Long Press the * Key
Well, I’ve arrived in Norway, and it is fantastic. Like all my posts, this one is by no means comprehensive, but I’ll tell a couple tales from the last few days.
I left Maine midday on the 7th. I had been a nervous wreck all day. I packed and repacked frantically, and as I was taking my bags to the car, I stubbed my bare toe on a brick, causing me to swear loudly and bleed profusely. A bad omen, I thought.
My parents drove me to the bus station, and the bus driver drove me to Logan. I had calmed myself on the bus, but my arrival at the airport brought a fresh wave of travel anxiety — an apparently genetic condition passed down through the generations.
Fortunately, I had a series long lines to wait in, which allowed me to breath deeply and collect myself. Or so I thought — as I waited in the security line, a uniformed agent of the TSA accosted me. He wasn’t one of the ones who check your boarding pass or your naked body scans — he was just a roving agent. No doubt a trained terrorist hunter, seeking out the most suspicious in the long line. “Where are you going?” he inquired suspiciously.
“Norway,” I said, certain that if this TSA agent got his way, the real answer would be Guantanamo Bay.
“How long are you staying?” he asked.
“10 months,” I said.
“Got a job?”
“A teaching grant.” As I said it, I realized how much this sounds like a cover story for some sort of anti-American activity. The TSA agent’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“Do you keep a journal?”
How did the agent know I kept a journal? Had the NSA intercepted my diary through some nefarious diary drone? “Yes,” I said.
“Good,” he said. At this point, we passed through the first boarding pass check, but the agent continued to follow me as I progressed through the system. “Make sure it’s a handwritten journal. Handwriting lets much more emotion on the page.”
This was an odd development in the conversation. My previous interactions with TSA agents had led me to believe they did not usually engage in personal banter or sage writing advice.
“It’s gotta be handwriting,” he continued. “Make sure you record the little details — what you ate, where you went, who you met. If you get a ticket for something, I dunno, a museum or a concert or a play, paste that in there too. You forget that kinda stuff, and it’s the little things that you’ll want to remember ten years from now. And don’t sweat it if it’s hard at first. You’ll have a great time.”
It was my turn to pass through the body scanner. “Thank you,” I said. “No problem,” he replied, and I passed into the scanner, and lifted my arms above my head.
9 or 10 hours later, I was in Frankfurt, tired, hungry, and very grouchy. I had not slept more than a few minutes on the plane, and though I had watched two highly enjoyable films (Oblivion and Iron Man 3), they had not improved my mood. The main problem was that my body knew perfectly well that it was midnight, while the clocks asserted that it was 6am. That the sun was rising was simply adding to the confusion.
I imagine it was around this time that my internal clock decided that enough was enough. “Fuck it,” said my circadian rhythm, “I’ll just alternate between nervous hysteria and utter exhaustion every several hours for the next couple days. That will teach him to travel to another time zone.”
By the time I landed in Bergen, I had gone through several iterations of this cycle, and I was not happy about it. I found it difficult to do anything requiring even the slightest concentration. Reading, for example, was a challenge, and human interaction was utterly beyond me. Certainly the German flight attendant whom I informed that I couldn’t understand Norwegian when she spoke to me in English must have thought I was a bit of an odd duck.
On the bright side, the approach into Bergen was easily the most beautiful plane flight of my life — the sun was shining in a bright blue sky, and every passenger in the plane had their eyes plastered to the windows. Below us, mountains stumbled into the sea in a labyrinth of cliffs, islands, and seaside towns.
When I had landed and collected my bags, I was met by my supervisor at the Bergen Cathedral School, Anita. Anita is a one-woman refutation of the stereotype of Norwegians as cold and unfriendly. She is simply the nicest person in the world. She drove me from the airport to the student center, then gave me a tour of central Bergen, then gave me lunch at her son’s sandwich shop, then drove me to my dorm a few miles south of town. She is wonderful.
My room was somewhat underwhelming. It is on the first floor, and it has mountain views in the sense that a coalmine does — it faces a mountain, but the base of the mountain from which the space from the dorm had been cut. In other words, I look on a rock wall about 15 feet away from my window. It’s a bit dark, and it’s August. The days are 17 hours long.
I share a kitchen, if you can call it that, with one other person — Hank, a friendly and somewhat reserved German. He plans on joining the MMA club, and has seen Fight Club hundreds of times. His favorite musical artist seems to be Beyoncé, and all in all, he seems an extremely nice guy. I think he and I will get along well together.
I spent the afternoon unpacking my bags and the large duffle of useful things left by the previous ETA, Ida. I was not my best self. There are water buffalo that would have unpacked more efficiently than I. My anxiety had also returned, and I was feeling certain that I would meet no friends and spend my year in a dark little isolation cell, unhappy and alone.
Included among the sheets, towels, hairdryers and tour guides was a phone. On a whim, I turned it on, and was informed that the screen was locked. To unlock it, I should long press the * key, which felt like a 21st century tribute to the prince of the gadgets and ruler of the airwaves, King Cellular Phone. Astonishingly, the phone had some minutes left on it, and it could send international texts. It was a real Fulbright miracle. I promptly texted the people I missed the most. They responded, and I felt that maybe, just maybe, I’d be ok in Norway.
Anyway, the next morning I left for Oslo at the crack of dawn (which is very early in a Norwegian summer). But that is a story for another post. Stay tuned.
Originally published at www.fascogris.com.
