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The Midnight Sun
by Jean d'Isle

ollowing a rather demanding year of study at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, I expected, with bridled enthusiasm, to be ordered to Washington, D.C. to apply my newly gained skills in some lowly staff position; the type of job where success is measured in terms of volumes of paperwork processed and where one never dares reflect on one's accomplishments at the end of the day.

When the orders came, I was snatched from limbo in our nation's capital and given an assignment in Spain. Sighing over missed opportunities for digging my car out of January snows and basking in the sauna of summers in D.C., I resigned myself to this obvious mistake by bureaucrats I had come so near to joining.

In planning for the move from California to Spain, we were determined to use this assignment as an opportunity to see as many western European countries as possible in the 30 days allowed between duty stations. We made arrangements to fly to Germany, where we would rent a car and drive and drive and drive.

On landing at Frankfurt airport, we loaded 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter into our rented Ford Taurus and began the incredible journey. Our itinerary called for us to drive as far North as we could go through Scandinavia, then South through all the countries we missed on the northern swing, eventually arriving in Spain. We felt reasonably comfortable in Germany, having had a tour of duty there in 1966. Although not fluent, both my wife and I could make ourselves understood and had no problem getting food, lodging and directions.

As we left Germany, we began to notice a gradual change, not only in the landscape, weather and hours of daylight, but in our ability (or rather inability) to communicate. Road signs became useless unless they had pictures. They didn't tell us anything. The people were friendly and helpful, but fewer and fewer spoke English. The alphabet might just as well have been Martian -- words looked as if you should be able to read them, but half the letters were decorated with bars and dots and slant signs. Eating became a challenge. We finally found a menu item both children would eat, identified as "Kuckling", that turned out to be chicken. And in a grocery store, thanks to some helpful illustrations, we found our other staple: "Barnmal", which turned out to be cereal. These two items got us through Scandinavia.

When we reached Finland, I thought I would have the opportunity to reestablish verbal communications with the natives, using Russian. Bad mistake. The person to whom I spoke Russian let me know (in fluent English, and not unkindly) that we Americans do not have much appreciation for history. Pressing North through Hammerfest and on to Nordkapp (North Cape), we found our way blocked from time to time by huge herds of reindeer. Even more memorable were miles of rough road where no other cars appeared for hours; and the seemingly endless unlighted tunnels-long stretches of anxiety, wondering what would happen if we broke down in one of them. Eventually, we reached our northernmost point on the trip and witnessed the celestial phenomenon of the sun descending to the horizon, taking a bounce and starting its climb back into the sky. We had seen the Midnight Sun.

Next Week: Combien de l'argent avez vous?

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Jean d'Isle is a retired naval officer living in Hawaii.During his military career he served in a number of overseas assignments, including Germany, England, Spain, Viet Nam and Puerto Rico. Following his retirement, he was an adjunct faculty member of Hawaii Pacific University and is currently under contract with the U.S. Navy at the submarine base in Pearl Harbor.

Jean's column, View From d'Isle, is a regular feature of VegSource On-Line Magazine.