The time in between, before and after!

The last 1 ½ years of our stay in the Netherlands I travelled 5 hours a day between our house and my job 4 days a week and worked one day a week from home. I liked my job, it was different to what I had done before and took me into a new direction. All which made the travelling worthwhile. According to studies made on travellers most people find it acceptable to travel 32 minutes to their work. For people choosing to travel further the job has to give them something extra. I guess getting up at 5.30 every morning to sit in a full train for 2 hours between Nijmegen and the Hague and then getting on a tram for half an hour shows a certain dedication or stupidity. Not to mention the time you lose on other things. Nowadays it takes me 5 minutes to go by bicycle between my house and the office and its interesting how easy it is to get use to this. I have at least 20 hours extra with the kids each week and when I leave the office I know that no time is wasted on “being in between things”.

Occasionally I do travel in my work and last Friday I participated in an EU conference in Gothenburg about unemployment and life long learning. Gothenburg is situated on the west coast of Sweden about an hour and 15 minutes drive from Ulricehamn. I got up at 6 am and left Ulricehamn by 7. At the bridge of Rångedala the car slipped due to the ice on the road but I was fortunate to get back on track. Three other cars were not. In total more then 10 cars were involved in a traffic accident due to the cold weather and the icy bridge. I continued another 10 km and then a moose ran across the road. Luckily no one hit him and I could carry on. At the airport of Landvetter I suddenly heard a lot of sirens and soon I could see a large pipe of black smoke coming up behind the forest on the south side of the road. Somewhere a fire was burning. This was becoming one of the most exciting trips I’ve taken in a long time. With all this action it occurred to me that I had forgotten to put on deodorant in the morning, something that has probably not happed to me since puberty. The idea of sitting in discussions with lots of people trying to sell in a project proposal while stinking like a pig was not an option so I stopped at a gas station to buy a deodorant. Getting back into the car it didn’t want to start.

Looking at all these individual happenings one could ask oneself if I was supposed to reach Gothenburg? Well, I’m not superstitious and if I’m going somewhere I will get there. Talking nicely to the car and changing from biogas to “the unfriendly gas” got the car going again. I reached Gothenburg and weather it was the Rexona deodorant or the good proposal that did it I don’t know but the day was a success. Driving back nothing out of the ordinary happened but I came to the conclusion that the road between Ulricehamn and Gothenburg must be one of the most beautiful highways in Sweden on a sunny October day.

While travelling that the morning I thought I would never accept a job where I would have to travel again but going back those thoughts were gone. I guess it is not so much the actual time spent on travelling that matter but what you do with the time in between, before and after.

Today it’s Sunday and heavy rain is falling outside. Elsa is out bicycling with her friend Sofia. Nils and Ingrid are playing Star Wars on the Wii. The fireplace is burning, we’ve been melting marshmallows and Jochem is off to the Netherlands, travelling 6 hours to reach his destination.

We are all trying to find the best solutions for the time in between, before and after!