The Most Destined Travel Companion ┃ Norway Tromsø

Joris & Rachel from France were my best travel companions during the two-month Nordic hitchhiking trip.

On the day I was going to enter Norway from Finland after visiting Santa Claus, a church worker who looked like the Finnish version of Kevin Spacey gave me a ride, allowing me to drink tea at the Sami Cultural Center to hide from the rain.

The rain has not stopped, and I still have to travel to Norway to meet the sofa owner. I went back to the road to call for a car, and an hour passed, but no car stopped. In the distance, two people in raincoats came slowly.

That was the first time I met Joris & Rachel.

The 18-year-olds were originally from France and were also hitchhiking to Norway's North Cape. Looking at the big smiles on their faces, I can't help but envy their youth.

“The old French couple we just met, they were traveling in a camper trailer and could take us for a ride,” Rachel said.

After being invited into the car, I felt warm and at ease and fell asleep. The car just drove to a campsite, 60 kilometers from the destination of Karasjok, Norway. I remembered the agreement with the owner of the sofa, and went back to the road to call for a car, but there were too few cars, and it was terribly cold outside.

Soon, Rachel came over and said that they negotiated with the campsite, maybe they could have free space to rest, and if I really couldn't find a car, I could go back and find them. After the last 10 minutes in the rain, I put my thumbs down.

Joris successfully borrowed the cabin as a kitchen and dining space from the owner, and let us spend the night there with our own sleeping bags. I borrowed the internet from Joris, successfully contacted the owner of the sofa, and changed the meeting time to tomorrow, and I was able to release the pressure from the agreement.

Joris is a straightforward and curious boy. When he knew that I was relying on street performances to support my travel expenses, he immediately asked, "So you don't get bored when you perform like this every day?" When he was bored, he continued to ask about the interesting things and difficulties always encountered in street performances.

The kind host told us where there was firewood to make a fire, and also served us a pot of reindeer and potato soup. We added spaghetti to the soup and ate it. The old French couple and his friends also came to join in the fun. I was instigated by Rachel to take it out. Guitar, the cabin suddenly became a stage for performances. That night, we shared the red wine brought by the old woman and the plum wine brewed by ourselves, and we chatted reluctantly through Joris and Rachel's translator, about their journey.

"Why go on such a trip?" No one asked that kind of question that night. Probably people who have really traveled long distances have fully understood this sentence. This sentence is like asking: "What is the value of human existence?" Although it can always answer such a big question, it often feels like it is just casually said. out the answer.

Even after so many journeys, I never cease to be lost.

Three days later, I ended the Long March in the North Cape of Norway by myself and continued to hitch a ride south to the small town of Alta, three hours from the North Cape. Since it was already evening, I wanted to find a place to sell and set up camp at first, but after eating a little food to satisfy my hunger, my intuition told me: keep going.

So, I was reunited with Joris & Rachel when I asked a local college student to drive me to a pickup point 5 kilometers away. They were even worse than me, who had a bad day. Rachel had tears in her eyes when she saw me in the four-hour drive.

We were chatting and hailing a car, and not long after that, the owner of the free car came to us and told us that he could take us. The hitchhikers, two passionate Norwegian college students, took us to Storslett, a small town two hours away from Alta. On the way, they impulsively “borrowed” dried fish that were drying outside and shared with us. Joris & Rachel laughed heartily, letting go of the frustration of waiting for most of the day to hitch a ride.

The next day, we continued to set off from the campsite, went to the supermarket to buy food, and started to stop the car while eating. We didn't even finish breakfast, and one car stopped. A car that has been filled with 4 boys, Joris & Rachel said in unison, let me get in the car first, and they will recruit the next one. But I actually got into the car nervously, and a thought swirled in my mind: If four big men tried to rob me, I would be powerless to resist. The loud music in the car formed a sound wall, which also made me lose the opportunity to talk to them.

After 40 minutes, I was finally able to get out of the crowded car and continue to eat my breakfast, and just as I took the last bite, the car with Joris & Rachel came in front of me, it seems that today is a ride Good day for the car. We walked to Olderdalen harbour together and started our island hopping journey, as if we were partners in the same ship in One Piece, following the direction of the recorded pointer to the next unknown island.

The boat arrived at Lyngseidet half an hour later. We were stopped by the crew who wanted to stop the car first. We had to wait for more than half of the car to stop before intercepting the remaining cars that had not left the ship. We, who failed to stop the car, walked a long way and started again. I was so tired that I dozed off. When I was woken up by Joris, I found that they had recruited the owner of the car and took the 20 kilometers to the port on the other side of the island. The boat has not arrived yet, but there are already vehicles parked and waiting in front of the port.

I took the courage to ask each car directly to see if anyone would come to our destination today - Tromso, and finally found two cars that were willing to carry us. Somewhere in the district so we can meet.

We boarded the ferry again, this time the voyage was shorter, and it didn't take long to arrive in the boat. We got back to the owner's car and went all the way to the city of Tromso, which was very smooth.

We stayed in the OK stores everywhere in Norway, chatting and eating hot dog burgers, and Rachel chatting with me about Joris's romances when she was out walking alone. It turned out that she and Joris were just friends, and although Rachel was born and raised in France, her parents were both from Lebanon. She talked about her romance in Mexico and Italy.

Rachel said of her bubble theory: "When you're only in that place and have a short romantic time with a certain person, everything becomes a memory, and it doesn't interfere with your past experiences in life." I listened quietly. I can't say anything.

"I love nature, and I love to live in reality and let go of everything related to the online world, but I still feel like I can't live in isolation because people are so cute and they always treat us so kindly." Rachel said eloquently Come on, we are indeed the stratosphere in this regard.

"The world is a huge system, and I don't want to get out of the system, and I can't actually do it, because the food we eat and everything in our lives are made by the system, unless we become Complete savages, hunting alone in the mountains on their own, or we'll always be part of the system." Rachel, who was young, understood the world much better than I did when I was 18.

As a traveler, what should it be like? Although becoming a landscape or a road sign brings a little more possibility to this chaotic world, what we can do in the end is to make the system more human.

When walking alone, on the other side of the mountains and mountains, it is such a joy to be accompanied by fellow travelers and applaud each other's journey. Because of this joyous gathering, we will be able to face it in the future. The reason why we feel lonely from loneliness is because we have never opened our hearts to face the original appearance of the world and the unique existence of each other.

The encounter with Joris & Rachel gave me a little more comfort and caring for others in the loneliness of being a hitchhiker in northern Europe.