We left each other in the Lofoten winds, in Moskenes. From there, a dancing ferry took us back to the mainland, to Bodø, and the journey slowly began to change direction. From forward to backward. From discovery to return.
But it wasn't easy. The Norwegian roads were closed by snow, and the Swedish alternative didn't give any discounts either: visibility reduced to three meters, wind at one hundred miles an hour, and fifty kilometers escorted by a snowplow, driving at twenty miles an hour, in total whiteness.
Then, finally, the descent.
Forests, silences and a hollow in destiny
Sweden turned out to be long, straight, all the same. Lakes, pine trees, silence. A landscape that relaxes, but tires. Hundreds of kilometers of calm and routine. Until a lunch break along a river turned into an unscheduled event: the camper stuck on an icy curve, in an abandoned quarry.
No help available. No alternatives. Only time and patience. Three days of digging, rocks, hand-thrown gravel. Finally, the climb back up. And a bit of silent pride.
A sunset, a bridge, a finish line
The day before leaving Sweden, almost by chance, a last reward: twenty degrees, a perfect clearing, a sunset that seemed to be waiting for us. Then the Danish bridges, the endless traffic in Germany, the nights among truck drivers and thoughts.
Verona is back on the horizon. Same, yet different. Because when you drive that long, you have time to think about it. And everything, even what seemed secondary, takes a precise place in the memory.
That's the beauty of returning: it doesn't end the journey, it completes it.
And maybe, somewhere, it prepares him to leave again.
