See you later!

(If you want to read the whole story, it starts here.)

Once upon a time, I had a couchsurfer from Australia. He spent a week in my apartment, watching his computer. He had been travelling for one year, and was supposed to travel for one more. But he was out of cash, ate my food, and hitchhiked between couchsurfers. He was super depressed. I told myself, that if I ever get depressed when travelling, I’d take the next boat to Europe and the train home.

This happened now.

But there were no ships taking people, and not that many buses anymore. And the buses that were, felt like packed corona containers.

It’s hard to be a human during a pandemic, since you yourself is what people fear. Like being a walking pile of shit. One example: I was eating on the outside of a restaurant. No people there at all. But the police came and told me I had to eat far away from the restaurant.

I found a hostel, but had to wait outside for 5 min while they checked if they could have a Swede. They could, because I had been in the Americas for six months. If not, they couldn’t accept me. There was a stench of puke and urine inside. The hostel owner gave ”small, dry coughs”, which is a very troubled sign.

Hotels cost more than 100 USD, and you have no idea if this will take weeks or months. My visa is expiring. And there is sign of life falling apart around me. I don’t have a BankID so I can’t even see my own money, and can’t sell stocks to fill my bank card. And the stocks have been falling. My cellphone dying also meant that I couldn’t use Whatsapp, so I lost those contacts.

All the people walking around Dallas are homeless. Everyone who started talking to me, asked for money.

I went to Greyhound to check for buses. They only had short trips left, except for one to Atlanta that would leave in the morning. I took the train to the airport and found a ticket to London, the day after. I slept in the airport, went to London, and there I got a night ticket to Helsinki. I slept in Helsinki airport, and then took a morning flight to Stockholm and met my family, outside.

Stockholm is cold, empty and everything works. I especially love the tap water, as silly as it might seem. Lying in bed and just drinking it!

And Stockholm is a nice change from the rest of the world. Restaurants are open and you can sit inside, eat the food and drink the beer. I managed to rent a room in Telefonplan, and I’ll sit here and think about what to do with my life.

The rest of the world is still left to discover. But it was great visiting the Americas, meeting old friends such as Nate and Nate, and getting lots of new friends.

Whenever ships start taking passengers across the Atlantic, I’ll be back!

And yes, flying is very bad for the environment, and I hereby added 1.7 ton CO2 to our rapidly heating planet. Since 2007, I’ve only flown when it’s been really necessary. This time I have created two subscriptions of carbon removal, here, removing 12 ton CO2 per year. (Recommendation by Robert Höglund from Oxfam). Carbon removal is way better than “climate compensation”, because the latter is very uncertain. You plant trees, that might later burn, or add to projects that would else have been built anyway. Plus that the trade is packed with false companies. Carbon removal means that you actually do remove CO2 from the atmosphere, by digging down coal made by trees, CO2 stored in new buildings, and direct air capture.

If you dislike pandemics as much as me, please avoid meat. Meat is produced with antibiotics, which will in the future create much worse pandemics, by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. It depends on what country you live in:

But even countries like Norway, Sweden and Finland use some of it for sick animals. And if you go to a restaurant, feel sure that the meat comes from the worst countries. And this is also caused by milk products, so skip your cheese, and let’s live without future pandemics! So that I can travel as much as I want 🙂