Being away for some days
I don't travel often. But recently my loved one and I decided to spend a few days away from home. We went to Møn. Perhaps it's an unusual time to go there, but it's a popular tourist destination, and we wanted to be with silence and with nature. We took a train, then a bus, and then rented bikes. Before we departed, we stayed in Copenhagen in a hotel for some days as we had a fellow human stay in our studio apartment.
We always travel light, but when I pack, I always feel like I take half of my possessions with me. Though I practise minimalism these days, rather than extreme minimalism, I still live with very few objects. For a few days, I took with me a couple of cotton vests, a pair of cotton trousers, very basic zero-waste toiletries, reusables such as a reusable net bag and a reusable coffee mug. I don't own winter clothes, but I took with me a light jacket and a large woollen scarf. The heaviest objects I took with me was my laptop and its charger. I brought the laptop with me as I wanted to write this autoethnography and some lines for my book. In Denmark, I was writing my book in Copenhagen, and it felt important to also write it in a rural area, with silence, and with nature. So many thoughts came to my mind in this rural area.
Before I arrived there, I thought it would be something very different, something I have never experienced before. But this area reminded me a lot of the area where I used to live from when I was around 5 until I was in my mid-teens. The pace of life in the rural area feels so different to the pace of life in Copenhagen. The area is mainly agricultural, and there is no overstimulation like advertising and shop windows. The closest supermarket is a bike-ride away, and the supermarket is very small. The tiny towns nearby look sleepy. I think I could live in any of these towns, have a garden, look after it, read, and write often. It feels like a dream.
It was the first time I decided to ride a bike after more than 10 years of bike-free living. Walking everywhere in the rural area is not an option, especially as days are very short now in Denmark. It feels to me that everyone in my social circle, and in sustainability academia more generally, has a bike. My fellow humans are always surprised when I tell them that I don't have one. I don't own a car either. Usually I walk everywhere, or use public transport if it's absolutely necessary. Living this way allows me to deeply connect with my surroundings.
