Sunset over Long Island Sound October 2010
Psalms 143:8 NIV
"Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul."
Carmen and I sat side by side on a bench at the train station with our Eurorail map spread across our laps. We were twenty years old and had just completed a study abroad program in Bregenz, Austria. We had four weeks to travel before heading home.
We were in a mountain village near Trier, Germany. We’d taken a local train up a mountainside looking for her extended family, but she discovered we were in the wrong place and didn't know how to find them. Therefore, we had the world at our fingertips and were about to decide where to go for our European adventure.
We closed our eyes, raised our fingers, and lowered them. We looked at the map, then at each other, and started laughing uproariously. Do we dare take this trip? When you’re twenty, with a Eurorail pass and time to kill, a trip above the Arctic Circle to Narvik, Norway, actually makes sense.
We hopped a train and began our northward trek. During the week’s journey, we met interesting people along the way and even stayed with a Swedish family and danced in a gazebo with their friends in a pine forest.
We rode a train through Norwegian forests and coastline until we ran out of tracks. Then we got on a bus. We rode the bus on a road that hugged the mountainous coast and narrow inland passages until we ran out of road. Then we got on a ferry and maneuvered through the fjords in July’s midnight sun. We rode the ferry until we were back on a road that took us to a train that transported us to Narvik.
Along the route, when our train crossed the Arctic Circle, we disembarked to take photos of the rock pyramid marking the Arctic Line.
We arrived at Narvik at 3:00 in the morning. The Midnight Sun allowed us to see as if it were twilight at home. I spotted a t-shirt in a shop window I wanted to buy, "I Made it to the Top of the World: Narvik, Norway."
I was a sponge soaking everything in, but Carmen seemed a little uneasy.
"Uh, Lori. We have to catch the 6:00 train back south this morning."
"What, Carm?"
"Donnie wrote me. He’s arriving in Zurich on Wednesday."
Three days? No way! It took us a week to get here. Donnie’s supposed to be working in Kentucky. What’s he doing in Zurich?
"I can't buy the t-shirt?"
Donnie is Carmen’s boyfriend. I’m losing my t-shirt to her boyfriend, who is supposed to be working in Kentucky. I can’t quite make this stick in my mind yet.
"No, the train schedules won't work out."
How will anyone believe I have been on top of the world without a t-shirt from Narvik?
"Ok, Carm. Let's head to the train station."
The rest of the trip is a midnight-sun-sleepless blur southward. We hadn't eaten any proper food since we had begun the trip, except for our interlude with the Swedish family, so we were starved.
Somewhere in Germany, we changed trains, and in front of our seats was a woven elastic pocket with magazines and one full-sized German chocolate bar. We salivated and pounced on it. We agreed if it were poisonous, chocolate was the way to die. We divided it in two and savored every bite.
It was the best chocolate we had tasted in our lives.
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Dear Lord, thank you for watching over me wherever you lead me, even to the top of the world.
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