Back To Shore

This was originally posted on my previous (now defunct) blog in August 2019.

Around the release of Frank’s new album, two wonderful fans – Sarah and Valerie – had the idea to honour the idea, the songs and the man behind it all, with a fan-project: find many more interesting, important, inspirational womxn or non-cis persons from history and share those stories. All essays can be found on the project’s website

Tales from Wo-Fan’s Land 

and you should definitely check them out, they are amazing. I contributed with an essay about Astrid Lindgren. I can’t really say what made me think of her, but it was such an interesting biography to delve into, so I thought I’d share what I wrote here as well and some of my German readers might learn something new about her too. There were so many more interesting details, but there also was a word limit for the essays 🙂

Astrid Lindgren (1907 – 2002)

Most people who have heard of ‘Pippi Longstocking’ – a red-haired, freckled, fiercely independent and anti-authoritarian girl – might also be familiar with the name of her creator: the children’s book author Astrid Lindgren. As long as I can remember I thought of Astrid Lindgren as a kind and gentle looking, elderly lady. I never really wondered what her life – which spanned almost the complete 20th century – might have been like until I recently read Jens Andersen’s biography „Astrid Lindgren – The Woman Behind Pippi Longstocking“. From which I learned that from an early age on Astrid had been a spirited, headstrong, fiercely independent woman. I learned that in the 1920s she became a young, unwed mother. During WWII she worked for the Swedish Secret Service. And in 1976 her satirical story „Pomperipossa in Monismania” brought down the long reigning Swedish government. For most of her long life Astrid Lindgren had been a female force to be reckoned with.

Astrid was born in November 1907 in the small town of Vimmerby in Southern Sweden.With 16 she started a small revolution, when – inspired by Margueritte’s revolutionary novel „La Garçonne“ – she was the first girl in town to cut her hair and to experiment with wearing men’s clothes. Already in school Astrid had shown a talent for writing and in 1924 she started as trainee with the local newspaper. She was on her way to a promising journalistic career when she got pregnant by her 50 year old, married boss Reinhold Blomberg in March 1926. To avoid harming Blomberg’s ongoing divorce case and to leave the small town gossip behind Astrid on her own accord moved to Stockholm to attend secretary school. When the divorce proceedings kept stalling, 19 year old Astrid had no other choice than to give birth abroad in Copenhagen (Denmark), which at that time was the only place she could do so anonymously. As long as her own future was uncertain she had to leave her son Lasse with a foster family in Copenhagen. By the time Blomberg’s divorce was finally settled Astrid had decided to end the relationship, because as she later in life stated „I knew what I wanted and didn’t want. I had wanted the child, but not the child’s father.“ For the next few years Astrid struggled to make ends meet as a young, single, working woman in Stockholm while also trying to save enough money to keep visiting her son in Copenhagen several times a year. Only after she married Sture Lindgren in 1931 she could finally bring Lasse back home with her, but the theme of abandonment and isolation can be found in many of the children’s stories she wrote throughout her career.

Astrid was a mostly stay-at-home mum until 1940, when she started working at the Swedish Secret Service. She couldn’t go into details about her „dirty job“ – as she called it – in the mail censorship department, but still included some information she gained in her diaries. Those were published under the title „A World Gone Mad“ for the first time in 2016 and are a fascinating account about the horrors of war as they could be experienced in neutral Sweden. It was around that time when Astrid started telling her daughter Karin (born in 1934) the story of Pippi Longstocking. In November 1945 the first Pippi Longstocking book was published and it was an instant success. Astrid quickly became one of the most successful Swedish authors, publishing several books and plays in quick succession and maintaining a strong media presence for decades. By the end of her career she had written 34 original books, which were translated in over 100 languages, had sold over 165 million copies and she was considered one of the most successful children book authors of all times.

Even in her late 60s, she kept writing children’s books, but then also became more outspoken about social or political issues. Due to some weird Swedish tax laws Astrid in 1976 incurred a marginal tax rate of 102% (!). She reacted by publishing the satirical story “Pomperipossa in Monismania” on the day of an important economics debate in parliament. The ensuing public uproar led to the Social-Democrats losing a crucial amount of votes in the general election later that year and thus ending their government after more than 40 years in power.

In 1978 Astrid Lindgren was awarded the German’s Booksellers Peace Price, where she held a wildly acclaimed speech – „Never Violence“ – condemning corporal punishment and any kind of oppressive method in child rearing. With this speech she once again influenced the public debate in her home country and in 1979 Sweden was the first state worldwide to prohibit any kind of violence towards children. Up until the 1990s, she kept making her voice heard for children, the environment and many more issues dear to her heart.

Astrid Lindgren died on 28th of January 2002. Her funeral on Women’s Day (8th March) was attended by the Royal Family, Government Officials and had hundred of thousands of people lining the Stockholm streets for her final journey and even more people watching on TV to say goodbye to the beloved author and one of the fiercest Swedish opinion-makers in the 20th century.

Sources:

„Astrid Lindgren – The Woman Behind Pippi Longstocking“ (Jens Andersen, published in English in 2018)
“A World Gone Mad – The Wartime Diaries of Astrid Lindgren“ (published in English in 2016) 
Astrid Lindgren Company Website 

When I was coming home from my first day trip on a German section of the Way of St. James last weekend, I had tentatively considered setting out again this Sunday (today). When I then had looked at my schedule for the week I right away did the sensible thing and postponed that idea. Today-Me is very grateful to Sensible-Me from last week.

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Work | The first full week after my time off was packed with meetings and conferences and too much work for my liking. At least too much for the week after a vacation. It all went fine and I / we got a good deal of things done and projects signed off by the people we need the ok from, so I shouldn’t complain too much. I should and do and this week definitely did appreciate that I’m working in this environment. I get along well with me very capable co-workers and we enjoy working with each other. I like that my work has significance or at least that I feel that I’m making a (tiny) positive change to a cause that is important to me personally. One of the long days was a conference which is always a great way to get new ideas or just be newly motivated to work on what I’m working on.

Funny anecdote: One of the speakers used a Titanic metaphor and then went off script with “By the way: there would have been space for more people on that door! And you try more than once to get the 2nd person up, right?” I guess it was a good thing that the average audience probably was old enough the remember the movie.

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Endings | Midweek there was a bombshell announcement of a marriage ending, which for a short while kept my mind more occupied than it should. It’s not my marriage. Neither a marriage of family members, friends, neighbours, co-workers or any other people in my everyday life. I should not care that much or indeed not care at all. Both are artists I’ve grown to love through their work, which often resonates deeply with me and whom I’ve also grown to care about through the way they present themselves to the world. From what I “know” about them they both are kind and decent people. I wish them well and it’s just sad to learn that they couldn’t make their marriage work. It sucks! Plain and simple! Being a fangirl can put you in a weird headspace on occasion, let me tell you.

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Introspection | Interesting side-note to the previous prompt: While one part of my mind for a bit kept mulling over that ending, the other part kept asking myself, why I was mulling over it to begin with. Similar introspective thoughts occurred this week in regard to my own actions / behaviour / relationships with other people. To paraphrase Eckhart Tolle: I was watching the thinker quite a lot in various corners of my life this week. While paying a bit more attention to my thoughts and emotions I’ve also realized how far I’ve come over the years. With therapy of course, but also with learning and getting insights from other sources. Trying to keep working on being more compassionate with myself. Learning to not doubt that things sometimes actually work well. Trusting that I actually know what I’m doing – that’s meant for the imposter syndrome gremlin in my head. It’s been an interesting week in this regard.

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Celebration | I’ve been part of the organisational team for an anniversary celebration yesterday. It all went well (in the end), but I found the whole day rather stressful, in the beginning at least. This all added to the introspection mentioned above in two ways: For one I realized that I felt quite comfortable with myself in situations which years ago I would have dreaded to be in. Situations which I later would have overanalysed about how much I had messed it all up and had said stupid, embarrassing things. The other aspect I haven’t quite figured out yet: Did I stress myself or did other people stress me? Did I have wrong assumptions? Did we not communicate clearly? Am I too sensitive or are others just a bit blunt? Lots and lots of thoughts maybe for this following week.

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Recharge | Summed up: A super busy week at work. Preparation for said anniversary on Friday afternoon. Anniversary all day yesterday (including taking down the tents, sorting the leftover food and such). Of course, my day today had been super chilled so far. Sleeping in. Watching a bit of Ben Lloyd’s Lost Evenings night 3 stream on Instagram during breakfast and such. Sorting through and editing yesterday photos. Catching up on my reading, because I haven’t done enough of that since I got back home from vacation.

I’ve finished my 2nd novel penned by Alexene Farol Follmuth, who writes contemporary / (dark) fantasy under the name Olivie Blake. I enjoyed both the YA romcom “My Mechanical Romance” by Alexene and Olivie’s adult, more serious romance “Alone With You in the Ether”.

Even though they were quite different – obviously, different genre and target demographic – I enjoyed both immensely, because I absolutely love her writing in both. Here I sometimes claim to be a writer (if anything in a creative genre at all), but I clearly lack the words to explain what I love about it. It felt different and refreshing and less like following the trodden path of phrases and words and plots used by many others before. There is another YA out, which I will definitely buy and I’m very tempted to give Olivie Blake’s “The Atlas Series” fantasy trilogy a go. Because I adored her writing. I don’t really care all that much for (dark) fantasy though or at least I need to be in the right mood / headspace for it. We’ll see…

Lyrics “One Foot Before The Other” – Frank Turner, 2011

While thinking about how to start this post I encountered a rare (for me) non-native English speaker dilemma. My first impulse is to call the activity I’m planning to write about “hiking”. That’s the verb I learned in school. When I started to travel to the UK for vacations as an adult I’ve realized in the UK they like to call the same activity “walking”. Which felt and to be honest still feels a bit weird. I walk to the bus stop. Or the shops. If I put on heavy boots, carry a backpack and take my trekking poles, I’m not going for a walk, am I? I’m going on a hike!

I got interested in hiking as activity a few years ago, when I started to be more mindful about being active, working out, fitness and such. I trekked up Ben Lomond in 2017 for crying out loud.

I’ve never been consistent with any fitness / being active routine though and I admit working out / running / hiking have been an on-off activity for me over the years. I’ve slowly come to just accept that and not beat myself up for every time I’ve fallen off the wagon. But instead applaud myself for every time I get back on.

Every once in a while, I have considered a proper hiking holiday on one of the many long-distance routes here or in the UK, even though I’m drawing the line at carrying my clothes and all my stuff in a backpack. I’m too high-maintenance for that and luggage transfer is expensive.

I did sort of start with the London Capital Ring Walk (126 km), because getting to the start and end point of a chosen stage is doable by public transport.

“Started” in the way that I did a first stage in June 2022. But even though I haven’t done another one the several times I have been to London since, I still haven’t given up on the idea of completing it. Bit by bit over the next few years.

A similar idea got stuck in my mind quite a while ago. I doubt I’d ever consider hiking the actual “Camino de Santiago” (Way of St. James) – the legendary hiking pilgrimage through northern Spain – to the tomb of St James in Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. But over the last decades all over Europe historical pilgrimage routes which feed into the Camino have been re-established, with digital maps, proper way markers and all. One of them – the Westphalian route of “Jakobsweg” (Way of St. James in German) is passing through my federal state. 200 km from Osnabrück to Cologne. All these re-established pilgrim hiking routes come with recommended stages to do in one go. This one is supposed to take 11 days with an average daily hiking distance of ~ 18 km.

I won’t be doing that. I plan to do it bit by bit. Hopefully more consistently than the Capital Ring Walk in London. But in a similar way that I plan to mostly use public transport to get to a starting point and back home from an end point. Last weekend I’ve mapped out the first half of the stages: which train station to start and end by and how long it will take me to get there.

Even when I say public transport most of the first few trips will include a bit of a drive to a bigger train station. Because that means I’ll only have to switch trains once and not twice and thus lessen the risk of missing a train or a connection because the first train is late or cancelled or something.

Part 01: Osnabrück – Natrup-Hagen (~ 17 km)
Saturday, 14 September 2024

Time spent on the actual ‘Way’: ~ 6h 20 min
Complete distance walked that day: ~ 21 km

Even though I’m in well enough physical shape to walk 15 – 20 km a day, I had no idea how this first day would go. No idea how quick or slow I would be. Spoiler alert: I was / am slower than the “average” walking time I found on various website about this walk. Which was bothering me for a moment until I realized that I don’t have to give fuck about average. I will do this my way. And if that’s slower than others, so what? Others probably won’t take as many photos as me either.

But as I had no idea how that first day would go, I wanted to be on the safe side and had planned an early start: Leave home around 5:30 to drive to the station, park the car, maybe grab something at the bakery, get on the train at 6:20 and be at the start of the path around 9:00.

In true and these days expected German public transport fashion the rail app informed me around 4:45 that the train I had planned to take was cancelled. The next one from that station would be an hour later, which would mean I’d get to start my hike an hour later

I checked alternatives from a different station in a bigger city and changed my plans, which included an additional 0.75 km from the car park to the station. But I knew that carpark, knew how to get there, what it would cost and couldn’t be bothered to look up alternatives.

The train rides as such went fine. I decided to wear a mask and was the only one doing so, but I’m so used to that after all these years. It was a lovely walk (another 1.5 km to add to my tally) along the river and through mostly empty city centre streets – it was early Saturday morning!

Until I arrived at St. Peter’s Cathedral, which can be considered the official starting point of this pilgrimage route.

I guess back in the day, pilgrims started the walk / pilgrimage with attending mass inside. I did not. From now on I’d be looking for the sign of the yellow scallop shell on blue background. (There was one earlier, closer to the cathedral, but the marker didn’t look as nice).

All in all, the trail was well marked, even though I sometimes was overly cautious and impatient and instead of trusting that I was on the right way checked the digital track on my map way too often.

The path leads through the old city centre…

…and from then on for quite a bit through the city. Residential areas, the occasional park, but all in all not so photo-worthy to be honest. That only changed about half way through, when the suburbs finally turned into a more rural scenery.

I had started a bit too brisk in the city, but then managed to get into a good pace. Not too fast and the walk wasn’t too strenuous. Even after the half-way point I was still considering to walk further than originally planned and get to the next alternative train stop. Yes I had that alternative planned out as well. I’m a plan-for-all-contingencies kind of person. Especially when it became clear that I would reach the planned for train stop in the long afternoon lull between departures and might have to wait there for about an hour.

But between km 12 – 14 I realized pushing on would be a stupid idea, because my feet were getting tired. I also knew there’d be another 0.75 km back to my car at the end of the day and also some steeper sections after my originally planned final stop for the day. I did not trust my tired feet anymore to manage those without stumbling or worse.

At km 16 I was very glad that I had given up the plan to push on.

In the end I only spent about 30 minutes waiting for the next train and the rides home went mostly fine. The 2nd train managed to accumulate a delay of 17 minutes on a 53-minute ride though As if the German rail gods (demons? gnomes? Whoever is in charge of this mess these days) wanted to bring the day full circle.

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I did not really set out to do this as some kind of spiritual experience, though I did set out trying to be more mindful about what I was doing and most of all what I was thinking while I was on my way. Which might be a first step to a spiritual experience? I don’t know. I caught my mind quite often not being in the present moment, but rather ruminating about things past or daydreaming about stuff in the future. We all do that, I know. I sometimes feel / am afraid I do that more than is good for me. I don’t know. I’m working on it.

At least I managed to stay off all the socials / mails / anything digitally distracting – except WhatsApp – the whole day and even till this morning, so that’s a step in the right direction. Turns out: I did not really miss a thing. Go figure!

Now let’s plan when to go out next and what to pack that I had forgotten this first time: sunglasses, gloves, something to sit on…, that kind of things.