I fell asleep in Marquette last night, after waking up on another continent.
Needless to say, I made it back from my trip to Germany okay. As magical of a place as the UP is,
I think it’s good to get away every so often, to get out of a Yooper bubble and meet different people, see how they live, and eat their chocolate.
The part about the chocolate, by the way, is very, very important.
It took 22 hours to get from Frankfurt to Marquette yesterday, and while it felt like forever I realize that it was indeed a minor miracle.
I think back to my great-great grandfather Schwemin, who left a tiny village north of Berlin 160-some years ago, traveled to Bremen, got on a boat to Liverpool, got on another boat to New York, and then finally made his way with two brothers to a strange & exotic place called “Marquette”.
That voyage from Germany took them almost a month. In comparison, 22 hours, even with the lady in front of you trying to recline her seat into my knees, is a piece of cake.
I think it’s hard for us to imagine what our ancestors went through to come to the UP. Most of us are descended from immigrants who made journeys from places like Germany or Finland or Ireland or Sweden.
Think what it must have taken for them to leave the only home they knew, make a voyage of unimaginable length, and start life anew in a place they had never even visited.
And us? Well, these days, we complain if cell service drops out on the Seney Stretch or if we can’t get a gluten-free pasty.
That’s why I think travel is good. It lets you look at your life from a different perspective, to meet people that you’d never run into back home, and to ponder how it might have been if someone generations ago hadn’t made that long & arduous journey.
Not only that, but it lets you sample some of the best chocolate the world has to offer.
I’m Jim Koski, and that’s another slice of “Life in the 906.”
