Study Abroad Stories
Memorable Collisions
By William Yon, Oberlin College (European Politics & Society)
Every so often I will find that a single moment will extend further than itself. While its limits stretch, its liquid limits streaking, we grasp more than our goldfish-sized memory, and we see how many moments can stuff themselves within the confines of a solitary instant. The resulting logjam releases in pulses of images, feelings, word associations, and all that our memory has concealed from our conscious self.
My most recent Moment happened on a bridge spanning the distance between Amager (pronounced Ah-ma) and Copenhagen center. The dawn was just beginning to spread her rosy fingers over the Danish horizon while my roomate and I were biking homeward. Allan and I looked over the canal and were chatting about something or other. When we came to the spot we had caromed into one another during an impromtu race earlier that day, time collapsed on itself and set off a series of collisions within my memory of the past four months. Maybe we were talking about my impending departure, now that I think about it.
Riding three to a swan car at the oldest amusement park in the world. All of us smiling through the leftover grime of overly-enjoyed cottoncandy. The gray light of dusk diffusing through a light fog, as I step out of the airport into the light drizzle which precipitated my arrival. The many attempts to speak Danish to a store clerk, who responds without fail in English, ‘Don’t worry about it, Danish is pretty hard. At least you tried.’
Meeting friends of friends, and their friends too on first arrival. Catharine and her six year old daughter coming to dinner, Whitney laughing ceaselessly about my calendar photos (french advertisements) while Catharine attempts to describe her thesis and its relevance for her hometown in Nigeria. Dressing as Vikings with my Danish class in Roskilde, being laughed at by a group of school children who listen to our attempted Danish patter. Sitting with the same group around a conference table and struggling to wrap our throats around the sounds ‘æ’, ‘ø’ and ‘å.’
I meet Juan and Carlos again in a hostel in München and become automatic friends for merely growing out of the same continental soil. Sitting in a kollegium surrounding myself with Spaniards, talking to Estefania and Reuben about youtube crazes happening simultaneously across the world. Playing Rugby with Australians, Welsh, Scots, English, French, Italians, Portuguese, Brazilians, Swedes and Danes. The lectures given, by people who I assumed were far too busy and far too important to deign to speak to a group of American university students.
Going to the Little Mermaid with the intention of disappointing ourselves, gleefully succeeding. Watching the scenery gracefully crawl away from the train while a friend sleeps and thinking how much better it is to travel by train. The visit to a gymnasium and the conversation with Elsa, Anders, and Pernille who were fascinated by the puritanical American liquor laws. Heidi, Marie, and Inga the Norwegian, German, and Icelandic girls who had befriended each other for their (shared?) geographic relationship with Denmark.
The bring-your-own-meat barbeque in the greenhouse, where Danes crooned to eighties music and awkwardly shook their limbs as if to dance. Walking through the forests of Humlebæk with Lam to his folkhøjskole to immerse ourselves in hyggeligt—sitting around a candlelit basement lounge with two sofas and large comfychairs in a small circle. Two friends entertaining a whole room by bickering incessantly over a grave injustice where a glass of wine was unjustly thrown into the face of an unsuspecting supporter who was falsely accused of speaking sarcastically while making a case for the wine-pitcher. Everyday basking in the glorious extra four minutes daylight as the sun slowly burned through the constant grey of winter.
Commiserating with Molly from Wisconsin over biking in Copenhagen as an American. Concluding the dire need for a warning system to alert locals that, as Americans, we don’t really know what the hell we’re doing on a bicycle. Cycling through town with Jens on a mission to Karaoke, only to fall at every stoplight and earn the kindly nickname ‘VæltePeter’ (Faulty Peter) for my odd similarity to the old bicycles with the obscenely large front wheel and the tendency to topple over without reason. Pedaling through empty streets at six o’clock on a Sunday evening, pathways devoid of motion except my wobbly roll and the wind rattling things.
Sitting on the pier at Nyhavn next to tall-masted ships, chatting with friends as tourists file into the overpriced multicolored cafés. A sunny cemetery, sprawling with locals who lay themselves out to tan on top of the gravestones. Fælledparken in winter, whose snow-covered ground disturbs no ones scheduled exercise, a strict schedule which probably explains why the Danes are all so damn skinny. Looking out over the Baltic on a sandy man-made island, oafish oil tankers ambling past the silent wind turbines, slowly chugging toward the north sea.
Endless falls, crashes, awkward near-misses, sheepish apologies, and embarassed laughter. One after another in rapid succession, a violent crescendo rising up into the collision earlier that day with Allan as we raced by a girl we thought was riding too slowly. As she passed by, we laughed together at ourselves and cleaned our impending bruises. A time of laughter, quiet, confusion, homesickness, discomfiture, ambivalence, acceptance, rejoicing; falling down, getting up, looking around, and moving on — the joy of travels — the joy of metamorphoses.
All this incinerated in the flash pan of my memory, only for a second — or maybe two? — and left behind only a gray tendril to daintily hang in the space between words. I only realized that I had suddenly gone quiet while in the middle of a sentence, when my roommate turns to me and said, “You Americans. I won’t ever understand you.” I laughed hard enough to fall over the handlebars of my bike. He slowed down, and waited for me to get back on track.
