first-time traveller: destination Utrecht

I'm 16 years of age and on my first real trip to a foreign country.

My childhood trips to neighbouring Sweden and Norway with my parents don't really count. I've heard my friends talk about holidays around the Mediterranean and I'm wildly jealous. My longing for foreign travel awoke years ago, and steadily grows as I pore over the world atlas (a wonderful book). My wanderlust is not even hindered by planetary boundaries, because Star Trek makes even interstellar journeys seem possible. 

But my hunger for adventure is hobbled by the fact that I'm not at all an adventurous person.

My two best friends (equally inexperienced travellers) come up with the idea to join an arranged trip to a huge, international Christian youth conference. Conveniently, we can get on a chartered bus close to our home in Finland and it will take us all the way there and back. This is why my first real trip abroad goes to a place I've never heard of: Utrecht. It's in the Netherlands.

We get on the bus. It's filled with other young people going to the same conference, but they all speak Finnish. We're Swedish speakers with shaky language skills, so we nervously keep to ourselves. The trip takes three days, non-stop. One night we sleep in a cabin on the ferry to Sweden, one night we snooze in the bus.

I'm 16 and the whole world is new and unknown. Nearly everything is a first-time experience.

* Copenhagen: we stop for while on a dark December evening, just to walk around Stroget and all the neon lights. My first time in a country where I don't really understand the language spoken around me.

* Germany: it's night and I need sleep, but I wake up every now and then, just to peer in wonder at a dark landscape I can barely see through the mud-spattered bus window, and tell myself, "I'm in Germany!"

* Passport control (there are none between the Nordic countries): no need to exit the bus. Intimidating, burly men stomp down the aisle and frown at everyone's passport. Mine is brand new.

* Sleeping in your seat on a crowded bus: it's possible, when you're young and exhausted. I barely notice the various ferry rides between countries, or the shocking news of Ceausescu's fall.

* The youth conference: there are 10 000 participants, so it's more than ten times bigger than any event I've ever attended. Information packs and brochures are available in about ten different languages (including tiny ones such as Swedish and Finnish). There are people from almost every European country. There are food stands selling snacks from almost every European country. The facility is massively bigger than any building I've ever seen. The girls' accommodation area is an immense hall furnished with thousands of mattresses. For the main meetings, all 10 000 attendants crowd into the same hall. There's simultaneous interpretation into our own language. 

* Eating with thousands of others, brushing my teeth with dozens of others around the same (very long) sink, making friends from other countries, bonding around the fact that the hall is cold and the rented blankets smell of horses. And they all have the same faith as me - I'm used to being part of a small minority that is sneered at by my peers. During the days we attend Bible study, missions seminars, national meetings (with Finns) and language-group meetings (with Swedes). We spend the nights chatting, singing and dancing in crowds of strangers. A few of our friends from home are also there, older boys who are supposed to keep an eye on us, but they soon give up.

* The rest of the Netherlands: we venture out into Utrecht, to have Chinese food and check out the shops. We pay with guilders and try oliebollen. We do a brief tour of Amsterdam, walking among the canals and giggling in the Rijksmuseum until frowning security guards start following us around. Even the grey, damp December weather is novel to me, since I associate travel with summer and December with snow.

* Hamburg: a long stop where we try to do some shopping, but then everything closes early and we resort to people-watching and giggling at McDonald's.

* Sleeping on the bus floor on the way home, freezing cold, and being stepped on by people. 

I come home about a week later, exhausted and with a cough, in the first days of 1990. I haven't managed to see very much of Europe and the Netherlands, apart from what I've glimpsed through mud-streaked bus windows. 

But I've met the whole of Europe. I've done my first real foreign travelling. 

final report of summer 2025

A car with a locked wheel, mental mentor meeting, almost moving my mother into a care home, three weeks of full-time vacation, several weeks of half-time vacation, almost every weekend at the cottage, fetching a dead eagle from a deserted island and sending it by post, two magical boat trips to summer islands, a little family time, lots of alone time, pondering vocational singleness, a small but exquisite church concert, Midsummer celebration as usual, Kuddnäs and the history of Topelius, selling crêpes at a church conference, wheelchair excursions with my mother, grilling sausages on a rainy day, books, a heatwave so strong it melted glue in the bathroom, weariness and tears, road trip to Pensala and Purmo and a country fair in Jeppo, cottage renovations, funeral of a beloved aunt, Kristinestad with friends, garden cafés and the most gorgeous B&B I've ever stayed in, the Stundars museum, a month-long break from TV, Night of the Arts with yarn crafts and decadent red wine, my mother's last trip to her favourite place, end-of-summer celebration, hospital visits.

I am made of words & rivers & winds & wildflowers. 

I am part grief & part hope & all love.

(Victoria Erickson)

guiding lights along the coast of autumn

Sleeping in peaceful, dark rooms. Books. Vanilla milkshakes. Candles. Women who know God. A weekend in a foreign city. Church windows. A little wine. Walks among birds and the smell of leaves. Celebrations. Star Trek. Making  music. Love.