My personal connection to both Paris and the country of Denmark is basically an absurd and random distortion of possibility and chance. Yet, here I am on a plane [a cramped wi-fi-less Air Canada flight in the 58th row with no chance of sleeping despite the tiny bottle of wine I just inhaled] en route to both countries.
That tiny little bottle of wine was actually quite delicious. Maybe it’s the alcitude (alcohol + altitude, yes I serendipitously made up this word at a wedding in Steamboat Springs, CO) but shit… maybe I need another mini bottle of this wine.
Tomorrow is going to suck. I am going to be so tired. Why the in the hell can I not sleep on a plane. I love white noise. I love stale recycled air being blown on me. This should be no problem…
Let’s talk about Air Canada some more. AIR CANADA WHY NO WI-FI??!! Flight attendants: I love that the assumption is I speak French, it’s flattering; perhaps it’s my quebeçoise swagger? Jesus, ok, this is stupid. Who would read this.
So, there is power, power meaning a place to plug in my computer but it’s not working. The plug keeps falling out of the socket and I really want to keep writing, otherwise I am just going to stare at that stupid interactive map with the graphic of our plane at a near stand-still floating above the icy Atlantic just barely off the coast of Greenland but just far enough away to not be able to swim to shore with the flotation device under our collective seats.
Seriously we’ve been hanging out over Porcupine Bank for NINE HOURS.
I digress.
Over twenty or so years ago I spent an entire year studying abroad as an exchange student in the country of Denmark. I will never forget the day I skipped class at my po-dunk American High School to attend a lecture on the possibility of studying in a foreign country. I basically dropped the mic and was OUT.
Because this is a preface, the details of an entire year abroad as a 17-18 year old in Scandinavia cannot be quickly jotted down in any sort of meaningful way. But in short: it was amazing. And now I speak Danish. I always have it in my mind that one day there will be this huge emergency and someone will say, “Hey! Who speaks Danish?! We need a translator!”
That day has not arrived. Occasionally I meet a Dane and it’s fun to speak a little Danish even with my atrophied vocabulary.
I am traveling back to Denmark to see “my Danish family” most of whom I have not seen since I left. I cannot explain how ridiculously excited, nervous, giddy, I am to see the people that somehow managed to put up with me for an entire year. If there are stories to be had, I am sure I will be reminded.
I can’t wait.
My first trip to Paris was in 1991 while my second visit straddled the millennium to celebrate Y2K under the Eiffel Tower. It is a bit interesting to be making my third journey to Paris in 2014, i.e. each trip made at emphatically different periods of my life.
Paris at age 19 was vastly different than Paris at age 28; what, pray tell, does Paris at age 41 have in store? I mean, besides the Paris Marathon.
taken with an olympus point and shoot loaded with 10000 ISO Ilford film
This… this is truly some random shit. Stay tuned.
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