This weekend, I caught a ferry from Sweden to Denmark’s small island of Bornholm. I had zero expectations of how my days would be spent, but let me tell you I was so pleasantly surprised. We arrived very late on Friday night and awoke Saturday to a range of possibilities.

My friends Hannah, Bella, Quynh, and Becca, as well as others, all hopped on bikes and started out on a journey to the city of Rønne which, we were told, hosts a farmers market on Saturdays. This would be a 24 kilometer journey (15 mile), coast to coast, to reach Bornholm’s capital city and what was supposed to take us an hour and 15 minutes, took us approximately three hours for many different reasons.

First of all, there were SO many hills! Inexperienced bikers as we are, we decided to save our legs the pain and guide our bikes up the long inclines on foot. I felt like a kid racing down the hills with the wind whipping through my hair. This journey allowed us to experience diverse landscapes. The first being fields and farms overlooking the water that were enhanced by the clear blue sky and brilliant sun. It felt as though we were biking through Van Gogh’s paintings. We also rode through forests lined with pine trees where the sun danced between them and smelled exactly like Christmas. We spent majority of our time in the countryside with geese, kitty cats, fruit and vegetable stands, and fields of daisies and the occasional sunflowers. We rode past a large red wheelbarrow with a sign that read “Free Apples” so we proceeded to ask the gentlemen tending to the garden to take some, and I’m so glad we did. It was the most delicious apple I’ve ever eaten. I felt like I was living in a fairytale. After, we rode into a field of daisies where ,of course, we stopped to take pictures.

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Processed with VSCO with l9 preset

Our destination left much to be desired. There were only two stands in our promised farmers markets and nothing else to do in the town. Although we did stop in a cafe on the harbour to enjoy a smoked salmon sandwich and a chai latte. We laughed about how sore every part of our bodies were going to be and how sore our rears already were. As amazing of a bike ride we had, none of us could muster up the strength to make another 15 mile trek back home by dinner. With that being said, we were determined to catch a bus back to the city of Gudhjem where we were staying. Our friend Sara took the bus to meet us for lunch and said it might be possible for us to bring our bikes back on the bus as no one was on there. So we waited for the next bus back to town which only came every hour. We designated someone to start crying to get the bus driver to sympathize with us and let us bring five bikes on if they opposed. After waiting a bit, the bus arrived, and it was packed. A look of dread appeared over all of our faces. Luckily, I think we had the nicest bus driver in all of Denmark. He put each of our bikes on the bus for us and even accommodated room by moving strollers to make us all fit without a single complaint.

I had never understood the phrase that said that the journey was better than the destination till yesterday. It was the most beautiful realization.

I’ve been contemplating a lot lately  about how I picture my life going, and I’ve even decided to write a serious bucket list.  Recently, I wrote a short story and in it I had written, “To me, life should be an equation where your choices equal the sum of your existence. How exciting is it to imagine your existence being so overwhelmingly large because you weren’t afraid to live.” My whole life, it bothered me that I never had a clear end point in my life. I don’t know what I want to be or where I want to live because I’m in love with all these versions of what my life could be– I could live in the desert climbing rocks with two dogs or in New York City and be surrounded by artistic geniuses or in the middle of nowhere with horses and chickens and tending a giant garden. Why not do all of it? Like my biking adventure, my life isn’t about a destination, I’m going to make my life a journey of every little thing that I can picture myself enjoying. Maybe this is common sense, but I needed to learn it. My life doesn’t have a clear end point, and it doesn’t need to. I feel at peace accepting the fact that I don’t need to know what the future holds.

Enjoy your journey.

Love,

Chrisann