Apinautica Chapter 12 - Part 1 - Sweden

[aggienaut]

Continuing the memoir, but before we continue I'll post a relevant excerpt from much earlier

---

[From Chapter 10 - Turkey, p109-110]

July 12th, 2013 - I find myself standing in the serene vastness of the Hagia Sophia, the basilica turned cathedral turned mosque turned museum that for a thousand years was the largest building in the world. High above on the lofty ceiling gilded quotes from the Qur’an in Arabic seem to glow golden in the dim light, and above that, the inside of the great dome itself is elegantly covered with painted scenes from the Bible in soft pastels. On an upper balcony I find the Viking graffiti the Norse-men the Byzantine emperors had employed as guards had left. Bored and far from home, did “Halvdan” lean against that parapet, some warm July evening, looking out with jade green eyes on the same sea, thinking wistfully of his home a world away? As a cool sea breeze rustled his rust-red beard, did he contemplate impermanence and set to carving his name with his axe-blade? Or was he thinking about some far distant Erika with braided hair whom he’d last seen years previous as his boat pushed off from the banks of the river Göta? Did he dream of seeing her again and wonder why he couldn’t just settle for the convenient local girls? Or was he thinking about nothing nearly so interesting, just extremely bored with a monotonous shift at work?

... [13,620 words / 26 pages later] ...

from where we left off, leaving Guinea, AKA Ebola Ground Zero, feeling sick



July 24th, 2014, Sweden – It’s a pleasant warm summer evening in Sweden, and from where we’re sitting in a small replica viking longboat in the mouth of the River Göta the lights sparkle on shore quite picturesquely while the sky still holds the last purples of a dramatic sunset. There’s just one problem, the square sail hangs limp from its boom, the wind has died.
   “Out sweeps!” our skipper Martin calls out and the six of us fit our long oars into the thole pins and begin to row. None of us are particularly practiced at rowing but we begin making our way through the water, towards the high viaduct over the river. Behind us the islands in the river mouth we had just visited are getting further away. In company with other shipmates on a more modern sailboat, the Busen, we had enjoyed an evening picnic on the island, grilling steak over a campfire and departing just at sunset. The Busen with the advantages of 1200 years of sailing innovations had quickly left us behind.
   But glancing forward I see we are actually very quickly catching up to it, the same doldrums have left it immobilized as well. We steer to pass close to our friends (and give them some good natured jeering, naturally), and it’s clear they’re worse off than us without wind – we are well-equipped with long oars in a vessel designed to be rowed as much as to be sailed, the Busen, on the other hand, seems to have only two stubby emergency paddles with which they are struggling to make any progress at all.
“Ahoy, Draken!” Anders in the Busen calls out to us. “Can you give us a tow?”
   We break into uproarious laughter. But he’s serious. My oarbench partner Erika and I share a look, grins and laughter with just a hint of the put-upon because we know this is going to make things harder for us, as we pass a coiled rope aft to Martin, who secures it to a bit and tosses the end the short distance to the Busen.
We set to with the oars again, it’s even harder now with a vessel under tow behind us, though they’re still trying their best with their stubby paddles too. Not only are none of us habitual rowers but there’s of course a river current we are fighting against, but slowly we pass under the viaduct and the twinkling lights on either side of the river slide by inch by strenuous inch. We sing sea shanties for awhile, starting with the classic homeward bound Mingulay Boat Song, which always sounds divine sung by sailors at dusk on the water:

   Heave her ho, boys
   Let her go, boys
   Swing her head round into the weather
   Heave her ho, boys
   Let her go, boys
   Sailin' homeward to Mingulay

   What care we though white the Minch is?
   What care we, boys, for wind and weather
   When we know that every inch is
   Sailin' homeward to Mingulay
   ...

   As we rhythmically pull at the oars I think of the innumerable viking longboats that would have made this same journey returning home from a voyage – the River Göta would have been a major riverine highway to the interior of Sweden. From here viking longboats would have set out for nearby Denmark, or further afield to the British Isles, or even for years-long journeys to Miklagard – their name for Constantinople. Our painfully slow progress just to make it a short way up the river makes such longer journeys seem beyond contemplation, but of course it would have been much much easier in a ship with 20-50 experienced oarsmen. It took us half an hour to make it outbound to the island, two hours of rowing home finally brings us to the welcoming bulk of our mothership, the Swedish Ship Götheborg.
   The Götheborg is massive as far as sailing vessels go, with three decks, and masts towering 40 meters into the sky. The original vessel sailed between 1738 and 1745 with a crew of 144, making three trips to China and back which were enormously profitable. This past week we’ve just been a crew of about a dozen doing maintenance on the replica Götheborg. At first I still felt sick and compelled to lie down any time I wasn’t working but my health feels much improved now.
   Finally we reach the dock and tie up under the looming hull of our mothership. The stern-cabin windows glow with a warm welcoming light. Despite the exhaustion, we decide to go for some beers at a nearby cafe to refresh ourselves. And after all, the least the crew of the Busen can do is buy the crew of the Draken beers. We sit at outdoor tables, summer evenings in Sweden really are wonderfully pleasant.
   I can be very oblivious, but walking back to the Götheborg as a group, I note that Erika, a pretty Swedish woman with her blonde hair in pigtails, is walking beside me, and had sat next to me at the cafe and in the boat. Things clink into place in my head. She’s very nice, and attractive, and artistic. I casually take her hand and she acts like its perfectly natural. We casually dally behind the rest of the group & walk out the the end of the pier alone under the starlight, the river gurgling by and the lights along both shores sparkling.

July 25th, Götheborg, 4:20am – My alarm goes off. Oh god this is too early. I quickly hit snooze before it wakes anyone else. I have a bus to catch at 4:50, but I’m all intertwined with a gorgeous Swedish girl in a hammock and surely I can stay another ten minutes.
   4:30 – it goes off again, but this is heaven in this here canvas hammock in the crew quarters deep in the Götheborg. I hit snooze and snuggle Erika. Why hadn’t we made this connection earlier, why does it seem I always must go.
   4:40 – okay I really really need to go. I reluctantly extract myself, which takes another few precious minutes, gather my stuff and scramble up the ladders out of the depths of the ship, run down the gangway and up the dock in time to just miss the bus. By the time I catch the next one and make it to the airport I arrive at check in 58 minutes before my flight and they will absolutely under no conditions let me through. I have to buy a new flight to France later in the day for several hundred dollars.

---

   While I've written about that tow home twice before (once in the original entry and again as an LJ Idol entry) this for the first time involves the more salacious details my involvement with "Erika." I don't normally write about these things but it was one of the complaints I identified with similar travelogs that they ignored this aspect which is such a significant part of the human experience. Though also standing as a warning in my mind always is the example of Thomas Kohnstamm who does not ignore it and it definitely comes across as crass they way he writes about it -- but I think the problem there is he writes about the women as either trophies or goals in of themselves (see my review of his book here for a more thorough discussion). To that end, its interesting to see how in the above account I don't seem to really "notice" Erika until any sort of pursuit is irrelevant, which I fear makes me sound like Kohnstamm, though I think what's really going on there is I have a theory that you can't really change a woman's mind about you and didn't generally try to woo any woman who wasn't already showing interest and so it was realizing she was interested that suddenly put her on my radar, and that's interesting but probably a bit much to shoehorn into the section. I actually specifically visited "Erika" the next year but it remains to be seen if that will seem relevant enough to include at all.

   While I generally keep to the truth in this memoir there's a fair number of little details changed here. Draken was the other boat, not the one I was in, which was a replica 18th century longboat, not a viking longship. The event actually occurred the night before but I moved it up to the last day in Sweden. Anders is a character from the LJ Idol retelling of the tow not the name of someone present. And neither original vessel was named Busen, which I chose just now because it means rascal in Swedish but looks like its "the bus" (that would be "bussen") which may amuse no one but me but hey.

Anyway I don't know if anyone would remember the first reference to Erika on the River Gota when it comes up again 26 pages later other than perhaps a confused deja vu but I was pleased to create this narrative loop.

Comments

[engarian.livejournal.com]

I'm glad your posting this again. You've had quite the adventurous life, little one - LOL.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Thanks! These days I'm feeling mostly nostalgic when I revisit these adventures, with the serious job an the wife I don't foresee myself having nearly quite such adventurous adventures in the forseeable future .. but can't complain, life is good, and I'm glad I have the adventures to look back on.