FULL CIRCLE

MAY 20, 2022 – In early December I flew from Heathrow to JFK. In New York I presented my passport for the last time on my Grand Odyssey. It contained so many stamps I’d had to have extra pages added by the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm, and the cover was so worn, the gold lettering and national emblem had all but disappeared. After clearing customs, I exited into the terminal’s zone of freedom. There to greet me with a large “Welcome Home Eric!” banner were two of my three saintly sisters. I was overjoyed to see them, and we joined in a long embrace, delighted to be reunited. No brother has ever been as lucky as I.

After a brief stay in New York, I flew home to Minnesota for another long embrace, this time with my parents. If I found joy in seeing them again, and as a parent myself, I can now imagine that they probably wallowed in relief that their wayward son had returned—in one piece. If my absence had taken several years off my mother’s life, perhaps my reappearance restored a few of them. In the days that followed my homecoming, I gladly attempted to appease my parents’ insatiable curiosity about the world I’d traveled. It would take far longer, however, for me to decompress and re-adapt to American life.

Over the course of nearly a year, I’d . . .

. . . spent $9,462.00 . . .

. . . seen 27 countries (in chronological order):

Fiji

New Zealand

Australia

India – Kashmir

Abu Dhabi

Egypt

Greece

Turkey

Yugoslavia – Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia

Hungary

Czechoslovakia – Bohemia, Slovakia

Austria

Italy

Switzerland

France

Spain

Portugal

Germany – Federal Republic

Germany – German Democratic Republic

Denmark

Sweden

Norway

Poland

Finland

Soviet Union – Russia

Holland

United Kingdom – England . . .

. . . traveled by the following methods (alphabetical order):

Airplanes – 11

Automobiles (private) – 136

Bicycles – 15

Boats – 44

Buses (local) – 80

Buses (long distance) – 33

Feet and Legs – 2 and 2

Horses – 1

Horse-Drawn Carts – 3

Motorbikes – 3

Rickshaws – 9

Shikaras – 22

Taxis – 31

Trains (local) – 11

Trains (long distance) – 97

Trams – 51

Undergrounds – 73 . . .

. . . stayed in the following accommodations (alphabetical):

Airplanes – 3 (number of nights)

Boat Decks – 7

Bus Rooftops – 1

Homes (private) – 85

Hostels – 58

Hotels – 24

Houseboats – 3

Huts (trekking) – 3

Parks – 1

Trains (berths) – 19

Trains (seats) – 16

Railroad Stations – 1

YMCA’s – 9 . . .

. . . and most critical of all, engaged in long, substantive conversations with 975 people from around the globe.

I was hardly the same person I’d been at the outset, and I hadn’t anticipated the ongoing challenge of “curating,” let alone fully absorbing, my experiences.

Now, 41 years later, I’m as thankful as ever that I had the time, the means, and the motivation to see the world as I did. Though I landed not far from the tree of my origins and put down stakes in the very place where I’d started, the Grand Odyssey transformed how I looked at life and the world around me. That transformation defines me to this day.

                                                  THE END OF ONE JOURNEY; THE START OF ANOTHER

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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson