When we originally planned to visit Scandinavia in 2020, it was just a dream of Victoria’s to see the land of her ancestors, which are both Norwegian and Swedish. We had the deposit down on a Rick Steves tour for August, 2020. That was when the pandemic was a Chinese flu.  It was only a couple of months later that the whole thing was cancelled and deposits returned.

Late in 2021 we wondered if the tour had been revived. We looked online and were stunned to see a succession of Scandinavian tours booked from mid-summer to early fall and nothing but waitlists to sign on to.  The tour business was alive again in Europe. So we signed up to wait.

In early 2022 we were notified that our number had come up on one of the lists at a time we had already planned a theater excursion to Stratford, Ontario.  We struggled with re-scheduling, but couldn’t make it work. In the meantime we signed up on waitlists for September.

Just a few days later, about on the two-year anniversary of our original booking, we heard our number had come up again. We were eligible to take the Scandinavian tour in the first two weeks of September. We were in!

With the pandemic receding, the only threat was that a war was raging in Europe, and Sweden and Finland were applying to join NATO.  We were traveling in the shadow of the brutal Ukrainian conflict.

How should we feel about being tourists across the Baltic Sea from a battlefield? The colors of American privilege were never so vivid.  We had survived a pandemic and a couple of waitlists to jump on a tour of geography and culture, while brothers and sisters in the Ukraine were enduring missile barrages and food shortages several hundred miles to the south.

The irony of our fortunate timing coinciding with the brutal timing of the war sits on my conscience. And yet Americans live every day of their lives with the privilege of prosperity and peace, while one-third of the world labors under poverty and conflict. Probably our trip merely emphasizes the incredible privileges we live with every day.

We continue to offer the support of  our own and America’s funds and our prayers, but they feel so insignificant.  Perhaps much more could be done out of guilt, but that is not what I consider real help. Perhaps there is more, but I have to give with understanding, not with random excess.

So Scandinavia it is.  Timing could be better, but we live with the fate of the over-blessed.  Taking this trip only makes it more evident than ever. We are living a dream and praying for another dream: peace in Ukraine. Our waitlist is fulfilled. May it be so in Ukraine by the time we board our plane in September.