Over and out from the lands beyond the northern borders of the known world

This is where I could be right now:

Lower topsail yard of the Søren Larsen, sailing in the Hauraki Gulf, looking at the Coromandel Peninsula.


Or maybe here:

Study corner in my room at Sakura in Kyoto.


Why not here:

Ella's place, Salang Beach, Tioman Island, Malaysia.


Instead this is where I am:

Walkway from bus stop to my home


Same as above, flash on to show the size of the cold, white stuff that constantly whips my face...

It is dark almost 24 hours a day, constantly snowing and way below freezing temperature. Why do people live here, really? But it is pretty cool anyway to be back home and to be able meet friends and family. And sometimes the snow is actually beautiful too:



My garden at noon today



Christmas market in central Stockholm

Anyway, I am back in Sweden and this will be the last post in this blog. I was picked up a week ago by my mother at Arlanda international airport, outside Stockholm. When I set out a little more than a year ago, the plan was to crew the Søren Larsen for about nine months, sailing around New Zealand and the South Pacific Ocean. Little did I know what a winding journey that lay ahead...

It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. You step onto the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.
-Bilbo Baggins
.

The enchanted Realm of Cumbria

I left the United States on Dec 7. It felt a bit sad to return to Europe and London's Heathrow Airport. This is where I flew out a little more than a year ago, still believing that I was going to spend a season sailing around the southern Pacific Ocean. Plans sure change sometimes! And I have been severely homesick every now and then, but the last few months have been so great, there really hasn't been much room for any of that. I totally enjoyed my time in Japan and in Kyoto in particular where I lived most of the time. Going back to the States was also great, and especially NY was just awesome. It is with somewhat mixed feelings I return to Europe.

Before moving on to my dark, freezing, beloved Scandinavia, I spent a few days at Izzy's house in Cumbria, near the Scottish border. This is the Lake District, for good reasons famous for its beautiful scenery.



Izzy with Bowie, her adorable border collie



These border collies are such fantastic little creatures! Intelligent, active, agile and social. They followed me on a short walk outside the farm. When I stopped, they immediately stopped too. At the instant they heard me start walking again, so did they. And asking them to stop or stand back a little, while I opened a gate was no problem, even though I had never met them before and had no idea what commands they were trained to respond to.



Border collie jumping through fence. Don't try this at home.



Border collie nose



Cumbrian roses still in bloom as winter temperatures plunge into the freezing range.



Pine tree with beautiful roots on the shore of Derwent Water, just outside the town of Keswick.



More of the breathtaking Derwent Water scenery.



Still early in the afternoon, but the sun is soon setting



Tolkien never visited New Zealand, where later the Lord of the Rings movies where shot. Maybe he rather drew some inspiration from the Lake District?






















Remember, all pics are clickable for a larger version!

Massive Swedeness in San Diego

My last stop in the USA was in San Diego where I visited Victor, a sailor I first met on the East Indiaman Götheborg four years ago. San Diego was all about parties, walking along beautiful semi-deserted beaches and Swedish Christmas traditions.



Warming up for the party. Tommy is drinking an American substitute for beer.



San Diego has an impressive collection of historical ships and replicas. This is the Surprise, which starred in the movie Master and Commander. Before the movie was shot, and still among many sailors, the ship was known as the Rose.



Air craft carrier. Big.



Interior from another of the ships, a Russian attack submarine. Torpedo to the right. Be glad you were never hit by that one, miss air craft carrier!



Star of India, fully rigged iron wind jammer built in 1863. Sparred length 278 feet/84.8 meters. Still sailing, occasionally.



Christmas luncheon at the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in San Diego.



Christmasy table decoration



Victor is the blurred dude with the wine glass.



Lucia parade, a festival celebrating the Catholic saint Lucy. It has roots in pagan celebrations of the return of light at the darkest day of the year and it has survived more than 400 years of Protestantism and almost a millennium of Christianity.



In Japan this would be a donburi, rice in a bowl with something on top. In San Diego I think it was called a Southern chicken rice bowl.

Bicycling San Fransisco

I left San Francisco early this morning and flew to San Diego. It was really cool to be back in SF after nineteen years, but the visit was way too short. The experience was a little similar to looking a place up on Google Earth. "Hey, cool, I can see the park where we used to hang out! Look, there is our old train station!" And then it is over.

I met Heather and Rusty from Søren Larsen. Heather is a local and I stayed one night at her grandpa's place in San Mateo and one night with some of her friends in Oakland. I rented a bike on my second day and went on a ride from Fisherman's Wharf, over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito, from where I returned on a ferry to the San Francisco waterfront.



Seagull with Alcatraz in the background




Tall ship Balclutha



Golden Gate Bridge



Me on above mentioned bridge



Golden Gate in twilight



View from the bridge



Another view from the same place



San Francisco in the background



The city in twilight



Skyline at night



Moon over San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge

NYC

The past week has been hectic. I have visited places where I haven't been since my first time in the United States, back in 1990 when I was fifteen years old. I flew from Milwaukee to New York on Thanksgiving Thursday, a little more than a week ago. There is a lot to write about the fantastic people I spent time with and the things I did, but I think I will actually skip that and just write a couple of words about the city. I have visited many other big cities around the world, and I have lived six months in Tokyo with its approximately 35 million people in the metropolitan area, but New York is special. The city is so dynamic, a total mix of opposites. It has a unique soul and flavor with its worn down, almost Gothic darkness, its sprawling and unruly creativity and its fast, hard and efficient attitude. New York challenges and inspires.

On my first night I went for a beer with Bren, my Peruvian friend from Langkawi, and her girlfriend. Somewhere after midnight I ended up with another friend, at a Thanksgiving party in a huge loft belonging to a German artist in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The night ended in West Harlem somewhere near sunrise. I took the A-train downtown from Harlem the next afternoon. "Ladies and gentlemen, it is showtime!!!" Just as we rolled out from 145th street, two guys started dancing in the accelerating train, doing backflips, dancing on each other, spinning around the interior. On the next station, the air echoed with congas and Latin percussion rhythms. Down on Columbus Circle, the Latin music was replaced with classic violins. That is New York. And the rest of my stay in the city continued in the same spirit...



I took a walk through Central Park on the third day.



The Metropolitan Museum of Art is located in the park. It is ginormous. Modern and classic art, industrial design, Asian art, historical weapons and armors, the largest collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts outside Cairo, and so on. Like a dozen fairly large museums shoved into one building. These amazingly expressive figurines are from the collection of traditional Papuan and Melanesian art, probably my favorite section of the museum.



From the same section comes this collection of big statues.



Mural from the Art Deco section.



View from Central Park at night. New York has gotten friendlier and safer since my last visit. Strolling through the park at night was not recommended back in the early nineties.



Full moon over Central Park.



I walked from Greenpoint to Manhattan one morning. On the way I passed Williamsburg Bridge. This is a view towards southern Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge.



Rooftops and glimpse of Manhattan skyline from Williamsburg Bridge.



I went to the Guggenheim museum one afternoon. A very interesting building, by Frank Lloyd Wright.



Interior from Guggenheim. There was a really big exhibition going on with Kandinsky paintings.



The High Line probably has the largest length to beam-ratio of any park in the world. It follows an old elevated railroad, abandoned many decades ago. The park is brand new, not even completely finished yet. I went there on my last evening in NY.



These seats are mounted on the old tracks, so you can slide them apart or together depending on how much you appreciate the company of whoever happens to sit next to you.



Tracks covered by vegetation.



Another view from the High Line. The park cuts through some buildings, just like the old tracks did.



More from the High Line.



Random picture.



Me with a Tokyo style multi-story parking lot in the background.



View from my room at Bren's place in Brooklyn. Yes, it is a lousy picture, but I just wanted to point out that Bren has a amazing view of the Manhattan skyline, not a very common thing.