Sarah

 

Tripping down the streets in Oslo with a cigar in my mouth and a bag-in-box under my arm on Norways birthday. It was the 17th of May.

 

Like the latest few years we start with champagne breakfast a la France which means loads of wine and sweets. I, who has something of a probem with taking decisions, just feel that it is too much to choose from. Ending up with one lost sweede at the dinner table with an empty stomach trying to decide whether I should take a pancake, a waffle, a muffin or a piece of one of the three cakes. In the end I fill the hole on my inside with wine.

 

 

Miss out on the famous parade - like every year, and I move on from the French connection apartment to something more Norweigan. Caroline, Cathrine, Anton and Magnus had been around the city and we meet up for drinking and, eventually, eating. I am pretty sure that the cesar salad was amazing, but at that point I had already been under the influence of alcohol for a while. Even though it was only 5 pm.

 

 

Watching the sunset by the dock in Aker Brygge and after many attempts to take a decent group photo to capture the day, I give up. Turns out a Norweigan flag, bag-in-box and three umbrellas (even though there is no sign of rain) do not help a potentional group photo. Instead we move indoors and to a bar, full of rugbyplayers. When drinking for 12 hours it is bound to go downhill at some point, for us it was at Hannibals hybel.

 

 

I and Ida follow each other, I follow her home and she follows me to the bus, at midnight and wish us a good night sleep. Though once I step on the bus I change my mind completely, the night shall continue. I arrive back at the French connection just in time to witness some of the boys throwing away their shirts while singing loudly. Great timing.

 

Like so many times during my trip when I ended up dancing salsa in the middle of the night in odd places, I dance this night around a kitchen. The many lessons on dance floors, streets, restaurants, buses and fast food stops have paid off. Some was actually surpriced by my moves.

 

 

After 16 hours of drunkness I wave the white flag, more is no longer an option. On the way home I am talking endlessly to a father-to-be about the future. And when I say home, I mean Euns couch that she has neatly made for me.

It has been nine months and Oslo is still home.

 

With a bottle of Powerade and a bottle of swedish mustard in my bag I am once again on bus 324 heading for Laholm. Like so many times before. Taking the bus that means, not especially with these certain items in my bag.

 

It is amazing how so much can be different but still so much the same after four years. We haven't seen each other since graduation in 2009 and still I feel the exact same when we party together back then as yesterday. In 2013. I act just like I acted back then. I say the same things just like I said back then. I look the same just as I looked back then. But things do happen in four years, things do change. And there were some awkward silences at times.

 

So bring out the cards and fill up the glasses! It is time for drinking games. And those weird silent moments are getting extint as the volume of the crowd turns up. The alcohol, this modern drug, saved us and made us get more things incommon. We can continue beyond the "So what have you been up to lately?" conversations.

 

All of sudden, after eating sausages and meat leftovers on the kitchen floor while passing around a bottle of Sourz, the clock strikes 2 am and we decide to move out into the night. Which at 2 am never is a good idea. We are not in New Orleans - the city that truly never sleeps and you can go out and buy baking soda at 2 am. We are in Halmstad where most of the bars and clubs close around 2, 2:30.

 

We end up on the streets outside some bars, talking to people I haven't talked to for four years - some even more. Among them, I meet my very first kind-of boyfriend from when I was 15 years old (this is excluding the "boyfriends" when I was younger and didn't spend time with them, for example I was together with a guy for two years and we maybe hung out three times in total. Still it was a very hard break-up, even if we only were 11 years old, anyhow), who throws a 100krona bill at me with a "Go buy yourself a beer" before he disappears.

 

The night is coming to an end and we finish it where we started it, in Davids' apartment. The after party includes more car alarms than music and after exclaiming "But we can't go to sleep now! Now is when we start talking deep and go real" I lay my head on the pillow and drift off.

Wow.
I can not believe I have been travelling for 197 days, and now it is over. I have been home for three days now, probably spending most of that time in my bed. The airplane home didn't give me as much sleep as I thought - but the entertainment system did keep me entertained! It didn't only keep me entertained but also awake, for a total of 30 hours. 

Before I went home I sent some emails to my closest friends if we shouldn't hang out now when I got home. A little bit disappointed we scheduled 19th of May. I was back the 2nd. Feeling a little low I just said to myself "Of course they don't stop up their worlds or lives just beacuse I will come home". Little did I know that that was exactly what they had done.

 

My family tricked me away from the house with no problem or suspicions whatsoever and when only my sister and I returned back to the house I was all set for a night with chocolate, chips and The Lord of the Ring. I don't have words to describe how completely shocked I was for arriving back at the house and greated with a "SURPRICE". The house was redecorated with a long table and different decorations reminding of different holidays. The holidays I have missed being away.

It started out with my wonderful, precious glögg, before we got a real swedish christmas meal. Followed up with Valentine's day cake and Eastercandy. It was amazing. I dont have anything else to say. It was all so perfect. I'm one hell of a lucky person.