Making Swedish pancakes and friends: A story of being alone but never being alone

As I sat at a table for one at an outdoor café in Greymouth -- a town of 13,000 on the west coast of New Zealand’s south island -- an unfamiliar woman sitting at a table nearby offered me some garlic bread.

“I can’t possibly finish all of it,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said, already shoveling the leftover snack from the stranger into my mouth. “Where are you from?”

Nine times out of ten this is my opening line when meeting anyone in this country since “New Zealand” is never the answer, and some sort of story or connection usually follows.

“From Sweden,” she said.

Now that I thought about it, I did recognize the accent. “Oh really, I’ve been traveling with two Swedish girls all week and I’m just waiting for their bus to pull into town.”

For not knowing Helen and Madeleine at the time we booked our cross-country tours out of Auckland, we had nearly identical itineraries, with the exception of the leg to Greymouth that morning. I had come via train from Christchurch. They were heading south from Nelson and would be here any minute. For only knowing them for a few days, I was growing anxious for their arrival, trying to find anything to do to occupy my time like laundry and eating other people’s food.

“I have a great idea,” I said to the leftover garlic bread woman. “I’ve been practicing Swedish, and I think it would be fun to say something to my friends that they haven’t taught me yet.”

She liked the idea and wanted to be part of the plan. We came up with, “It’s so great to see you again.” The woman wrote it down on my notepad in Swedish, and I butchered the words to make them look like words I knew in English. I recited the line back to her a half dozen times before she told me it was perfect. I thanked her for the bread and the language lesson and headed back to the Neptune hostel located right off the Tasman sea just in time to greet my newest friends.

After hugging Helen and asking her how her trip was, I dropped the bomb.

“Huh?” Helen said with a confused look on her face.

I repeated the line, which I had been practicing aloud, flawlessly to the best of my knowledge, for the past 10 minutes.

“I don’t understand what you are trying to say,” she said.

“Yeah, is that Latin?” Madeleine asked.

It appeared I had failed miserably. They had mastered my language, and I couldn’t tell them it was good to see them again. It was so far off that they couldn’t even guess what I was attempting to say.

I cut my losses, folded some laundry, had a quick shower, and picked up right where I had left off with my friends as we headed to the local brewery tour we had signed up for that evening. The temperature was a perfect 70 degrees. There was a nice breeze in the air. I could smell the beer as we neared the Monteiths brewery. I was happy to see everyone again.

***

Helen and I had clicked right away. I met the 19-year-old Swedish girl and her 20-year cousin Madeleine on a black-water rafting trip through a chain of caves on the northern island a few days back. Madeleine assigned me to the duty of protecting Helen since she apparently had every phobia you can name, all of which were an element of this trip at one point. Heights, dark, insects/creatures. Now that I think about it, I’m not really sure why she signed up for this particular excursion in the first place. But I’m glad she did. My job of protecting her basically ended up entailing discussing the fact that we should hang out later that night.

After a successful cave rafting trip, we hopped back on the bus to continue our journey across the incredible country. I had been sitting with Tom and Jim, a couple of guys from England who I met at my hostel in Auckland, and a guy named Joep from Holland. With the addition of the Swedish cousins, we decided it was time to throw a party in the back of the bus, buying two cases of Tui and putting down as many as we could before reaching Rotorua.

It was about midnight when we decided to gather around a table at our hostel to host an international drinking games convention. The British guys taught us a game called Save the Queen – the objective being to throw a coin with the Queen of England on it into someone else’s beer when they’re not looking. The victim then has the responsibility of chugging their beer to, you guessed it, save the Queen from drowning.

Next it was team Sweden’s turn. Their game simply involved telling us to start drinking. They then sang a Swedish song and when the song was finished, whatever beer was left in our bottles was poured onto our head. I’ve learned this is something Helen likes to do quite often. So far I’ve had three beers poured on my head this trip. Two of them had nothing to do with the game.

The game I seriously injured myself during consisted of bending over to pick a cardboard box up with our teeth without using our hands or touching our knees to the ground. Instead of taking it slowly, I lunged for my target, hyperextending my knee. When I woke the next morning and couldn’t put pressure on my left leg, I considered obtaining some crutches or seeing a doctor. Instead, I went skydiving. I can almost walk normally.

***

I can’t say I’ve met anyone quite like Helen. She is a sweetheart and a brat mixed into one charming personality. She likes to bite my arm when I fall asleep on the bus, but when she apologizes in her Swedish accent, claiming she didn’t mean to do it, I can’t help but smile. She makes every situation more exciting than it’s supposed to be. This morning at breakfast, she cracked open her hard-boiled eggs by hitting them against her head. This afternoon, as we walked through Queenstown, she convinced the guys at the fire station to give us a ride around town on the fire truck.

I will have to say goodbye again in a few days as I leave New Zealand and Helen heads for Thailand. It’s a reoccurring situation that no matter how much I do it, I will never get used to. I have met some great people in each city I travel through, always having to part in the middle of getting to know them. It’s a strange kind of lonely.

I am sure to meet new people each place I go, but that doesn't mean I want to replace anyone's company. Really, I have no choice if I want to continue traveling around the world. Traveling does not allow for any sort of comfort zone. My time with Andrea in Fiji seems like months ago. My skin has finished peeling from the sunburn I got there.

***

I arrived in Christchurch around 9 p.m. a few nights ago, and it appeared I would have to sleep in the train station since there was zero availability anywhere in town. This may appear to be an ignorant strategy - to arrive into a town with no place to stay - but it had worked fine ever since Auckland. Luckily, there was one other guy in the station in the same boat as me, calling every place in the phone book with no sign of hope. We exchanged names and the fact that it appeared we were both screwed, and failed to come up with a plan. Then an angel disguised as a cab driver named Mike appeared and said he had heard about a cancellation at a nice place in town.

Now it might seem unusual to split a hotel with a guy from England I had met just minutes earlier, and it may have seemed odd to me prior to heading to New Zealand, but let me assure you that this is perfectly normal behavior in this country. I basically have gotten to the point in which I assume everyone is traveling the world and everyone is looking for a cheap way to get by and to help each other out whenever possible. So Jonathan asked me if I was an ax murderer. I said no. And I caught up on some much-needed sleep that night. All I could think about as I lay in bed was meeting back up with my group. I had only known them for half a week, but traveling with someone seems to speed up the progress of the relationship.

***

Prior to meeting the garlic bread woman at the café, two girls walked toward the entrance and I heard a familiar accent.

“Excuse me, sorry to bother you, but where are you from?” I asked.

I assumed she was from the states, and I was right. New York to be exact. I can't recall her name since we only chatted briefly, but I remember the conversation in which we agreed we haven’t seen many Americans during our time in New Zealand, and that it’s a shame our culture doesn’t inspire young people to travel more at a young age. In the past week I’ve had conversations with young travelers from Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales, England, Austria, Canada, Chile, South Africa, Holland, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Denmark, Finland, Spain and a few other places I’m sure I’m forgetting. But this was only the second American I had met since I arrived in Auckland last Sunday. And with the unbelievable amount of travelers wandering New Zealand, I’ve met a lot of people. Everyone has a story, and everyone is envious of what everyone else is doing, no matter how amazing our agendas are.

Meeting an American was a unique encounter, especially in such a small, secluded town, but I didn’t jump at the chance to hang out with her despite the rareness of the sighting. It just didn’t thrill me to meet someone from home like you might think it would.

Seeing how people from the other side of the world live is stimulating. To eat their food and learn their languages makes me feel alive. It’s also interesting to see how independent some people can be and how others struggle to survive. Yesterday, I gave Joep the rundown on how to do laundry before Helen, Madeleine and I went to explore a glacier. Stuff as much in as you can. Set it to cold. Wait. He seemed ready to take on the challenge. Upon our arrival an hour later, we noticed that Joep had put the washing powder and his clothes in the dryer. I haven't laughed that hard in 2007.

A few nights ago Helen and Madeleine made a special kind of pancake for Joep and I. It’s a recipe from their Swedish grandmother. The kitchen in the hostel was full of different smells and spices and people from all around the world. It was such a normal thing – people making dinner – but seeing so much culture in one tiny kitchen was a moment I can't forget. I wasn’t allowed to flip a pancake, but Helen let me get in a few pictures to make it look like I was participating. Mostly I just drank New Zealand beer and watched the sun set over Lake Taupo.

I don't want to leave New Zealand. I don't want to say goodbye again.