Continental drift

July 8, 2017

When I was a child growing up in Los Angeles, I had two friends who had been to Europe: Miriam and Jane. I regarded both of them as touched by great good fortune. Europe! I didn't quite believe in the place. On my first ever trans-Atlantic journey, to Israel when I was sixteen, I used up an entire roll of Kodak film (36 exposures) snapping pictures from the plane window. The English Channel! The Alps! They existed! I really hadn't been certain.

Many years later, living in England took some of the gloss off of European travel but I still thrilled to the various journeys I could take, alone, or with friends, and, eventually with my own expanding family. Amsterdam. Krakow. Dublin. Marseilles. Crete. All an hour or three away by boat, train, plane. Once, my parents and children and I went to France for lunch, because my mother wanted to see The Burghers of Calais. It turned out that we almost had to leave the middle child behind at the Calais ferry terminal because of a minor passport snafu, but that's another story. ("You'd like French boarding school," I assured him. "They have great food.")

Now I live in Canada. I've been to Thunder Bay, St. John's, Halifax. I know Buffalo and Syracuse, and a few other previously unimagined destinations. They all had great food too, but the trips lacked the romance of, say, a long weekend in Rome.

So I particularly enjoyed a sojourn to Copenhagen earlier this month, accompanying husband, who attended a conference (on "Economic Theology" since you ask. No, me neither). I'd never been there, never been in Scandinavia at all other than Iceland, which seems a sort of Scandinavian adjunct rather than the real thing. (Sorry, Reykjavik.) I have been to Helsinki and know that Finland, while Nordic, is not Scandinavian. I don't remember why, though.

Christiania, Copenhagen

Listening to my husband speak at the conference was part of the pleasure. The man is clever. He knows such erudite words and how to use them. Someone sitting next to me in the conference hall whispered, "Are you connected with him?" I admitted it. "He is so wonderful!" the man said to me. "He's just amazing."

I agreed. We've been married twenty years and I still agree.

From our hotel window we could see the Oresund Bridge, famous now (apparently) from the television crime drama 'The Bridge', which connects Denmark to Sweden. In fact, from our window we could see Sweden. I felt a thrill, simply looking at the coast and the faint skyline of Malmo, because Sweden is a country where husband has spent a good deal of time conducting research. He has never taken me there with him before, but now, after more than two decades together, he agreed to let me in, albeit quite a distance from his own field site. So, after a hearty breakfast, we boarded the train in Copenhagen airport and descended, thirty minutes later, in Lund, a charming Swedish university town. Amazing.

Europe is a different country.

Sliver of Sweden, from Denmark (Amager Beach)

We wandered medieval streets and the Botanic Gardens,  and explored the crypt and caught the last of a free concert in the Cathedral. We ate fish soup and shrimp salad in the airy, polished food hall. Husband conducted transactions in Swedish and then we discovered our server spoke perfect American English.  "I was an au pair in Westlake Village," she told us, which is a suburb of LA,  a twenty-minute drive from my childhood home.

In bookshop, while husband looked for Agatha Christie in the unoriginal Swedish, I tried to buy him an anniversary card. There weren't any. I asked shop assistants and a few kindly schoolgirls to help me, in case I didn't know the right words, but apparently Swedes don't make, buy, or give anniversary cards. Husband had to settle for a plain old English one a few days later when we reached Durham, the city where, long ago now, he and I met.

In the beginning: Durham

Air Canada

Old phone box with kids, Birling Gap, E. Sussex

I indulged in a madcap, last-minute, too-brief visit to England last week, timed to attend a bat mitzvah. Apologies and regrets to all the friends I did not see; I spent my few days catching people I'd missed on last summer's trip, in between attending the festivities that formed the reason for my trip. Every minute was packed, either with plans for myself or those for daughter, who accompanied me. Only after she and I had passed through the (bizarrely) rapid check-in and security at Heathrow, ready for our flight back to Toronto, did I sit back and breathe slowly. I watched my child zigzag across the shopping mall known as Terminal 3 in a determined quest for PokemonGo quarry. As ever, in that liminal zone, I contemplated my imminent departure, and wondered whether I was leaving home or heading toward it. 

Normally I'm no fan of flying-- every turbulent bump sends my heart racing-- but as we boarded our Air Canada flight from Heathrow for Toronto, and settled into our upholstered capsules, I welcomed the opportunity to sit still, read, watch a film (*Sicario*. Good. Brutal), dole out 'lift-off' sweets to daughter, play games, and think about where I felt least foreign: Canada or the UK. Maybe travelling between the two was my true home. I tightened my seatbelt, accepted a chewy Haribo in preparation for take-off. But wait. Before we could complete a game of Hangman on the seatback screen, of course, we had to watch the safety video. And right there, right then, on the tarmac at Heathrow, I knew I was already back in Canada. 

The small glass square showed a smiling pair of men, their romantic connection signified by the fact that they have a row of three seats to themselves yet choose to sit next to each other. The one in the middle wears a cardigan, another clue to his sexuality. They demonstrate how to buckle seat belts. Next up, a South Asian woman wearing a sari and with a bindi on her forehead smiles broadly as she puts on a canary-yellow oxygen mask and then applies one to the pony-tailed smiling little girl sitting next to her. A besuited white business man frowns as he stows his screen in his wide business class seat (the kind that slip into the arm-rest: way posh). A slim, chic east Asian woman in a pencil skirt and buttoned white blouse carefully studies the laminated floor-plan of the plane, memorizing the location of the overwing doors. A stylish blonde woman in the emergency exit row nods in agreement as a disembodied hand points out the opening mechanism, and not to be outdone, a very handsome, vaguely dark-skinned man of unidentifiable ethnic background(s) and dashing five o'clock shadow smiles delightedly before adopting the 'brace' position.  

Yes, it's Canada. Diverse, tolerant, inclusive. Toto, we're not in England anymore, certainly not with its Brexit-endorsed outbreak of xenophobia and isolationism. Nor are we in the USA, Trumpeting its disdain for Hispanics and Muslims. We are going home, and, right now, it's a home I feel proud to claim.

Being a true curdmudgeon, however, I do have a few objections to the airlines' portrayal of Canada and Canadians. They are as follows: 1) I adore my husband but if given the option to have an extra seat space between us on a flight, I would so take advantage; 2) it's bloody uncomfortable to have your hair in a pony-tail on an airplane because you can't lean back, poor child; 3) except for these few shiny and cheerful good Samaritans, the flight is empty and spacious (on second thought, this may in fact reflect Canada quite well-- just not Toronto); and, finally, finally 4) no one, not even a Canadian with plenty of legroom, would be calm and smiling in a situation requiring an oxygen mask.

Unless social justice, inclusion, and diversity are antidotes to gravity, as well as to misery? 

In any case, it was a serene flight, not an eddy or a bounce, until we landed in Toronto. And if anyone is interested, daughter is currently at Level 7 of Pokemon Go. I'm so proud.