Contextless Quotes

I recently came across my old travel journal from my nine-month backpacking trip through Japan, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Nepal, India, Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon. Reading through it left me very, very amused. From it, here are some quotes for your enjoyment, taken completely out of their original context:

‘I’ve got the shits and I’m tired of traveling: Why I’m not cut out for this’

‘That was a terrible, terrible idea.’

‘My hotel (read: rooftop littered with rubbish costing a whopping $10 to lay a mattress on) is a dump but it’s all I could find.’

‘She was driving me crazy. Hopefully that thought will be a comfort once the solitude starts getting to me.’

‘The highlight of the night was probably me trying to say in Arabic, “My dear, you are so beautiful!” Instead, I managed to say, “My dear, you are so beautiful and big!” Ktiir vs. Kbiir. God…’

‘Loon was our raft captain who seemed either perplexed or offended when I tried to explain that he shares his name with our state bird.’

‘I’ll write more later about the moral conundrum going through my head at that moment.’

‘I met an 82 year old woman today who has been a Peace Corps volunteer three times – all after retirement. At one point she was the oldest current volunteer on the planet.’

“I just had a psychosomatic stress reaction to the Lao music coming from the bungalow next to mine.’

“Phnom Penh’s been great – almost too much fun, seeing as how a large part of our time was spent at a genocide museum.’

‘The hammock: I believe I’ve found my soulmate.’

‘I asked the weird Chinese girl in our hostel if she still had the tarantulas in the plastic bag up in her room. “Uh, I think so!” was her response.’

‘Suddenly serious, she told me, “Walking this path made me believe in God for the first time. It’s too beautiful, too incredible.”‘

‘I woke up at 4:30am to the sound of an explosion muffled by earplugs and a quick shake of the building.’

‘We danced to horrible techno music and took a “hard man” shot (snort salt, take tequila shot, squeeze lime into your eye).’

‘There’s something profoundly tragic about a people fighting justly to get back what was stolen from them even as there is little to no hope of success…It saddened me immensely, that rally. I walked away with a heavy heart and a bruised faith.’

‘”Are those nunchucks you got there?” I said absentmindedly toward, but not to, a rather pudgy but bulldoggish man on a sidewalk near Beirut’s waterfront. His posture snapped up immediately, as if he had been strolling along, just daring some ignorant fool to comment on his ‘chuks. “Yes,” he said. “Because I am master.”‘

‘I’m so lucky to be doing what I’m doing. It’s amazing, really.’

El Camino del Norte de Santiago

For 28 days this September, I walked from Bilbao to Finisterre, Spain. The route I took is one of the Caminos de Santiago, ancient pilgrimage routes from all over Europe to the city of Santiago, where the apostle James is said to be buried. In total, it was 773 kilometers (about 480 miles). The Camino del Norte, the northern route of the Caminos de Santiago, took me along the Iberian coast for about three weeks, leading me through Pais Vasco, Cantabria, Asturias, and Galicia, before turning southwest through miles of rolling farmland and forests toward Santiago. Like many pilgrims, I continued three days past Santiago to Fisterre, a small village once thought to be the end of the earth.

The first week I planned to walk with my German buddy Jakob, who, after we met in Syria a year and a half ago, remains the travel friend I’ve seen the most over the last two years, but I was looking forward to the rest of my journey as a solitary, meditative mental and physical exercise.  As all travel adventures tend to do, the camino confounded my expectations. I ended up walking alone for only two of the 28 days. I met dozens of kooky, inspiring, at times annoying, and always interesting folks along the way. By far the two I bonded with the most were two Norwegian medical students. The three of us walked together for more than two weeks.

There are dozens of tales from the walk that I could fill pages with, but for once I’ll let my photos tell most of the story. Ask me about it sometime (and really listen, as I’m finding many people back home have a hard time doing) and I’ll tell you about the grunting Danish woman and her ‘sexy underlegs’ (it sounds far worse than it was), Ian the always-drinking Englishman, sunrise just outside of Arzua, Maggie the sweetest Canadian nurse/CEO you’ll ever meet, the dog pissing on my only pair of pants at 6:45 in the morning, and a young American woman who, upon being asked her name, replied, ‘oh, they call me Gypsy.’

All in all, in many the same ways as my trek in Nepal, it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I ended the camino feeling more confident, clear-headed, and more at peace than I’ve ever been before. It’s difficult to describe exactly what made the walk so profound. It was the opportunity for reflection that walking six to nine hours a day provided, the stunningly beautiful vistas, the immediate sense of community and comradery with other pilgrims, and, strangely, the simple daily routine that I came to expect and in which I found great satisfaction: waking early in the morning, walking almost immediately, the mid-morning snack and rest – usually on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic or in a small town cafe with a small cup of espresso in front of me, lunchtime on the beach, afternoon naps under scraggly trees, chance encounters, fun chats, and deep conversations with locals and fellow pilgrims, the glorious arrival in the albergue, taking off my shoes after a 20-plus mile day, and evenings spent at the hostel washing clothes, grabbing a simple dinner, exploring the surroundings for a short time and perhaps the most fulfilling part, falling into a deep sleep at the ripe hour of 8:30.

For many years it’s been a tradition for pilgrims to either leave or burn their clothes at the precipice of Fisterre’s peninsula, just past the lighthouse. Along with a couple fellow pilgrims, I made my way down the rocky peninsula through what was quickly becoming an ominously dark night. As dusk crept overhead, we arrived at the final distance marker. These cement signs, all sporting a concha shell pointing left, straight, or right, had shown us the way and told us how much farther there was yet to go for nearly a month, so to see the last one was a relief and a shock. Its finality –  that I wasn’t going to be walking for eight hours the next day, that I would actually be taking a bus, of all things – was suprisingly gripping. After taking photos with the marker and singing a few celebratory songs, we walked further, past the lighthouse to the end of the end. There, next to a radio tower with hundreds of pieces of pilgrims’ clothing tied to it, looking out over the vast Atlantic, we had our last peregrino dinner of bread, cheese, and fruit with a dessert of Milka chocolate and a bottle of wine. The sun fell nearly to the horizon and, confounding all of our expectations, pierced through dense layers of cloud to present, what seemed to be just for us, a whisper of a sunset. After a period of stunned silence, we decided to complete the final task of our journey. We sat for a while as the shirts we had used for nearly thirty days and, in my case, a torn and ratty pair of pants burned. We waited for the embers to burn out completely, the wine keeping us warm, before heading back to our hostel and back to our separate lives.

 

Paavo Lanto From Lappland

I finally arrived back in the States last Tuesday. After an incredible few days in New York City, I made my way to Charlotte, North Carolina, where my parents recently relocated. There, I came across my travel journal from the first leg of my two-year journey. In it I found this story, copied here nearly exactly as it was written.

February 4th, 2009

I met a writer today, named Paavo Lanto. He’s from a country I’ve never heard of called Lappland, which I learned is actually a semi-autonomous part of Finland. He’s authored two books, which, according to him, are doing well in Lappland and Finland. In his fifties, he had very harsh features – piercing, vampirish eyes, sharp cheekbones that almost make him look emaciated, a receding hairline with a razor-sharp widow’s peak, and a tall and spindly build. He had a strong and deep voice that, combined with his thick Finnish accent, reminded me of an Eastern European dictator. He learned English from an engineering school, so his vocabulary and grammar is often slightly unwieldy (‘Raindeer meat is without as many negatives than all other meats!’).  I told him in passing that I love writing and I’ve always thought about becoming a writer. He immediately launched into an assault of advice.

‘Don’t write for critics ever! Critics are failed writers who know only to criticize.’

‘Just start!’

Find your own voice, your own style. Never imitate!’

After 20 minutes of his admonitions, I was charmed. Two hours later, I was annoyed and embarassed. Here’s an example of our conversation:

‘Have you ever read Mika Waltari?’

‘No, I haven’t. Is he…[interrupted]‘

‘You must read Sinuhak the Egyptian. Its one of the best books ever wrote.’

‘Yeah, I’ll have to check that…[interrupted]‘

‘Most writers, I say writers because I don’t like the term authors, it’s too culture, imitate. Never imitate [yelling now]! Mika Waltari was original!’

‘I’ll keep my eye out for it. [I sigh after finally being allowed to finish a sentence].’

In the midst of this, we’re sitting at a bar with young people all around and I’m stuck with Paavo Lanto from Lappland. It being my first night on the island, I was hoping to meet a nice girl or at least a fun group of people, but all I got was him. I made the mistake of mentioning at the beginning of our conversation that I didn’t have any plans for the night. My difficulty in exiting the conversation was made all the more difficult by the fact that his bungalow was three meters away from mine.

After a minute or two of awkward silence, he cut me off again.

‘So what languages do…’

‘Finland was the only country in the world to stop the Red Army! Ask him [pointing to the Danish bartender]! Ask him. [He asks for me] Did you know that?’

[The bartender] ‘Know what?’

‘Finland was the one country to halt the Red Army [yelling again, and he wasn't drunk]!’

‘Okay.’ [Looking both amused and exasperated].

‘You didn’t know that?’

‘No, but I know now.’

‘Yes… [continues on and on about Finland stopping the Red Army.]‘

‘Okay.’ [Just exasperation now].

After I foolishly mentioned my latent writing aspirations, Paavo Lanto from Lappland became convinced that I was going to be the next Hemingway. And made it his mission to tell anyone who would listen.

‘Do you think he will be a great writer?’ he asked the barman.

I look away, embarassed.

‘Uh, I don’t know. Time will tell.’ He’s moved from exasperation to avoidance now.

‘I think he will be. He has the sensitivity [with an emphasis on every syllable of that word] to be a great writer. And he’s a thinking person. Writers must be thinking people [yelling again]!’

‘Okay.’ The bartender moves to another part of the counter.

Though the conversation kept me thoroughly amused, I began to look for an excuse to leave early. He wasn’t having it.

‘I will tell story now.’

‘O… [interrupted].’

‘A Lapish man lives one kilometer up the river from his friend. He sees a tree fall one day and begin to move with the water. The man wants this tree so he runs to the house of his friend and says “The tree is mine! It fell on my land and was carried away to your land by the river!” His friend says, “No, the tree is mine! If the rivers wants to bring me a tree, how can I refuse?” [He pauses and stares at me with his beady dracula eyes for extra added effect]. The man up the river replies, “So tell me, if my brother dies while drunk and falls into the river and is drowned, when he arrives on your land, is he your brother or mine?’

Paavo Lanto from Lappland pauses again. His face has been getting redder for the last few sentences and he’s been leaning in more and more. He delivers the last sentence with percussive gusto: ‘is he YOur BRoTher or… MINE?’ but doesn’t say it in a way that definitively ends the tale. I wait, confused as to whether I should laugh, nod knowingly, or continue listening.

And then it comes. ‘HA HA HA HA HA HA!’ Louder than everyone else in the bar combined, he guffaws like a buffoon. Realizing it’s the end of the story and apparently quite funny, I laugh tentatively.

‘Ha…..ha….ha…. Wow, that’s a funny story.’

‘The Canadians love that story [yelling again]!’

‘Yeah? Do you meet… [interrupted again]‘

‘Yes, they love it! And they are very easy to understand.’

I look down for the hundredth time, resigning myself to the fact that I’ll have to wait for him to finish his beer before I can get out of there.

‘Have I told you about Finland in World War Two?’

‘Yes, you… [interrupted]‘

‘Ask him! Ask the barman!’

‘We already asked him.’

At this point, Bob Dylan’s version of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ comes on. Paavo immediately thrusts his hands into air guitar position and starts the worst (and most hilarious) unasked for karaoke rendition of it I’ve ever seen.

The conversation continued like that, including an encore performance of Dylan’s song, until he finally finished his beer and I was able to say ‘Oh, no, I’m very tired so I don’t think I’ll go to the party at the Treehouse bar.’ Before I finally got rid of him, he told me (notice he didn’t ask) that he would be taking me out on his motorbike the next morning. I left quietly at 7am for another beach on the other side of the island.