My decision to go WWOOFing in Norway be like:
| Table 2. Methods of traveling as a debbie | |||
| Details | |||
| Serendipity | Initiative | ||
| Big Picture | Serendipity | Lackadaisical | debbie wuz here ♥ |
| Initiative | ??? | Micro-Managey | |
Given the assertion that being in Toronto is the gift-wrap to the gift that is my trip to Hong Kong, it must follow that Hong Kong is the gift wrapping to … two China mini-trips??
These were also trips about being with the people we went with rather than where we went so, again, I will spare you from the interpersonal details. But in this case, where we went inspired some serious inquisition on what I consider reality.
So bring your Tempo tissues and come along!
I haven’t gotten around to finishing even half of my Europe 2017 retroactive posts, and here I am with another trip in my past to mull over. Yet gratitude is a common theme in my life, and I never want to squander this blessing by failing to recognizing it.
So, I understand that Time is writing history faster than we can record it, but why my life is happening faster than my mind can reflect on it is surely not Time’s fault. My life can hardly be considered fast-paced– and trust me I have an inkling of what fast-paced really is after visiting Hong Kong.
…And with that wonderful segue, I’ll elaborate on my Hong Kong and China trip for a bit before resuming with Europe/Scandinavia posts. (How do people deal with reflection backlog anyway??)
Gelato is cheaper than a bus ticket here; so naturally, I had gelato everyday and walked everywhere.
After the past couple days of terrifying experiences, I had already decided on the train on my way to Innsbruck that my two days in Innsbruck will be chill. I will tone down the walking, not try any mountains, and just enjoy the city. I mostly followed through with that, so that translates to a pretty boring blog post. (Poor you.)
The process of mountain hiking is conducive to becoming a metaphor of journey, spirituality, and life. I mean, it literally has a rising action, a climax, and falling action. For the duration of the hike, I can self-indulge and romanticize myself (or my party) as a main character(s) in some heroic journey. Hiking is a celebration of life as a process rather than a destination; and that’s a much needed for a soul that’s trapped in a “destination”-oriented mind like mine.
While hiking, I need to be hyper-aware of time and space for mundane things like daylight, my own safety, and such. Yet for the same reason, the fact that a hike occurs within the time span of a really long conversation, puts the mind in a space where internal dialogues can fester and run (read:walk) their course. Given that long internal dialogues monologues are prone to recursive thinking (…at least mine are?), it follows that the activity of hiking is conducive to forming nested micro-metaphors within the broader “hiking metaphor” as a whole.
But–and forgive me for being trite–isn’t the phenomenon that hiking is fertile with nested metaphors, itself a metaphor for life? After all, any metaphor about life is just a subset of life that is modular enough for the human mind to appreciate the parallel. Every metaphor about life is nested in life. So it really shouldn’t be a surprise that a powerful metaphor of life, like hiking, is a Russian doll of nested-metaphors.
I’m convinced that the hike on this day is somehow a metaphor for all my other days. This is my absolute favourite “story” to tell about my trip because the things that happen in a certain sequence within a certain time. On a deeper note, I love telling it because I feel like the story hasn’t ended yet. I feel like this day had more subtle metaphors I haven’t fully teased out, and perhaps symbolism that I don’t yet know the meaning of.
It’s a new day…… and you know what that means! Another chance to tackle Garmisch-Partenkirchen to Mittenwald!
There’s really no reason why I should be so determined to do this. It’s not supposed to be a hard hike or anything. Somehow having it denied from me yesterday, made me want it more today. Also, having it denied from me yesterday made me want to make it longer today. I’m convinced that irrationality like this is what makes me human. I’ve learned to live and breathe it.
Between the conference and WWOOFing in Norway, I had a little less than a week of alone travel time. The morning after the conference, I took the first train I could out of Munich (marked 1 on map below) to the Alps on the German-Austrian border (3 on map). For (my own) reference, I labelled Starnberg (2), because that’s where my professor took us that day we skipped part of the conference together. A couple days later, I would take the train to the end of the line at Innsbruck, Austria (4).
Specifically, the town I visited is Garmisch-Partenkirchen, which, according to my research is a great skiing place in the winter and a great hiking place in the summer. I had already picked out several hiking routes to take. I had two goals for the 3 days I will be here:
But, aware that I am completely at the mercy of the universe and such (in terms of the weather, health etc.)…
I’ve learned that anytime I refer to a desire as “my goal”, it’s really just an arrogant way of saying “my request to the universe”.
We will revisit these goals later.
Tourism posts are boring.
Every (western) city has the same building, per chance, with different architecture (Which we have already established that I don’t care about). Every city has some permutation of a transportation system. Every city has parks. Maybe some attraction that’s actually unique to the city, those are often over-crowded and swarming with tourists. In short, travelling to cities is pretty much my bane, but I would love for a chance to live in a non-Toronto city.
That said, this post is going to be one of those tourism posts. Slightly modified by the conference aspect, but mostly touristy none-the-less. Still, I feel like I need to give this leg of my trip some attention. After all, the conference is the reason I get to come here in the first place!
I promise, dear reader, this is the most boring post of the trip. Not necessarily because I was bored, far from it! I just don’t think it’ll be very interesting for you to read.
Enough dilly dallying, lads. Let us commence.
My 2+ months time away from home began with a 1 day stopover in Reykjavik, Iceland on the way to Munich for a conference. I was waaay excited.
I landed around 6:20 at Keflavik Airport on a Sunday morning and took a bus to Reykjavik. It was a beautiful day and looking out at the purple-coloured weeds springing up from an apparent wasteland on the way to the city was absolutely stunning. At June 25, I was there in prime “midnight sun” season and the sun was already bright like noon!
As Reykjavik is pretty small, I decided to go on a leisurely walk to explore the city. There is absolutely no better way to know a city intimately than tracing its features on foot (that is, if you, like me, refuse to make talking to strangers a thing you’d do casually). Below, is the route I took to maximize exposure to attractions I expected to be most interested in:
Long story short, the culmination of my master’s, besides the thesis defense, was a 10 minute talk I gave at a 4 day conference in Munich this summer. My professor, admirably adventurous and opportunistic himself, encouraged me to take advantage of the lab-paid flight to travel before and after the conference (and, honestly, he fully supported traveling during the conference too). I ended up maximizing this opportunity by extending the 10 minute talk within a 4 day conference to a 70 day adventure that included: two layovers in Iceland (on the way there and back), the conference in Munich (of course), hiking in the Alps, traveling in Scandinavia, and realizing a dream of mine to go WWOOFing (in Norway-“the-happiest-place-on-earth”, no less)!
I am super grateful to my professor for suggesting and encouraging me to extend my trip. Otherwise, I would have flown home right after the conference for the following stupid reasons (and why those reasons were stupid):