Dave's Travel Journals
Blind Date
Stockholm, Sweden: June 11, 2001
By Dave Fox
Meeting a new tour group is kind of like going on a blind date, only we're stuck with each other for 18 days whether we like each other or not.
I arrived in Copenhagen a week and a half ago in a dreary, chilling rain that felt more like late February than late May. But it didn't matter. Copenhagen is an intoxicating city no matter the weather. Every time I get there I wonder how I have managed to forget over the past year how enthralling it is.
Three days later it was showtime. The day a tour starts, I generally sleep late and have a leisurely morning. Then around 1 p.m., it suddenly dawns on me that 26 people have just crossed an ocean expecting me to enlighten them, and I feel hideously unprepared. But I always manage to shop for a picnic (not an easy task for a group that big), pull together city maps and handouts, and come up with something semi-intelligent to say to a roomful of strangers who have each paid several thousand dollars to have me guide them. No pressure.
But bad groups are rare and this one is exceptionally good. Nearly everyone has been on our tours in other places, and they have bonded quickly. There is not a single whiner.
On day four of the tour, five days ago, I made my eighth visit to the island of Ærø, a place so cozy you want to hug the houses. Every time I walk into "Det Lille Hotel" ("The Little Hotel") Kjeld, one of the island residents, is sitting at the bar nursing a beer. He remembered me this year. The same was true in the town pub down the road where Johan the bartender gives me free drinks now when I show up. It's nice to be remembered in such an idyllic place. It's like coming home, though I have to remind myself that in spite of the coziness, I would collapse in a matter of weeks from the monotony if I tried to live in such a small place. First-time visitors fantasize about moving there forever. I try not to disrupt their dreams with my reality, having visited many times. Most of us aren't cut out to live on Ærø, but we need places like it, places where we can slow down our brains, places we can fantasize about escaping to when life gets too lifelike.
From Ærø, we rolled north to Kalmar, Sweden, a new stop on the tour this year, a salty seaside town -- politically important in the 15th century, now relatively quiet... except for the hundreds of recent high school graduates who partied outside my hotel window until sunrise. Kalmar is a popular place for Swedes to party. With seven liquor licenses and only 50,000 residents, lines in the bars are never long.
Stockholm's slogan is "Beauty on Water." It sounds cheesy until you arrive. It's really 14 islands laced together by 52 bridges. Tonight we sale through the Stockholm Archipelago -- slaloming on a cruise ship through hundreds and hundreds more islands.
This time of year, it never gets totally dark out. Tonight is the night of the tour where I stay up too late on the boat to Helsinki, the halfway point in the tour. The group has bonded by now, and with free beer and wine at tonight's dinner smorgasbord buffet, the more intriguing parts of their personalities usually come out. I always board the ship hoping they will still respect me in the morning.
 |