Norway - a new personal top favorite

Today I almost dropped my camera in a toilet full of piss as it slipped from my shoulder when I was flushing. It was a close one as I grabbed the strap in the last fraction of time, like a well trained soviet agent... Why am I writing about this mundane, almost stupid accident you might entitledly wonder after I have been silent for so many days in updating my travel journal. The explanation is quite simple, because the moment occurred in the toilet of a motel located HERE

Exposed to this kind of incredible beauty, like most of us do, I find refuge in the stupid or ridiculous to vulgar things, first because of a deep buried fear I could not cope with the emotions that such an encounter can generate and maybe in my particular case by the haunting thought that I will not be able to convey, to put in proper words the emotions I might come up with. Would this be the hubris of someone who feels words are one of his choice instruments or just the tragic intuition about us as species being too small and insignificant to a larger “scheme of things” that expresses itself also through forms like this? And I don’t mean by that the manifestation of any kind of deity. People who know me are accustomed to the kind of irreverent disrespect even the concept of God gets form me. We are a (growing) bunch of little hairless apes with the unique, among other living creatures on this planet, capacity to conceptualize, nullified none the less by our tragic incapacity to surpass our primary animal instincts as fear, rage, aggressiveness, need of hierarchy (most of the time enforced by primitive behavior), etc. witch leaves us trapped in the condition of our more hairy cousins who also can count but don’t know that this can lead to fractals or advanced mathematics, not any more than we know our capacities can lead to significant and fulfilled lives if we could just see beyond our selfish selves.

How can one return to a life where the struggle for an even larger flat screen TV, futile fashion accessory or better car is the driving mechanism, after being confronted with THIS?

Well, as I said, by just trivializing it, by going through the experience of it as through just another consumption routine, by viewing it as entertainment. This is why most of the people traveling are doing it by car, or even more confining to their day to day stereotypes, motorhomes. I have seen people parking their pathetic caravans in places of breathtaking beauty, extend their satellite dish and sit inside to watch TV munching on popcorn!!! This is one of the reasons why we are ultimately going to fuck up this incredible beautiful planet: because we see it as another of our lame entertainments we can switch on and off to our liking.

But enough with the ranting. One of the conclusions out of the improper way I managed to maintain updated this blog is that it’s probably not going to be a travel journal after all. I will probably have not the time nor the verve to come back to write about Prague let’s say, as I promised in my previous post, if since then I had been through the experiences of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden and Norway, as it is the case now. I might very well write about experiences I had in any one of the previous places, but any sense of chronology will be probably lost. I will try though to maintain some kind of temporal continuity through the maps of the itinerary. In this respect I have decided to create a separate section for them so they could be followed in a more flowing sequence. To come soon.

No, not lazy writing, just happy living every day of my trip...

Yesterday have been 3 weeks since I left Bucharest and I’m on my last day (out of 3) in Warsaw heading tomorrow for Gdansk and the polish lakes district on my way to Vilnius. I wish I would have written more, made more pictures but the time seems so very short and the things to do, see, feel, think about, almost infinite. There are places where I would have just sat and contemplated the view for days and people I’ve met I would have spent so much more time with, but I’m on a journey and leaving a place for another is how it’s done, and I still haven’t acquired the art of ancient oriental masters who had space and time in their grasp and could be in more places at the same time...

Is there yet a first important idea, lesson or conclusion that these first 3 weeks offered me? Yes, I have learned that nature in itself is beautiful and impressive absolutely everywhere, majestic mountains, rolling hills or ever-stretching plains. Beside this, what people inhabiting it have been and continue doing in and with it carries exceptional influence on how one relates to and remembers a place or another. In other words the nature of this world is wonderful but it is in conjunction with the particular cultures of every region that it gives us the entire magnificent gift of living in it and having the unique chance to discover it.

The Hungarian, Czech or Polish flatlands that I have crossed might not be as impressive as the breathtaking Alps but their rich and almost endless green, undulating hills and sense of tranquility stir no less a lasting emotion in the traveler. The major differences in perceiving and relating to a place are determined by the contacts with it’s inhabitants and the way they exist in their own environment. The aspect of villages, the cultural heritage of the cities (large or small), the attitude and expression on people’s faces make the difference in the way we ultimately perceive places. Here we can also discern a very fine balanced mix between the cultural heritage of a place, usually to be discovered in stone and metal, i.e. in it’s monuments and buildings, and it’s living spirit that comes out by the more or less silent concert of it’s people. The way they dress, walk, look around and at others around them, greet strangers or their neighbors, deal with side effects of every community (poverty, trash, the public/private space dialog), what they dress, eat and what (and how much) they drink, are just some things building up to one’s personal experience of a place.

On these grounds and despite the mythology about people of the two countries not being to friendly to each other (well, at least in Romania it is believed that Hungarians are not friendly to us...) I was most impressed in such a good way by Hungary among the former East European countries I have been through by now (Czech Rep. and Poland). The Czechs might be more “joyful” and the Poles more ... well, I don’t precisely know how they are yet as I have some conflicting impressions, but the Hungarians are the more “stylish”, more elitist and somehow more fancy of them. I also don’t by what determination, collective effort or general behavior they manage too keep a country more clean than you might ever expect in Eastern Europe. I haven’t seen for tens if not hundreds of miles a plastic bottle or any other kind of trash on the side of a city or country road. It really doesn’t feel like the East as in Czechia or Poland, where although both very nice and burdened with history, the “clean” aspect does not seem to be of prime importance or of much interest to their people. Not that they are filthy in any way, but the places just don’t have the "shine" they have in Hungary. What to mention about my home country in this respect? Any comparison with any of them would put us to very much shame...

But after the rather long time since I last posted and the countries I have been through already I am tempted to write too much so I’ll stop here, as abrupt as it is, and come back later with more crystallized thoughts and impressions, but not before making a short note of praise to my beemer: Almost 9.000km on the clock and not even a single glitch! I love this bike.