Only 15 hours from home if you go from Albuquerque by way of Minneapolis and Amsterdam. I love it here—all green (I admit to an abnormal ‘green’ fixation) and quiet and not-grand but beautifully ordinary. My hotel is right on a huge lush park so perhaps I can find some ducks of which to take pics of tomorrow.

The trip here was totally uneventful but nevertheless degrading the way airline travel has become. Herded here and there and packed together and spoken sharply to and frozen and fed bad things. I decided to make it through by conducting a stream-of-consciousness writing experiment, creating a poem called DELTA, copying Ron Silliman’s BART. Silliman rode BART one whole day and simply recorded what he observed in one pages-long sentence/poem. One of my favorite poems. But I can do that I said to myself. So I scribbled madly sometimes but just existed in a condition I fondly think of as airfunk other times. Turns out airfunk isn’t my invention; there’s a site making videos that is named AirFunk, but it seems so perfect for describing one’s state of being on long flights I intend to claim it for future travel-writing.

Well then. Here I am at Ellingsens Pensjonat/Bed and Breakfast. It’s quite comfortable and sweet really and by a sumptuous park and near the Palace—not sure which palace but I foresee many photo ops tomorrow. Took the airport bus the 35 or so miles into the city and then a cab the few blocks here. The fares were exactly the same! Checked in just after 6pm and now trying to stay awake until 10. After a long long day of travel it is so completely satisfying to reach your hotel and so totally irresistible to crash. But I did not; here I am hours later in a daze. For me the worst leg of this trip is over—except for last one going back home from Korea. I am so tired, too tired to go to check out the many restaurants I am told are just around the corner, not an ounce of energy left in my flown-out old body.

As anyone who’s ever read this blog knows, I am completely in love with the idea of being Minnesotan and Norwegian and feel so right with the world in both places. I am here and very happy and settled down in my modestly charming two-day home.