Well, I'm back again.

So I made it back to the United States, but not without a fair amount of hassle. I left my apartment in Moss at about 4:30 A.M. on December 17^th, and luckily, the RA for the college dorms gave me a ride with my suitcases down to the bus stop. He chatted with me a little bit, and as the bus approached, he went home for bed just as I was beginning my long trek home.

Getting on the bus was my first little hassle. The bus driver hopped down from the door of the vehicle and threw my luggage into the undercarriage of the bus, then I followed him onto the bus to pay for my ticket. I asked him for a ticket to Gardermoen, the main airport in Oslo, and I asked him if there were student tickets available. He looked at me funny and cautiously asked, “…are you under 30 years old?” I explained that my 26^th birthday had literally been two days prior, to which I got another funny, cautious stare—he then said it was fine and asked for my student identification card. Crisis averted there.

I had a quick flight to Amsterdam from Oslo, but when I hit the Schipol Airport, things got a little hairy. There was nothing wrong with my flight at all—honestly, it went by fairly quickly, being I was too tired to care. When I got to passport control in the airport, a surly little man pulled me aside to his very official passport police office and started asking questions about my residency in Norway. I provided him with documentation about my Norwegian residency permit and the acceptance of said permit, but he seemed a little big for his britches to me. His little power trip was enough to send me into a foaming rage in the middle of the airport, so I tried to find something to eat, sit down, collect myself, and get through my day.

The flight from Amsterdam to Minneapolis was hardly bearable. The flight was packed, seat to seat, and this was a huge airplane, to boot—most likely the biggest airplane in which I’ve ever traveled. Nine hours is too long to be stuck on a plane flying over the Atlantic Ocean and barren, frozen parts of Canada. Luckily, the plane had small video screens in the headrests like the flights I had going over to Norway, so that was a small comfort. I watched a few movies, and then everything was better. The airline also provided food, so I got to have a nice, warm meal en route, and that made things a little better.

I hit ground in Minneapolis and felt like I was home already—though I was still a few hours short. The line to go through passport control in Minneapolis was awful, and I’ve decided that, if there is a personal hell for everyone, mine will be waiting in a passport control line that never ends. I got through passport control with no issues, though, and the passport agent wished me a nice stay in America—thanks, chief, because I’ll be staying a good, long while.

Once I made it through passport control, I moved on to the U.S. customs counter. On the plane to America, every passenger was given a small card with which to say what items the passenger was bringing into the country. As I packed my bags in Norway, I opened an Excel spreadsheet on my computer and created an itemized list of everything in my bags, separated by which bag each item was in, a description of the item, an approximate value for the item, and the item’s country of origin. I filled out this card on the plane and presented it to the customs agent, who took the briefest of looks at it and said, “Alright, next please.” So after wondering and worrying about the intense interrogation I was facing going through customs after being in a foreign country for four months, I got little more than a head nod, and I was through.

I waded through people in the terminal, made it through another round of airport security (I think it was five security checkpoints in all), I found my girlfriend on the other side of the security checkpoint. My first meal in America, you ask? A hulking bacon cheeseburger with a Jack Daniels barbecue sauce and french fries. Worth it? Of course it was. No regrets here! The rest of the trip was really easy, considering I was already in the United States and had a travel partner to share my frustrations with after a 25-hour day of traveling across the world.

Sole Searching

As I was cleaning my apartment today in preparation for my departure from Norway on Tuesday morning, I got to the entrance of my apartment that has dried and dirty footprints from my shoes. I’ve got two pairs of shoes—an American pair and a Norwegian pair—and I couldn’t help but feel a little nostalgic.

I knew in my soles that these would be the shoes I’d take to Norway. I’ve had a pair of shoes like this before, but I wore them for almost an entire year before they started falling apart. Because of all the walking I’ve done since I got here, I’ve worn the soles down to nothing in some places, and the white parts of the sole have actually fallen out of the shoes.

These shoes have been with me in every step of my adventure. They’ve seen the western and eastern sides of North Dakota, and they’ve flown with me out to Pennsylvania. After that, they bounced with me from Pittsburgh to Boston to Reykjavik, Iceland to Oslo, Norway. These were the shoes that nervously paced back and forth in the Gardermoen airport waiting for my bag, then sprinted outside to the bus stop to travel south to Moss. I even wore them as I hiked through Mosseskogen, the forest north of Moss—that’s where I tore a hole in the side of my right shoe, I’m pretty sure.

Come to think of it, these shoes have gone through every leg of my European journey. In August, they walked the streets of Oslo when I first arrived in Norway and took me through the biggest city I’d ever seen. In October, they took me across Belgium to the city of Bruges, striding over cobblestone streets to view windmills and towers. Later in October, they slipped their way through the largest city I’ve ever enter—London—and I walked in the paths of kings! In November, I realized how much I took my shoes for granted as I walked through Auschwitz and saw an entire room full of shoes stripped from Jewish prisoners. 

I came back from Poland feeling straight-laced, and I figured I should buy a new pair of shoes, seeing as the hole in my shoe kept ripping wider. I walked to the mall and bought a pair of Norwegian shoes, and they’ve been very nice so far.

If I had to tie this post up in a nice bow, I’d say that you shouldn’t take your shoes for granted—think of all the places you’ve been, and now think of all the other people (and shoes) that have walked there before you. I’ve walked in the footsteps of millions of people, nobility and peasants, old and young. The idea is almost too much to wrap my mind around.