Bad news from home while in Mariehamn, Åland Islands

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When you’re traveling, you’re cut off from friends and family back home. You can get in touch online, but physically and psychologically there can be a great distance between you. Travelers must get used to this, but sometimes it’s more difficult than other times.

What can you do when you get bad news from home while you’re traveling?

Early this morning, Masayo and I left Stockholm, Sweden by ferry for the Åland Islands. Once in the small community of Mariehamn – quiet, clean, Scandinavian, covered in soft yellow leaves — we’d just sat down for dinner when we got the news that my Grandpa had passed away in Florida at the age of 96.

How do you handle something like this – far away from home, at the beginning of a long trip that was months in the planning?

Right away, we had some practical things to figure out. Could we make it over for the funeral? Would we need to cancel the rest of the trip and use our budget to visit family? What do you do when you’re on the road and something like this happens?

But that was evening time; we had a long day of moving around and exploring before that.

Where is Åland, anyway?

Åland is a collection of small islands that lie between Sweden and Finland in the frigid Gulf of Bothnia; culturally Swedish and technically Finnish, they actually have a high degree of autonomy, with their own government, stamps, and flag. Small and out of the way, they aren’t on the regular tourist trail at the best of times — and here in late October, even the capital Mariehamn seems like a well-maintained but deserted ghost town.

After waking up to a blood sugar of 159 (not too bad) we strolled through the other-worldly streets of Stockholm’s Gamla Stan section through the pre-dawn darkness, past closed craft shops with lit-up display windows, to the subway station. A bleary walk to the ferry terminal later, the sky was getting light and we settled into a few hours of Scandinavian ferry life.

This was a weekend ferry full of drunken Swedes who make the round trip to take advantage of the well-stocked duty-free liquor stores on board. In fact, when we arrived at the ferry terminal in Mariehamn, only Masayo and I and one other traveler walked down the gangway into town; all the other tourists walked straight onto another ferry waiting to carry them back to Stockholm.

The ferry isn’t so much for transportation, it’s just a floating excuse for locals to get around paying alcohol tax. Humans are weird.

Aboard the ferry, a little while after our pastry and coffee breakfast on a bench outside as the smooth, cold Swedish waters passed underneath us, my blood sugar was 78. I had some chocolate before eating the bland, tasteless pressed sandwich purchased from the ferry terminal in Stockholm. Well, actually, they forgot to charge us for it so it wasn’t exactly purchased, in a technical sense. Not a good meal, but cost effective.

After disembarking in Mariehamn, we walked the short up the hill to the hotel we’d booked, Hotell Cikada, and we saw no other people outside on the way. Just little tree-covered paths, colorful, simple wooden houses, and the very occasional car. In the room, from where we could see the Swedish consulate building and could taste the salty air, my BG was 252. I handled that ferry sammich rather poorly, insulin-wise. Sigh.

The Hotell Cikada had bicycles we could use and we rode around Mariehamn in the afternoon. It’s a pretty small town, on a narrow bit of land in the sea. The air was wet and the sky was overcast, but the colors of the houses and leaves and people at ground level burst forth from everywhere. It’s an imminently enjoyable little community.

Back in the room by BG was low – 65. A bit of an up and down day, diabetes-wise.

The news comes

The news about Grandpa actually came to Masayo and me as we sat down for dinner in the hotel restaurant, where (unlike in our room) the wifi worked. After ordering food but then getting the news, we sat and looked at each other, not knowing what to say. At age 96, it wasn’t a tragic shock or anything, but something of an emotional wallop nonetheless.

There were a couple dozen women from a local sports team celebrating a victory at a long table next to us. A gigantic trophy sat on the table and they chanted excitedly, sang rousingly, laughed incessantly and jumped up and down, even to the bemused merriment of the few other diners. Masayo and I sat with our tasty and pricy fresh fish meals, trying to join in the spirit of the festivities but feeling distracted and withdrawn.

We did some research about getting out and finding a flight from somewhere (Sweden? Finland? Estonia?) to Florida, but it didn’t look like we were going to find anything. Finally in emails with my dad we established that our European trip would continue as planned, and we’d visit everyone (especially Grandma) in a few months, as planned.

After struggling through dinner I ended the night with a 161 blood sugar, almost exactly where the day had begun. Too many highs and lows in between of course. Something for me to build on. Perhaps it’s my own unhelpful superstition, but I get a sense of satisfaction when blood sugars at the beginning and the end of a day are about the same, no matter what happened in between.

My Grandpa and his own love of travel

My mustachioed Grandpa, Robert, was in the Navy in World War II, and was a bank manager afterwards. He loved to sail his boat around Florida and in the Caribbean, and both he and Grandma traveled the world. The last trip they took together was, in fact, to Scandinavia (his family was from Norway and Denmark). She sent me photo prints of them in Helsinki and Oslo, places I’d been myself, posing with Viking ships or smiling guards in front of palaces, having a ball.

Now here I am, stuck with Masayo on this quirky little unknown island in the middle of nowhere, thinking back on Grandpa’s impressive life and his own adventures. As a kid I used to love looking at his bookshelves when we were visiting them in Florida. It was the varied collection of someone with an eye cast to exploring the world.

He had works on sailing and history, English-French dictionaries, atlases… things that in retrospect were very travel- and international-themed. (My favorite thing, though, was a poster on the wall of a topless tropical native girl wearing flowers in her hair, standing in the bright sun looking off to her right, with deep green palm trees swaying in the background. Grandpa couldn’t quite conceal the impishly raised eyebrow that went along with that distinguished mustache.)

I think a lot of my love of travel and curiosity about “other” places came from these afternoons in my grandparents’ house, with its wooden barometers, curios from abroad, antique sextants, travel books, and the large, enticing sailboat, named after my sister, floating in the canal out back.

He was pretty strong right up until the end, and the last time I saw him, a couple years ago, he was lucid and in good humor, flirting with the nurses at his retirement home to the amusement of the rest of us (especially proud and admiring Grandma). We took him out for a pasta lunch and he had a beer with his.

I’m sorry to not be able to go to the funeral, but I’m glad that I am here in Scandinavia — on an island most known for its sailing tradition. Grandpa seems everywhere here, proud of us for coming all the way here.

I think he’d have wanted to be here too, if he could. Thanks for the inspiration, Grandpa! You’re always with me on my travels.

Have you ever received big news from home while traveling far away?

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