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The problem with writing for a living, I have discovered, is that while I am so lucky and gratified to write in the travel world—truly, the most fun job next to fiction writing—I have very little time to write about my own travel experiences.

Or, possibly, I am just not all that great at prioritizing myself in the Great Freelancer Time Management Race. Still, an experience I had in November during a whirlwind trip to Oslo has stayed with me all these months, and so today, I make time for it. 

Several years ago, a Norwegian musician I enjoy named Sondre Lerche filmed himself singing one of his most beautiful songs, 

. This was part of an intimate concert series he filmed in the museum itself, a place with dramatic and unique sound qualities.

The Emanuel Vigeland Museum in Oslo, November 2023

I knew upon watching the video that I needed to see the museum for myself.

Emanuel Vigeland was the younger brother of noted Norwegian sculptor 

. Most visitors to Oslo are more familiar with Gustav, thanks to the 

large installation of his work at Frogner Park

. But Emanuel's work as a painter, stained glass artist, and sculptor is also visible all over Norway, in museums, churches, and universities.

Vigeland's magnum opus would be the building that eventually became 

—his own mausoleum. Originally, this was meant to be only a museum of his work, but over time he decided he would be interred here himself. The windows he'd planned were filled in and the interior walls of the small chapel-like structure were gradually covered in an epic, 800 square meter fresco he named 

. Life is beautifully and explicitly depicted here, in all stages from conception to death.

Beyond the fresco, however, are the unique acoustics in the mausoleum. There's a seventeen-second reverb after every sound in the room; Sondre Lerche said after hosting concerts in the mausoleum that singing and playing guitar there 

made him feel like he had to learn himself and his instrument all over again

When I entered the vestibule of the museum, I was informed that visitors had to be careful and quiet in the room to ensure a tranquil experience for all. I couldn't even use my DSLR camera in there; the shutter couldn't be muted, and it would have been very disruptive indeed.

It was dark, so much darker than I had anticipated. No windows, of course, but also, the only lighting came from tall, dim lamps that projected their light upward, and a few ground level floodlights directed towards the lower half of the walls. They illuminated what they were pointed at very well, but not much beyond that. 

Despite the gloom and the cold—it was November in a small brick building in Norway, after all—and despite the fact that this is literally a person's final resting place, there was a feeling of life, of a ferocious artistic spirit, all through the room. Truly, Emanuel Vigeland put his full self into the creation of 

 is the word that came to mind when I entered the room, the only way I can describe the feeling of expansive wonder that washed through and over me. I gasped, and it echoed around the room, making everyone turn to look at me. A blush burned my cheeks as I stepped to the bank of chairs in the center of the room, moving as quietly as I could.

The chair I chose scraped across the floor, the sound bouncing off of the painted walls, and my face scorched warmer. I sat as still as any fairy-tale mouse ever did, and willed myself to calm down and be quiet.

As time went by and I took in the fresco that surrounded me, I realized that I was holding my breath. In the next instant, I released it, and thought, 

? Everyone else in the room was also breathing. And not even loudly, but you could still hear everyone inhaling and exhaling, breaths waltzing on the air and colliding with the walls. The room was just doing what it was built to do, reflecting even the most humble and vital sound of life back at those of us within its four walls. I let out another deep breath in a soft huff and listened as it journeyed around the room and came back to me.

I closed my eyes and listened. Somehow, this room managed to be silent and loud all at once. Hardly anyone spoke, and when they did, it was in whispers that we all heard. Footsteps shuffled and tapped across the stone floor. More chairs squeaked and scraped. The door to the vault scraped open from time to time, and this was a deep, sonorous low note, the most solemn disruption.

No matter how still you are, life goes on around you. Life is loud even when it's not. And you exist, perceptibly, even when you're trying not to.

I have spent a lot of my life trying not to bother anyone. I remember being an occasionally loud child who was asked by teachers and authority figures to calm down. I was prone to weight gain, so I was told I needed to eat less and take up less space. I went to church, where I was instructed that everything I liked was a sin, thinking for myself was bad, and the best thing to do was praise God and be less.

In many ways, I defied all of these strictures, but I had to cope with the guilt of being a disobedient nuisance for doing so. It took a long time and a lot of therapy for me to let that go and just live as myself and be happy in it. Because I exist, no matter how small and quiet I tried to make myself. So I might as well just be who I am.

, surrounded by footsteps and breaths and life and the whole soul of Emanuel Vigeland, that brought that back home to me once again. I was delighted to sit there in all that loud silence, experiencing life and just being myself. Awestruck. Thoughtful. Breathing. Existing. 

On the way out, I bowed to the urn of the creator, nestled into its little niche over the door with two amorous skeletons arched over it. I would have offered him a respectful nod anyway, but Emanuel Vigeland allegedly designed the door to very specifically force visitors to bow to him upon their exit, because he was a bit jealous of the acclaim his more famous older brother had always received. Perhaps this is true, perhaps it's not, perhaps it's a blend of the two. I am inclined to think there's a humorous grain of truth to it, given my own revelations in the vault.

The urn of Emanuel Vigeland and his wife, November 2023

I am not sure I intend to visit Oslo again anytime soon; my heart belongs to Bergen, and I want to see that city again before I go anywhere else in Norway. If I do end up in Oslo on a Sunday again, though, I will go back to the Emanuel Vigeland Museum. It's always nice to have an existential experience that's not a crisis.

You are alive, you breathe, you exist. Do it to the extent that you, and only you yourself choose. Never, ever make yourself small just because the world told you that you should be; no matter how small you get, you still exist, you are still part of this earth, and you deserve to be here in all your full glory.

Experience: The Emanuel Vigeland Museum + Existential Reminders

New Year's Day was a source of dread for me for most of my life. The holiday itself was fine, I liked the idea of a fresh start. New year, new me, and all that.

But I would wake up knowing that I was going to be coerced into eating 'good luck food.' Usually black eyed peas in my Southern childhood, later on cabbage from well-meaning friends. I don't like either of these foods very much, and it was torturous trying to swallow down a spoonful after being nagged into agreeing on that much. "It's for luck," I'd be told, as my good-luck demon of the moment shook their head at me in reproach. "Don't you want good luck? Can't you be a 

What kind of luck comes from being nagged into eating food you don't like? How are you meant to be enthusiastic about something you don't enjoy? For years, I wondered about this. I felt like there wasn't any good energy about any part of this, so it surely could not be bringing me luck. Not that I am particularly superstitious, but it felt like having a good luck ritual that was deeply unpleasant was counterproductive. I wasn't opposed to the placebo of a positive ritual. It's just that this one wasn't.

Then came 2017. I wanted to experience a cool, different New Year's Eve.To do something fun and adventurous, go somewhere I had never been. I hadn't really been 

 apart from a work trip to the Philippines a decade before, so I had a fair amount of choice at hand. I decided on Norway because I had learned the language in order to watch a television show, and Bergen because I'd seen pretty photos on Instagram. 

I've mentioned before that this ended up being 

 for me. A lot of decisions were made during and after that trip. One of them, quite accidentally, was how I would face New Year's Day luck traditions going forward.

I woke up that morning not really thinking about lucky food. It was my last day in Norway, and I'd loved every moment of my trip so much, I didn't want to leave. I'd just decided to make a five year plan to uproot my whole life and move to Europe! There was a lot on my mind, and then I remembered that I needed to empty the fridge of my airBNB.

Silvia's guide to budget eating in Norway

 all week, so I had the last of a big pot of fiskesuppe that needed to go. I also had some leftover cooked penne pasta, so I combined the two and made a meal of it. It was a nice enough soup, and I was glad I had started my 2018 with a quintessentially Nordic meal. It felt like I was cementing the idea of the five year plan I'd hatched while standing wharfside at midnight, watching the fireworks over Bryggen and dreaming of a different life.

2018 ended up being a pretty good year, to my surprise. So for New Year's Day 2019, I made fiskesuppe again. And again in 2020, even though we all know how that year turned out for the world. And then I kept going. Every New Year's Day since 2018, I've made fiskesuppe. Mostly I used the 

 base that I'd used in 2018, if I had any. In 2021, I switched things up and made 

, because I'd tried it in Helsinki and it was possibly the best soup of my entire life-it's basically fiskesuppe, but a bit lighter, and often with smoked salmon in addition to the regular salmon.

The point is, every year since 2018, I have made my salmon soup. This year, I made my best one yet; fully from scratch using 

, with thinly sliced carrots, a proper flour-and-butter roux, potatoes, salmon and shrimp. I added my own flair in the form of smoked salmon (the Finns really got their hooks in me with that one, I fear) and some fresh gnocchi because dumplings are love in any soup. I cooked  it in the shared kitchen in my  home, set aside a portion for my flatmate's girlfriend who had asked to try it, and ladled a healthy portion into a bowl to eat on a chilly January day in The Netherlands, because my five year plan has come to fruition and I have indeed changed my life the way I swore I would on that wharf in Bergen in 2018. A bit late, thanks to the pandemic, but I had done it.

I also ate some cabbage and black eyed peas at a friend's house, uncoerced, because right now maybe a little extra luck couldn't hurt, and my attitude has improved immensely since I decided in 2018 that I was going to make my own luck, form my own traditions born out of genuine affection and enthusiasm. I have come to believe that the most important thing about manifesting good luck on New Year's Day is that whatever you do has to be imbued with good grace and happiness, otherwise... what's the point? How successful can any little luck spell be if you're bitter and unhappy about it?

Life is not perfect. But it's more aligned with my wharfside  dreams than I ever dared hope, and I'm going to chalk it up at least a little bit to the soup. Because there is not much in this world that can't be improved with a good bowl of soup, and that includes one's outlook on life.

Traditions: New Year's Day Fiskesuppe

Well, it was probably past time for it to happen, but I took a tumble with my bike.

An OV Fiets in Deventer, the one and only time I made the mistake of renting a gearless, coaster-braked bike in one of the few hilly cities in the Netherlands.

I bought a second-hand city bike—here, they call this style of bike 

, and certainly that doesn't at all give me a complex—back in June, once I had received word that my residence permit had been approved. I had rented an 

 on a couple of occasions and was happy to find that my bike riding skills, aired out on a very limited scale in the US in years prior, were adequate enough for me to feel comfortable with buying a bike and getting used to the 

cycling-forward culture of the Netherlands

(it helped, of course, that I was spending an extra hundred Euros a month on buses around my city—sticker shock has a way of being very motivational, no?)

There was a day that I needed to retrieve a package of mine that DHL had delivered to a local bike shop. While there, I spotted a little blue 

 that fit all the requirements for a bike that I had written down for myself. The price tag was good, the bike in great shape... next thing I knew, I was out on the street pedaling home on a Decathlon Elops that I immediately christened Riley (after my favorite Sense8 character, Riley Blue).

Riley started her life with me having a pair of panniers slung from her rear rack, but these days I prefer a basket.

Life with Riley has been good these last few months. I have souped Riley up a bit with a fun polka-dot bell and a full tune-up. I had her fitted with a really good and supportive seat. I have panniers and a basket for cargo transport on the back and a mount on the front so that I can hook on a cat basket (I haven't done this yet, but the option is there).

Riding a bike feels like freedom, and I love it. I've averaged three kilometers of bike riding a day, most days of the week. I don't always do things like the Dutch do—the way I mount a bike and 

 fold up my kickstand with a nudge of my left heel seems to drive them up a wall—but I am feeling more comfortable all the time. It's great fun, riding a bike.

A special-edition OV-Fiets, one of several bikes I have managed to 

Today was probably a day I should have taken the bus to get to the library. I was feeling off all morning, stressed from trying to figure out how to juggle my workload and annoyed that one of my housemates had left the kitchen in a state after cooking a pasta dinner two nights ago. I hadn't eaten yet, because I didn't want to even look at the kitchen and I didn't have any good snacks in my personal stash. Then I went to the grocery store, where my phone crashed while I shopped and then I realized I hadn't locked my bike when I parked it. It was a real Murphy's Law of a day already, and then I came to a major intersection.

I was already thinking of too many things at once as I approached the crosswalk, and then I was trying to slow down and grab the signal box for the bike lane, but I was too far away, setting me off-balance. As I began to wobble I panicked and forgot which foot to put down (right is best; the knee is wonky, but thanks to scoliosis and my hyperflexible left hip, the right is STILL the more stable, ever so slightly closer to the ground side). I'd loaded my bike basket hastily and therefore very unbalanced at the store... all in all, the whole scenario couldn't have ended in anything but a fall. The dominos were just lined up in the ideal bad way.

Over I went, sprawling out across the bike lane with my little 

But just as there were all bad dominos lined up, there were good ones. Since I was slowing down to trigger the crossing light, I didn't crash. It was a gentle fall, all things considered. And someone was there to help me to my feet when I would have been content to lie in the road and die of embarrassment. I was a little bruised and scraped, but nothing was broken or bleeding. I crawled out from under my bike, thanked the fellow who helped me stand, and picked Riley back up to cross the road on foot.

Riley on a picturesque evening in Deventer a few weeks ago.

I knew I had to get back on the bike, though. I was close enough to the library that I could have wheeled it through the train station on foot and been right there. I didn't have to get back on my bike at all, except, of course I did.And I kept telling myself that as I crossed the street. "You have to  get back on the bike. You have to. If you don't now, you never will." 

My hand was throbbing where I scraped it, there was a super sore spot on my rear end that I wasn't exactly looking forward to putting back onto the seat, and my back was already starting to ache from how I twisted on the way down. I wanted to go home. I did not want to get back on my bike. But I definitely, really had to get back on my bike.

One of my life mottos is a lyric from the song 

 pull up your head off the floor, come up screaming

. Don't just get up, jump up, be ready to fight back. It's helped me get back up both metaphorically and physically on a number of occasions in my life, and now was no different. 

I tend to look for big lessons in things that happen to me—the time 

 comes to mind—but I think this time it's as simple as it looks. Falling off of a bike is a rite of passage for transplants into cycling culture. Getting back on has to be part of it, too. 

So, somewhat gingerly, I eased myself back onto my bike seat and set off again. Within a few moments, I was once more happily racing towards the library with the wind in my hair. A bit sore, a little more careful, but back in the saddle and on my way.

Lessons: Get Back On The Bike

Deventer Boekenmarkt. My library series on TikTok. Obtaining the Dutch American Friendship Treaty visa. The backlog of posts—and photos to go with them—is real, as is my full work calendar for the next three days. 

And yet here I am, about to not talk about a single one of those things.

You will still get photos, though. Utrecht Centrum with view of St. Martin's, August 2023.

I arrived in the Netherlands on February 3rd, 2023. It was a day I had been waiting for since May 31st, 2022—the day I spontaneously decided to move up my immigration plans and turned in my resignation at work. Or, really, maybe that's the day I had been waiting for since January 1st, 2018, when I was standing by the city fjord in Bergen, watching the New Year's fireworks go off and realizing that it was inevitable that I would leave the US to write in Europe one day.

 hard work. I started my journey with serious emotional baggage and sadness. Then, I had no job waiting for me in the Netherlands, no home address, no family and only one friend in the country at all. The last few months have been an uphill slog in terms of rectifying all of that. 

And yet, I am not homesick. I am unwilling to give up. I don't miss home—I miss my friends and family there, but I do not want to go back to them if it means leaving here (sorry, loved ones). I am determined to not ever have to. And that, apparently, is not entirely normal?

Entrance to Walstraat, Deventer, August 2023.

I have watched other American immigrants admit tearfully to struggling in the first few months, even ones who love traveling and spend most of their lives on the road. Heard the tales from new friends. Seen other freelancers warn that starting your whole life over abroad is a brutal and bitter undertaking, because you are so often alone or just without the level of immediate support that you're used to.

And it has been brutal and bitter for me in many ways! That's very true. I arrived in the late chill of winter not long after my aunt passed away, landing during a nationwide transit strike with only my suitcases, my mother, and two cats—and in less than two weeks, the mother part of it all went back to the US. Leaving me cold, jobless, house-hunting and still grieving the loss of my aunt while living in an air BNB in the semi-rural east of the Netherlands. But still excited, a little shocked, determined to make this work, somehow.

I was warned that homesickness would set in, so I've been braced for it. Waiting for the day that I desperately want to go home. Wondering where the tears are. Missing my loved ones, but not to a degree that renders me unhappy and depressed. I am surrounded by people whose first language is not my own, everywhere I turn everything is in Dutch and I am only slowly picking it up. I gave up my car, my job, my entire life as I knew it and shipped myself off to a country I'd only been to twice, and even then, never left the major airport until the day I moved here.

I have never seen so many houseboats and bicycles. Toto, we are definitely not in Kansas anymore.

But seven months in, I am still more terrified that I'll 

 to go back to the US rather than yearning to be back amongst all that is familiar. There have been no homesick tears. I still wish I could have all my friends and family here so I could show them how cool it is, rather than wishing I was with them. I send photos across the sea every day, snips and moments of my new life and home whizzing digitally to households all over the US. I am not at all in a stable place yet financially, I am still digging away at the foot of freelancer mountain, but I am happy. Every day is either a fresh and sparkling new experience, or it's a comforting day spent relaxing into new routines, and I love it all.

Which leads me to wonder: what the heck is wrong with me?

Why am I not occasionally falling apart? Why is my heart not in a constant state of distress because I miss everyone so damn much? Where are the tears, dammit? I was told there would be tears, and I am tired of teetering on the precipice wondering when they'll come out of nowhere and drown me in misery. I am not saying I want to be upset! But I'm supposed to be... right?

I am not strong, I am not brave, I don't feel any more exceptional than anyone else. Not even in this; I don't feel I am better than anyone who has weathered emotional storms through their immigration process. I just feel like there must be something wrong, something broken in me because it's been seven months and despite the vastly different setting and lack of support system, I feel quite comfortably... not at home, but settled? Sort of?

In short, I am having a nice time. I am discovering new things regularly. I have new comfort foods (kaassouffle, my eternal fried snack love). The only thing I truly, truly miss is (judge me and rot in Hades) bottomless chips and salsa at On the Border or the hometown Tex-Mex restaurant my family has dined at since I was a baby. And queso. I miss queso. I miss Diet Coke, real, actual Diet Coke. But I can live without these things. I am fine 

Sint Nicolaasmolen, Denekamp, August 2023.

I do think part of it is down to the pandemic. Already an introvert, I didn't find it to be much hardship holing up in my apartment for two years. I missed traveling, but other than that I was content to live and work in my apartment, only occasionally emerging to talk to my downstairs neighbor or go to the store. 

I'm of the Gen X cohort that transitioned fairly easily from an analog childhood into a digital young adulthood and became accustomed early on to making global connections through the internet. So I am used to having my friends and family virtually at my fingertips. Even if they aren't right at my side, they're still part of my life daily.

Then there's the fact that I moved around a fair amount as a child and young adult, and I had always wanted to travel. And then when 2016 rolled around, I really desperately wanted to find a way to leave the US for good. That's when I began researching and planning, haphazardly at first, then more focused once options began to surface.

And I was a parentified child. I don't resent this, it's how things shook out and we all made it to adulthood largely intact (that one of my younger brothers seemed to revel in diving headfirst off of things and concussing himself cannot be laid at my doorstep, he still does this in his forties). But it did establish an ability to cope with that which I cannot change somewhat earlier on in my life than most folks experience, I think.

Maybe I am not broken. Maybe I was built by life for the purpose of being where I am now, the way that I am?

Autumn is coming to Hengelo. September 2023.

It is not that I love my loved ones less than the people who miss their loved ones so much more keenly and sharply. And it is not that I am better or stronger than the people who struggle emotionally with their immigration journey. But it is also not that I am broken or wrong. I just 

. Life has shaped me into someone who is able to make home out of wherever it is that I happen to be. My home is myself, perhaps, and location is just a living condition.

Maybe I will break down at some point. Maybe I will become desperately homesick and wish I had never set out on this path for my life. Maybe this seven months is the honeymoon period and it's all downhill from here!

Or maybe I'll be fine. Maybe I can just let myself keep marveling at new sights and experiences. Maybe I can just treasure this time in my life because no matter what else happens, I had this. There was a dream for myself that I made into reality, maybe not in the exact way I imagined, but in a way that's still so cool. 

Already I am heading into my fourth season here—I arrived at the tail end of winter, spring has gone by and summer is making way for autumn to arrive. I am closer to my one year anniversary than to my actual arrival date.  I am so excited to see everything that comes next, and that's an exactly, perfectly fine way to be.

Thoughts: Location Is Just A Living Condition (or, Reflections On Immigrating, 7 Months In)

Given that some of my earliest happy memories are of checking out 

 books in my tiny hometown library as a child, it should be unsurprising that in the last year, I've developed a habit of doing most of my freelance work in libraries. 

Libraries are cool, and sometimes in the Netherlands, cooler than most.

Why not, you know? They have internet, they have knowledgeable and helpful librarians, and in the Netherlands, many of them have an attached café. Libraries also have specific opening hours, which makes it easy to create and stick to a schedule (a thing every freelancer you know has struggled with at one time or another). Unless you're checking out books or reserving a workspace, you can typically visit them without needing a library card. Libraries! They're great. As a freelancer and as a novelist, I love them.

Now, the very fun thing is, since moving to the Netherlands, I have visited and worked in more libraries in the last six months than I ever did in the USA.

Of course, I began with the main library in Hengelo, even back while I was still living out of an airBNB and having to travel by bus. After a while, I switched things up and checked out the second Hengelo library branch. Then I started a writing group, got a rail pass and started traveling into Enschede, Almelo, Oldenzaal, all over the 

After a time, it occurred to me that 1) this country is at best three hours wide and three hours tall by just about any train route, with most trains having seatback tables and internet and 2) there is nothing stopping me from visiting libraries all over the country. Oh, and also 3) there are some 

So, okay. I picked a library, packed up my laptop and rail pass, and headed out. The library I picked? The 

The side entrance of Bibliotheek Neude in Utrecht.

Do not let the funky exterior signage on this side entrance fool you. Pay attention to the lions, the weathered-stone, clearly well-aged, monumental lions. This will give you a small, a very tiny minuscule hint as to what awaits you inside.

See, the Bibliotheek Neude is housed in a 

. And it must have been one heck of a post office in its time, because it is a genuinely stunning building inside and out. It is often referred to as a cathedral of knowledge, for reasons that will be obvious right about... 

Yeah, I swore internally the first time I saw it, too. Would you just 

The library is four stories tall and impeccably restored by both 

. Most of the book collection here is spread across the second floor mezzanine and the whole of the third floor. On the topmost floor, you'll find a gorgeous study loft with reservable desk space (though the library has other areas available that do not require a reservation) and 

 where you can charge your devices, if you are an adept and speedy cyclist.

Working amongst the rooftops of Utrecht's city center.

Phone dying? Put on your cycling shoes and get it powered back up in no time.

I reserved a desk on the top floor—you can do this once as a guest, but you would need a library card to do it again in future—for the maximum three hours and worked happily away under those gorgeous exposed beams. What a glorious palace of productivity! Was it incredibly distracting? Of course it was. I still managed to get plenty of work done, though!

The second floor mezzanine, lined with bookshelves.

View of the city, also from the second floor. The second floor is really where it's at, view-wise, inside and out.

A wall of vintage telephones. I didn't check to see what was behind the doors, alas... but it sure looks cool.

I have seriously never been in a more stunning library. And you know what's absolutely wild? There are other absolute architectural gems of libraries in this country. I'm going to visit as many of them as I can. Even the ones in Amsterdam, and I do not enjoy traveling to Amsterdam (sorry, Amsterdam). All the palaces of books I can get to and work in, I'm off to see. I have a mostly unlimited rail pass and all the time in the world. As long as I get work done and can get back at the end of a day to feed my cats, nothing's stopping me.

Is there a great irony in the fact that I left my corporate job because of my hatred of commuting, and now I am willingly commuting most days of the week? But of course, what I hated was losing hours of my life doing nothing but driving back and forth to a building that did not at all look anything like this:

I can't with the gorgeousness of this place.

Yeah, I'd say I made an excellent trade-off in the work-life sweepstakes.

P.S. I believe everyone should be able to sign up to leave comments now, if you'd like to check.

Libraries: Bibliotheek Neude, Utrecht

Growing up in a petrochemical town, I was introduced to 

 at a young age. Any time a chemical transport would come through, blocking off traffic for anywhere from five minutes to nearly an hour, I was fascinated by the number of cylindrical train cars that were covered in graffiti. It was crude but elaborate, usually someone's chosen graffiti name, painted in layers of swirling colors and sharp angular letters on the sides of these tubular steel vehicles. I don't think I ever saw the same name twice.

I am no visual artist and never have been - photography is the only visual art with which I've been remotely competent. I find it incredible that there are people in the world who can look at anything and go, "Yes, that's a canvas." Then  I find it doubly impressive when they're making intricate, multi-layered works of art with spray paint. Spray paint! Any time I have ever tried to spray paint anything, it's ended in sticky disaster. Even with a stencil.

The people who leave their mark on the world with paint, whether it's art for the sake of being art or whether it's a political message - I find them amazing. Admirable.

 |  Østre Skostredet in Bergen, Norway | December 2017

In America, street art can often feel tolerated at best - because so many people mingle street art and simple tagging graffiti into the same category, both often seem to be dismissed as nothing more than a nuisance, with too many people in positions of power willing to eradicate the lot. 

By contrast, when I traveled to Bergen for my first solo trip in 2017, I found street art everywhere. Big and elaborate murals, little messages in pocket alleys, stencil tagging... you name it, I saw it. And I marveled at it. When I started uploading my street art photos to Instagram, I discovered that Bergen is home to a 

thriving street art community and culture

. The official tourism website for Norway even has an 

article/guide dedicated to the topic of street art across the country

. You can buy prints of popular pieces at places like 

When you consider that just a few years ago, a number of original 

 pieces were wiped out by the city government in Bergen, this enthusiastic embrace of the art form is remarkable. And it is an art form - albeit an ephemeral one. I snapped this photo, a piece of a gorgeously colorful and super trippy mural on the side of the Sentralbadet building in December of 2017...

Trippy Mural at Sentralbadet, artist unknown to me | Komediebakken in Bergen, Norway | December 2017

...only to come back two years later and find it painted over with this darkly funny mural of some very  metal woodland creatures. To the best of my knowledge, this one is still there, but you never know when something new will go up.

Wood Land, artist unknown to me | Komediebakken in Bergen, Norway | December 2019

I've seen street art in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Helsinki on my travels. And now of course I live in Hengelo, which is a midsize city in the east of The Netherlands. Here, too, street art is  treated like the art form it is. In the local library, you can pick up 

 that not only leads you on a walking tour of many large street art pieces, it makes sure to name the artist, when it's known.

The Street Art Wandelroute map, a bit creased up from being knocked around in my backpack for weeks.

 and I went out in late May and walked part of the route with our cameras - it was too warm to walk the full route, which is a good few kilometers around - and of course in my day to day, I get to run across more of the pieces featured in the map.

  | B.P. Hofstedestraat in Hengelo, The Netherlands | May, 2023.

Neena - who is going to be very surprised when she reads this blog post and see this photo - is shown here snapping the largest street art mural in Hengelo at the De Beurs parking garage. This huge, colorful artwork was painted by Eelco van den Berg; it covers the whole side of the garage and took 350 cans of spray paint!

 | Molensteeg in Hengelo, The Netherlands | May, 2023

"Dopamine Kid" is one of my favorite little almost hidden pieces, tucked in amongst a collection of works in a side alley. Our little painted artist is spraying the chemical symbol for dopamine on this wall, and the artwork as a whole is a reminder to be consciously looking for happiness.

These fun little aliens are, maybe unsurprisingly, a Pokéstop in Pokémon Go. Based on that and how sun-bleached the mural as a whole is, I rather think this one has been around for a bit! Below the aliens is a remarkably detailed stencil piece depicting a woman in a Native American headdress. Stencil art amazes me, the amount of thought that has to go into the layering process must be incredible.

Monopoly Heist, artist unknown by me | Molensteeg in Hengelo, The Netherlands | May, 2023

The map doesn't say who painted this. I love it. Pretty sure it is a deeper message about capitalism than the whimsical nature and the simple-seeming stencilwork of it would have you believe at first glance. I'd say with the guns it's a little more violent than your typical Monopoly game but have you 

| Beekstraat in Hengelo, The Netherlands | July, 2023

This mural is on the tourist bureau map,  but I didn't see it on our original photo walk - I happened to pass by it last week while on the hunt for a soft-serve ice cream cone. It's a gorgeous piece of work, and a fitting tribute to David Bowie. Unmistakably Dutch, too, with the bicycles tumbled everywhere. Also? If I'd shot further on along the street, I'd have captured the little girl from the cover of the  map.

I love living surrounded by such vibrant, celebrated expressions of life and art. My opinion is that there's no art form that's a louder heartbeat saying 

  than street art. Maybe because of the ephemeral nature of it. After all, a heartbeat is here one minute and gone the next, and these murals could be, too. But while they are here, oh, what a mark they do make.

Pink Flamingo by Med Nøtt | Kjellersmauet in Bergen, Norway | December, 2017... gone by 2019.

Concepts: Celebrating Street Art

In 2017, I hopped on a plane and took my first solo trip to 

. I went over New Year's, because I had always wanted to experience at least one New Year's Eve outside of the US. I don't quite remember why it had to be New Year's - but I think I felt even then that it would be a life-changing experience, and what better time to have one of those than during the shift from one year to the next?

The author in front of a surprisingly relevant deli window in Bergen on December 31st, 2017.

The morning of New Year's Eve, I roamed the Bryggen and Torget areas of Bergen. It's important to explain now that I had spent the last year learning conversational Norwegian in preparation for this trip, and that I was better at reading it than understanding it when it was spoken to me.

I passed the Deli de Luca at the market square - which doesn't exist in that location anymore - and their window caught my eye because number one, it was the first thing I was able to read without laboriously translating it in my head. Two, I was stunned speechless by 

"One who travels, has much to say. One who has much to say, makes many friends."

Traveling was something I had longed to do for years and years. As a Navy brat, I'd grown accustomed to moving here and there within the United States as a child. My father got to sail all over the world seeing new and exciting places (that some of these locations were combat zones didn't register with me at the time), and I wanted to do that, too. In fact I knew two things from a young age: I wanted to write, and I wanted to see the world.

And now here I was in 2017, having published 

only a few months prior, standing in Norway on my first solo trip, getting told by a deli window that yes, actually, travel and writing were what I was supposed to be doing with my life.

Now, what that deli window didn't manage to explain to me at the time was the 

 of it all. I was working in financial technology at the time and had been for seven years at that point. I already knew it wasn't going to be my lifelong career, but I was hard-pressed to know how to do what I actually wanted to do and make a living out of it. My whole life, I had absorbed the message that you weren't supposed to enjoy your career, not really. Enjoyment would come when you retired. Working was about money, about being loyal to the company you worked for, working hard and earning your peaceful senior years.

It wasn't until the pandemic that I, like many people, began to realize that maybe this was actually no way to live. Not properly. Not in any way that could be called living.

Bergen again in 2019, from the observation deck atop Mount Fløyen.

 who, several years ago, upended her whole life and went back to graduate school to get her Ph.D. 

 I thought at the time. Wild and risky but also amazing. I followed her journey with awe on Facebook. I couldn't ever imagine feeling secure enough to do any such thing. 

But I thought about it all the time as I watched Wendy bloom. She got that Ph.D. She got her first book published. These were things she wanted, and she got them, no matter what it took.

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