Road trip to Scandinavia : Hamburg – Stavanger via Flensburg: Merci Vincent !

If you cared to read my previous posts about Zurich and Hamburg, you are aware of my drastic change of plans… no Don Giovanni in Oslo tonight, no Kon Tiki Museum, no Copenhagen… instead I am heading to Berlin for The Rolling Stones concert…!

Well, it turns out that the highlight of my trip was to enjoy an almost family reunion with my childhood friend Vincent!

And on my way I was able to stop in Flensburg for a short yet fruitful visit to the ECMI office thanks to my other friend François Grin!

Once upon a time, I used to live in the 19th district of Paris… my neighbors there were a family of Franco-Vietnamese who lived two floors below.

There were 3 children in this family, Florence, Anne and Vincent. The latter two being closer to me in age were always part of my life even though we lived in three distinct parts of the world.

When Vincent, an experienced French expat moved to Norway, I knew this time round I would visit him… I just had to rush a bit since after two years, Vincent will now go back to work in Paris.

I always say that the journey is more important than the destination but Stavanger wasn’t even meant to be a destination…and it became a marvelous journey into our childhood intimacy and memories.

This amazing experience of sharing, hospitality and rare pleasure is the living proof that cosmopolitan Paris produced (I am sadly not so convinced it still does…) a brand of cosmo people, open-minded and sharing a common culture and values way beyond our diverse backgrounds.

Vincent is remarkably sociable, a “bon-vivant” such as only France can produce!

After an introductory tour of Stavanger and a party at his friends who are moving to San Francisco, we went to Bergoy, a charming resort in the Fjord, where we wined, dined, swam and shared laughter and music tips! with Nicole, a remarkable young Austrian prodigy

I owe Vincent a totally new music library and much more than that, I owe him a rare moment of pure friendship.

Add to this the troublesome awaiting for my Rolling Stones tickets which confronted us with both German and Norwegian amazing lack of flexibility and you have enough material for my next play…!

Merci mon copain, tu es magnifique !