Vimmerby to Katrineholm, Sweden. August 5 to 8.
For the final few days of my journey I had made sure to have time to spare. Making the arrival one to look back at with happy memories felt most important after four months on the road. A time and place was set for friends and family to be waiting for me, and being late for that was something I would avoid at all costs. The final month of my cycling adventure might not have been the most cheerful in my emotional state, but I was adamant to end it all on a high note.
I cycled out of the woods of Småland to Linköping where I would stay with Oskar through Warm Showers. He himself was doing a long cycling journey, but in stages of two weeks at a time. Being a separated father of two he had care of the kids about half the time and used the other to travel digital nomad style. When I stayed with Oskar his bike was somewhere in Greece and last I spoke to him he had reached Istanbul.
Now, toward the very end of my long tour, there was very little drama and at the time I was glad for it. I was tired - not so much in body, but in spirit. For this story, a chronicle that I very much look at as my most raw experience put down on paper, I will not pretend that there was a last struggle befitting a grand tale. By this point I had had enough of fighting, of adventure and of tension. I used downtime to rest, write, spend quality time and party prep for my homecoming. Smooth sailing was really all I wanted. Those of you who have followed me through the years perhaps do not recognise this. The Pelle you knew might be one who embraced challenges, sought them out even. Indeed, I did not cycle from Iraq looking for smooth, comfortable or easy. Just like in the great stories, I hoped that the Pelle that would return would not be the same as the one who left. It was just so, but my own adventure turned out to be quite different.
The second evening in Oskar's summer allotment we had a visitor. Jeanne, another cyclist temporarily living in Linköping but originally from the French countryside, came for dinner, talks and a game of Carcassonne. She told us of her cycling tour in southern Europe and how, in hindsight, she barely recognised herself by the end. When we spoke about how I would look back on my journey she said:
"You'll probably need the rest of the year before you can really grasp the entirety of it."
I just nodded, not quite believing her, but with no basis for objection. It would show that she was about as right as one can be.
My third to last stage of cycling was from Linköping to Katrineholm where I would stay with relatives. In between lay Norrköping and as I usually do I took the opportunity to check in with some friends in town. The world of Swedish football goalkeeping is, as I'm sure you'd imagine, quite limited in scope and so if you're in that sphere you likely know the others who are when you're out and about. In Norrköping an old adept of mine, David who is now way out of my league, was just done with the training for the day.
Proudly I often assume the role of that random someone from years past that suddenly drops a message. Those who answer, and even better take time to meet, get high marks from me. Just that little check-in chat with David, getting a peek into the daily life of a young professional athlete, was enough to put a smile on my heart. More than anything I want the goalies I have helped through the years to know that I am still with them and they are still with me, wherever we are.
The path north to Katrineholm was narrow with lots of traffic but I had plenty of practise with that in Iraq and Turkey. I arrived safely to my uncle Stig right on the estimated time and aunt Gunilla especially was most thrilled and relieved to see me get there in one piece. She had been following my journey with well wishes all from the start and it felt just right to make the trip past her home now that the voyage was soon at an end.
Hers is a position I have never had. To be at home, grounded in a safe house while someone you care for is away on something potentially (or deceptively) dangerous. Perhaps I've always been too preoccupied with myself or simply trusted people to do fine even when they're out in deep waters, but truth is I have never truly worried about another. Cared for but not feared for. I believe that's a dimension to human connection that I yet do not have nor fully understand, which only makes me appreciate and respect it even more. Aunt Gunilla, perhaps more than anybody, had constantly reminded me throughout the entire adventure that I was being thought of and cared for. In an ironic yet fitting conclusion, my thanks to her was to eat at her table, of her food, and lots of it. She seemed most pleased with that.
While in town I also got to reconnect with my cousins Linda and Maria, both much older than me with full families of their own. There's a peculiar feeling of being surrounded by people so close and yet so far. They looked after me as a kid and our fathers grew up in the same house as brothers. But the life I have lived has put me at such distance from the small city family bubble in which they reside. What relevance does my story of cycling from Iraq have in their world? Sometimes I fear that I'm too far gone for ordinary folks to relate to me. This was my first stay with people that didn't actively look for travelers to host, but just happened to have blood ties to the weirdo who wad nothing better to do with his time than to tread over continents. Although I had cycled home, the choice and the process of doing so had in some ways brought me even further away. I had returned, but began to realise that the road was still long for me to come back.
I thought to end this chapter there, but the darkness that I currently carry inside does not reflect the air in that moment, families united. Our life choices may be as different as can be but there was nothing but respect for mine, and from me appreciation for theirs. It was tangible that the house of Linda and her husband Niklas vibrated of love, and I cannot think of a more nurturing environment to grow up in. Theirs is a home that inspire me to one day have a family of my own... if God wills it so.
