Oslo, Bergen, and Flåm
Caravaner's Companion: yummy buns, my favorite hotel in Europe, and sublime wool sweaters
Welcome to the Summer ‘24 batch of Caravaner’s Companion, featuring Norway, Greece, and Cyprus. Released in batches of three each season, upgrade to get these novice-friendly, down-to-earth (and around-the-earth) travel companions chock full of travel recs, cautionary tales, & vibe checks. From your chronically-traveling, donut-obsessed, over-caffeinated bestie. Skål!🍻
Want a freebie? Check out my guide to Greece!
… And don’t miss the last batch:
Cairo, Egypt | Lisbon and the Algarve, Portugal | Antigua Guatemala, Lake Atitlán, and Petén
I’ve always found the idea of roots tourism—the practice of visiting a country your ancestors emigrated from—the tiniest bit silly. It makes me think of that episode of The Sopranos where the gang goes to Italy and Paulie fumbles his attempts to connect to Italians and ultimately realizes he, an Italian American, doesn’t know the first thing about Italy’s culture.
My mother’s family is of Norwegian descent, and when Nick and I visited Norway last year, I was determined not to think of the trip as a homecoming. I had never been to the country before, I don’t speak the language, and I can’t even claim to have all that much knowledge of modern Norwegian culture. Yet I couldn’t deny that I felt at home the moment Nick and I landed. The people felt impossibly familiar. It was something in the way their eyes disappeared when they smiled, in the color and texture of their hair, in their tall, sturdy stature.
“Every single person here looks like one of your relatives,” Nick said before we’d even made it to central Oslo from the airport. I suppose Viking genes are strong, because he was right. As I told you in this essay about finding my grandmother in a plate of lutefisk, this familiarity meant Norway quickly earned a place in heart. I’m always talking about feeling kinship with new cultures, and friends, this was it in the most literal sense. To be there was to be a child surrounded by family. I felt loved, held, and known.
As comfortable as I was in Norway, it isn’t somewhere you go for pampering or flashy, glitzy experiences. If anything, Norway is a place for simplifying and getting out in the elements: for shivering on the deck of a ship and watching it cut through the glasslike water of a fjord, or taking a brisk, calf-aching hike in a forest carpeted with moss. It’s for stepping away from screens, connecting with the natural beauty around you—the trees, the plants, the sharp cliffs and the sweeping coastal plains—and feeling human.
Maybe it’s a place for finding our roots after all.