One of my favourite ways of spending time is to get away from where everyone else goes, and explore the ‘everyday places’. I am not good in crowds at tourist sites – I feel I learn a lot more about the place I am in by trying to get under the skin of the place itself, away from everything that is arranged to convey a certain appearance.
I recently spent a weekend in the central part of the United States on a work matter. In between work obligations, I managed to find time to explore the area where Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri meet and stroll around in towns that foreigners have never heard of.
In my own country, Denmark – half the size of the state of Indiana – it is a topic how to keep the outer parts of the country, the rim, connected to the more urban areas (‘Udkantsdanmark’). In comparison, the distance – not physical, but in every way – between downtown New York or Los Angeles, and the small sleepy towns in the Mid-South Central USA that once were, is astronomical.
