Frozen Fjords in Sogndal

Here's a post from March. I spent three days in a I-can't-believe-this-is-real cabin in a wee town in Norway, and it still remains one of my favorite spots.

I am in a haven of frozen fjords and floating snowflakes in Western Norway. Sogndal, near the Sognefjord, had been my home for the past three days, and I have done not much else besides eat, read, write, and sleep.

View from the windows.

I am every writer’s jealousy. I am sitting at a wooden table that oozes Norwegian kitsch and I am looking out of four huge windows onto the frozen fjord that is a few meters from the cabin. The rain that pounded the cabin for two straight days has yielded to its softer cousin, snow, and I’m watching the easy snowflakes rush towards the window, driven by the unabating wind, like fairies. The wind rattles the cabin, and the bare tree on the west side of the cabin chatters to me with every gust. This is like no place I’ve ever been before.

The cabin is six kilometers from town and about 10 meters from the main road, sheltered by rocks that would be a small cliff, save for the tiny foundation on which the cabin stands. The cabin is about 150 square meters and perfect. There is a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and two bite-sized bedrooms with only room enough for a built-in bed and walking space.

And then there are the windows. The windows in this place are beautiful. In the summer, they must swing open wide with an easy unfastening of the latch and let in the breeze that comes from the fjord via the mountain tops. They let in the light and a bit of the cold, but they are a safe barrier through which to watch the frozen weather outside and the tiny cluster of houses across the way. This morning, a crab washed up on the island of ice right outside the cabin. It lay on its back, and I assumed it was dead. I left for a hike and when I came back an hour later, it was gone. I hope it slipped away silently back into the not-quite freezing water to go about its crab business.

This is a place where I wish some genius writing would pour out of me. I wish this Norwegian table would inspire my fingers to tap out incredible sentences and wise words. But instead, I sit here, drinking my tea, looking out at the coming snow, and try to write something that works. This is as good as it’s gotten since I’ve been here.

This cabin makes me feel guilty for not writing something spectacular. I have the whole place to myself until about 5 PM, and nothing “good” has flowed from my fingers. It’s frustrating to think about the late nights in college I spent clacking away at my Ikea desk and my running shorts still on, holed up in my loud apartment, writing things that I feel are beyond and above me now. I feel like I’ve taken a few steps back.

I can see that part of the problem may be that I’m expecting too much. It feels like if I were to write something brilliant anywhere, it would be here. That would be perfect. But this is just another reminder that my expectations are what cause me disappointment, not the actual situation. The pieces that I’ve written on this trip that I’ve liked so far have been written in a train station and on a bus. Those don’t strike me as very romantic writing spots.

My station.

And so, I think it’s time to let my cabin go for now. I can let it slip back into the ocean of expectations like my crab friend, and it can go about its cabiny business, sitting along a fjord in a frozen winter, pushing back against the wind.

I bet it’s beautiful here in summer.

Train Rides? I'll Take 25, Please.

This post was from late March and after some tweaking, it's here! 

Trains have a certain romance to them, don’t they? There’s the physical ticket, strong cardstock in your hands, not a flimsy sheet of paper you printed off at home. There’s the noises of the station—lovers kissing goodbye loudly, business women snapping shut their phones as they climb the two steps into the cabins, the “all aboard!” whistle of the conductor. Once aboard, there are the plush seats, the gentle sway of the train like a cradle, and incredible scenery that flashes by. It all feels very 1920s, and I want to don a tweed suit number and matte red lipstick. Instead, I am a frumpy young American wearing the same pants from three days ago with a technical backpack hugging her shoulders.

Blam-o! There's my ticket, from Bergen to Oslo.

As an American, I never fully appreciated train travel until I went abroad. Our train system in the States is pretty deplorable, expensive, and not nearly as well constructed as the rail lines in Europe (though, admittedly, I’ve never been on it…I know, I know). Surely, the grass is always greener, but in this case, it truly is. Mostly, the grass actually exists in Europe. And I can afford it.

I bought a RailPass which granted me 10 days within two months of unlimited rail travel. I thought back to my study abroad days and how much I had enjoyed the train rides and the scenery that breezed by us. On those train rides, my mind wandered through memories and feelings and what to make for dinner. For me, the train allowed me a safe freedom for a few hours to simply ponder.

So I started hopping on trains and flashing my pass. To Lugano, Switzerland; to Paris, France; to Copenhagen, Denmark. I started looking forward to my travel days. They allowed me to take a break from constantly planning, calculating, and figuring out how to get from one place to the next. I was able to let that part of me sleep and recharge, while the thinking part of me took over.

My train rides look like this: I hop on board. I navigate my way to an open seat (or my specific seat if I’ve been forced to make a reservation), and heave my bag into the rung above me. I leave my jacket on because it’s too complicated to take off and hang it. I place my journal on the table in front of me, put my feet on the foot rest below me, and I look out the window. People stream past with large suitcases in tow, some enter my compartment and sit around me. Then there is a whistle, the train hums, and we creep away from the platform. We are on our way, and my mind and I are off to another place.

I learn a surprising amount on my train trips. I ask myself questions, let my mind float to what it thinks is important at the moment, and let my heart lead. Sometimes, the realization is as banal as the fact that I don’t actually like mayonnaise at all, and sometimes it’s as deep as I'm scared to move away from home and my family. Usually, these train rides are very easy on my legs but harder on my emotional heart.

The hardest train ride I’ve had was from Coimbra, Portugal to Hendaye, France. I was tickled to finally be taking an overnight train. It was to be unlike my train from Florence to Austria, in which I had a bed in a berth with two other students. This train to Hendaye I had just a chair that reclined a few inches. The train wasn’t packed, but there were loud people whose voices carried. The heater was on over-kill, and I was sweating out of my long underwear and pants. I woke up every hour or so as the train stopped, bumped and hiccupped along the weaving railway. When we arrived, I felt so fuzzy with lack of sleep and sticky with sweat that I didn’t care I had to make a 27-Euo reservation for the fast Thalys train to Paris. I handed over my Euro in the hopes that I would get some sleep on this comfort train. The romanticized ideas of matte lipstick and kitten heels of the ‘20s slowly began to fray like a flag in the wind.

The best train ride was easily my most recent, from personality-lacking Oslo to beautiful Bergen. The sun ruled the blue sky, and clouds were only a rumor over the tops of mountains. We glided through the mountains and over them, passing by stretches of blue-white snow that curved over the tops of houses like cake fondant. Cross-country skiers flecked the brilliant white expanse, and I felt a sudden desire to ask the conductor to stop the train so I could grab a pair of skis and join the strangers outside. We continued on and curved the hips of ridges and ducked through the throats of the peaks. We’d pass into darkness as we entered a tunnel and then a shocking pop of white would leave me squinting, desperately wanting to see what was out there in the expanse. Small houses cropped up now and then, but the overwhelming feeling was white, white, white.  

Surely, there are times where I abhor train travel. That high-speed, snooty French Thalys train was 30 minutes late, and caused me a bit of a ruckus when I had to meet my couchsurfing host. There are the accordion players and Portuguese rappers that perform for you and you must sit trapped, watching them, and then struggle with what to do when they walk around, their cup in hand for tips. There are the Italian trains that seem to start and stop when they feel like it, and the creepy people sitting around you. I remember when I caught a train from a small town whose name I can’t remember to Porto. The train was quite full, and there was a 35ish man sitting across from me. He had the face of every pedophile, Hannibal Lecter, mass-murderer and cranky civil servant I’ve ever seen. Our knees touched and our eyes met, and I have never felt a colder stare. It still tightens my spine to think about him and what I imagine he’s done. And so, there are the people on the train, too. They come as all sorts, and there is an equally opposite kind person for each bad one,  and I met many of the latter on the trains.

But here’s what I love about trains: I am whisked from where I am and what I have done and am en route to where I will be, who I will become, and what I will do. It’s hard to find fault in that.

So I look forward to my next train ride tomorrow. I am taking a bus to Voss, the train to Drammen, and a final train to the out-of-the-way RyanAir airport in Oslo. I am looking forward to who I will become in Scotland, and I am thankful, endlessly, to the trains for getting me there.

*Update: Turns out that the Voss to Drammen train ride was the most nerve-wracking. It was significantly late to the point where an NSB Railway ticket agent gave me a taxi voucher to get to the airport so I could make my flight. I still love trains.