Our next adventure

My family will tell you that I am “at my best” when we are traveling, when everything goes as I planned, when I can order food or ask for the bathroom in the local language that I have been studying for months, when I can find myself making long term friendships with people with whom I just spent two hours. All these are wonderful reasons to write about traveling.

But the truth is that I decided to start this blog out of despair. After the acceptance at the ballots of a fascist regime I feel I am falling in the abyss. Having grown up in a dictatorship I saw the signs and I told everyone that would listen but I am like Cassandra of Troy. I have taken a break from Facebook and the news for mental cleansing but I still find myself having panic attacks at night or at work. So this witting attempt is more a creating-a-coping-mechanism-to-keep-my-sanity blog than a advice-about-what-to-pack-for-the-fall-in-Paris blog.

I apologize for the somber tone of this post, but I really have not slept much since the election, and I should be “at my best” because a trip is coming: In less than a week I will be in Tromsø, Norway.

I’m in that stage of my life that I better start emptying the “bucket list” while I can. And since I was sleeping when the Northern Lights showed up in South Georgia this year, I will have to go 217 miles north of the Arctic Circle to see them. Yes, we have Alaska in this side of the Atlantic, why not to go there ? Answer: Alaska is not Europe, I love Norse mythology, I’m fascinated by the Viking tales and the Normands (more by the ones that went to Sicily than their cousins that stayed in France and England) and I surely don’t want to spend more money in another red state.

This coming trip started almost like a “dare”. My dad is 83 years old, he lives in my hometown Chivilcoy (did you google that yet?) and comes to visit me once a year. Last year I took him to Europe for his first time (I will write about that another day) and he loved it. One day after we came back, I mentioned to him that this year would be the best one to see the Aurora Borealis. The solar activity follows an eleven years cycle and we are at the pick of it . “So… We are going to Scandinavia next year to see them, right?” he asked. And that is what we are doing.

My brother Ezequiel who also came to stay with me for a while is tagging along.

This group is irreversibly incomplete, though. We missed the matriarch: my mom, who died over 2 years ago, was the one that made me love history, mythology, science and traveling. If I have one regret is that I had not been able to take her to Europe, the place that she knew by heart thru books and movies but never visited.

So… I guess that I better start packing, we leave in 4 days .