Travels with myself

It has been almost a month since I last posted anything.  In that month I travelled from Auckland through Vancouver to Copenhagen (Helsingor) and back.  It is strange to travel with such ease...  I admit that I found the trip exhausting.  The long flights despite the in-flight entertainment and sleeping pills were tedious (to say the least).  But it was so easy to get from one end of the world to the other.  I just paid my money and put my mind into neutral.

And I arrived at a place where my ancestors surely began their travels - but thousands of years ago.  I had not been in Scandinavia for 30 years.  When I was last there, I felt that I 'looked local' and assumed that it was because I was young and the young dressed the same no matter where they were in the western world. This time I am not so young and again I blended in ...  

My ancestors left - likely first for England or maybe Scotland and then, as the story is told, for Ireland before leaving for Canada eventually after hundreds of years ending up in the West.  I suspect their travels were much harder both physically and mentally - the journeys were long and one way.  How many hours or days were spent in regret for the land and people left behind?  How many days were spent in anticipation of the New World which awaited them?

I wonder if I would understand these my ancestors if I was ever to meet them - understand why they left and what they found...  and would they understand me, how I too feel when it takes hours rather than years to travel away and back again.