Wanna Meet Someone New? Go North And Discover Yourself!
You’d be surprised how miraculous Scandinavian lands are. Just to show you how unique they are I’m gonna list some contradistinctions that they include. (Just a brief description first: There are 5 in total and I’ve been in 4 of them except Iceland)
- Very easy to live, so hard to discover.
- Both the places and people look so peaceful from outside, once you get to know them, you’ll see that they know how to make some noise. (And how to drink too…)
- Miracles of nature are heartwarming, but if you stay there more than enough, you’ll be freezing your ass off. (But still, it is worthwhile)
- Both the longest sunshine and the never-ending darkness will be waiting for you in there. (You won’t care about darkness after you saw those magical lights during winter)
- And the people of North…Really hard to meet them (seriously don’t even try to say hi to anyone with a useless smile on your face, they don’t do that thing there), but once you did, it’s even harder to let them go out of your life.
Now that I got your attention, let me describe my title for you.
A great majority of the people don’t actually know much about themselves. In your mind, you are exactly the person that you want to be. You are living freely and without boundaries. But, since you are in a society in which your behaviors and ideas are getting judged every day in anyway, from outside you probably live like an ideal person to the society. However, even we modify the self for the public audience, most of us aren’t brave enough to admit it neither to others nor to themselves.
We must free ourselves at least once from the social pressure that has taken us over for our entire life. By doing this we’ll get the chance to set the real self free and be actually the ideal person that we want to be or at least we imagine.
So what exactly Scandinavia has to do with this?
It is just the perfect place to run away from the social pressure that is surrounding us. Of course, I’m not telling you to move in there for a lifetime. Just spend one week or slightly more and you’ll get what I’m trying to say. During my stay in Scandinavia (quite a long time for an outsider), I experienced such amazing moments both with the people and the nature in there. Sure, I made stronger connections with the mother nature more than the people. That’s why I had the chance to listen to my inner voice and meet myself once again after a long time. Since mother nature doesn’t have a voice itself, it is up to us to interpret the miracles of it.
I’ve spent enough time in Norway to experience what I’m saying here. Of course, I have visited countries like Sweden, Finland, and Denmark, so that I have seen enough to understand that Scandinavia, as a whole, offers a different way of living.
Some may say it’s loneliness, but I’d rather call it as personal space. It’s our tiny little box, where nobody watches you or cares about you, so you can set your inner monster or whatever you call it as your soul. When you take a break from your daily life, where “all eyes on you”, you’ll have your own personal space and enough time to think about yourself.
Scandinavia also has some good challenges such that once you decide to deal with those, they will help you to adapt yourself to any other culture so easily. I saw this following line on a commercial and I liked it, so I’m gonna write that quote here:
“Scandinavia is tough, it’s not for everyone.”
The top 3 challenges are surely networking, the culture, and the weather if you’re not from Canada. Each of these challenges gives you some strength both physically and mentally.
Living in the north is a challenge. Challenges are the most essential parts of a journey for you to start discovering your weaknesses, strengths and your real opinions about the direction of your life. Things you experience may somehow lead you to evaluate the quality of your life or your personality.
Beginning from our childhood, we are getting used to dream a better life than our original one, pick some random idols and associate our best life with them while growing up with the jealousy of those lives. However, at some point in our lives, we may have short breaks or instant situations which happen during the monotony. Those breaks may show us how to live that best life instead of our idols.
I have discovered my true personality and my way of living much earlier than my Scandinavian journey. But I have realized during my time in Norway that I’ve been fooling myself about how excellent I was living my life just the way I want.
My best recommendation after these words would be to go north. Take no one but yourself with you. Make local friends and try understand the culture of them (You’ll see most of them are quite happy with their life and they complain less about small things). Explore the beauties of Scandinavia, take all its challenges while you can, see things of mother nature that you can’t even imagine. Listen to your inner voice through-out your journey and learn how to speak to yourself without being called a “freak”.
There will be always some Trip Advisor addicts. For those, I’ll leave my Scandinavia bucketlist below.
- Do some crazy hikings which last more than a half-day.
- See as many Norwegian fjords as you can wheter with a tour or alone.
- Roll-over in snow half-naked if you are brave enough.
- Visit the famous Lapland, or find more affordable places (or Iceland if you can afford) to watch the Northern Lights. (If you couldn’t see them until your last day, book some cheap place and try again the following day, otherwise you’ll regret it for a long time)
- Drink the mulled wine called “Glögg” after a cold day, I became addicted.
- Try the famous Finnish sauna during winter. Nothing may shock you anymore. (-20 to 40 real quick…).
- Book a cabin with some friends over the mountains during winter time and enjoy!
