the longest day

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The longest day By: Alexandru & Andrei

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We look at each other with a grin on our faces. After months of preparations and changes, the final plan took shape. In a few weeks I will leave on the motorcycle from Bucharest. Andrei will fly a few days later directly from his project site and rent a car when he gets there. We will meet at some crossroads in the middle of nowhere. For now, that junction is just a point on the map. We stare at the PC screen and try to take in the idea. It’s really happening! We are going to Norway this summer

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Page 1: The longest day

The longest dayBy: Alexandru & Andrei

Page 2: The longest day

EveWe look at each other with a grin on our faces. After months of preparations and changes, the final plan took shape. In a few weeks I will leave on the motorcycle from Bucharest. Andrei will fly a few days later directly from his project site and rent a car when he gets there. We will meet at some crossroads in the middle of nowhere. For now, that junction is just a point on the map. We stare at the PC screen and try to take in the idea. It’s really happening! We are going to Norway this summer.

DawnOr yawn. After 3 countries, 5 cities, 6 taxi rides, 2 train rides, 4 flights and not enough sleep I am finally there. Well, not yet “there” because the plane is performing some ac-robatics avoiding sharp mountain peaks while on approach. To make up, the pilot in-forms us that we just crossed the Arctic Circle.The weather is magnificent, there’s no trace of clouds whatsoever and the pilot has been almost constantly talking “To your right, you can see the glacier yaddayadda… To your left, the island of…” I don’t really care about their names; I just know the landscape is amazing. In one hour or so I will be in Tromsoe where a “Golf or equivalent” is waiting for me to use en-route to Nordkapp.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Finland…

We have been on the road for almost a week now. We’ve travelled through Hungary,

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Slovakia, Poland the Baltic Countries and now we are deep in Finland, heading north.Today we have crossed the Arctic Circle and the longest day of our life just started. The sun will not get below the horizon for a long time now… OK, the sun might always be up but that doesn’t mean that it cannot be hidden by clouds.Yes, motorcycles are fun but sometimes not as romantic as TV commercials would let you believe. In less than 1 hour we have to stop twice because it was getting colder and colder. It was the middle of June and still we were freezing. We soon realize that we have to put on all our clothes (even the rain suits and it was not raining…), just to keep a remote sense of warmness in our bones. Still, we smile having that feeling of freedom that any long touring motorcyclist has experienced. As long as you feel the engine running smoothly beneath you and you have gas in the tank, you feel that there is no place which is too far. And indeed, soon enough, we meet for the very first time with the snow covered mountain peaks of Norway.

MorningYou know perhaps that scene in ”Bedazzled” when an oversensitive Elliot (crying for the third time in a row over the sunset) asks: “When is that darned thing going to set?” Well, the answer is NEVER. At least in northern Norway for about three months, that is. My first encounter with the midnight sun was a bit of a shock. I was not even in Norway but near the border between Finland and Sweden, taking a long detour while going North. I

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had been driving for about 5 hours through what is essentially wilderness (I’ve seen more reindeer than houses) when I realized that it is midnight. The body knows it is midnight but the fact that the sun is up there doing its job confuses it. It’s just towards two o’clock that the need to sleep becomes overpowering and a little nap on the border between Finland and Norway becomes necessary. But that’s just a nap because I have a meeting to attend in the morning, a very important one - at a certain junction.

Norway is amazing. Riding a motorcycle from one fiord to another, with great weather and open, clear roads seems everything that any motorcyclist can wish for. While we wait for Andrei to come from the South, we stay for a few days with a Norwegian family on a remote island. There are only a few hundredinhabitants, scattered on the island and the life there seems from another world.They all know each other, they all trust each other, they rarely ever need to lock their doors (only when they leave for long trips far away) and even then they usually put the keys near the house, in plain sight. We are driving on a narrow road heading for the small marina and we notice birds nesting and hatching right beside the road. Our host tells us that nobody disturbs them and so they are not afraid of humans. “What a wonderful world” as Louis Armstrong would say…

NoonWe meet Andrei at a ferryboat crossing. He seems tired but very happy. Finally we get to travel together as we were planning for so long. He is leading the way in the rented

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car and our destination for today is Nordkapp, the “end of the road” in the far North of Europe.

The road to Nordkapp is fantastic. To my right there is always the sea. Maybe it’s the latitude, maybe it’s the polarized sunglasses but the deep blue is haunting. To my left there is, most of the time, a rocky wall because the land here had to be convinced the hard way to accept the road. Above me there is the sky and in this case the sky has very much in common with the sea. It’s very blue. In front of me there are sometimes reindeers, sometimes a tunnel but most of the time asphalt and one motorcycle.We have 100 kilometers to go to Nordkapp, our destination. Maybe it is because of the fog that we found there or maybe because I had time to get used to the view but I remember more vividly the road than the actual overpriced tourist trap that is Nordkapp.

EveningAs we continue our trip heading for the Lofoten islands, the weather remains excellent – quite unusual for these parts of the world. Fishing used to be the main occupation of the inhabitants but now tourists are the main source of income. And one can understand why: we discover more and more places that seem to be painted by a skillful artist. Rather than taking the usual way of sleeping at a hotel or a hostel we have the opportunity to stay with another local guy. He is in fact Dutch but for a few

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years now he has been a tourist guide in Lofoten. He lives in a small modest house from a tiny village. We will sleep on the floor mattress in his free room but we get to hear great stories about Norway, his life there, his passions (he is into cycling).

Sometime later, about 2000 kilometers further, the moment to part ways has arrived. We are on the Arctic Circle as designed in the Master Travel Plan. From here we head back on the two wheels to the South, home, to Romania. My four wheels instead are due North, back to Tromsoe, where I will exchange them with a pair of wings. We take a picture together and we set out in opposite directions. We’ll see each other over a coffee next weekend in Bucharest.

DuskWe are still in Norway. At least is southern Norway. We stare at the map and calculate the thousands of kilometers we still have until home. We have a long road ahead of us and we feel like our vacation is already over. In spite of this I keep smiling, feeling that we are lucky. It is about something that I think any long distance traveler has experienced: If you take your time, you become very aware and very connected to the foreign place you are travelling through. Endless green forests and countless lakes, the majestic fiords and snow covered mountains, the acute feeling of loneliness that hangs heavy over the vastly unpopulated areas and the fairytale images of the remote villages, everything gets taken in. More like a sensorial memory than just a visual one. For the first time in a very long time, we notice that it is getting dark outside. The

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longest day of our life is about to end.

I am still in Norway. At least in northern Norway. I am tired after spending half a day roaming through the streets of Tromsoe and so I am going back to the hotel. Sometime later after this moment, Alex told me about a little place they found in southern Norway the same day.

The inhabitants of a cozy village named Norddal put up a fake picture frame that you can use to take your picture from across the fjord with the village as a background. The tagline written on the frame is “The Happy End”. Well, as I was walking away from the bus station that day I got my very own frame withthe essence of this trip: blue sea, snow covered mountains, perfect roads and all bathed in the light of the midnight sun. Although I still had some flights before I could say I am home, I felt like the journey had ended then and there. Tomorrow the sun would set for the first time in almost 10 days. The longest day is indeed about to end.

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