Friday, April 07, 2006

Stranger in my home

As the last person getting my sleepy butt out of the airplane, I notices something crucially different - it freezes in the little pants I am wearing, and so does the rest of me. One thing is evident, I am back in the Ye old country of the Vikings.
They used to wear fur - smart littel buggers. but as I claim to be an animal defender, I am staggering along in my latex, and nylon and cryon - shivering...

It is one thing that is strange about returning to a place I have spent nearly all of my life - It feels as though I never left!
Walking through the streets of Oslo, looking at the things I have cast my eyes upon 12336,5 times before - I feel as if I never left this freezy place at all...the only difference is, at the same time I see it like I saw it for the first time :
Its not just the weather that is cold, the buildings look cold as well. The lines are minimalistic and strict, the colors in grey, earth and steel. It makes me shiver a little extra.
The train I am on is very posh, (if it is possible to say that about trains - but you know what I mean.) Compared to Spain, everything suddenly seems very posh - things I before looked upon as Normal.
It is also very strange to walk around and realize that almost everybody around me are Norwegian. I am not the exotic one anymore - I blend in with the crowd. It is good and bad at the same time.
Descending the train, I bump into a man, "Perdona me", I say automaticly - he gives me a long sceptic look.
Walking around in the streets, taking in the well-known atmosphere - I stare at the people around me, and all of a sudden I feel my roots - my home. It touches me, this is a totally new feeling for me. A thought so evident, yet always so far from my mind hits down on me - "this is where I am from". I walk around in this city, that is mine and not mine at the same time. And I look at the faces, so familiar, and yet so far away. Maybe they have gotten closer now, that I dont live here anymore.
And I realize one thing - I had to leave my own people, and the country I was born in, to feel a relation to it. I had to turn my back at it totally before I could call it home

But when looking around me, I feel that one hing has not changed, I see the faces, their conversations, what their lives are about, what they want and look for, and I know - I am still the outsider in this country.
- I am still a stranger in my home

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