The Moment I Stopped Feeling Like A Tourist in Norway

I hear English before I see her.

Not American English. British English.

Spoken to someone beside her somewhere beneath the enormous ceiling of Nidaros Cathedral, and after a week of Norwegian, German and languages I cannot place, that sound stops me in a way I did not expect.

I am staying with a friend. Her English is perfect, but it is her second language. In a place full of conversations I don't understand, I am grateful to have her as my translator. For the first time in my life, a full week passes without the sound of my language nearby. I don't travel for the comforts of home, it's always to experience something new, but when home finds me anyway it is a pleasant surprise. I know this feeling from traveling within the States, too. Somewhere up north or out west, surrounded by accents that aren't mine, but the moment I hear a darlin' or a hey, sugah' in that thick molasses drawl, what I'm really hearing is that my people are here. At Nidaros, I begin to understand what that means.

We walk farther into the cathedral and the place holds its own atmosphere that feels warm and quiet and even intimate despite the height of the ceiling. There is a bustle of people moving around to see the murals of Jesus and to attend prayer. The ceiling is so intricate that sound behaves differently, with an orchestra rehearsing, it felt as if the music was humming in my heart. I will never forget that sound, nothing short of holy.

In the middle of the noise — Norwegian, German, languages I cannot place — I hear a sound that lifted out of the chatter. Familiar. Almost unfamiliar. English. Not American English. British English. A woman, speaking to the person beside her. I feel seen before she sees me, and I reach for the smallest kind of connection, just a hello.

I walk over, introduce myself, and tell her how nice it is to hear a familiar native speaker after what has felt like an eternity. It is an emotional thing. Embarrassingly emotional. She is happy to see me, too. In some way it is strange. Separated by the deep blue Atlantic all our lives, and yet we meet in a place neither of us is from, and we speak the same language. Language was the bridge. We talk for a bit. Where I am from. Where she is from. Nothing important. Everything important.

I am from the Lowcountry, and she is from England, and on paper we don't have much in common in that cathedral, but we had a wonderful conversation anyway. I had heard English my entire life without thinking about it as the language of home and family and the South, because at home you do not hear the accent at all, it is just air. Until after a week without it, a stranger's voice could stop me in the middle of a cathedral and make that cathedral feel like a porch. Maybe the connection was never Southern. Maybe it was never even English. Perhaps it is hearing yourself in a place where you didn't expect to.

Travel does not expand your worldview because you see new things, it expands it because you hear old things differently. And sometimes, if you are lucky, it gives you five minutes with a stranger whose voice sounds like yours. We may never speak again. I don't know her name. But I remember the sound of her voice beneath the cathedral ceiling, and the strange rush of happiness that came. I had gone to Norway to hear something new and instead, I heard home.