Dave's Travel Journals
Jetlag Dreaming
Stockholm: June 12, 2002
By Dave Fox
The good thing about jetlag is if you cannot afford to fly across multiple time zones and would like to see what it feels like, you can achieve the same effect by staying awake for 78 hours, forraging in the woods for psychedelic berries, and spinning in a desk chair for several hundred rotations. Someone asked me recently, "How do you deal with jetlag with all the traveling you do?"
I told her, "I whine constantly for several days until it goes away."
The tours I lead begin in Copenhagen. I've spent enough time there now that it feels like home, but every time I step off the airplane from Seattle and emerge an hour later into downtown, I feel stuck in a dream that I am in a place where everyone rides bicycles and talks funny.
This time, I flew into Stockholm, not Copenhagen, where there are fewer bicycles. Nevertheless, my dizziness from being awake too long and trying to function outside of the Seattle time zone, made the buildings seem to sway hypnotically as I staggered through the Old Town trying to jar myself into reality. I had dinner, though it was breakfast time for me, at my favorite Belgian pub. Two hours later, I emerged into the late night twilight that happens here in the summer, wondering, "How the hell did I end up here?"
I will never get used to landing in another country, even when that other country happens to be Seattle on my way home. Everything feels dizzy and surreal.
After two days of research, I bounced down to Copenhagen to start my first tour... then to Aero, a southern Danish island so cozy, the pain in my feet from walking all day on uneven cobblestones feels somehow comforting.
I don't think there are many places left in the world like Aero. Time seems less important, and everybody trusts everybody else. People sell things based on the honor system. All over the island, people leave boxes of things for sale -- strawberries, eggs, hollyhock seeds, or paperweight rocks painted to look like ladybugs. They put out signs with the price to pay, and a little cash jar. At the end of the day, their wares are gone and their money jar is full.
Our tour bus pulled up by the ferry dock at noon. A cooler sat on a park bench, kept company by a lazing cat. The cooler had a Danish flag attached, and a sign that said there were bags inside of homemade macaroon cookies for 20 kroner each.
On my way to the phone booth 11 hours later, the cooler was gone for the night. The cat was still there, keeping watch over the island. The next morning, the cooler was back with a fresh stash of treats. The cat still hadn't wandered far.
Four days later, I'm now back in cosmopolitan Stockholm, more coherent than I was when I landed here 12 days ago. We're a week away from the summer solstice. Walking back to my hotel the other night at midnight, there was still a hint of sunlight in the northern sky.
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