteen times now, and it would be very optimistic of me to think that I might go another eighteen times. I've reached an age where these spans of time take on a different aspect. I'll be 61 in a few days; someone who was 61 on the day I was born would have been born in 1893, the year of the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. It's a strange thought. My own fate will be the same as that of every person ever born. I'd like to think that, sixty-one years from now, someone born this week will be traveling to Scotland, or Denmark or Sweden or Iceland, and thinking how fortunate he is that the turmoil of the world he was born into is as much a thing of the distant past as Viking raids and Anglo-Scottish border wars. That's overly optimistic, I suppose...I should be happy to know that people will still be traveling and thinking about anything at all.

Fin

2016