Italia, mi sei mancata!

It feels strange to be on the road again. As if I’d not planned for this even before I decided to return to Sweden, perhaps because ‘the road’ this time goes through the sky. It feels almost like I’m cheating. As if traveling should not be this easy. Like crossing Europe with a single step aboard an airplane at the price equivalent of 21 Euros is somehow wrong.

Outside the Baltic sea has passed and now the fields of Germany stretches out in all directions bellow us. How odd that lands and boarders that have been fought over for centuries barely register as I glance out through the airplane window... Instead I just see a single culture in the full bloom of its power.

Let’s be frank, up close our civilization is kinda ugly. Compact and concrete, utility built out of stone and brick and steel reinforced concrete.

If you compare the structures of today with the old architecture of your average Italian city the modern buildings usually can not hold a candle to the old in their aesthetics.

But that changes when you look at them from above. As you ascend above the roofs and treetops all the nooks and sharp corners that mark our civilization fade and the underlying structure appears. A grid of interlocking networks that branch out and recombine, roads and roundabouts interlocking and connecting us like diodes on a motherboard.

Our culture is not concerned with tiny details like crenelated overpasses and fanciful edifices because our cities are not meant to be viewed from the ground up. Our culture is not concerned with details, but with the grand total of things. The overview effect.

There is a bridge 5 miles long that connects the southern peninsula of Sweden to the eastern edge of Denmark, seen closely there might not be much art in that continuous stretch of cement. But from the sky that bridge looks like the graceful stroke of a zen masters pencil.

This is what I think about as I effortlessly cross the invisible boundaries that my over privileged passport allows me.

We are a species that transcends boarders. We are a people that have reached out to the utmost corners of the earth. We are the generation that has mastered the art of flight.