Today would decide whether I could deal with the hills. I was depending on them to kick my metabolism into gear, but I didn’t know if my old-ass knees could handle so much pedaling with such a stupid amount of gear.
Chomped it right outside the place, standing in the sun.
I was reluctant to leave the downtown. It had a kind of quiet bustle that felt very Scandinavian, like a calmer version of the seaside town of Santa Cruz back home. But there was exploring to do!
I went for the Eurovelo 1 route, which passed through the city. Immediately there was a problem: The main cycling tunnel under the highway was closed for construction. I had to pedal over a busy bridge instead. Was this a sign of things to come?
On the edge of town I stopped to finish the croissant and the mocha I’d perched in the cupholder. I really like the cupholder. It’s an accessory and also a mission statement about the way I ride: Slowly enough that coffee never gets a chance to slosh out.
The first hill out of town was definitely steep, and there were more right after it. I had been expecting to enter dense forest as soon as the hills began, establishing a clear difference between Norway and the nearly forest-free Iceland coast I pedaled five years ago. Instead it was a patchwork, more like California. Summer in Norway equals winter in California, apparently — at least at sea level.
A few hills later I shot down into Langenes, a seaside town almost too small to have a name. All the properties by the water had this well-integrated look, like the residents had spent years – perhaps generations – thoughtfully building channels and stacking rocks to make use of the sea. I stopped a bunch of times to eat snacks and just look around, taking in the detail and working out the choices people had made over time.
I love the way this property is so integrated with the sea.
A few kids on bikes rolled by in the opposite direction, and waved hello. A woman walking her dog stopped to mess with her phone, then said hello as she passed. Everyone was in a nice mood.
I found a very weather-beaten kiosk that listed activities for visitors. It came with a map that showed an earlier, mostly accurate version of the Eurovelo 1 route. It was a good sign that the drivers around me would be expecting cyclists. It also reminded me I had many days of hill ahead, before the land would flatten somewhat and become farms for a while.
Along with the kiosk, I found quite a variety of road signs:
Back home this would be a “ghost bike” marking a highway death of a cyclist. Not sure what it means here.
I also began to see large amounts of cut firewood, organized in different ways. There were competing standards apparently. I knew Norwegians took their firewood seriously but it was amusing to see this fact playing out right along the side of the road.
It was also a reminder that I was immersed in a culture that had different – and more consistent – standards about the respect of other people’s property. Back in the USA there were similar places, but they were mixed in with places where, if you left a pile of organized firewood out by the side of a public road with no signage, it would soon vanish into the beds of passing pickup trucks.
The takers might even conjure some kind of justification in their heads as they loaded it up, for example, “This must have been stacked here by the county utility after they cut down some tree that was too close to a power line. By grabbing some, I’m being helpful!”
Other things I passed:
Small chunks of farmed land with a single house and barn on them, looking suspiciously well organized, as though the owners were pursuing a lifestyle rather than a business.
Another burned-out property that appeared to be the victim of some heating device gone rogue.
Some very expensive looking boats, and a lot of boathouses built right onto the water. The tides didn’t move much in this region so the gaps could be small.
Why put hooks in the ground when you can just use water?
The combination of boats and manicured land reminded me of super-affluent regions in California. Over there, if you wanted a lifestyle like this, you first needed the land, which would probably cost you five or ten times more than here, and a similar amount in taxes in absolute terms. If you farmed it was very likely you were already wealthy, and farming for the hell of it — for example to make your own toy brand of wine.
There were of course serious farms in California – lots of them – but they tended to be inland, larger, and had a busier, slightly cluttered look, because the owners were constantly planting, repairing, harvesting, digging, fertilizing, et cetera.
Then again, I was probably reading too much into the distinction here, in economic terms. It’s likely that a small, manicured farm here is not just a lifestyle choice but is integrated enough with collective efforts in adjacent farms to make the profit margins worthwhile. It’s also likely I was seeing lots of small farms because there had been a country-wide movement to subdivide large ones, creating “cluster farms” run by individual families. The distribution of land ownership in California had taken a very different route.
(Fun fact: In terms of land area, Norway is only 10% smaller than California!)
After a particularly steep hill, I crossed a high bridge and descended into another small town. It was a long day of riding and I was running low on snacks. Eventually I turned to the bag of brazil nuts I’d carried all the way here from a Sacramento food co-op. Bland, but filling…
Not sure what these little flowers are, but they’re pretty.
In the evening I reached the town of Mandal, and stopped just long enough to buy a massive pile of Thai food. The campground was in a forest on the west side.
It’s a self-serve operation here. Back home you exchange canisters and some company fills them up.
A smooth deployment of the overcomplicated campsite!
It had been a long day with a lot of hills, but definitely a success. My legs had done well. No stiffness, just a general whole-body feeling of exhaustion, and the Thai food was helping with that.
Onward to the next day!
Escaflowne Corner, Episode 2
Lots of fantastical scenery, a couple more characters, and some choice mech sword-clashing. It’s all such a 90’s anime time capsule. Once again, Hitomi saves the day with premonitions and female rage. Looks like this is going to be a pattern.
Is Hitomi’s immaturity a calculated choice by writers to appeal to young boys … or a side effect of Japanese anime artists being ignorant about how women work in general, in the very buttoned-down and segregated culture of 90’s Japan?
Slept pretty well. I wanted to just poke around the city all day, but first I had to take the tent apart and figure out why it didn’t hold air. With all my gear shoved to the corners of the room there was just enough space to test the thing.
I pulled the 15-foot bladder out of the strut and patiently immersed sections of it in the sink, looking for bubbles that would show me a leak. I didn’t see any, but I did find a stowaway:
A stowaway from California! It would have caused trouble no doubt.
A stowaway from California! It would have caused trouble no doubt.
Finally I saw something when I reached the very end: Air was slowly leaking from the valve itself. The soft plastic ring underneath the cap had scratches all over it, probably from me jabbing around the valve with a pair of pliers when I was putting the tent back together last time. I flipped the ring over, then tested the valve. No leak, as long as I didn’t over-tighten it.
It took a long time to get the bladder back in the strut, line it up, hook the layers back together, and re-inflate the tent. I left it standing in the middle of the room. If it was still fine when I came back in the evening, I was good to go.
Before setting out, I took another look at the map of the downtown. There’s a decommissioned building in the center of town that used to be … a prison! It held 44 inmates. It was shut down only six years ago when a larger one opened nearby. (As an aside, it’s hilarious that Wikipedia has a category page called Defunct prisons in Norway.)
A recent fire. This would be the beginning of a pattern I saw as I went around Norway.
Down near the coast I found a restaurant that promised fish stew and fish and chips. So I ordered both, and ate them very slowly, listening to the birds and the inscrutable conversations around me, and generally unwinding. It was the first time in three days that I wasn’t being, or about to be, a passenger on some transport.
It was pretty dang good soup! I ate it very slowly.
Pretty good fisk and kips, but I know there’s better out there…
Near me a large group of old Norwegian folks were arrayed on benches around an open space, all in their 70’s or 80’s, having a slow discussion about — something or other. One guy had his beer set on my table, and didn’t bother to move it when I sat down. I didn’t mind of course. It was a little hint of that flexibility of personal space I saw in Iceland.
After that I decided it was time to walk around and gaze at stuff, so I rode over to the Museum Of Art, where there was an exhibition of the portraiture of Edvard Munch. I browsed through some nifty local kids art on the bottom floor, then put my stuff in a locker and got a ticket for the “real” museum upstairs.
Read about “Self Portrait By The Arbour, 1942” (English taken directly from sign.)
When German troops invaded Norway in 1940, Munch spurned all contact with the occupiers, retreating to his main residence at Ekely, where he lived up to his death from pneumonia in 1944. Here he became known as “the hermit of Ekely”, even though he continued to receive friends and selected guests on a regular basis.
In this late self-portrait, Munch presents himself featureless and alone, walking in the arbour beyond his winter studio, deep in contemplation. While the empty seat and bench accentuate his solitude, the glowing yellow shrub and view of the landscapes to the distant Oslofjord convey a feeling of oneness with the natural world.
I worked my way almost all around that floor when a typically adorable young Norwegian staff member came up and said the place would close in two minutes.
“Oh no!” I said. “There’s so much more to see!”
“Well, you still have two minutes!” she said brightly.
After that, I cycled around looking for ice cream but the store I targeted was closed, and the next place was a really American-looking bulk candy shop, so I gave up. No evening treat for me! I still had leftover fish and chips from the restaurant so I certainly wouldn’t starve.
Back at the AirBnB the tent was still just as upright as before, which was fantastic news. I probably wouldn’t have had enough time to take it apart and look for another leak. I rolled it up and packed the large bags, getting as ready as possible for the next day.
Then I remembered: I had a leftover cookie from the bakery in Hirtshals! Mmmm. With no good reason to leave the AirBnB for the night, I realized it would be a good time to start an episode Vision Of Escaflowne, since I was actually in Norway as I’d planned.
That was kind of weird. I’d first had the idea of re-watching this series at least five years ago, and made a note about it in my travel plans, but I couldn’t remember why. The connection between the cartoon and Norway was tenuous: The main character Hitomi reminded me of a woman I’d dated in college, and that woman was from a family that emigrated to the United States from Norway. Or had it been Sweden?
Ex-girlfriend connection or no, Vision Of Escaflowne is fantastical and dramatic – a story about a girl who blunders through a magic portal into a swords-and-sorcery otherworld – and the idea of watching it in a far-off place was appealing. Norway would have lots of big spaces and I would be traveling it alone, putting me in an introspective mood, and I could watch the show and think about my angst-ridden college days as well. Plus, the show was 20-something episodes, which would be just enough to make my way around the coast watching one episode per day.
After so many years of this plan drifting around in the back of my head, it felt very strange to actually be in the place where it could happen. Here I was in Norway, and it had only taken ten days of travel away from my “normal” life. Is this what I’d been picturing, years ago? A little seaside town – chilly but not freezing – a grid of affluent streets at the end of a ferry port and a train terminal, a cramped and slightly rustic AirBnB room? This massive pile of gear?
I really couldn’t remember. But I poured a glass of Norway water and set the cookie on a napkin, put on headphones, and watched the first episode.
Here begins Escaflowne Corner, where I write whatever thoughts I have about the day’s episode. This is definitely of no interest to anyone but me, so it’s in a disclosure section:
Escaflowne Corner, Episode 1
The world of the show is interestingly small: There are only four characters with faces, and we say goodbye to two of them in this first episode. We don’t see any other school students or staff, no other people on the street, and even Hitomi’s parents are only heard in voice-over.
I forgot how unashamed the animators are of showing Hitomi in Japanese-flavor “upskirt” camera angles. When she’s on the starting blocks for example, the camera is aimed right up her ass. What’s funny is, there is some justification for the angle: We see how coiled up she is, poised to spring, and sense her focus and dedication to the sport. But a modern director would find a way to convey that without putting the camera in the exact spot a teenage boy would want to stick his face, saving Hitomi her dignity. They would lean away from the fanservice instead of almost literally into it.
Generally, Hitomi is portrayed as empty-headed. Her biggest concerns are getting a kiss from her crush, and improving her running speed. Perhaps this is the norm for a – what – 16 year old? I don’t know if she’ll grow in later episodes, but so far she’s only special because of some innate magical power that’s vaguely associated with her femaleness: She feels sick, then she has a premonition, and that compels her to act in some way that looks quite irrational to observers, like a sailor-suit wearing Oracle of Delphi.
I admit that one of the ways she reminds me of my college girlfriend is, she too would sometimes get very upset over some inner thought and have an emotional breakdown, and I was drawn to – could relate to – the emotional intensity of it all. 25 years later I am still sometimes drawn to that sort of dysfunction. Huh; I wonder what that says about me…
My emergency twig supports did their job. As I struck camp I made plans to spend some of the next day taking the tent apart to find the leak and patch it. I was grateful I’d remembered to bring patches…
Somehow the tent stayed up all night, so I didn’t have to.
I made my way into town, intent on breakfast — several breakfasts, if possible. It was so far before the tourist season that most of the restaurants were closed.
Lots of bread, but still a pretty good breakfast sando.
The next ferry to Kristiansand was in two hours. There wasn’t much to do in town so I decided to just roll down to the terminal and hang out; maybe sort photos or listen to an audiobook. The route took me past a large building that my map identified as the Nordsøen Oceanarium. I didn’t have enough time to look around inside, but the music they had playing near the entrance was so boisterous and charming that I just had to get a recording on my phone.
Nordsøen Oceanarium Welcome Song
I have no idea what the lyrics are, but I imagine it’s some jolly story about swimming in the ocean with mermaids and fish!
I pedaled on, and found the ferry terminal. I parked the bike in the lee of the nearest gatehouse and assembled my portable camping chair, then opened the lappy to sort photos. With the wind factored out, the sun warmed up my jacket and pants and I felt surprisingly comfortable. So much so that an hour flew by, and the next time I looked up the line of cars was moving. I repacked the chair and joined the line.
In the second line, after all the cyclists and motorcyclists were clustered together, one of the motorcyclists moseyed over to me for a conversation, starting with my weird bicycle and then ranging around. A friendly fellow, probably about 60 years old, with blond hair and a squint. I asked where he was from.
“A little island near the middle of Denmark.”
I was intrigued. He looked a lot like my uncle Denny and I guessed we were probably related somewhere five or six generations back. He had a tough-looking motorbike kitted with sturdy metal boxes full of gear, and a bedroll lashed across them.
I asked, “Coming up to Norway for a vacation?”
“Oh yes,” he said. “I’ve done this trip lots. For me it’s only three hours or so on the bike, and I get to the ferry. Very easy to go. There’s lots to see in Norway, and the roads are good, and there is almost no traffic outside the main cities like Oslo and Bergen.”
“Sounds great!” I said.
“Yes, you’ll like it! Except for the tunnels. Some of them you can go through on a bicycle, but if you do, it’s dark and very cold, and they can be very long. Many of them have bypass roads. Everyone in a car uses the tunnel, so they don’t need the bypass roads. So they’ve been making the bypass roads bicycle only. It’s great. You’ll like those.”
“Definitely.”
“What’s your route?” he asked.
We hunkered over my phone and I gave him a rough outline. I said, “I’ll stay on the coast for a while, but I want to go inland later. Is it going to be cold?”
He shrugged. “If you go in May, not too cold. The snow is already gone from the coast. You’ll find some when the elevation goes up, but the roads will be good. Sometimes you get five, seven meters of snow, and the roads are like tunnels.”
“Five or seven meters?” I was agog. I’d been along plowed roads where the snow was like a wall, as much as ten feet high, but he was talking about twice that.
“April is really still winter, outdoor-wise,” he said. “Ski-resorts like Hemsedal and Geilo have open lifts and trails in April, but at the same time, the spring flowers are blooming down in Oslo and Bergen. The mountain roads will be open, but the daytime temperature there might be 0 to 10 degrees, even if the weather is sunny.”
I assumed he meant 0 to 10 degrees in Celsius. Converting temperature in my head was going to be a challenge for the next few months.
Around us the cars were starting their engines, and the other bikers were putting their helmets on. I thanked him for the advice and we wished each other well.
After we parked, all the passengers gathered at tables in a large room upstairs. A very suave-sounding captain spoke over the P.A. and said we should take advantage of the executive lounge, where we could get as many snacks as we wanted after paying an upgrade fee. He didn’t say what the fee was, so I assumed it was too much.
One of the youngest staff on the boat was a woman who looked in her early 20’s. She spent part of the voyage walking around with a large basket of small snacks, offering things to patrons, and the rest of the time with a box slung over one shoulder, going table to table and selling ice cream bars. I couldn’t help thinking this role was a holdover from before the boat had a coffee bar and full-on dining service, and it was kept around for nostalgia purposes. A strangely menial job for someone that age, but on the other hand, perhaps I’m bad at judging age here, or perhaps the job pays better than I expect, or perhaps it’s not her full-time role and they swap around each day.
The woman had golden hair cut boyishly short and a strong jawline, and reminded me a lot of a girl I’d had a crush on all the way back in the 5th grade. Weird how these memories stick. It made me want to flirt with her, which would have been deeply inappropriate for a lot of reasons, mostly because I’m more than old enough to be her father.
During the trip, the televisions that hung from arms in the ceiling all around the room displayed a repeating loop of perfume ads: Toned women and men in wacky clothing, posing in unearthly environments, splashing in water or fake lava, all with expressions on their faces between “I’m about to fall asleep” and “someone just cut in front of me in line for the bathroom.” It took me most of the journey to figure out why: The on-board market was crammed with different kinds of perfume for sale. Why that? Because perfume is very expensive for the weight, not an essential good (so it’s not likely to be stolen), and it never spoils. Perfect for a store in a location as awkward as a boat.
When it was time to leave, I rode casually to the front of the line inside the boat, and the crew waved me over to a position next to the lead car. I could tell the cars were full of impatient tourists because they were scooting pointlessly close together, as if their lives depended on keeping their neighbors from cutting in when the lines converged. The Norwegian drivers would be more considerate, no doubt.
The guard at the exit gate to the terminal asked me a bunch of questions about where I was going and how. He seemed surprised that I’d brought the bike from America. “Yeah, I took it apart and put it in a giant box, and brought it with me!” I said.
He made an incredulous expression, as if he was thinking “What will these lunatic cyclists do next?” But then he waved me through with a “Have a nice trip!”
I had arrived in Kristiansand. The downtown grid of streets was lively but mostly full of souvenir and clothing stores. I wanted a restaurant! I found my AirBnB on the other side of town and hauled the bags inside, then set out again.
As I rode away, I noticed three “rough gentlemen” in their 40’s or 50’s going in the other direction. Two were pushing beat-up bikes; one was coughing deeply. Their clothing, posture, grooming, and general furtiveness implied to me that they were destitute and not welcome in the city. I thought Norway didn’t have any so-called homeless people? I realized I had to recalibrate my perceptions here. Maybe these men were just very tired dockworkers who’d been kicked out of a bar for partying too hard on a Monday? I’d been assuming that Norway was like Iceland, and had virtually zero crime.
Here’s a spoiler for you: For the next month, I would never feel the need to use my bike lock, with only four exceptions: Once in Stavanger, once in Haugesund, once in Bergen, and once in Oslo — not coincidentally the four largest cities I found myself in. Other than that, I just didn’t bother with the lock, and unless there was a hotel room I could walk the bike into, I would just leave it outside, leaning on the kickstand, bags and all.
I woke up an hour early. Decent sleep, mostly due to the quiet of the room
I kitted up the bike and wrestled it down the four sets of stairs to the ground floor. As I was donning gear outside a grizzled cop across the street stared at me, then began ambling across to talk to me, then apparently changed his mind and turned around and went back to his police van. I couldn’t read his intent, but perhaps he saw my own body language and realized he was making me nervous, and would just make me more nervous if he started asking me questions.
It was so early that the city felt empty. Most of the stores were still closed. I meandered my way towards the train station and stopped at a random bakery for coffee and a bunch of breakfast snacks.
I had this feeling like I couldn’t quite relax until I knew exactly where the train was, so I packed the snacks onto the bike. The big screen at the station showed the same platform as yesterday. I took the elevator down and located one of the little screens, and saw this:
Two interesting things here. First, the train in front of me would split in half when it left, with one half going to Flensburg and the other going to Kiel. Good to know; it would suck to get on the wrong half!
And second, the train in front of me was going to the place I wanted, but leaving in a few minutes instead of an hour. I decided to just board the earlier train instead of standing around. If the conductor called me on it, I’d just pretend to be an ignorant tourist!
The conductor who checked my ticket seemed fine with it. When he recognized my accent, he asked which state I was from. When I told him California, he mentioned Gavin Newsom, and said he had been touring through Europe giving talks. I was not aware of that, and told him.
He changed the subject, and in halting English, tried to express his thoughts about the recently started Iran war. I responded slowly, trying to keep my own words simple.
Conductor
I think some countries, they are not suited to democracy like us. Maybe dictatorship works better for them.
Me
Well, I see it this way. I think in Iran, there is a certain kind of land: Most of it is desert, and very hard to live on. Not very profitable. And then some of it, is oil fields. Those pieces of land are very, very profitable, as long as someone tightly controls them. So the land itself makes a situation where it’s easy for a dictatorship to keep control. Just grab the oil fields and hold onto them, and then start passing out money to the people in the desert. Enough to keep them happy, so they don’t try and take over.
My hope is that the people of Iran will get enough economic power to fight their own government. But the government has done another thing: It also controls the religion. If the people are upset, they just say, “It’s your religious enemies that are causing all your problems. The Jews, the Christians. They want your government to change because they want to destroy your religion.”
That’s a very hard position get out of. I think the people would accept democracy but they have to separate religion from government. And I think what’s really making it hard for them is the land.
Conductor
But why drop bombs on them? It’s just a waste. It’s hurting all of us.
Me
I agree with you. It’s a waste. Trump thought the Iranians were going to rise up. He’s an idiot. All the people who tried to rise up, got murdered by the government months ago. He’s trying to make the regime surrender, but for them it’s a holy war. They won’t stop until they’re dead. In the meantime we waste all this money and time. It’s stupid.
Conductor
If I was an American, I’d be a Democrat.
Me
Good!
Conductor
JD Vance will probably run for president next.
Me
Probably, but he’s no Trump. I think he’ll lose.
Conductor
I heard Kamala might try running again.
Me
Yeah, I’m worried about that too. She lost once already. She might be less popular to Democrats than JD Vance is to Republicans…
Conductor
If Newsom runs, I would vote for him. But he has a lot of repairing to do of the relationship between the US and Europe. Lots.
Me
Definitely. He’ll get my vote.
He smiled wished me a great trip, and moved to the next passenger. A nice bit of bonding over our shared frustration. Yesterday I was a Good Samaritan, today I am apparently an ambassador. What a world!
The train ride was uneventful. I arrived at the transfer station with over two hours to spare and there was no earlier connection I could catch, so I got a snack and wandered around.
I’ll never understand this. How do German parents not find this extremely problematic?
Somewhere into the second hour I got a phone message the train from Hamburg had been delayed for nearly an hour. The other train bound for Denmark would not be waiting for it.
If I hadn’t skipped onto the earlier train this morning, I would have lost an entire day!
The transfer at Fredericia was nerve-wracking. The computer-generated schedule gave me five minutes to find another train on a different platform, and my train was two minutes late. Luckily I was bracing for this. I looked up the destination platform in advance and got the bike planted right in front of the doors. When they opened I heaved the bike down and ran for the elevator. Up, then quickly across to the other platform, then down… I managed to haul the bike onto the next train 15 seconds before the doors closed. Come on, Danes, you can do better than this.
The transfer at Aarhus was worse: The train was eight minutes late. People all around me were grumbling in Danish and German about missing their connection. The conductor made an announcement of some kind but it was only in Danish, and the grumbling got louder.
When I got the bike out, I saw a stream of people jogging up the platform towards some other train. Had the conductor found them an alternate? I fell in line and jogged with them, trying not to jab anyone in the ass with the cranks on the recumbent. A minute later they all compressed into a confused horde at the foot of the stairs. Most of them were gazing up at a display with a schedule on it. A lot of arrival times were flashing. The rest of them were looking at their phones and frowning. No easy answers for us.
I used the phone to conjure a new schedule, bound for Hirtshals, and located what was probably the first train in the series on a different platform. Lots of people were swapping platforms around me, looking confused. I didn’t want to trust what the displays were saying but I had no choice.
An hour later I boarded a train, and it was headed in the right direction – north instead of south – so I counted it as a win. If the train matched my phone, I had several more transfers to make…
I was the only person with a bike in the bike car, so there was a lot of space nearby. A woman with a large open-top stroller parked against the opposite wall. She took the infant out and held it over one shoulder, then leaned against the back of the nearest seat, wiggling every now and then to keep the kid happy. All the seats around us were occupied and a man immediately offered her one, but she shook her head and said she preferred to stand.
Another woman walked into the car with an infant riding in a sling on her chest, and leaned against the side of the doorway. The women didn’t seem to know each other. For the next hour or so, both kids made goggle-eyes at everyone, babbled and smiled, and reached out their tiny arms, and every passenger in their line of sight – young or old – made eye contact and responded and gently played with them to pass the time. It was delightfully civilized.
One of the women stopped wiggling and held her infant up and did a smell test. Time to change the diaper. She turned to the big open stroller and lowered the kid inside, and did a quick sequence of practiced arm movements. Something went into a bag and another thing came out. In two minutes the infant was back on her shoulder, looking mildly pleased and wearing a different pair of pajama pants. No embarrassment, no bustling out to a changing station in a tiny bathroom behind a door. Nobody seemed to notice.
It all made me thoughtful. The dynamic of caring for children, for all people of all ages, felt more integrated with the rest of daily life here. How could I encourage that back home?
As I continued north the trains got smaller and smaller. The connection to Hirtshals was just two cars. I felt the trappings of the modern transport system falling away … or perhaps a sense of distance creeping in; a sense of deeper language barriers and differences in custom. I was headed for colder and higher land with a lower sun. The environment was rapidly changing away from what felt like home in California.
Zach and Michael were going to be moving house before I saw them again, so this was probably the last time I would ever explore this part of the Netherlands, which was fine; it was pleasant but not remarkable. I was ahead of schedule so I got coffee and rolled towards Amsterdam even slower than usual, admiring the flowers and reading the plaques on the monuments and so forth. I also checked through my mental list of bike gear. If there was any unique hardware or clothing I needed, it would be good to buy it in the next few days before I was stuck on the Norway coast.
Pieter de Monchy (1916)
Turftrapster (1979)
Tussen de 16de en 19de eeuw vond turfwinning plaats in Amstelveen. Het turftrappen was in die tijd een belangrijke bron van inkomsten.
Dit bronzen beeld is aan het Oude Dorp geschonken door de Rabobank en stond oorspronkelijk aan de Amsterdamseweg.
Pieter de Monchy (1916)
Turftrapster (1979)
Tussen de 16de en 19de eeuw vond turfwinning plaats in Amstelveen. Het turftrappen was in die tijd een belangrijke bron van inkomsten.
Dit bronzen beeld is aan het Oude Dorp geschonken door de Rabobank en stond oorspronkelijk aan de Amsterdamseweg.
The ticket for the German train I was boarding had a platform number on it. I had a new appreciation for that after dealing with the French train system, which refused to provide a number until a few minutes before departure. I’d scoped out the platform already, so all I had to do was check the big schedule board at the station to make sure it hadn’t been changed. At the platform, the letters along the track guided me to the spot where the bicycle car would pull up. The car had plenty of room. So far, so good…
While I was standing around on the train I got a message from the hotel in Hamburg. They’d cancelled my room because of “water damage” – probably they overbooked or something – and issued me a refund before I could do any negotiation. All the hotels near the city center were booked, so I switched to AirBnB and found a room a few miles from the station. It cost $40 more but I counted myself lucky.
As I put my phone away I also counted myself lucky just to be living in an age where this sort of maneuver was possible. I’d found a random private citizen in a different country who was willing to put me up for a night, six hours before I was due to arrive… And I had no trouble with the language barrier or the currency conversion… And I’d done it in 15 minutes, while on a moving train!
It was a triumph of the computer and data industry that I spent my youth exploring. I felt glad to be experiencing it. Then I remembered more recent developments, and how that sense of gratitude was getting mixed with a sense of dread.
I asked myself, “What’s the next logical step in this situation?” And it was clear: In a few years, the devices in our hands would act on our behalf. As soon as the cancellation message arrived, my phone would start pinging other services – Expedia, AirBnB, Kayak, etc – compiling me a list of options for alternate places to stay that fit the criteria of my schedule: Close to the station, close to the same price, same day, late arrival time, no stairs to navigate on a bike… I wouldn’t need to tell it; it would know all this from context. So when I opened the phone, I would just pick something from a list and it would do the booking for me. Time saved; convenience added. What’s not to like?
Well, here’s what’s not to like: Young people who don’t know how to navigate the world will start asking the thing, “What should I do?”
Just like search engines now, the device will give them a useful answer that also happens to steer them towards services that are paying the most advertising dollars, which is certainly a nuisance. But there’s something about this anticipatory, guiding mechanism that opens a door to something worse, because “what should I do” is not a purely logistical question. Behind every instance of “what” is an instance of “why.” Why do you want to do a particular thing?
If you’re a young person, then hopefully you’re making a conscious decision based on some advice from people who care about you. In days of yore, if you were a kid and you wanted to do something, you had to figure out how, and that meant something like:
Ask your family,
Ask your friends,
Ask a teacher,
Poke through library books,
Mail-order some specialty manual,
So unless you worked pretty hard to conceal it, your community got wind of what you were pursuing and had some chance to give you input. Having and interacting with human family, and friends, and teachers, and librarians has generally been the way people thrive — and barring that, the way people learn from each other how to participate in the world, and how to think in general. But now that’s optional. You don’t need to ask your family, or friends, or teachers, or go to some place where librarians have exercised editorial control.
Sweep all that in the trash. Replace it with an obsequious corporate-owned AI agent that you always need to keep inches from your body in order to do basic things like buy a sandwich and unlock your car. Family, friends, and community are now mediated by the agent, if you choose to involve them at all, because processing everything they say to you is part of the “training” that makes the agent so good at anticipating your demands. If you ask – or perhaps even if you don’t – the agent will compose messages to your friends and send them on your behalf. It will tell you it’s being helpful, and at first you’ll agree.
You’ll go from using it to learn, to using it to decide and execute, to having it learn, decide, and execute on your behalf, and your relationships with Apple, Google, and Meta will become more central to your choices and your actions than your relationships with your own parents, friends, co-workers … wives, children … Those companies will know exactly who you are, and the people around you will knowless and less.
In due time, like the worst switcheroo magic trick in the world, the device will become essential, and the friends and family will become completely optional, and will start to disappear.
The default version of a person will become an animal in a glass box, wallpapered with whatever ideas a company has been paid the most – or even worse, ordered by a government – to display. Rubber-stamp those individuals out, creating tower blocks of little glass aquariums, filling a city; a country. It won’t be universal and it obviously won’t be ideal, but it will be efficient. And that will make it the new baseline for human society. If you’re lucky you have some kind of life outside the glass box. If you’re not… Well, I don’t know. You’ll probably be entertained and fed, but I don’t think I’ll be able to recognize you as a real human being any more. The social gap will be too much for me to cross.
Sometimes I think I’m living at the tail end of a golden age of humanity. Millions of people are being lifted out of poverty all over the world by better economic networks and medical and farming technology, but at the same time, millions on the other end are also climbing into glass boxes. I get to live somewhere in the middle, for however long it lasts.
But standing on the train this afternoon, I realized that my train of thought doesn’t actually just end in darkness. There’s something else going on at the same time, with the same technology – language models and generative art – that makes me paradoxically optimistic.
Human beings thrive when they spend time face-to-face, interacting in the real physical world, touching hands, breathing the same air, and looking each other in the eye. … And they know it, even if it’s just subconsciously.
Combine that with the fast approaching situation where, “thanks” to generative art tools, we will soon not be able to consider anything we see on a phone screen – especially on social media – to be the truth, and we will collectively be forced to recognize the infinite capacity these devices have to manipulate us, and begin to distance ourselves from them. We’ll see the glass box for the prison it is, and instead of arguing over the content of the wallpaper – which is what social media is all about – we will actually have to climb out of the stupid box, touch hands with the people around us, and learn how to live some kind of life without mediation. Again.
COVID-19 compelled us to socially distance from other people to stay healthy. In due time we will all understand the need to socially distance ourselves from theinternet for the same reason.
“That’s my new bumper sticker,” I thought.
SOCIALLY DISTANCE YOURSELF FROM THE INTERNET
Still in a thoughtful mood, I arrived at my first transfer. I shoved the bike onto the platform with no trouble.
A couple of curious Germans commented on the bike. In general I was getting more actual attention from Germans than I got from people in the Netherlands. There’s an interesting tug-of-war, on either side of the border, between the politeness of minding one’s business, and the friendliness of starting a conversation.
Other things that are immediately different: People here wear t-shirts and hoodies; even the old grandmother types. The young people don’t just dress like miniature adults. And lots more smokers, of all ages. Germany has kind of a problem with smoking.
I had to ride two trains to get to Hamburg, and I’d bought the tickets separately, in order to make a really big gap between the first and second train. If I’d purchased it as one trip the software would have given me something like five minutes to move my bike through the station. No thanks. So instead I had about 90 minutes to wait. I’d rather wait than be late!
After a while I got bored of sitting and packed the chair up, and began to wander the platform. There were only two other people waiting: A flinty-eyed old man coming from an airport, and a mysterious woman with a butch haircut and some really hot plaid pants.
I settled into my assigned seat. The couple across from me got up to visit the dining car. A woman walked over and asked about the empty seats, and I told her I didn’t know when the occupants would return, or whether the seats were reserved. She said she was looking for a spot where her grandmother could sit down, and nodded over to an old woman with a walking stick. I stood up and gave her my seat, and wandered back through the sliding doors to the bicycle storage car.
Back there I hung out next to a German couple who were hunkered down in a stairwell. I guessed neither of them had reserved seats. The woman had a limp, exhausted posture, and was dressed in army fatigues and heavy boots, and had a duffel bag resting nearby. I overheard some of their conversation: She just finished a grueling month of training and wanted to fall right into bed when she got home, and sleep for days. The two of them looked pretty intimate so I assumed there would be at least a little boning first… Well, I hoped so.
As I was standing there, an older man wearing a suit walked through the sliding doors. He was moving very shakily, gripping the rails along the wall. I figured he was suffering from some advanced disease affecting his nervous system. Why hadn’t someone given him a seat? He stood near me for a while, then decided standing was too hard, and lowered himself very slowly to the floor, nearly falling over. The undignified position clashed with the tailored cut of his grey suit and trimmed white beard.
A few minutes later, the woman with the grandmother came into the car and leaned against a bike rack. She tried to chat with the man in the suit, starting with, “English? German?” but he shook his head, and spoke in Italian. She didn’t know Italian but they managed to trade a few sentences in his really basic English. The man was from Italy, trying to get to Denmark where he had family waiting for him. That was all she could learn.
I liked her. She was trying to liven up the trip with some connection. She turned to another man who was tinkering with his bicycle nearby: “English? German?” He replied in English, but she keyed into his accent and replied in Spanish. He grinned. They had a nice chat about his job and life in Chile, where he was from. He got his bike down from the hook and put his bags on it, getting ready to leave.
The man on the floor checked his watch and suddenly started flailing his arms at the rail, trying to pull himself upright. It was going to be very hard. The woman saw him and looked concerned but the man with the bike was in the way. I’d had practice getting heavy men to their feet from taking care of my Dad, so I walked over and stood very close to him – practically over him – and opened a hand and held it down. The man immediately grabbed it, and I pulled him up enough to hook my other hand behind his arm at the shoulder and haul him upright. Then I moved his hand to the railing.
“Thank,” he said, and worked his way around to the exit doors as the train pulled to a halt.
The woman in the fatigues grabbed her duffel bag and disembarked with her boyfriend. At the same time, two much older ladies in cycling pants entered from the adjacent car and began prepping their bikes. The bikes were motorized and quite heavy, so I helped them get lined up by the door. The next stop arrived quickly. “Danke, danke!” they said as I helped lift their bikes to the platform.
I realized I was getting a nice little example of life without electronic mediation. All these little interactions made me feel way better than a couple hours of staring at memes on a phone.
(Note for the future: The fictionalized hamster adaptation of this day will be titled “Hambone’s Courteous Journey”, and will feature a ruggedized hamster ball on a bike path with Hambone trotting briskly inside.)
The Hamburg train station was like I remembered: Very big, and efficiently but weirdly organized.
The first thing I did was buy another sandwich. I had some currency left from my trip three years ago — a bunch of 1 and 2-euro coins. While I was counting those out, a young man in shabby clothing wandered over to me with a dazed half-smile on his face and asked me for money in German. I was in the middle of making a transaction so I ignored him, but he got closer and closer until he was breathing in my face, holding his open hand up under his chin. I resisted the urge to shove him to the ground and finished paying.
Then I pressed a 1-euro coin into his hand and told him, “that’s a little too close, man.” He about-faced and disappeared. At least he knew not to ask for more.
Another stark difference between Germany and the Netherlands. Germany has a churning, roiling economy – one of the strongest in the world – much more willing to take in immigrants but also just as willing to exploit them. About a quarter of the current population of Germany either immigrated themselves, or are children of two immigrants. The Netherlands is more socially coherent and manicured, but their walls keep out more than just water: They keep out the riff-raff.
This is how you get your AirBnB keys, most of the time.
The AirBnB turned out to be a sort of dorm arrangement. A long, dank looking hallway of rooms, with one common bathroom and food prep area. You could call it “Bed And Make Your Own Breakfast”.
