At some point yesterday, I crossed a horizon of some sort. I’m not sure what horizon, exactly, but I feel it. I’m suddenly in the North. And then I tell myself, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, you have no idea what ‘North’ really is.” But I do sense a shift.
Whether it’s a different quality to the air, a different light, a change in the landscape, a certain vibe, or an overlapping of all these things. I don’t know. I’ve left the Balkans, of course. Exactly where is something I’m also not sure about. Does Bratislava still qualify as “Balkans?”
The E75 is beginning to reveal a new dimension, a difference on some level at which I hadn’t yet felt any difference over the past 1,500 kilometers.
I’m fascinated by the fact that two communities, Sitia and Vardø, are connected by a freeway interspersed with stretches of two-lane road. I’d originally mused that this route might have been created so that Vardø residents could vacation in Sitia— which is a dream destination. Palm trees. Greek wine. That’s why I planned my drive for the off-season, so I wouldn’t get bogged down in return traffic and end up in a jam at the Norwegian border. But I’m close to discarding my original theory, because honestly, I no longer believe it. But why else would two islands be connected by a road that’s several thousand kilometers long? Why?
In any case, I’m now in “the North”— the southern North, at any rate.