Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Scandinavia June 2009
With the California property sold and Carol and I settled in Washington with our daughter and grandsons we finally got to go on our long delayed Scandinavia trip. It was worth the wait!
A Danish for breakfast, anyone?
Yes, Carol and I are on the road again, thankfully. After two years of not traveling because of putting our house up for sale in California, finally we are settled in Washington state, my old boss at Great Adventures is safely behind bars for the next five years, and it is definitely time to get back seeing new places and making new friends.
Since Carol had never been to Scandinavia and it had been almost 50 years since I’d been here, it seemed like a good place to get the feet moving again. We flew to Copenhagen to begin our trip. We have our customary five weeks and I am sure that it will all pass too quickly and we’ll be home again. I remembered my time here so fondly, I was really curious how I’d see things through my ancient and aged eyes instead of those of the youthful vagabond I was at the time.
Sticker shock: While not the most important change, it certainly was the one that hit me in the face first. Our $60 cab ride of 15 minutes was our introduction to the fact that the dollar is really in the toilet and that things are really expensive in their own right. $12 will buy you a big mac, if anyone would have that desire, $4 will get you a ride on a bus, a small coffee and a pastry is $7, and it will cost you a $55 bridge toll to get to Sweden. All these new realities simply remind us that we’re not in Kansas anymore, which thankfully, we never were.
The biggest fundamental change I’ve seen is the ethnic diversity that now imbues itself to Danish society, with all the benefits and knee jerk reactions that is concomitant with that fact. In 1962 Danish society was made up of the stereotypical blond haired, blue eyed vision we see on television. However, with the open borders of the European Union, floods of peoples have left their homes in Rumania, Poland, Cyprus, and other countries where people have struggled for both the freedom of expression and the hope of a better life for themselves and their children to all the countries of Europe, Denmark notwithstanding. There is also a large Muslim population which has been thrown into the mix. These people have added a cultural mosaic to the society at large. You see national dress from many far flung places, making a distinct mark on the streets.
For all the good that this diversity brings, it inevitably brings out the worst in some of the local inhabitants along the way. When times are good, the problems are minimized, however with the global economy being what it is, people begin to look at the newer arrivals as the reason they individually are losing their jobs and that times are tough. There has been a knee-jerk reaction on the part of Many Danish politicians about the evils and perils of diluting the cultural and racial blood of Denmark. The whole incident with the Danish newspaper cartoon which so enraged the Muslim world had a huge impact on Danes natural tolerance and there is a significant debate going on within Danish society about the benefits and detriments of immigration. It is an issue that will not go away, and one that the Danes like most European countries, not to mention the US, are forced to face.
But even with these changes both superficial for the tourist and deep seeded for Danes, it is still the country which is considered to have happiest people in Europe. You’d never know that from the faces of the people who rarely show their emotions. Danes don’t acknowledge others while walking. Lissbeth, our Servas hosts, says that she has passed the same man almost every morning of the work week for 30 years, and he has never made the slightest hint that she is there. He lives nearby, and she leaves on her bike as he leaves his house walking, and watches him pass stony-faced without a hint that he knows who she is. I asked her about her neighbors, and she said she didn’t have a clue who they were, or what they did. This, she told me, is typical of Danes in general. We joked about the fact that when I held the door opens for Carol in a shop all the Danes would walk through without even the slightest acknowledgement. One of Carol’s books said the Danes don’t even have a word for “please,” and they never say they’re sorry. We asked our hosts about this and they couldn’t come up with examples of the opposite.
Bikes, bikes, and more bikes: Michael, Lissbeth’s husband, told us there were more bikes than people in Copenhagen. The two of them have three for example. There are special bike lanes wide enough for 2-3 bikes and they have their own traffic lights. On one of our trips to city center, we noticed a group of bicyclists who made better progress than the bus. This makes for a very fit population. You rarely see fat Danes. I finally saw an extremely fat couple and thought, “Okay, they are some.” Then she opened her mouth, and it sounded like Iowa or Nebraska to me.
Haight Asbury meets NYC graffiti artist meets Nordic sensibilities: There is an area of Copenhagen called Christiania which proclaims as you enter: “You are now leaving the EU.” And so it seems. An old army base that, was abandoned, was appropriated, ala Alcatraz, by a group of cultural dissidents who pretty much lived by their own rules. A group commune of a sort. Growing their own food, selling crafts and artistic creations, they survive today as a flourishing community within the overall Danish landscape. Naturally, or so it seems to me, along with that freedom came an open drug trade in Marijuana and Hashish. The police didn’t bother them and people openly smoked on the streets of the community with impunity. The police didn’t bother them because they could monitor the trade and knew exactly what was going on. Eventually, politicians objected, somebody wanting to get reelected raised a ruckus, the police raided the place over a period of time, the marijuana trade went underground, scattered, and now the police lost their insight to the illicit trade.
Now, however, there seems to be an understanding that this is its own little world, and, while we were there, canisters of pot and large chunks of hash were openly bought and sold in front of all passers-by.
The area has become the second most popular attraction in Copenhagen, after Tivoli Gardens, and large tour buses pull up in front and hordes of tourists from around the world descend upon the area to gawk, and be both fascinated and disgusted by the graffiti littered area.
We hit the weather perfectly - beautiful skies and an 80 degree temperature. Lissbeth told us that they only get 10 days like that a year. Naturally, the parks were filled with people enjoying the day. The canals were lined with people sitting beside the water eating lunch, having a beer, and generally soaking up the sun.
Although we haven’t hit the real midnight sun quite yet, we already feel the effects. It doesn’t get dark until 11:30 at night, and gets light at 3:30 in the morning. It’s difficult to know when it’s time to start slowing down because we are so accustomed to the amount of light doing that automatically for us.
Danes love to drink beer. There’s no other way to describe it. However, even so, we saw little sign of public drunkenness, unlike Germany, for example, where it is really an all too common sight. Danes are far more concerned about smoking than drinking. National campaigns have cut the rate of tobacco consumption dramatically. You can’t smoke inside any public building, for example.
So now we’re off to Stockholm and a stay with another Servas family. Then we’ll head straight north to the northernmost towns in the world. New things await. We can’t wait.
Stay safe,
Carol and Jim
Since Carol had never been to Scandinavia and it had been almost 50 years since I’d been here, it seemed like a good place to get the feet moving again. We flew to Copenhagen to begin our trip. We have our customary five weeks and I am sure that it will all pass too quickly and we’ll be home again. I remembered my time here so fondly, I was really curious how I’d see things through my ancient and aged eyes instead of those of the youthful vagabond I was at the time.
Sticker shock: While not the most important change, it certainly was the one that hit me in the face first. Our $60 cab ride of 15 minutes was our introduction to the fact that the dollar is really in the toilet and that things are really expensive in their own right. $12 will buy you a big mac, if anyone would have that desire, $4 will get you a ride on a bus, a small coffee and a pastry is $7, and it will cost you a $55 bridge toll to get to Sweden. All these new realities simply remind us that we’re not in Kansas anymore, which thankfully, we never were.
The biggest fundamental change I’ve seen is the ethnic diversity that now imbues itself to Danish society, with all the benefits and knee jerk reactions that is concomitant with that fact. In 1962 Danish society was made up of the stereotypical blond haired, blue eyed vision we see on television. However, with the open borders of the European Union, floods of peoples have left their homes in Rumania, Poland, Cyprus, and other countries where people have struggled for both the freedom of expression and the hope of a better life for themselves and their children to all the countries of Europe, Denmark notwithstanding. There is also a large Muslim population which has been thrown into the mix. These people have added a cultural mosaic to the society at large. You see national dress from many far flung places, making a distinct mark on the streets.
For all the good that this diversity brings, it inevitably brings out the worst in some of the local inhabitants along the way. When times are good, the problems are minimized, however with the global economy being what it is, people begin to look at the newer arrivals as the reason they individually are losing their jobs and that times are tough. There has been a knee-jerk reaction on the part of Many Danish politicians about the evils and perils of diluting the cultural and racial blood of Denmark. The whole incident with the Danish newspaper cartoon which so enraged the Muslim world had a huge impact on Danes natural tolerance and there is a significant debate going on within Danish society about the benefits and detriments of immigration. It is an issue that will not go away, and one that the Danes like most European countries, not to mention the US, are forced to face.
But even with these changes both superficial for the tourist and deep seeded for Danes, it is still the country which is considered to have happiest people in Europe. You’d never know that from the faces of the people who rarely show their emotions. Danes don’t acknowledge others while walking. Lissbeth, our Servas hosts, says that she has passed the same man almost every morning of the work week for 30 years, and he has never made the slightest hint that she is there. He lives nearby, and she leaves on her bike as he leaves his house walking, and watches him pass stony-faced without a hint that he knows who she is. I asked her about her neighbors, and she said she didn’t have a clue who they were, or what they did. This, she told me, is typical of Danes in general. We joked about the fact that when I held the door opens for Carol in a shop all the Danes would walk through without even the slightest acknowledgement. One of Carol’s books said the Danes don’t even have a word for “please,” and they never say they’re sorry. We asked our hosts about this and they couldn’t come up with examples of the opposite.
Bikes, bikes, and more bikes: Michael, Lissbeth’s husband, told us there were more bikes than people in Copenhagen. The two of them have three for example. There are special bike lanes wide enough for 2-3 bikes and they have their own traffic lights. On one of our trips to city center, we noticed a group of bicyclists who made better progress than the bus. This makes for a very fit population. You rarely see fat Danes. I finally saw an extremely fat couple and thought, “Okay, they are some.” Then she opened her mouth, and it sounded like Iowa or Nebraska to me.
Haight Asbury meets NYC graffiti artist meets Nordic sensibilities: There is an area of Copenhagen called Christiania which proclaims as you enter: “You are now leaving the EU.” And so it seems. An old army base that, was abandoned, was appropriated, ala Alcatraz, by a group of cultural dissidents who pretty much lived by their own rules. A group commune of a sort. Growing their own food, selling crafts and artistic creations, they survive today as a flourishing community within the overall Danish landscape. Naturally, or so it seems to me, along with that freedom came an open drug trade in Marijuana and Hashish. The police didn’t bother them and people openly smoked on the streets of the community with impunity. The police didn’t bother them because they could monitor the trade and knew exactly what was going on. Eventually, politicians objected, somebody wanting to get reelected raised a ruckus, the police raided the place over a period of time, the marijuana trade went underground, scattered, and now the police lost their insight to the illicit trade.
Now, however, there seems to be an understanding that this is its own little world, and, while we were there, canisters of pot and large chunks of hash were openly bought and sold in front of all passers-by.
The area has become the second most popular attraction in Copenhagen, after Tivoli Gardens, and large tour buses pull up in front and hordes of tourists from around the world descend upon the area to gawk, and be both fascinated and disgusted by the graffiti littered area.
We hit the weather perfectly - beautiful skies and an 80 degree temperature. Lissbeth told us that they only get 10 days like that a year. Naturally, the parks were filled with people enjoying the day. The canals were lined with people sitting beside the water eating lunch, having a beer, and generally soaking up the sun.
Although we haven’t hit the real midnight sun quite yet, we already feel the effects. It doesn’t get dark until 11:30 at night, and gets light at 3:30 in the morning. It’s difficult to know when it’s time to start slowing down because we are so accustomed to the amount of light doing that automatically for us.
Danes love to drink beer. There’s no other way to describe it. However, even so, we saw little sign of public drunkenness, unlike Germany, for example, where it is really an all too common sight. Danes are far more concerned about smoking than drinking. National campaigns have cut the rate of tobacco consumption dramatically. You can’t smoke inside any public building, for example.
So now we’re off to Stockholm and a stay with another Servas family. Then we’ll head straight north to the northernmost towns in the world. New things await. We can’t wait.
Stay safe,
Carol and Jim
The Swedish chef lives
The Swedish chef lives
One of the things I learned to enjoy from my daughter was the Muppet Show, and in particular, the Swedish chef. Ang even had a computer program that would translate regular English phrases into Swedish “chefese.” So we were very disappointed when the show went away, but I’m happy to say that the Swedish chef lives, and can thankfully be heard daily on various radio shows throughout this grand and beautiful country. When I heard him on the radio, I realized that Zoot from the show moved to Copenhagen and lives in Christiania.
Our stay in Stockholm was highlighted by our hosts Ulf, Ulla, the kids, and the dog, as Ulla refers to the family. They have very busy lives but graciously made a place for us in their home and showed us a Stockholm which nobody else gets to see. Cruising the waterways from their boat they took us on a three hour tour of the ins and outs of the various channels, seeing things up close from the water point of view. Stockholm is a visually stunning city with so much variety in its different areas.
Carol and I spent the majority of a day in Skansen, a recreation of life in old Sweden. The amazing thing is that while this seems to be the rage in many places of the world, the Swedes created their living museum in 1891, bringing entire farmstead complexes, churches, meeting halls etc, from all over Sweden.
Best of all, for me, was that they didn’t just give some abstract description of a farmer’s life in general, but rather, because the displays represent the early 1800’s they were able to research the history of the farmer, teacher, minister, etc and describe “His/her” life from people who still lived and knew the stories of the people who occupied the home. This farmer had two children, one of whom became….. This teacher’s wife made………… The owner of this store………… sort of thing. It really made it personal. Probably the best representation I’ve ever seen.
We learned that the Mongolian student we sponsor has a niece who is married and lives just an hour from Stockholm Hajaa was a tour guide in Mongolia and when a group of Swedish tourists stepped off the Trans Siberian Railroad train, little did she know that her future husband would be in the group. Anyway, Daniel and Hajaa are two absolute love birds who have been married for four years and are now expecting their first child. Great kids and we enjoyed an afternoon with them.
Ulf recommended that since we were going to be in Vasteras, we should head north in the interior of the country rather than the coast and great advice it was, too.
The heartland of Sweden runs right up the middle of the country and is filled with small villages, which, while seemingly have little to offer, contain wonderful examples of old Swedish life. We stopped by accident in a small town called Sater which just happened to be the 7th oldest village in Sweden dating from the early 1600’s as a continuously inhabited community. The hotel was built in the mid 1600’s and was surrounded by houses of the same era which are still inhabited.
I was fascinated by the construction. All wood, of course, but not just rough-cut log cabins, but hand-hewn timbers where each corner is an intricate combination of miters, bevels, and other compound angles which make it all fit together in a solid, tightly sealed manner. One corner timber had 14 different angles to make it fit to the timber above and below it. This was all done by hand, of course, and I can’t even make a square cut using my laser-guided saw.
All the homes are painted the same deep red color, a result of the copper mines in the area where the tailings were used to create an inexpensive paint that everybody used. This color has become synonymous with the area, and almost all wooden houses, and 95 percent of them are wooden, are painted this color. Later plaster homes were built and many of them are yellow, but this deep red is the predominant color throughout the north of Sweden.
Landscape design in highway engineering
It would seem that the roads were all developed by someone who had water features in mind. For literally hundreds of miles, the roads cut through the thick woods like a black or red ribbon weaving it way from one source of water to another. Streams, rivers, lakes, large and small continually dot the landscape.
You might think there would be a certain monotony to the hours upon hours of the “Sameness,” but not so. Each situation is so different, yet continually beautiful. Some rivers flow placidly along seemingly not moving, while others rage in torrents. Some lakes are postage stamp in size while others are 50-60 miles long. One is so large it even has its own Loch Ness Monster stories. Of course if I drank as much beer as the locals do, I’d see monsters too.
My favorite scenes were:
A lake with a small island about 100 yards of shore with a golf flag stick in it and a tee box on the shore. Talk about your water hazard.
A lake on one side of the road, smooth and calm, while on the other side of the road a cascading wall of water plunged from on high raising a spray which wet the windshield.
And the best of all was a beautiful large lake miles in length. Maybe ¼ of a mile from the shore was a small island maybe 20 feet in diameter. It had a very small house on it with a flower garden all in bloom and a small row boat pulled up along shore. Someone’s retreat for sure.
These small garden plots are a staple of life here. We met a man in Stockholm who has one. The house is only an 8x10 foot rectangle, and he and his wife live in it from May to September, even though his flat is only about 100 yards away. I didn’t ask him about bathroom facilities. I didn’t even want to go there, literally and figuratively.
The road system is excellent, and Swedes love to drive fast. I can be cruising down a two lane road and suddenly realize I’m doing 80 without stressing about curves or poor conditions. You have to consciously keep the speed down. Hard to do when someone goes by you doing 90+
It’s all about presentation
Along the drive, and particularly the smaller roads, the ones that drove my mother crazy in Ireland, people have gone out of their way to make your view of their house/land pleasant to the eye. For example, in the old days the milk truck would come and pick up the large metal milk cans from small dairies at a platform built the same height as the bed of the truck. Those days are long gone, but the people have maintained the platforms, have left the milk cans there and decorated them with paint, flowers pots and crafty looking goodies. Each one draws the eye and makes the miles go by even more quickly. This is prime wild flower time in the north and long stands of lupines, fireweed, red clover and white daisies and lots we don’t know the names of fill the sides of the road. Driving has never been so pleasant.
American Graffiti revisited
A sub culture here in Sweden is American cars. Mostly from the “classic” era, but in reality all generations of cars. Caddy’s, Chevy’s, muscle cars, and you name it. It’s HUGE here.
In fact, in Vasteras the largest American car show in the world is coming this weekend. Over 10,000 cars will be on display. Check it out:
http://www.bigmeet.com/
We’ve seen people cruising like it was Modesto, Ca ala 1962. Haven’t seen the blond in the white thunderbird, though. Convertibles are preferred for cruising, but I have seen all the cars from my high school graduation in ’58.
The psychology of light and more light.
The sun went down last night at 11:45 p.m and rose at 1:22 this morning. That makes dawn and dusk moot phrases, ‘cause it ain’t gonna get dark, dude.
This really screws up the body. Okay, it really screws up mine.
When my military son had to go on maneuver he would tell me that he had to leave at 0’ dark 30. Well Carol has her own way of describing this. It’s called 0’light 30. When I wake up at 3;30 and see that it’s light, my mind says get up. My body says its only had four hours sleep and something has got to give. ‘
I went out to the lobby of a hotel the other morning to write since I couldn’t sleep, and soon another guy comes wandering out wearing nothing but his underwear. Pretty soon, another guy came out, thankfully more appropriately dressed, wandered around, and then left. A few minutes later a taxi arrived the first guy, now fully dressed rolls out his suitcase, gets in the taxi, and goes, who knows where.
Carol has her own black out curtains, a black mask left over from one of our 20-hour plane rides. Okay it wasn’t that long, but it seemed that long. It’s all too claustrophobic for me. I’d get out of bed and start bouncing off furniture if I wore one. Everybody laughs and says you get used to it after a few years. Maybe my old boss will get used to prison after a few years, too, but it still isn’t going to be fun.
And as Newton said (if it wasn’t Newton, somebody said it): “For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. So if it never gets dark here in the summer , does that mean that it never gets light in the winter?
And we’re not even in the land of the midnight sun yet. Oh joy, it’s gonna get better.
Swedes are good squirrels
All along the roads they are getting ready for what they know are the dark days (literally) ahead. Farmers are harvesting the first hay crop and baling them into little white plastic rolls which look like mushrooms dotting the fields. HUGE stacks of firewood are piled up in one yard, while the neighbor is one step ahead, his are stacked neatly and seemingly shrink-wrapped in plastic rolls to keep the moisture out. The ice-breakers are in port here ready for the inevitable.
Being Californians (I’m always going to be a Californian) when the sun hit 85 the other day, I’m looking for shade and cool. Not the Swedes. They’re soaking up every ray of sun they can, like they’re some sort of lithium rechargeable battery to help make it through the winter.
Well, I could go on, and sometimes do, but we’re really enjoying ourselves. Today, it’s Lulea in Sweden, the northern most major city and tomorrow to Finland, that land with one of the highest suicide rates in the world (along with New Zealand and Iceland, quite a combination) and where they have a national obsession with the Tango. Now what’s that all about?
Stay safe, we love you,
Carol and Jim
One of the things I learned to enjoy from my daughter was the Muppet Show, and in particular, the Swedish chef. Ang even had a computer program that would translate regular English phrases into Swedish “chefese.” So we were very disappointed when the show went away, but I’m happy to say that the Swedish chef lives, and can thankfully be heard daily on various radio shows throughout this grand and beautiful country. When I heard him on the radio, I realized that Zoot from the show moved to Copenhagen and lives in Christiania.
Our stay in Stockholm was highlighted by our hosts Ulf, Ulla, the kids, and the dog, as Ulla refers to the family. They have very busy lives but graciously made a place for us in their home and showed us a Stockholm which nobody else gets to see. Cruising the waterways from their boat they took us on a three hour tour of the ins and outs of the various channels, seeing things up close from the water point of view. Stockholm is a visually stunning city with so much variety in its different areas.
Carol and I spent the majority of a day in Skansen, a recreation of life in old Sweden. The amazing thing is that while this seems to be the rage in many places of the world, the Swedes created their living museum in 1891, bringing entire farmstead complexes, churches, meeting halls etc, from all over Sweden.
Best of all, for me, was that they didn’t just give some abstract description of a farmer’s life in general, but rather, because the displays represent the early 1800’s they were able to research the history of the farmer, teacher, minister, etc and describe “His/her” life from people who still lived and knew the stories of the people who occupied the home. This farmer had two children, one of whom became….. This teacher’s wife made………… The owner of this store………… sort of thing. It really made it personal. Probably the best representation I’ve ever seen.
We learned that the Mongolian student we sponsor has a niece who is married and lives just an hour from Stockholm Hajaa was a tour guide in Mongolia and when a group of Swedish tourists stepped off the Trans Siberian Railroad train, little did she know that her future husband would be in the group. Anyway, Daniel and Hajaa are two absolute love birds who have been married for four years and are now expecting their first child. Great kids and we enjoyed an afternoon with them.
Ulf recommended that since we were going to be in Vasteras, we should head north in the interior of the country rather than the coast and great advice it was, too.
The heartland of Sweden runs right up the middle of the country and is filled with small villages, which, while seemingly have little to offer, contain wonderful examples of old Swedish life. We stopped by accident in a small town called Sater which just happened to be the 7th oldest village in Sweden dating from the early 1600’s as a continuously inhabited community. The hotel was built in the mid 1600’s and was surrounded by houses of the same era which are still inhabited.
I was fascinated by the construction. All wood, of course, but not just rough-cut log cabins, but hand-hewn timbers where each corner is an intricate combination of miters, bevels, and other compound angles which make it all fit together in a solid, tightly sealed manner. One corner timber had 14 different angles to make it fit to the timber above and below it. This was all done by hand, of course, and I can’t even make a square cut using my laser-guided saw.
All the homes are painted the same deep red color, a result of the copper mines in the area where the tailings were used to create an inexpensive paint that everybody used. This color has become synonymous with the area, and almost all wooden houses, and 95 percent of them are wooden, are painted this color. Later plaster homes were built and many of them are yellow, but this deep red is the predominant color throughout the north of Sweden.
Landscape design in highway engineering
It would seem that the roads were all developed by someone who had water features in mind. For literally hundreds of miles, the roads cut through the thick woods like a black or red ribbon weaving it way from one source of water to another. Streams, rivers, lakes, large and small continually dot the landscape.
You might think there would be a certain monotony to the hours upon hours of the “Sameness,” but not so. Each situation is so different, yet continually beautiful. Some rivers flow placidly along seemingly not moving, while others rage in torrents. Some lakes are postage stamp in size while others are 50-60 miles long. One is so large it even has its own Loch Ness Monster stories. Of course if I drank as much beer as the locals do, I’d see monsters too.
My favorite scenes were:
A lake with a small island about 100 yards of shore with a golf flag stick in it and a tee box on the shore. Talk about your water hazard.
A lake on one side of the road, smooth and calm, while on the other side of the road a cascading wall of water plunged from on high raising a spray which wet the windshield.
And the best of all was a beautiful large lake miles in length. Maybe ¼ of a mile from the shore was a small island maybe 20 feet in diameter. It had a very small house on it with a flower garden all in bloom and a small row boat pulled up along shore. Someone’s retreat for sure.
These small garden plots are a staple of life here. We met a man in Stockholm who has one. The house is only an 8x10 foot rectangle, and he and his wife live in it from May to September, even though his flat is only about 100 yards away. I didn’t ask him about bathroom facilities. I didn’t even want to go there, literally and figuratively.
The road system is excellent, and Swedes love to drive fast. I can be cruising down a two lane road and suddenly realize I’m doing 80 without stressing about curves or poor conditions. You have to consciously keep the speed down. Hard to do when someone goes by you doing 90+
It’s all about presentation
Along the drive, and particularly the smaller roads, the ones that drove my mother crazy in Ireland, people have gone out of their way to make your view of their house/land pleasant to the eye. For example, in the old days the milk truck would come and pick up the large metal milk cans from small dairies at a platform built the same height as the bed of the truck. Those days are long gone, but the people have maintained the platforms, have left the milk cans there and decorated them with paint, flowers pots and crafty looking goodies. Each one draws the eye and makes the miles go by even more quickly. This is prime wild flower time in the north and long stands of lupines, fireweed, red clover and white daisies and lots we don’t know the names of fill the sides of the road. Driving has never been so pleasant.
American Graffiti revisited
A sub culture here in Sweden is American cars. Mostly from the “classic” era, but in reality all generations of cars. Caddy’s, Chevy’s, muscle cars, and you name it. It’s HUGE here.
In fact, in Vasteras the largest American car show in the world is coming this weekend. Over 10,000 cars will be on display. Check it out:
http://www.bigmeet.com/
We’ve seen people cruising like it was Modesto, Ca ala 1962. Haven’t seen the blond in the white thunderbird, though. Convertibles are preferred for cruising, but I have seen all the cars from my high school graduation in ’58.
The psychology of light and more light.
The sun went down last night at 11:45 p.m and rose at 1:22 this morning. That makes dawn and dusk moot phrases, ‘cause it ain’t gonna get dark, dude.
This really screws up the body. Okay, it really screws up mine.
When my military son had to go on maneuver he would tell me that he had to leave at 0’ dark 30. Well Carol has her own way of describing this. It’s called 0’light 30. When I wake up at 3;30 and see that it’s light, my mind says get up. My body says its only had four hours sleep and something has got to give. ‘
I went out to the lobby of a hotel the other morning to write since I couldn’t sleep, and soon another guy comes wandering out wearing nothing but his underwear. Pretty soon, another guy came out, thankfully more appropriately dressed, wandered around, and then left. A few minutes later a taxi arrived the first guy, now fully dressed rolls out his suitcase, gets in the taxi, and goes, who knows where.
Carol has her own black out curtains, a black mask left over from one of our 20-hour plane rides. Okay it wasn’t that long, but it seemed that long. It’s all too claustrophobic for me. I’d get out of bed and start bouncing off furniture if I wore one. Everybody laughs and says you get used to it after a few years. Maybe my old boss will get used to prison after a few years, too, but it still isn’t going to be fun.
And as Newton said (if it wasn’t Newton, somebody said it): “For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. So if it never gets dark here in the summer , does that mean that it never gets light in the winter?
And we’re not even in the land of the midnight sun yet. Oh joy, it’s gonna get better.
Swedes are good squirrels
All along the roads they are getting ready for what they know are the dark days (literally) ahead. Farmers are harvesting the first hay crop and baling them into little white plastic rolls which look like mushrooms dotting the fields. HUGE stacks of firewood are piled up in one yard, while the neighbor is one step ahead, his are stacked neatly and seemingly shrink-wrapped in plastic rolls to keep the moisture out. The ice-breakers are in port here ready for the inevitable.
Being Californians (I’m always going to be a Californian) when the sun hit 85 the other day, I’m looking for shade and cool. Not the Swedes. They’re soaking up every ray of sun they can, like they’re some sort of lithium rechargeable battery to help make it through the winter.
Well, I could go on, and sometimes do, but we’re really enjoying ourselves. Today, it’s Lulea in Sweden, the northern most major city and tomorrow to Finland, that land with one of the highest suicide rates in the world (along with New Zealand and Iceland, quite a combination) and where they have a national obsession with the Tango. Now what’s that all about?
Stay safe, we love you,
Carol and Jim
Myron Floren revisited
When I was growing up Saturday night was at, my dad’s insistence, Lawrence Welk night. I hated listening to all the stupid acts – Jo Ann Castle, Sissy and Bobby, etc. Yes, I still remember all those names. They’re permanently etched in my brain. There are things I’d like to remember about my life and can’t, - but these. They’re right there in the memory banks. I would verbally trash the Lennon sisters with their wholesome squeaky-clean persona, while secretly engaging in a 14 year old’s fantasies. I remember my dad loving the accordion player Myron Floren. So here we come to Finland and voila it’s “flashback time.”
Our Finnish Servas hosts informed us that they were going to a Folk festival in the Swedish/Finnish border town of Haparanda where their son, Heike, was playing, “ta-da,” the accordion. Since we were leaving on the day of the festival, we had to pass.
So we crossed into Finland and stopped at the tourist information building where we got information on local doings. The manager, Eija, told Carol about this famous Weaver who would give Carol lessons for an hour. While Carol was looking at the web site with Eija, I was bantering with the workers, and I mentioned that one of the girls must be a piano player since she had long fingers. “Yes,” she said. At that point Eija asked me if I knew what instrument she played with her stubby little fingers. “Piccolo?,” I asked. She replied that she played, Ta-da,” the accordion. I told her we had heard about a festival and the son with whom we were staying was playing in this festival. She asked his name and when I told her, she giggled and said she was organizing the festival and played in the same group as Heike. She said she had two accordions in her car and when I asked her if she would play for us, she said: “Sure, come back in 30 minutes.” As it turned out she was going to her performing group, so here Carol and I are at a class for 15 accordionists listening to polkas, folk songs, and other traditional songs. We loved it. Somewhere out there, my dad’s laughing at me.
Our host was this wonderful, gregarious, effusive woman who forced me to face one of my personal demons, my innate dislike of people who can be described only as more than overweight. Elana is huge. But she was so disarming that I couldn’t help liking her instantly. Certainly more than I liked my reactions to her the moment I saw her, what with my prejudices. We have family and friends who have worked hard fighting this weight problem with limited success. Just another thing Jim has to work on.
She took us out that evening to show us people, places, and things, all with a giving spirit and an openness that dispelled the notion that Finns are cold, unfriendly people. Combined with Eija’s laughter and smile and the other Finns we met, we were thrilled that preconceived notions could melt away quickly. That’s always a dilemma for me in my travels. Realistically we meet a limited number of people in a limited number of days. Considering karmic forces, coincidental happenstances, luck of the draw, and all the other clichés one can muster, are we seeing a true picture of a place or only our little, personal snapshot of a people. But, in the end, all we know is what we see, and we’ve found Finns to be open and friendly.
.Elana asked us if we knew about sauna. We told her of course we did, since we had one. When Carol described her “Infra-red” sauna, again she just frowned and said: “That is not sauna. Sauna must have water, sauna must be attached to bathroom, and must to have hot rocks.” She said that every Finnish house had a sauna. Even people who live in apartments had a sauna. Finns couldn’t live without one.
On the first night we went out and about we showed up at her uncle’s house at about 10:45 p.m. I couldn’t imagine dropping in on someone at that time of night at home. You might get shot as an intruder. But hey, this is where it doesn’t get dark, so no harm, no foul. “We sleep in the winter,” Elana informed us. Coffee, sweet buns, and conversation made for a late night. We got to bed after midnight, and that after declining another round of late night coffee when we arrived back at the house.
We had told the girls at the tourist bureau that we wanted to see reindeer in the wild and so they told us to go on these remote roads the following day. We did, and saw nothing. Elana just looked at us with this blank stare when we told her where we were going. “Why?” she wanted to know would anybody go where’s there’s nothing but bushes. Her friends at work all laughed as well. It must be a Finnish thing. We had a good time, but saw no reindeer. But we were so tired, we had to pull off the road and lean the seats back on our car and take an afternoon nap.
Another late night visitation the following night with more coffee and rolls and conversation with a friend left us very tired. When Elana asked us what time we were leaving in the morning, she insisted on making us coffee before we left, and then she would go back to bed.
So off we headed, north of course, always north. We passed the Arctic Circle and the requisite souvenir shop, and arrived at Alli Ohenaja’s camp. It’s a beautiful, isolated place. Well, it’s Northern Finland, I guess that goes without saying.
Alli is Sami, the indigenous people of Lapland, and is a total bundle of bubbly joy and enthusiasm. She’s about our age and maybe five feet tall. Her husband died six years ago, so now she runs this guest camp, a 900 acre reindeer ranch, and still creates beautiful designs in her weaving. We don’t know how many reindeer she has, ‘cause it’s really impolite to ask. It’s akin to asking how much money they have in the bank. We were the only guests in the camp so she had a lot of time for us. We went to her “shop” which is a living museum of the Sami life. It was incredibly interesting even for the non-fiber guy She fixed us dinner of reindeer stew, and showed us that it had to be eaten in just such a way: Take the mashed potatoes, make a mountain of them, create a crater in the middle, pour the stew in the middle of the crater, then put the cranberry? Sauce and dill pickles on the side of the plate. Maybe it was the presentation, but the meal was delicious and we overate, of course. Carol got her fiber lesson, wove a sash with a Sami design on it and we had a wonderful afternoon and evening.
Alli was dressed in western clothes when we arrived, but when it came time for her to be “On,” she was dressed in the traditional Sami outfits. She looked absolutely beautiful and explained what each part of the dress was and why it was. Nothing is just there, it’s all functional. I asked her about the knife hanging at her side, and she smiled and said: “If the Sami doesn’t have his/her knife, it’s like an arm is missing. You never know when or how you will need it.”
Winter is the busy time for her camp, and Carol and I are thinking seriously of bringing a group to her camp. It’s a beautiful area. Don’t know how people would do with the “Opposite and equal reaction” light thing I talked about in the last letter, but people can ski, go on reindeer sleigh rides, ice fish, help herd reindeer, and other assorted activities. The ladies could do the fiber thing, and guys could, well, do the guy thing
Mood swings and temperature changes
Elana told us that the wind was blowing from the north and we should expect colder weather. They do know their weather here!
It went from a high of 85 degrees one day to a high of 42 the next. Cold, drizzly rain hampered our ability to do some things, but we were lucky in that it was mainly two days of driving, and the big benefit was NO MOSQUITOES. They are legion and legendary up here in the north. You can buy plush toys that buzz when you squeeze them. There are so many that the reindeer are tormented by them and the botflies that get up their nose. I don’t know about you, but I hate when that happens.
Where’s Santa
On the day we drove to see the reindeer and didn’t see any we were bummed. Well, no more. It’s one of the things I really wanted to see. Reindeer in the wild. We’ll I’m disappointed no more. We saw soooooooooo many that Carol finally said: “No more reindeer stops.” We had plenty of photos and videos. An interesting thing is there are not any wild reindeer. They all belong to somebody. They have this intricate method of ear tagging the baby reindeer. Like cattle brands used for identification in the old west, these ID marks are cuts they make in the babies ears in an intricate pattern of big cuts, small cuts, and notches. There are over 10,000 combinations they can make, and everybody knows everybody else’s marks.
Water, water, everywhere and it’s all fit to drink
Well, we thought we saw a lot of rivers and lakes in Sweden, but it a geometric increase in Finland, and we weren’t even in the lake area. Look at a map of Finland, and you’ll realize what we mean. I didn’t know there was that much water in the world, much less in one country. And it’s all so pristine and unspoiled. Just sitting there for people to use, and we rarely saw anybody on the water. Only one boat on this gorgeous lake we stopped beside to eat our lunch.
The restaurant at the end of the Universe
With all respect to you HHGTTG fans out there, the restaurant is an overpriced Chinese restaurant in Kirkenes, Norway. Yes, we made it!! All the way to the north. Where the road ends. Where Finland, Norway, and Russia all come together. The only place where all the signs are written in Norwegian and Russian.
We went to the Russian border just so we could say we did. It’s only 10 minutes away, and leads to Murmansk. That name from my past map perusals. The place where the Russian navy has its fleet. Shades of Crimson Tide, and all. Kirkenes is a small town, 5,000 people who fish and mine and sleep around, according to Mette, the hotel receptionist who came over and sat down and talked to me this morning when I came downstairs to finish writing this. She said she can’t understand it, since it’s such a small town, everybody knows everybody and everybody knows what everybody else is doing.. She told me more about life here in one hour than all the guide books I’ve read over the months before the trip. She was thoroughly engaging and so open about herself and her life that she will always be the focal point of my thoughts of Kirkenes. Once again, people pop into and out of my life who enrich it by their being a part of it.
To the dark side of the moon
Tomorrow we take the Hurtigruten ferry south on our 34 stop, six day “Cruise” to Bergen. Check it out:
http://www.hurtigruten.us/Itinerary.asp
Scroll down to "day seven" and you’ll see our itinerary. Many of the stops are only for an hour or two, so there’s little time to explore, but we’re really looking forward to it. No more driving for a week. No more changes of hotels for a week. No more……….. well you get the picture. It’s not like a Carnival Caribbean cruise, but I think that’s the good news.
We probably won’t be able to send emails during that time, but I’ll keep my brain from overloading by writing daily and send them when we can.
In the mean time, please you’ll stay safe and know that we are having a great time………..again.
Carol and Jim
Our Finnish Servas hosts informed us that they were going to a Folk festival in the Swedish/Finnish border town of Haparanda where their son, Heike, was playing, “ta-da,” the accordion. Since we were leaving on the day of the festival, we had to pass.
So we crossed into Finland and stopped at the tourist information building where we got information on local doings. The manager, Eija, told Carol about this famous Weaver who would give Carol lessons for an hour. While Carol was looking at the web site with Eija, I was bantering with the workers, and I mentioned that one of the girls must be a piano player since she had long fingers. “Yes,” she said. At that point Eija asked me if I knew what instrument she played with her stubby little fingers. “Piccolo?,” I asked. She replied that she played, Ta-da,” the accordion. I told her we had heard about a festival and the son with whom we were staying was playing in this festival. She asked his name and when I told her, she giggled and said she was organizing the festival and played in the same group as Heike. She said she had two accordions in her car and when I asked her if she would play for us, she said: “Sure, come back in 30 minutes.” As it turned out she was going to her performing group, so here Carol and I are at a class for 15 accordionists listening to polkas, folk songs, and other traditional songs. We loved it. Somewhere out there, my dad’s laughing at me.
Our host was this wonderful, gregarious, effusive woman who forced me to face one of my personal demons, my innate dislike of people who can be described only as more than overweight. Elana is huge. But she was so disarming that I couldn’t help liking her instantly. Certainly more than I liked my reactions to her the moment I saw her, what with my prejudices. We have family and friends who have worked hard fighting this weight problem with limited success. Just another thing Jim has to work on.
She took us out that evening to show us people, places, and things, all with a giving spirit and an openness that dispelled the notion that Finns are cold, unfriendly people. Combined with Eija’s laughter and smile and the other Finns we met, we were thrilled that preconceived notions could melt away quickly. That’s always a dilemma for me in my travels. Realistically we meet a limited number of people in a limited number of days. Considering karmic forces, coincidental happenstances, luck of the draw, and all the other clichés one can muster, are we seeing a true picture of a place or only our little, personal snapshot of a people. But, in the end, all we know is what we see, and we’ve found Finns to be open and friendly.
.Elana asked us if we knew about sauna. We told her of course we did, since we had one. When Carol described her “Infra-red” sauna, again she just frowned and said: “That is not sauna. Sauna must have water, sauna must be attached to bathroom, and must to have hot rocks.” She said that every Finnish house had a sauna. Even people who live in apartments had a sauna. Finns couldn’t live without one.
On the first night we went out and about we showed up at her uncle’s house at about 10:45 p.m. I couldn’t imagine dropping in on someone at that time of night at home. You might get shot as an intruder. But hey, this is where it doesn’t get dark, so no harm, no foul. “We sleep in the winter,” Elana informed us. Coffee, sweet buns, and conversation made for a late night. We got to bed after midnight, and that after declining another round of late night coffee when we arrived back at the house.
We had told the girls at the tourist bureau that we wanted to see reindeer in the wild and so they told us to go on these remote roads the following day. We did, and saw nothing. Elana just looked at us with this blank stare when we told her where we were going. “Why?” she wanted to know would anybody go where’s there’s nothing but bushes. Her friends at work all laughed as well. It must be a Finnish thing. We had a good time, but saw no reindeer. But we were so tired, we had to pull off the road and lean the seats back on our car and take an afternoon nap.
Another late night visitation the following night with more coffee and rolls and conversation with a friend left us very tired. When Elana asked us what time we were leaving in the morning, she insisted on making us coffee before we left, and then she would go back to bed.
So off we headed, north of course, always north. We passed the Arctic Circle and the requisite souvenir shop, and arrived at Alli Ohenaja’s camp. It’s a beautiful, isolated place. Well, it’s Northern Finland, I guess that goes without saying.
Alli is Sami, the indigenous people of Lapland, and is a total bundle of bubbly joy and enthusiasm. She’s about our age and maybe five feet tall. Her husband died six years ago, so now she runs this guest camp, a 900 acre reindeer ranch, and still creates beautiful designs in her weaving. We don’t know how many reindeer she has, ‘cause it’s really impolite to ask. It’s akin to asking how much money they have in the bank. We were the only guests in the camp so she had a lot of time for us. We went to her “shop” which is a living museum of the Sami life. It was incredibly interesting even for the non-fiber guy She fixed us dinner of reindeer stew, and showed us that it had to be eaten in just such a way: Take the mashed potatoes, make a mountain of them, create a crater in the middle, pour the stew in the middle of the crater, then put the cranberry? Sauce and dill pickles on the side of the plate. Maybe it was the presentation, but the meal was delicious and we overate, of course. Carol got her fiber lesson, wove a sash with a Sami design on it and we had a wonderful afternoon and evening.
Alli was dressed in western clothes when we arrived, but when it came time for her to be “On,” she was dressed in the traditional Sami outfits. She looked absolutely beautiful and explained what each part of the dress was and why it was. Nothing is just there, it’s all functional. I asked her about the knife hanging at her side, and she smiled and said: “If the Sami doesn’t have his/her knife, it’s like an arm is missing. You never know when or how you will need it.”
Winter is the busy time for her camp, and Carol and I are thinking seriously of bringing a group to her camp. It’s a beautiful area. Don’t know how people would do with the “Opposite and equal reaction” light thing I talked about in the last letter, but people can ski, go on reindeer sleigh rides, ice fish, help herd reindeer, and other assorted activities. The ladies could do the fiber thing, and guys could, well, do the guy thing
Mood swings and temperature changes
Elana told us that the wind was blowing from the north and we should expect colder weather. They do know their weather here!
It went from a high of 85 degrees one day to a high of 42 the next. Cold, drizzly rain hampered our ability to do some things, but we were lucky in that it was mainly two days of driving, and the big benefit was NO MOSQUITOES. They are legion and legendary up here in the north. You can buy plush toys that buzz when you squeeze them. There are so many that the reindeer are tormented by them and the botflies that get up their nose. I don’t know about you, but I hate when that happens.
Where’s Santa
On the day we drove to see the reindeer and didn’t see any we were bummed. Well, no more. It’s one of the things I really wanted to see. Reindeer in the wild. We’ll I’m disappointed no more. We saw soooooooooo many that Carol finally said: “No more reindeer stops.” We had plenty of photos and videos. An interesting thing is there are not any wild reindeer. They all belong to somebody. They have this intricate method of ear tagging the baby reindeer. Like cattle brands used for identification in the old west, these ID marks are cuts they make in the babies ears in an intricate pattern of big cuts, small cuts, and notches. There are over 10,000 combinations they can make, and everybody knows everybody else’s marks.
Water, water, everywhere and it’s all fit to drink
Well, we thought we saw a lot of rivers and lakes in Sweden, but it a geometric increase in Finland, and we weren’t even in the lake area. Look at a map of Finland, and you’ll realize what we mean. I didn’t know there was that much water in the world, much less in one country. And it’s all so pristine and unspoiled. Just sitting there for people to use, and we rarely saw anybody on the water. Only one boat on this gorgeous lake we stopped beside to eat our lunch.
The restaurant at the end of the Universe
With all respect to you HHGTTG fans out there, the restaurant is an overpriced Chinese restaurant in Kirkenes, Norway. Yes, we made it!! All the way to the north. Where the road ends. Where Finland, Norway, and Russia all come together. The only place where all the signs are written in Norwegian and Russian.
We went to the Russian border just so we could say we did. It’s only 10 minutes away, and leads to Murmansk. That name from my past map perusals. The place where the Russian navy has its fleet. Shades of Crimson Tide, and all. Kirkenes is a small town, 5,000 people who fish and mine and sleep around, according to Mette, the hotel receptionist who came over and sat down and talked to me this morning when I came downstairs to finish writing this. She said she can’t understand it, since it’s such a small town, everybody knows everybody and everybody knows what everybody else is doing.. She told me more about life here in one hour than all the guide books I’ve read over the months before the trip. She was thoroughly engaging and so open about herself and her life that she will always be the focal point of my thoughts of Kirkenes. Once again, people pop into and out of my life who enrich it by their being a part of it.
To the dark side of the moon
Tomorrow we take the Hurtigruten ferry south on our 34 stop, six day “Cruise” to Bergen. Check it out:
http://www.hurtigruten.us/Itinerary.asp
Scroll down to "day seven" and you’ll see our itinerary. Many of the stops are only for an hour or two, so there’s little time to explore, but we’re really looking forward to it. No more driving for a week. No more changes of hotels for a week. No more……….. well you get the picture. It’s not like a Carnival Caribbean cruise, but I think that’s the good news.
We probably won’t be able to send emails during that time, but I’ll keep my brain from overloading by writing daily and send them when we can.
In the mean time, please you’ll stay safe and know that we are having a great time………..again.
Carol and Jim
The world's most beautiful cruise
Hurtigruten part 1
The Hurtigruten cruise line is the life blood of Northern Norway. It was started in 1893 as a way to get goods to/from all the small fishing ports in the hinterlands. Although there are roads to some of the towns, they are small and rough in many places, and difficult to traverse, not to mention very slow going since Norway has 34,000 miles of coast line. Ferry service linked the towns on the islands with the main land, but even so, service was spotty. So enter the Hurtigruten coastal ferry line with its 11 ships which ply the waters each and every day of the year providing all the goods and services without which the isolated communities simply could not exist.
Even with the daily arrivals of the ships, life here is tough to say the very least. If you look at the coastline of Norway, you will see literally thousands of miles of rugged land with fishing overwhelming the economic force. 80% of the people live along the coast through out Norway. Little places like Vardo may have a military fortification, others might have some mining interests or oil exploration, but the towns are purely and simply fishing communities at their heart. We watched this morning as pallet after pallet of dried cod was loaded onto the ship for delivery to the markets south and abroad. Without Hurtigruten there would be no market.
Therefore, there is a large debate going on in Norway now about the economic feasibility of this line. The ship is full for our voyage as it is for most of the summer months, but in the winter where there is no sun, who would want to make the journey through rough seas when you couldn’t see anything anyway what with the winter sun below the horizon most of the time. Still, every day a Hurtigruten ship stops on the way north, and another stops on its journey back south. The government has had to pump a lot of money into the company, and the debate is simply, “How much is too much.” As you might expect, the people of the north feel VERY strongly about it.
Our ship the Polarlys is a medium sized member of the line. It was built in 1996 so it has the amenities, like stabilizers to smooth out the ride in these waters which can get nasty, to say the least. We’ve had seas of 4-6 feet most of the way. Not rough for you sailors out there, but not the glass many people like on their cruise. They told of a journey this summer where an aortic storm came through and they had 30 foot waves crashing over the ship. A journey which normally takes two hours from one port to another took 13 hours. Must have seemed like 13 days to many of the passengers. Apparently………….well you get the picture.
With a total of 737 passengers, and only 439 in cabins, it certainly is a change from the mega-ships we’ve been on in the past. The other 300 are deck passengers who get on at one port and get off in another. They visit friends/relatives for a day or two and then get on the ship traveling in the opposite directions. We met a couple who had relatives at one of the ports and their family got on board for six hours today. Then they’ll get off and drive back home.
The passenger list is 98% European. There is actually another American couple on board. When they were told there was another American couple on board and we were pointed out to them, they didn’t think we were Americans because of my African bush hat. Naturally, I wore it for the rest of the day We tried assiduously to avoid them, but were put at the “English” speaking table for dinner, which meant the four of us. An hour of listening to Americanese: “It’s so much nicer on a ‘real’ cruise ship,” and “I don’t like fish, don’t they have ‘real’ food,” made us flee to the public lounges for some intelligent, interesting conversations, which we have had many.
On one stop yesterday, we saw a man with a trowel digging in the ground. I asked him what he was looking for and he replied: “Arctic earthworms.” Now there’s a topic you don’t hear on your Princess Caribbean cruise.” Seems he’s a zoologist in Sweden and he’s studying the DNA of earthworms. Another man I met this morning said his Great Grandfather actually started Hurtigruten. We had an interesting conversation about the history, but he got off the ship to visit relatives still living here in the north. Another Swedish orthopedic surgeon shared our breakfast table and we had lots of banter back and forth about life in the north. He’s done the trip before and had interesting sidebars.
While the food has a definite European flavor, kippered herring is available for breakfast, “Excellent for your health,” the doctor told me as he relished every bite, there’s certainly nothing to complain about, at least for most people. The American said that he should have just had multiple desserts and he’d be fine. Considering his girth, it didn’t appear he missed too many at the luncheon dessert table.
Carol’s eyes lit up when we went for lunch yesterday. One whole table in the round had, and excuse me if I miss something: Smoked salmon, two kinds of mussels, HUGE crab claws, snow crab, king crab, sautéed peeled prawns, whole shrimp, and whole crawdads. In addition, they had pork loins, the requisite boiled, unsalted small potatoes, gravy, fresh vegetable salad table, and lots of fresh fruit. Breakfast and lunch are buffet style, while dinner is a sit down, traditional cruise type meal.
My only complaint is that I can’t get coffee in the morning when I get up without paying for it. I NEED MY COFFEE, PEOPLE!! I can pay $4 for a small cup or wait till seven when the breakfast room opens up.
The landscape so far is, to put it mildly, stark. We haven’t seen a tree for two days since we left Kirkenes. Lots of rugged cliffs, hills of maybe 500 ft elevation, and rocky coast lines. It would certainly be an isolated life for people here. The doctor told me that if the government allows the line to go under, then Norway will experience what Sweden has, and that means a steady stream south to the cities, and life in the north will die as they know it today.
We’ll make 35 stops in the next five days. Most are for ½ an hour, some for only fifteen minutes. Just time to load/unload goods and a quick walk around town to stretch the legs. The towns usually have between 1,000 and 3,000 inhabitants, but today we get to Hammerfest and will stay in port for about four hours. The towns seem like the sleepy villages they are. Few people on the streets and little general signs of life as we would think.
The government does put a lot of money into the north. They built a three mile tunnel under the sea to reach a town of 3,000 people who would otherwise be cut off. Another one is 5 miles long and there are thousands like that linking the islands with the mainland. Americans had a fit about the “Bridge to nowhere,” Here, it is a necessity and nobody really objects to that expenditure. It seems that Norwegians are very proud of their Northern lands.
So it’s not like they are unfeeling to the needs of the territory. One lady told us that the government needs to provide more help. I asked her what kind of help they needed, “More sun.” she said laughingly. It must get really bleak here in the winter.
We’ve had nothing but cold, drizzly weather on the ship so far. People keep apologizing for it, because we’re not seeing it at its best. Our reaction is that this is more realistic and gives a truer picture of what the people have to deal with up here. The outside temperature is about 5-10 degree Fahrenheit and it’s summertime. If it was a sunny 65 degrees, I think our reaction would be: “Hey, it wouldn’t be so bad living here.” As it is, we simply shake our heads and say: “If it’s like this in summer, just imagine what the people have to put up with in the winter.”
The low clouds and fog hang over the mountains creating a certain gloominess and foreboding aspect to the landscape. I can’t help wonder what lurks behind the passes and mountain tops. It is truly beautiful in its own right, but a dark beauty. Not your generally accepted photo-op. But the ship keeps plowing onward into the unseen.
After several small villages as ports, we finally stopped at a “large” town. Hammerfest. With 7,000 people living there, it actually resembled a city, rather than a collection of houses with a grocery store. It is the northernmost city in the world, and seems very much a going concern. It has a liquid natural gas terminal where they freeze the gas to 165 degrees Celsius, and even without my calculator to make the change to Fahrenheit, I know that’s cold. By doing so, they compact the gas to 600 times its normal density. They then ship it to………..Miami. Seemed really strange, when told that.
On one of our stops, Vardo, they informed us that it was actually further east than Istanbul, which was really a mind blower to me. It is also the equivalent to Salem, Mass, in that they have had their own witch history and actually burned 84 of the supposed evil-doers at the stake.
Beylewag was the little Norwegian village where they filmed Karen Blixen’s story “Babbette’s Feast,” even though she was Danish and it was supposed to be a Danish village. The starkness of the village could not have been more perfectly portrayed.
Carol saw whales bobbing and weaving their way through the water which was a real treat.
Up here in the very north, the mosquitoes are so vicious that in the spring when the calves are small the reindeer are transported by the Norwegian Navy to small islands where there aren’t any of the nasty things. There the calves can grow with the spring grasses away from the constant biting. In the fall when the calves are bigger and stronger, the herds actually swim back across the straits to the mainland on their own.
The Yin and Yang
Woke up this morning to a gloriously bright day with nary a cloud in the sky. I could walk around the deck without a jacket or hat, and just in time for we’re getting into the “really pretty part of the journey,” as they call it. Actually, it’s all been great for us, but things have certainly changed.
Large cities and towns with all that that entails now mark our stops. City squares, kids’ parks, the hum of cars in the streets, and a general sense of life rather than mere existence fill the field of vision.
Most of the towns and cities have very little old architecture. That’s not because of a lack of Norse imagination, but represents that fact that the Nazis trashed the entire Norwegian coastal towns on their retreat. Hammerfest, for example, was entirely burned to the ground, except for the cathedral which was saved when two German commanders disobeyed orders and saved it. So, all the towns are post 1945. No old parts to the cities exist.
I’m going to send this out as is. Since I couldn’t send while we were on the ship, I had to wait until we reached Bergen to email this and the whole cruise thing would wind up being more than I wanted to have in one single outpouring.
So here’s hoping everybody is doing well, and that life as we know it continues. Ooh, that sounds like a subject for the next part.
Live large and prosper,
Carol and Jim
The Hurtigruten cruise line is the life blood of Northern Norway. It was started in 1893 as a way to get goods to/from all the small fishing ports in the hinterlands. Although there are roads to some of the towns, they are small and rough in many places, and difficult to traverse, not to mention very slow going since Norway has 34,000 miles of coast line. Ferry service linked the towns on the islands with the main land, but even so, service was spotty. So enter the Hurtigruten coastal ferry line with its 11 ships which ply the waters each and every day of the year providing all the goods and services without which the isolated communities simply could not exist.
Even with the daily arrivals of the ships, life here is tough to say the very least. If you look at the coastline of Norway, you will see literally thousands of miles of rugged land with fishing overwhelming the economic force. 80% of the people live along the coast through out Norway. Little places like Vardo may have a military fortification, others might have some mining interests or oil exploration, but the towns are purely and simply fishing communities at their heart. We watched this morning as pallet after pallet of dried cod was loaded onto the ship for delivery to the markets south and abroad. Without Hurtigruten there would be no market.
Therefore, there is a large debate going on in Norway now about the economic feasibility of this line. The ship is full for our voyage as it is for most of the summer months, but in the winter where there is no sun, who would want to make the journey through rough seas when you couldn’t see anything anyway what with the winter sun below the horizon most of the time. Still, every day a Hurtigruten ship stops on the way north, and another stops on its journey back south. The government has had to pump a lot of money into the company, and the debate is simply, “How much is too much.” As you might expect, the people of the north feel VERY strongly about it.
Our ship the Polarlys is a medium sized member of the line. It was built in 1996 so it has the amenities, like stabilizers to smooth out the ride in these waters which can get nasty, to say the least. We’ve had seas of 4-6 feet most of the way. Not rough for you sailors out there, but not the glass many people like on their cruise. They told of a journey this summer where an aortic storm came through and they had 30 foot waves crashing over the ship. A journey which normally takes two hours from one port to another took 13 hours. Must have seemed like 13 days to many of the passengers. Apparently………….well you get the picture.
With a total of 737 passengers, and only 439 in cabins, it certainly is a change from the mega-ships we’ve been on in the past. The other 300 are deck passengers who get on at one port and get off in another. They visit friends/relatives for a day or two and then get on the ship traveling in the opposite directions. We met a couple who had relatives at one of the ports and their family got on board for six hours today. Then they’ll get off and drive back home.
The passenger list is 98% European. There is actually another American couple on board. When they were told there was another American couple on board and we were pointed out to them, they didn’t think we were Americans because of my African bush hat. Naturally, I wore it for the rest of the day We tried assiduously to avoid them, but were put at the “English” speaking table for dinner, which meant the four of us. An hour of listening to Americanese: “It’s so much nicer on a ‘real’ cruise ship,” and “I don’t like fish, don’t they have ‘real’ food,” made us flee to the public lounges for some intelligent, interesting conversations, which we have had many.
On one stop yesterday, we saw a man with a trowel digging in the ground. I asked him what he was looking for and he replied: “Arctic earthworms.” Now there’s a topic you don’t hear on your Princess Caribbean cruise.” Seems he’s a zoologist in Sweden and he’s studying the DNA of earthworms. Another man I met this morning said his Great Grandfather actually started Hurtigruten. We had an interesting conversation about the history, but he got off the ship to visit relatives still living here in the north. Another Swedish orthopedic surgeon shared our breakfast table and we had lots of banter back and forth about life in the north. He’s done the trip before and had interesting sidebars.
While the food has a definite European flavor, kippered herring is available for breakfast, “Excellent for your health,” the doctor told me as he relished every bite, there’s certainly nothing to complain about, at least for most people. The American said that he should have just had multiple desserts and he’d be fine. Considering his girth, it didn’t appear he missed too many at the luncheon dessert table.
Carol’s eyes lit up when we went for lunch yesterday. One whole table in the round had, and excuse me if I miss something: Smoked salmon, two kinds of mussels, HUGE crab claws, snow crab, king crab, sautéed peeled prawns, whole shrimp, and whole crawdads. In addition, they had pork loins, the requisite boiled, unsalted small potatoes, gravy, fresh vegetable salad table, and lots of fresh fruit. Breakfast and lunch are buffet style, while dinner is a sit down, traditional cruise type meal.
My only complaint is that I can’t get coffee in the morning when I get up without paying for it. I NEED MY COFFEE, PEOPLE!! I can pay $4 for a small cup or wait till seven when the breakfast room opens up.
The landscape so far is, to put it mildly, stark. We haven’t seen a tree for two days since we left Kirkenes. Lots of rugged cliffs, hills of maybe 500 ft elevation, and rocky coast lines. It would certainly be an isolated life for people here. The doctor told me that if the government allows the line to go under, then Norway will experience what Sweden has, and that means a steady stream south to the cities, and life in the north will die as they know it today.
We’ll make 35 stops in the next five days. Most are for ½ an hour, some for only fifteen minutes. Just time to load/unload goods and a quick walk around town to stretch the legs. The towns usually have between 1,000 and 3,000 inhabitants, but today we get to Hammerfest and will stay in port for about four hours. The towns seem like the sleepy villages they are. Few people on the streets and little general signs of life as we would think.
The government does put a lot of money into the north. They built a three mile tunnel under the sea to reach a town of 3,000 people who would otherwise be cut off. Another one is 5 miles long and there are thousands like that linking the islands with the mainland. Americans had a fit about the “Bridge to nowhere,” Here, it is a necessity and nobody really objects to that expenditure. It seems that Norwegians are very proud of their Northern lands.
So it’s not like they are unfeeling to the needs of the territory. One lady told us that the government needs to provide more help. I asked her what kind of help they needed, “More sun.” she said laughingly. It must get really bleak here in the winter.
We’ve had nothing but cold, drizzly weather on the ship so far. People keep apologizing for it, because we’re not seeing it at its best. Our reaction is that this is more realistic and gives a truer picture of what the people have to deal with up here. The outside temperature is about 5-10 degree Fahrenheit and it’s summertime. If it was a sunny 65 degrees, I think our reaction would be: “Hey, it wouldn’t be so bad living here.” As it is, we simply shake our heads and say: “If it’s like this in summer, just imagine what the people have to put up with in the winter.”
The low clouds and fog hang over the mountains creating a certain gloominess and foreboding aspect to the landscape. I can’t help wonder what lurks behind the passes and mountain tops. It is truly beautiful in its own right, but a dark beauty. Not your generally accepted photo-op. But the ship keeps plowing onward into the unseen.
After several small villages as ports, we finally stopped at a “large” town. Hammerfest. With 7,000 people living there, it actually resembled a city, rather than a collection of houses with a grocery store. It is the northernmost city in the world, and seems very much a going concern. It has a liquid natural gas terminal where they freeze the gas to 165 degrees Celsius, and even without my calculator to make the change to Fahrenheit, I know that’s cold. By doing so, they compact the gas to 600 times its normal density. They then ship it to………..Miami. Seemed really strange, when told that.
On one of our stops, Vardo, they informed us that it was actually further east than Istanbul, which was really a mind blower to me. It is also the equivalent to Salem, Mass, in that they have had their own witch history and actually burned 84 of the supposed evil-doers at the stake.
Beylewag was the little Norwegian village where they filmed Karen Blixen’s story “Babbette’s Feast,” even though she was Danish and it was supposed to be a Danish village. The starkness of the village could not have been more perfectly portrayed.
Carol saw whales bobbing and weaving their way through the water which was a real treat.
Up here in the very north, the mosquitoes are so vicious that in the spring when the calves are small the reindeer are transported by the Norwegian Navy to small islands where there aren’t any of the nasty things. There the calves can grow with the spring grasses away from the constant biting. In the fall when the calves are bigger and stronger, the herds actually swim back across the straits to the mainland on their own.
The Yin and Yang
Woke up this morning to a gloriously bright day with nary a cloud in the sky. I could walk around the deck without a jacket or hat, and just in time for we’re getting into the “really pretty part of the journey,” as they call it. Actually, it’s all been great for us, but things have certainly changed.
Large cities and towns with all that that entails now mark our stops. City squares, kids’ parks, the hum of cars in the streets, and a general sense of life rather than mere existence fill the field of vision.
Most of the towns and cities have very little old architecture. That’s not because of a lack of Norse imagination, but represents that fact that the Nazis trashed the entire Norwegian coastal towns on their retreat. Hammerfest, for example, was entirely burned to the ground, except for the cathedral which was saved when two German commanders disobeyed orders and saved it. So, all the towns are post 1945. No old parts to the cities exist.
I’m going to send this out as is. Since I couldn’t send while we were on the ship, I had to wait until we reached Bergen to email this and the whole cruise thing would wind up being more than I wanted to have in one single outpouring.
So here’s hoping everybody is doing well, and that life as we know it continues. Ooh, that sounds like a subject for the next part.
Live large and prosper,
Carol and Jim
Hurtugruten, part duex
Trees, trees, and more trees: Many people on board have commented on the lack of vegetation, and there has been a general “greenish” tinge to many of the lower elevations, but nothing even resembling bushes. Now, however, trees and vegetation fill every nook and cranny of land, with only the rock outcroppings being devoid of life. Gardens and cultivated areas of land dot the land.
People continue to be very interesting. Had another really good conversation with the Swedish zoologist about genetics, DNA, and all the places he has found earthworms. I found out he is really one of the world’s authorities on the subject. And although it may seem otherwise, it’s really fascinating. We talked for over an hour. I didn’t know I had it in me. You can read about him at:
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2988/0006-324X(2005)118%5B264:ANMSOT%5D2.0.CO%3B2
I finally went up to a couple we kept seeing because we always wound up sitting near each other and said: Hi, we keep running into each other.” They laughed because they were feeling the same. Turns out they’re a Dutch couple and have become our cruise mates. Johann and Maruska got together 18 years ago when she came to Rotterdam from Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (before it became Slovakia) for some employment retraining. She was put into a house for boarding, and to her surprise she lived with a single male. Well, they fell in love and have been married for the last 17 years. He became a father to her 12 year old daughter, while he she taught him how not to be shy and be afraid of heights. For the latter, he had to take a course for a year-and-a-half before he could fly to Bratislava for the wedding. She also taught him to like climbing in the mountains. But it was not an easy sell.
A couple of Brits have entertained us too. They’re about our age, and this morning Carol and I were at breakfast and the man sat down and said that he wasn’t feeling up to snuff yet. About 10 minutes later his wife came into the dining area and asked if he was feeling okay. He said: “Yes, why?” “Well, because you have on my glasses, that’s why.”
That cracked me up, because it’s the kind of comment I might get at home notwithstanding the fact that our glasses are really different. He said: “Oh, yeah, how about that. You know, these aren’t bad. But I did tell these people that I wasn’t quite myself.”
The old man and the sea
With the improved weather, we have a full panorama of snow covered mountains on both sides as we snake our way in and out of the island passages. The ship just passed a lonely fishing dory. It appeared to be about 12-14 foot long, with a lone fisherman in it, miles out to sea, surrounded by the glory of the coast. The water is calm today, but still….that’s a small boat so far away from land. There’s still a lot of snow on the mountains, even though they are not really that high. Just a general indication of how far north we really are.
We weave our way in and out of narrow passages and then into open water for several hours. When we’re close to land, people stop their cars or come out of their houses to wave at the ship as it passes. On one occasion today, we were greeted by a household spilling out of the house, all carrying and waving Norwegian flags.
We haven’t hit the fjord area yet, but there are still some in any area of the Norwegian coast. The trolls have their own fjord, which we will go through this afternoon. It’s called, naturally, Trollfjord. It’s only 100 yards wide and everybody is looking forward to it. Learned that all the rocks are merely trolls who got caught outside when the sun came up and were turned to stone. Either there were billions of trolls, or they weren’t very bright, ‘cause there are certainly a lot of rocks.
We pass all kinds of water craft. Even the most conservative estimate states that there are 650,000 boats, one for every seven Norwegians. Dorys, skiffs, sailboats, power boats, you pick it, it’s here, and the Norwegians are out on the water in force. I have a client in Stockton from Norway and he and his buddies from Norway head to Greece a couple of times a year to sail in the Mediterranean waters. I never totally understood it before, but now: “I get it, Trygve”
The worms are safe
One of our port stops was a particularly short one of 15 minutes. Carol opted not to go, so I went on down to the gangway and there was Christer with his bag containing his vials and trowel. I asked him if he wanted company and he said: “Sure.” So we hustled off the ship and I followed as he picked his spot to dig. Sure enough, there were worms. He picked them up and handed them to me and I kept the squiggly suckers from escaping back into the ground. We then hustled back to the ship just as they were getting ready to close the gangway.
The next morning I was up at 6 a.m. checking email and writing. We had a port stop at 7:00 and I thought it would be cool to go out and catch worms since I knew Christer had late dinner sitting and probably wouldn’t make it. However, my need for coffee won out and since they don’t open up the restaurant and the free coffee until 7:00, he lost out. I joked with him later telling him he lost out to my need for coffee. He laughed, and said that actually, he couldn’t take any more worms because he was out of vials and preserving alcohol.
I told him that I had lots of questions after our last conversation, and that I wanted to know about earthworms and continental drift. Well, his eyes lit up and said: “Yes, that is actually quite an interesting subject.” His wife, Ulla, just rolled here eyes, and had that: “Oh, dear, here we go again.” Look on her face.
We saw them later in the day on a different stop, and she had a great smile on her face. She had found a Peruvian stall at the market selling alpaca sweaters. She got one she particularly liked and was a happy camper.
So the worms of Central Norway are safe, Christer is no longer on the hunt.
Speaking of happy campers Carol found a reindeer hide which had been tanned and she fell in love with it, so we now have more to put into the extra bag that I suggested we bring on the trip. I’ve learned this from previous trips where we’ve had to buy bags to cart home the Irish linen and Scottish tweeds, amongst other things. We have all these extra bags at home. We could have a garage sale on soft-backed luggage.
Life as we know it
While we’ve been steadily increasing the size and complexity of the cities at which we’re stopping, it wasn’t until we reached Svolvaer that we really felt we were in a “Tourist” area. There, with the good weather being prevalent and the town being a jumping off area for travel into the popular Lofoten islands, things really started to jump. People were sitting outside in cafes, stalls lined the squares selling, yes, reindeer hides and Peruvian alpaca sweaters and goodies along with the requisite troll and Viking souvenirs, and there was the sense of joie de vivre in the air.
Lots of students on backpacking holidays, bicyclists of all ages with saddle bags loaded with supplies and clothing, boatloads of people all set to go somewhere. Groups of young guys carrying coolers heavily laden with who knows what going somewhere on the water for the day. It was absolutely exhilarating for me to see this. I remember so well the sense of excitement in the uncertainty of what may lay ahead. Uncertain of what, but secure in the knowledge that it was going to be wonderful and novel. It’s not all that different for us in our “Old age,” but we’re not backpacking or cycling. We’re the ones with the extra bucks and time to bail our way out of a situation as opposed to being forced to just deal with it. There’s something in me that wishes I could do it all over again.
Back to the gloom
The weather has turned nasty again. We stopped in Trondheim and had three hours to explore, after breakfast we went out and walked around town, the largest we’ve found so far. We trudged around town in the drizzle and found the Nidaros cathedral. Looked cool, but they wanted $10 to go inside. Reminded me of the Dr. Hook song where he just wants to go in to talk with God, hopes he’s not bothering anybody. We decided against it, and instead, like always, found a really cool alternative the Bo church with its old wooden beams and friendly people inside who welcomed us warmly in the true Norwegian style. Statures of Thomas Angell dot the plaza, and his house looked tres cool, but couldn’t google or wikipedia him, since those kind of searches here go through Norwegian computer servers and answers come back in Norwegian. Lots of things to learn about, even after our return home.
Heading back south the weather again turned glorious and our vision was unfettered by the obstructive fog and clouds. I never got tired of just sitting and watching the coastline, for as soon as you would turn away, the ship would pass a little inlet where there was a picturesque vision which would just as quickly disappear.
The rocky coast line would have patches of greenery where a cluster of houses, sometimes 10, sometimes 20 or more houses would appear with a road winding out the back of the cluster and into the unknown. Certainly to join another road which came from other clusters which formed a bigger road, etc. Invariably, these pods of houses had patches of farmland and fields where people had carved out a life for themselves away from the hustle and bustle of city life. And if that wasn’t isolated enough for them, there was always a single house built maybe a half a mile from the “community.” Obviously, someone who couldn’t stand the hustle and bustle of urban sprawl, Norwegian style. Talk about the suburbs, Norwegians give it a new meaning.
The closer we got to Bergen, the more these little villages appeared. They became not only more prevalent but with greater size. But there always seemed to be someone who built his house away from the main group of houses and who would be off to the side with no one near him. I can hear George, my neighbor in Clements, laughing and saying: “That would be you, Owens.”
After six days we docked in Bergen. We said our goodbyes to Christer, his mom and Ulla his wife.
Maruska and Johann found us to give us great, warm hugs and hoped that we’d meet again. Johann later came up to find me, I was watching Tour de France on the TV, and gave me the ultimate compliment. He Said: “When I first saw you I thought you were just another typical American, but I found out you weren’t.” I couldn’t ask for anything nicer to be said about me when I’m traveling.
So now we’re in Bergen, and as the kids would say when they’re texting each other, “OMG”. What a change, but that’s another story, to come later.
Carol and Jim
People continue to be very interesting. Had another really good conversation with the Swedish zoologist about genetics, DNA, and all the places he has found earthworms. I found out he is really one of the world’s authorities on the subject. And although it may seem otherwise, it’s really fascinating. We talked for over an hour. I didn’t know I had it in me. You can read about him at:
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2988/0006-324X(2005)118%5B264:ANMSOT%5D2.0.CO%3B2
I finally went up to a couple we kept seeing because we always wound up sitting near each other and said: Hi, we keep running into each other.” They laughed because they were feeling the same. Turns out they’re a Dutch couple and have become our cruise mates. Johann and Maruska got together 18 years ago when she came to Rotterdam from Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (before it became Slovakia) for some employment retraining. She was put into a house for boarding, and to her surprise she lived with a single male. Well, they fell in love and have been married for the last 17 years. He became a father to her 12 year old daughter, while he she taught him how not to be shy and be afraid of heights. For the latter, he had to take a course for a year-and-a-half before he could fly to Bratislava for the wedding. She also taught him to like climbing in the mountains. But it was not an easy sell.
A couple of Brits have entertained us too. They’re about our age, and this morning Carol and I were at breakfast and the man sat down and said that he wasn’t feeling up to snuff yet. About 10 minutes later his wife came into the dining area and asked if he was feeling okay. He said: “Yes, why?” “Well, because you have on my glasses, that’s why.”
That cracked me up, because it’s the kind of comment I might get at home notwithstanding the fact that our glasses are really different. He said: “Oh, yeah, how about that. You know, these aren’t bad. But I did tell these people that I wasn’t quite myself.”
The old man and the sea
With the improved weather, we have a full panorama of snow covered mountains on both sides as we snake our way in and out of the island passages. The ship just passed a lonely fishing dory. It appeared to be about 12-14 foot long, with a lone fisherman in it, miles out to sea, surrounded by the glory of the coast. The water is calm today, but still….that’s a small boat so far away from land. There’s still a lot of snow on the mountains, even though they are not really that high. Just a general indication of how far north we really are.
We weave our way in and out of narrow passages and then into open water for several hours. When we’re close to land, people stop their cars or come out of their houses to wave at the ship as it passes. On one occasion today, we were greeted by a household spilling out of the house, all carrying and waving Norwegian flags.
We haven’t hit the fjord area yet, but there are still some in any area of the Norwegian coast. The trolls have their own fjord, which we will go through this afternoon. It’s called, naturally, Trollfjord. It’s only 100 yards wide and everybody is looking forward to it. Learned that all the rocks are merely trolls who got caught outside when the sun came up and were turned to stone. Either there were billions of trolls, or they weren’t very bright, ‘cause there are certainly a lot of rocks.
We pass all kinds of water craft. Even the most conservative estimate states that there are 650,000 boats, one for every seven Norwegians. Dorys, skiffs, sailboats, power boats, you pick it, it’s here, and the Norwegians are out on the water in force. I have a client in Stockton from Norway and he and his buddies from Norway head to Greece a couple of times a year to sail in the Mediterranean waters. I never totally understood it before, but now: “I get it, Trygve”
The worms are safe
One of our port stops was a particularly short one of 15 minutes. Carol opted not to go, so I went on down to the gangway and there was Christer with his bag containing his vials and trowel. I asked him if he wanted company and he said: “Sure.” So we hustled off the ship and I followed as he picked his spot to dig. Sure enough, there were worms. He picked them up and handed them to me and I kept the squiggly suckers from escaping back into the ground. We then hustled back to the ship just as they were getting ready to close the gangway.
The next morning I was up at 6 a.m. checking email and writing. We had a port stop at 7:00 and I thought it would be cool to go out and catch worms since I knew Christer had late dinner sitting and probably wouldn’t make it. However, my need for coffee won out and since they don’t open up the restaurant and the free coffee until 7:00, he lost out. I joked with him later telling him he lost out to my need for coffee. He laughed, and said that actually, he couldn’t take any more worms because he was out of vials and preserving alcohol.
I told him that I had lots of questions after our last conversation, and that I wanted to know about earthworms and continental drift. Well, his eyes lit up and said: “Yes, that is actually quite an interesting subject.” His wife, Ulla, just rolled here eyes, and had that: “Oh, dear, here we go again.” Look on her face.
We saw them later in the day on a different stop, and she had a great smile on her face. She had found a Peruvian stall at the market selling alpaca sweaters. She got one she particularly liked and was a happy camper.
So the worms of Central Norway are safe, Christer is no longer on the hunt.
Speaking of happy campers Carol found a reindeer hide which had been tanned and she fell in love with it, so we now have more to put into the extra bag that I suggested we bring on the trip. I’ve learned this from previous trips where we’ve had to buy bags to cart home the Irish linen and Scottish tweeds, amongst other things. We have all these extra bags at home. We could have a garage sale on soft-backed luggage.
Life as we know it
While we’ve been steadily increasing the size and complexity of the cities at which we’re stopping, it wasn’t until we reached Svolvaer that we really felt we were in a “Tourist” area. There, with the good weather being prevalent and the town being a jumping off area for travel into the popular Lofoten islands, things really started to jump. People were sitting outside in cafes, stalls lined the squares selling, yes, reindeer hides and Peruvian alpaca sweaters and goodies along with the requisite troll and Viking souvenirs, and there was the sense of joie de vivre in the air.
Lots of students on backpacking holidays, bicyclists of all ages with saddle bags loaded with supplies and clothing, boatloads of people all set to go somewhere. Groups of young guys carrying coolers heavily laden with who knows what going somewhere on the water for the day. It was absolutely exhilarating for me to see this. I remember so well the sense of excitement in the uncertainty of what may lay ahead. Uncertain of what, but secure in the knowledge that it was going to be wonderful and novel. It’s not all that different for us in our “Old age,” but we’re not backpacking or cycling. We’re the ones with the extra bucks and time to bail our way out of a situation as opposed to being forced to just deal with it. There’s something in me that wishes I could do it all over again.
Back to the gloom
The weather has turned nasty again. We stopped in Trondheim and had three hours to explore, after breakfast we went out and walked around town, the largest we’ve found so far. We trudged around town in the drizzle and found the Nidaros cathedral. Looked cool, but they wanted $10 to go inside. Reminded me of the Dr. Hook song where he just wants to go in to talk with God, hopes he’s not bothering anybody. We decided against it, and instead, like always, found a really cool alternative the Bo church with its old wooden beams and friendly people inside who welcomed us warmly in the true Norwegian style. Statures of Thomas Angell dot the plaza, and his house looked tres cool, but couldn’t google or wikipedia him, since those kind of searches here go through Norwegian computer servers and answers come back in Norwegian. Lots of things to learn about, even after our return home.
Heading back south the weather again turned glorious and our vision was unfettered by the obstructive fog and clouds. I never got tired of just sitting and watching the coastline, for as soon as you would turn away, the ship would pass a little inlet where there was a picturesque vision which would just as quickly disappear.
The rocky coast line would have patches of greenery where a cluster of houses, sometimes 10, sometimes 20 or more houses would appear with a road winding out the back of the cluster and into the unknown. Certainly to join another road which came from other clusters which formed a bigger road, etc. Invariably, these pods of houses had patches of farmland and fields where people had carved out a life for themselves away from the hustle and bustle of city life. And if that wasn’t isolated enough for them, there was always a single house built maybe a half a mile from the “community.” Obviously, someone who couldn’t stand the hustle and bustle of urban sprawl, Norwegian style. Talk about the suburbs, Norwegians give it a new meaning.
The closer we got to Bergen, the more these little villages appeared. They became not only more prevalent but with greater size. But there always seemed to be someone who built his house away from the main group of houses and who would be off to the side with no one near him. I can hear George, my neighbor in Clements, laughing and saying: “That would be you, Owens.”
After six days we docked in Bergen. We said our goodbyes to Christer, his mom and Ulla his wife.
Maruska and Johann found us to give us great, warm hugs and hoped that we’d meet again. Johann later came up to find me, I was watching Tour de France on the TV, and gave me the ultimate compliment. He Said: “When I first saw you I thought you were just another typical American, but I found out you weren’t.” I couldn’t ask for anything nicer to be said about me when I’m traveling.
So now we’re in Bergen, and as the kids would say when they’re texting each other, “OMG”. What a change, but that’s another story, to come later.
Carol and Jim
A dose of reality
After a week of visiting villages and small towns where we might not see anybody on the streets, and then steadily increasing our human contact with the outside world as we got further south, we had more or less conditioned ourselves to the fact that we might have a peaceful and tranquil stay after we got off the boat in Bergen.
Well, welcome to reality, Jim!!
We got the car off the ship and headed to the center of town to find our hotel. Our first clue was when we came to a corner and like a dummy, I stopped to let someone cross the street in front of me. That was like a signal to half of humanity and a flood of people seemed to come from nowhere, and it is not an exaggeration to say that we sat there for more than a minute waiting for a break in pedestrians to where I could continue. Suddenly, we were in the middle of the tourist season in one of the major tourist cities of Scandinavia.
Its major impetus is that it is a city small enough with a population of about 250,000, but large enough to have everything a tourist might want. It is a MAJOR jumping off point for the fjords. One can go in almost any direction, except for west, of course, and see some of the most spectacular scenery available to the human eye. It is a young person’s town in that it has a major university with the, appropriately named, University of Bergen attracting students from all over the world, and top the whole enchilada off with the fact that it is the quintessential picture postcard city of Norway.
Since most Norwegians are off for the month of July, the only “Real” people left here are those in the service industry. Then you add back the number of tourists present and you have a city crammed with people in the downtown area instead of being spread out amongst the city at large. It is an absolute zoo in the center of town. The pedestrians are 3-4 abreast in the streets. To get information on what to see and do, you go into the tourist center, take a number, and then wait 45 minutes before you get called to get your tour or activity booked. I guess we just weren’t mentally prepared for this. Our last vacations have been the trip to Africa, walking the camino in Spain, the trip to Tibet, and others where we were in places not inundated by the hordes of tourists that can descend on a given point in the world.
This morning the situation was compounded by the fact that two mega-cruise ships were in port, disgorging an additional 4,000 people into the streets for some major shopping into a concentrated amount of time. The ships made our little Hurtigruten look like a cabin cruise.
Therefore, Carol and I did what can only be described as an act of desperation. We got out of the main area and just started walking. Using our logic that most of the tourists would stay in the major tourist area around the harbor, we took to the hills, literally. Bergen is nestled at the base of a lush, green hillside with the houses stacked one above each other in levels which seemingly don’t have any separation. However, as we discovered, much to our delight, it is an area full of little alleys, winding streets, and tons of hidden treasures all waiting to be discovered. In one case we followed a narrow passageway and found that four houses had joined the area behind their house into some kind of a common area with benches and gardens, an absolute delight to behold.
I think that Bergen would be a wonderful place to visit in the off season when one could enjoy it without being jostled while trying to do so. We took the floibahn up the mountain and got an overview of the city as a whole. With all the water ways coming in from different directions, it is really a pearl in the midst of the ocean.
But we needed to get out of dodge and so we fled after two days and headed inland. My client in Stockton who is from Bergen suggested we do what is called “Norway in a Nutshell.” It turned out to be really good advice and we totally enjoyed our day. Since we had a car we were able to start and end our trip a couple of hours inland and not have to return to Bergen. The tour consists of a combination of bus, rail, and ferries which give the passenger the quintessential view of the best the area has to offer.
The ferry ride on the Fjord was particularly nice, still lots of tourists on the ferry, but tolerable. That afternoon we got back to our car and headed towards the Geiranger Fjord, reputed to be one of the loveliest in Norway. We decided to stay in a little town named Vik, and it was absolutely delightful. It was exactly what we needed. With 2,000 inhabitants or so, it was quiet and picturesque. The most dramatic moment came when three girls were walking their dog in one direction and a boy walking his dog came from the other. The two dogs sniffed each other, accepted each other, the crisis passed, and the town went back to its sleepy ambience. Before leaving this morning, we went to see one of the oldest remaining stave churches in Norway. This one was built in 1130. You can see it at:
http://www.fortidsminneforeningen.no/eiendommer/16/16
The grab-bag of superlatives: Carol and I have decided that the best way to describe Norway is to take a plain, brown, paper bag, fill it with a whole bunch of adjectives like: majestic, peaceful, inspiring, bucolic, dramatic, serene, and a couple dozen more of your choosing and then when you want to explain what it feels like, just grab one from the bag, and it will surely fit the moment.
Words like beautiful just don’t do the job. It is one of the most spectacular countries I’ve even been in. I remembered it this way from my youthful eyes when I was here in 1962, but I wondered if that was just me being young and things looking better the further away from them you get.
Well, that couldn’t be more wrong. It really is that good. Ever since we got on the Hurtigruten I’ve had the Morning song from Grieg’s Peer Gynt running through my head. I’d sit out on the prow of the ship watching the landscape and the music just poured out of my brain and blended with the vision with which my eyes were filled. I figured somebody else must have felt the same way I did, and thanks to my favorite: youtube.com I was right. In fact it was done by Norway in a Nutshell. So I’ve listed a site below to give you a sense of what my eyes and ears were seeing and hearing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGCIf_WUJow&feature=related
This one below is not Peer Gynt, but it’s Grieg and you’ll get the picture, literally.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf6mXhYXudg
It was this sort of scene that inspired Norway’s greatest composer, and you get the sense of it as well.
Now if you really want to see a good you tube, you’ve got to check out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=astISOttCQ0&feature=fvst
This is my grandsons’ favorite. I mean, after all, it has had 19,500,000 (and still counting) hits compared to the Grieg’s 24,000. Do my grandsons have good musical taste, or what
Carol’s Norwegian vocabulary lessons
Since Carol is a linguistic person at heart, she has really taken to the Norwegian language, and has already learned many valuable words to make her trip more meaningful. Whereas I’m stuck on hello, goodbye, thanks and you’re welcome, Carol is far more diverse.
She’s learned Salg - sale, fabrikk utsalg – factory outlet, garn senter- a yarn shop, Tricotagefabrik – a knitting museum, and is working on a whole bunch more to expand her vocabulary.
This is not a German Autobahn
One of the books stated that Norwegian drivers tend to go the speed limit and that limit is already slow. Most of the roads here have a 40-45 mile an hour speed limit, and, in fact, they do adhere to it. When somebody goes roaring by, it invariably has a German or Swedish plate. I remembered Ulf, My Stockholm Servas host, telling me that once he was going down a highway at about 90 mph and a cop pulled up alongside him on a motorcycle and banged on the roof of his car to get him to slow down. He did so, and avoided a ticket. How come that wouldn’t work for me with the CHP.
But the real question for me is why anybody would want to burn up the roads when there is so much to see at any given moment. I don’t want to miss everything by having to give my total and undivided attention to whizzing down the highway seeing how many cars I can pass. It is that glorious. It requires some patience and a peaceful mind. We only made 200 kilometers today, about 120 miles, because we took it slow and made dozens of stops to enjoy the view.
There is a fantastic network of ferries plying the waterways, because without them you literally couldn’t get there from here. The Sogne Fjord comes inland over 100 miles. Try driving around that one on your Sunday drive to see Grandma. Nothing is cheap in Norway, but the ferries are as reasonable as anything you’ll find. This morning after leaving Vic we took the ferry to the other side, and drove along the water at water level. Then climbed over the top of the mountain with over a dozen switch backs, rode the ridge of the mountains with its numerous lakes, dropped down again to the next fjord and then repeated the whole process. We must have stopped over 20 times for the photo op that wouldn’t go away.
Often that moment had to do with waterfalls. Carol has described them as looking like somebody /9some fiber lady undoubtedly) threw some yarn down over the back of the couch and let it fall as it would. They are sometimes little ribbons working their way down to the fjords, and sometimes they’re torrents 50-80 feet wide, thundering as they fall pell-mell downward. And I mean they’re everywhere. On our two hour ferry ride yesterday on the Nutshell deal, I tried to see if we were ever out of sight of one. The answer was no.
When planning the trip, as much planning as we do anyway, we thought we would spend about a week in the fjord area. We knew it would be beautiful just from all the descriptions of the “Must do’s” given in our readings. I must say that nothing has disappointed us here in this labyrinth of ocean and land. It is……………. Where’s my grab bag.
Stay safe,
Carol and jim
Well, welcome to reality, Jim!!
We got the car off the ship and headed to the center of town to find our hotel. Our first clue was when we came to a corner and like a dummy, I stopped to let someone cross the street in front of me. That was like a signal to half of humanity and a flood of people seemed to come from nowhere, and it is not an exaggeration to say that we sat there for more than a minute waiting for a break in pedestrians to where I could continue. Suddenly, we were in the middle of the tourist season in one of the major tourist cities of Scandinavia.
Its major impetus is that it is a city small enough with a population of about 250,000, but large enough to have everything a tourist might want. It is a MAJOR jumping off point for the fjords. One can go in almost any direction, except for west, of course, and see some of the most spectacular scenery available to the human eye. It is a young person’s town in that it has a major university with the, appropriately named, University of Bergen attracting students from all over the world, and top the whole enchilada off with the fact that it is the quintessential picture postcard city of Norway.
Since most Norwegians are off for the month of July, the only “Real” people left here are those in the service industry. Then you add back the number of tourists present and you have a city crammed with people in the downtown area instead of being spread out amongst the city at large. It is an absolute zoo in the center of town. The pedestrians are 3-4 abreast in the streets. To get information on what to see and do, you go into the tourist center, take a number, and then wait 45 minutes before you get called to get your tour or activity booked. I guess we just weren’t mentally prepared for this. Our last vacations have been the trip to Africa, walking the camino in Spain, the trip to Tibet, and others where we were in places not inundated by the hordes of tourists that can descend on a given point in the world.
This morning the situation was compounded by the fact that two mega-cruise ships were in port, disgorging an additional 4,000 people into the streets for some major shopping into a concentrated amount of time. The ships made our little Hurtigruten look like a cabin cruise.
Therefore, Carol and I did what can only be described as an act of desperation. We got out of the main area and just started walking. Using our logic that most of the tourists would stay in the major tourist area around the harbor, we took to the hills, literally. Bergen is nestled at the base of a lush, green hillside with the houses stacked one above each other in levels which seemingly don’t have any separation. However, as we discovered, much to our delight, it is an area full of little alleys, winding streets, and tons of hidden treasures all waiting to be discovered. In one case we followed a narrow passageway and found that four houses had joined the area behind their house into some kind of a common area with benches and gardens, an absolute delight to behold.
I think that Bergen would be a wonderful place to visit in the off season when one could enjoy it without being jostled while trying to do so. We took the floibahn up the mountain and got an overview of the city as a whole. With all the water ways coming in from different directions, it is really a pearl in the midst of the ocean.
But we needed to get out of dodge and so we fled after two days and headed inland. My client in Stockton who is from Bergen suggested we do what is called “Norway in a Nutshell.” It turned out to be really good advice and we totally enjoyed our day. Since we had a car we were able to start and end our trip a couple of hours inland and not have to return to Bergen. The tour consists of a combination of bus, rail, and ferries which give the passenger the quintessential view of the best the area has to offer.
The ferry ride on the Fjord was particularly nice, still lots of tourists on the ferry, but tolerable. That afternoon we got back to our car and headed towards the Geiranger Fjord, reputed to be one of the loveliest in Norway. We decided to stay in a little town named Vik, and it was absolutely delightful. It was exactly what we needed. With 2,000 inhabitants or so, it was quiet and picturesque. The most dramatic moment came when three girls were walking their dog in one direction and a boy walking his dog came from the other. The two dogs sniffed each other, accepted each other, the crisis passed, and the town went back to its sleepy ambience. Before leaving this morning, we went to see one of the oldest remaining stave churches in Norway. This one was built in 1130. You can see it at:
http://www.fortidsminneforeningen.no/eiendommer/16/16
The grab-bag of superlatives: Carol and I have decided that the best way to describe Norway is to take a plain, brown, paper bag, fill it with a whole bunch of adjectives like: majestic, peaceful, inspiring, bucolic, dramatic, serene, and a couple dozen more of your choosing and then when you want to explain what it feels like, just grab one from the bag, and it will surely fit the moment.
Words like beautiful just don’t do the job. It is one of the most spectacular countries I’ve even been in. I remembered it this way from my youthful eyes when I was here in 1962, but I wondered if that was just me being young and things looking better the further away from them you get.
Well, that couldn’t be more wrong. It really is that good. Ever since we got on the Hurtigruten I’ve had the Morning song from Grieg’s Peer Gynt running through my head. I’d sit out on the prow of the ship watching the landscape and the music just poured out of my brain and blended with the vision with which my eyes were filled. I figured somebody else must have felt the same way I did, and thanks to my favorite: youtube.com I was right. In fact it was done by Norway in a Nutshell. So I’ve listed a site below to give you a sense of what my eyes and ears were seeing and hearing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGCIf_WUJow&feature=related
This one below is not Peer Gynt, but it’s Grieg and you’ll get the picture, literally.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf6mXhYXudg
It was this sort of scene that inspired Norway’s greatest composer, and you get the sense of it as well.
Now if you really want to see a good you tube, you’ve got to check out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=astISOttCQ0&feature=fvst
This is my grandsons’ favorite. I mean, after all, it has had 19,500,000 (and still counting) hits compared to the Grieg’s 24,000. Do my grandsons have good musical taste, or what
Carol’s Norwegian vocabulary lessons
Since Carol is a linguistic person at heart, she has really taken to the Norwegian language, and has already learned many valuable words to make her trip more meaningful. Whereas I’m stuck on hello, goodbye, thanks and you’re welcome, Carol is far more diverse.
She’s learned Salg - sale, fabrikk utsalg – factory outlet, garn senter- a yarn shop, Tricotagefabrik – a knitting museum, and is working on a whole bunch more to expand her vocabulary.
This is not a German Autobahn
One of the books stated that Norwegian drivers tend to go the speed limit and that limit is already slow. Most of the roads here have a 40-45 mile an hour speed limit, and, in fact, they do adhere to it. When somebody goes roaring by, it invariably has a German or Swedish plate. I remembered Ulf, My Stockholm Servas host, telling me that once he was going down a highway at about 90 mph and a cop pulled up alongside him on a motorcycle and banged on the roof of his car to get him to slow down. He did so, and avoided a ticket. How come that wouldn’t work for me with the CHP.
But the real question for me is why anybody would want to burn up the roads when there is so much to see at any given moment. I don’t want to miss everything by having to give my total and undivided attention to whizzing down the highway seeing how many cars I can pass. It is that glorious. It requires some patience and a peaceful mind. We only made 200 kilometers today, about 120 miles, because we took it slow and made dozens of stops to enjoy the view.
There is a fantastic network of ferries plying the waterways, because without them you literally couldn’t get there from here. The Sogne Fjord comes inland over 100 miles. Try driving around that one on your Sunday drive to see Grandma. Nothing is cheap in Norway, but the ferries are as reasonable as anything you’ll find. This morning after leaving Vic we took the ferry to the other side, and drove along the water at water level. Then climbed over the top of the mountain with over a dozen switch backs, rode the ridge of the mountains with its numerous lakes, dropped down again to the next fjord and then repeated the whole process. We must have stopped over 20 times for the photo op that wouldn’t go away.
Often that moment had to do with waterfalls. Carol has described them as looking like somebody /9some fiber lady undoubtedly) threw some yarn down over the back of the couch and let it fall as it would. They are sometimes little ribbons working their way down to the fjords, and sometimes they’re torrents 50-80 feet wide, thundering as they fall pell-mell downward. And I mean they’re everywhere. On our two hour ferry ride yesterday on the Nutshell deal, I tried to see if we were ever out of sight of one. The answer was no.
When planning the trip, as much planning as we do anyway, we thought we would spend about a week in the fjord area. We knew it would be beautiful just from all the descriptions of the “Must do’s” given in our readings. I must say that nothing has disappointed us here in this labyrinth of ocean and land. It is……………. Where’s my grab bag.
Stay safe,
Carol and jim
Norway's Cathredrals
Hi y’all:
Okay, let's try this again. I heard that I sent out an empty email. Now you know that my brain is empty most of the time so I thought it appropriate to have an email the same. However, in the interest of showing that it's not empty ALL the time, here's the email that should have been included.
To Geiranger and beyond
One of the not to be missed sights in all the guide books is the Geiranger fjord. It is the quintessential waterway where the mountains tower above the water on both sides, and the passageway is narrow and majestic. Not only the guide books, but all the people we met, Norwegians and otherwise, said that if we wanted to see the fjords, we needed to see Geiranger. Not one to dispute local advise we had planned to arrive at the little town named after the fjord, or is it the other way around, and take one of the ferries that plow the waterways throughout Norway. The plan was to leave the car in Geiranger and ferry to Hellesylt and back to the car. It only takes an hour each way. However, a wrong turn left us on the road to Hellelsylt and we went to plan b and put the car on the ferry with us and traversed the fjord in just one direction.
No harm, no foul. It only cost us a little extra money to do it this way, and saved us some time. The trip was exactly as had been described to us. Waterfalls cascaded down the sides of the steep cliffs and splattered their selves into the ocean water. One such fall is called the “Seven Sisters,” since the one source of water splits into distinct channels, and creates a beautiful display. There were dozens of waterfalls along the route. I hate to sound blasé about such things, but it’s almost getting “Cathedral” like. Many people traveling in Europe for the first time, eventually don’t find anything spectacular about seeing another beautiful church, and we’ve stopped taking photos of waterfalls unless they are the Chartres of waterfalls.
We bought our requisite bread, sliced ham, cheese, OJ, and bananas for our lunch and stopped at an overlook on the way out of town. A place calleld the “Eagles Nest.” We were high above the water looking down at the spectacle displayed below as if we were in a “Wish you were here,” post card. All in all, I’ve had worse locations for a picnic
We were heading to our Norwegian Servas hosts in the small village of Valldal. So up over the mountains we went through the valley between the two fjords and down again on the other side.
Here’s a photo of the fjord
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Geirangerfjord.jpg
Along the way, however, we found several more Chartres, and had to stop for more photo ops. Just when you think you’re done with waterfalls another pops into view and more or less says: “Oh yeah, what about me.” When they fall directly into the fjord, their job is done, but in the mountain passes between fjords, when they reach the bottom of the “V” between the two mountains, they’ve only reached half their destination. Now comes the real fun, because as they reach the bottom of the channel, they join forces with all the other small falls to form a stream and with each passing mile the amount of water is increased with each succeeding waterfall until we now have a raging torrent of water which has to reach the sea. Over the millennia that this has happened, all the soil in the river has long since washed away, so now you just see water and big rocks interacting in a dramatic and spectacular (have I used that word before?) way. The water still has a thousand or more feet of drop in a short distance creating a thunder of water which runs directly beside the road which is trying to do the same thing. They may be here, but I haven’t seen any babbling brooks in Norway. They’re raging, wild courses of water not to be denied as they cascade over all the trolls which were turned to stone because they didn’t get out of the light before the sun came up. The only tranquil places are where the water forms into lakes as if they’re gathering up strength to burst out the end of their lake.
We’ve been told that each year some kayakers are killed when they don’t reconnoiter the lake and think they can just paddle to the mouth and are confronted with a situation beyond their control and they plummet into the cauldron. Also Kayakers are killed when they paddle under the waterfalls in the fjords. The constant eroding by the water eventually loosens rocks which come hurtling from above and sometimes hit those simply looking for a moment with the water.
Trolls are an integral part of Norwegian folk life. Everybody teaches their children the stories, and the first one they learn is one that I learned as a child about the “Troll under the Bridge.” They’re a part of the national consciousness, part of what makes Norwegians who they are. Like fairies in England, Leprechauns in Ireland, they lend a colorful aspect to the national ethos. Norwegians agree they’re ugly, but they’re ugly in a pretty way. They’re not grotesque or nasty, but rather: They’re trolls. What else would you think they looked like.”
We arrived a little early at the house of our hosts, so we walked from the house to the fjord a distance of about 200 yards, and I talked to a local ferryman about a tunnel which went directly into the mountain at the end of the village. Valldal has a population of maybe 1,000 if everybody is back from Vacation, and nobody has lost their cats and dogs, so the tunnel looked out of place. The man said that the tunnel went about 10 miles down the road and then stopped. It is literally the road to nowhere. So, naturally, we took it. When we reached the end, there was a lovely trailer park/camping ground, and what to our surprise – a Kraftmuseum. I said to Carol: “Oh crap, we take the road to nowhere and what do we find but a craft museum.” We laughed and she smiled when I said: “Do you want to go in.” So naturally we did, and guess what, it’s not a craft museum. Kraft in Norwegian means power. It was a disused power plant turned into a museum. Penstocks, turbines, the whole energy ball of wax. Carol had this funny little look on her face as we went in. The curator showed us around and explained things to us. I told him that I had lived in a PG&E camp as a child, and since we’re not talking about a major tourist attraction here, I showed him photos of Las Plumas which are on the net. He’d heard of the Oroville Dam, and hence had some concept of the history. There are some really cool Las Plumas photos on the web. Go to:
http://www.google.no/imgres?imgurl=http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/tf7x0nb3zs/hi-res&imgrefurl=http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/tf7x0nb3zs/&h=881&w=580&sz=132&tbnid=P2nJUlWkvioctM:&tbnh=146&tbnw=96&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlas%2Bplumas%2Bpower%2Bhouse%2Bphotos&usg=__rTZANE3RgJ6dt84wyuSbFecz7uQ=&ei=ELJgSoGtA4rT-Qay8OCXCw&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=1&ct=image
http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/tf7199n9h9/?brand=calisphere
.
The family was back at the house when we returned. Nina, Terje, their son, Grim, and his Lithuanian friend Indre. Yes, Geidre, we’ve met another Lithuanian Nina fixed one of Grim’s favorite meals, potato dumplings made with a piece of sausage in them, Norwegian sausage and salted mutton, and the requisite plain boiled potatoes. An excellent meal, except that we ate about 9:00 p.m. and finished somewhat after 10. They laughed at us. In the summer they go to bed around two or three in the morning and try to get up before noon so they can say they got up in the morning.
We were trashed from the day. We’d driven all of 55 miles, down from the 87 we made the previous day. We told them we’d make better time if we didn’t stop to take photos and clamber around the waterfalls So off to bed around 11:30 when they others were just getting into their evening coffee.
A day trip to Alesund provided a nice way to see our last day of fjords. We went over the trollstiegen. See:
http://www.trollstigen.net/
for some photos for our last dramatic day in the fjord/mountains. Naturally there were lots of waterfalls and…………….(grab bag, please) scenery. But mostly we just talked with Nina, Terje, and the kids. Lots to learn about Norway and Norwegians. Servas provides an excellent opportunity to do just that.
For example, the house that they live in was Built in Alesund in 1903, but was moved to Valldal in 1907. It is a timber house and it was not uncommon for people to tear down the houses and move them elsewhere. They just numbered the timbers for reassembly. This house was moved over 100 miles away. I neglected to ask how they moved it in those days before cars.
The house sits across a small street from the local church and its graveyard. Terje told me that his whole family was buried there. Seven generations of his family had lived in the house and he pointed to a corner of the room where we were sitting and said that he was born in that corner. So he could literally sit in his living room and look at the spot where he was born and through the window where his ancestors were buried.
The plots are filling and they’ve expanded the graveyard, but still they’re running out of room. Nina told Carol that her mom was buried in the same plot as her great-grandmother. They wait 50 years before reusing the same plot.
Heading south away from the fjords and towards Oslo we started the next phase of our trip. Along the way we stopped to climb up a mountain for an hour so we could stand behind a raging waterfall. Just how dumb is that? Later that day we drove to a glacier and again walked up for an hour to reach it.
Along the way a young girl of about 12 asked me to take her family’s photo. When asked to do this, I always say: “I’ll do it for a nickel. I don’t work for free.” I add that they can owe it to me or pay me later. It’s good for a laugh and lots of time it works for a way for conversation. Where are you from? Is this your family? Etc. In this case the girl got this really confused look on her face when I told her it would cost her 1 kroner. She shook her head, said no, and didn’t laugh as I took the camera. I could see her mom ask what that was all about and then laugh when she told her. Turns out they are from Barcelona, and so Carol and the mom had a good conversation while I bugged the girl for my kroner.
We saw them several more times in the coming days in places far away from the glacier. We just kept running into them even 300 miles to the south in Oslo. Each time the girl didn’t see us before we saw them, and I’d sidle up to her or come up from behind and say: “Pagame.” Pay me! She’d get this really pained look on her face, like: “Oh, no, not him again.” Mom and dad would burst out laughing while daughter was trying to cope. Mom tried to pay me with some potato chips, but I was holding out for cold cash. Mom wanted to know where we were staying in Oslo, and we told her about Servas. She was very interested and took the website to learn more. We’ve had the opportunity to spread the gospel of Servas on this trip. Anyway, it was all great fun, and even the girl learned to laugh at the whole scene.
For a photo of the Briksdal glacier and how it has changed in just the last six years, look at:
http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/visual-proof-of-global-warming.html
We made it to Lillehammer for the evening and had a nice evening in a good hotel. We try to change up our nights. Servas is great, but we also need to be able to spread out and simply relax on our own schedule not other people’s. The combination of Servas and hotels works really well for us.
Since we were in Lillehammer we drove up to the Olympic area where the 1994 winter Olympics were held. We clambered up the ski jump and then saw these guys going up the chair lift with skis. What’s this all about? Well, we were about to find out. The ski jump has two grooves in the middle of the wide downward shaft. We couldn’t get close enough to tell for sure but they looked like your basic four inch kitchen tiles all connected together. Then the hill where the jumpers land was totally covered with brushes like the kind on your garage broom. They were layered on strips about six inches apart, so the appearance was that of a shingled roof. Row upon row upon row. All the way down the hill. Then the water sprinklers came on to wet the whole run and jump area. A man sat on the bar at the top of the jump and then, clatters, clatter, clatter, he came whizzing down the jump over the wet tiles. I had climbed to the exact height of the take-off point and he went whizzing by me no further than 15 feet away. He hit the take-off point and all went silent for a second. Whoosh, he literally flew through the air. Carol was standing further down the hill and she could hear the jumper’s clothes making a sound like, as Carol described it: “The fluttering of wings.” It was like some giant bird was soaring through the air. It was too cool!!! We moved to different spots in the run to get different perspectives as they make several runs up the chairlift and then down the jump. It was just one of those moments in travel that you get lucky enough to experience even though you have no clue.
So we’ve made it to Oslo and enter the last week of our trip. I don’t know what’s to come, but I know that we have more great things ahead of us.
Until the next installment, here’s hoping everybody is safe and well.
We certainly are.
Love to all,
C and J
Okay, let's try this again. I heard that I sent out an empty email. Now you know that my brain is empty most of the time so I thought it appropriate to have an email the same. However, in the interest of showing that it's not empty ALL the time, here's the email that should have been included.
To Geiranger and beyond
One of the not to be missed sights in all the guide books is the Geiranger fjord. It is the quintessential waterway where the mountains tower above the water on both sides, and the passageway is narrow and majestic. Not only the guide books, but all the people we met, Norwegians and otherwise, said that if we wanted to see the fjords, we needed to see Geiranger. Not one to dispute local advise we had planned to arrive at the little town named after the fjord, or is it the other way around, and take one of the ferries that plow the waterways throughout Norway. The plan was to leave the car in Geiranger and ferry to Hellesylt and back to the car. It only takes an hour each way. However, a wrong turn left us on the road to Hellelsylt and we went to plan b and put the car on the ferry with us and traversed the fjord in just one direction.
No harm, no foul. It only cost us a little extra money to do it this way, and saved us some time. The trip was exactly as had been described to us. Waterfalls cascaded down the sides of the steep cliffs and splattered their selves into the ocean water. One such fall is called the “Seven Sisters,” since the one source of water splits into distinct channels, and creates a beautiful display. There were dozens of waterfalls along the route. I hate to sound blasé about such things, but it’s almost getting “Cathedral” like. Many people traveling in Europe for the first time, eventually don’t find anything spectacular about seeing another beautiful church, and we’ve stopped taking photos of waterfalls unless they are the Chartres of waterfalls.
We bought our requisite bread, sliced ham, cheese, OJ, and bananas for our lunch and stopped at an overlook on the way out of town. A place calleld the “Eagles Nest.” We were high above the water looking down at the spectacle displayed below as if we were in a “Wish you were here,” post card. All in all, I’ve had worse locations for a picnic
We were heading to our Norwegian Servas hosts in the small village of Valldal. So up over the mountains we went through the valley between the two fjords and down again on the other side.
Here’s a photo of the fjord
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Geirangerfjord.jpg
Along the way, however, we found several more Chartres, and had to stop for more photo ops. Just when you think you’re done with waterfalls another pops into view and more or less says: “Oh yeah, what about me.” When they fall directly into the fjord, their job is done, but in the mountain passes between fjords, when they reach the bottom of the “V” between the two mountains, they’ve only reached half their destination. Now comes the real fun, because as they reach the bottom of the channel, they join forces with all the other small falls to form a stream and with each passing mile the amount of water is increased with each succeeding waterfall until we now have a raging torrent of water which has to reach the sea. Over the millennia that this has happened, all the soil in the river has long since washed away, so now you just see water and big rocks interacting in a dramatic and spectacular (have I used that word before?) way. The water still has a thousand or more feet of drop in a short distance creating a thunder of water which runs directly beside the road which is trying to do the same thing. They may be here, but I haven’t seen any babbling brooks in Norway. They’re raging, wild courses of water not to be denied as they cascade over all the trolls which were turned to stone because they didn’t get out of the light before the sun came up. The only tranquil places are where the water forms into lakes as if they’re gathering up strength to burst out the end of their lake.
We’ve been told that each year some kayakers are killed when they don’t reconnoiter the lake and think they can just paddle to the mouth and are confronted with a situation beyond their control and they plummet into the cauldron. Also Kayakers are killed when they paddle under the waterfalls in the fjords. The constant eroding by the water eventually loosens rocks which come hurtling from above and sometimes hit those simply looking for a moment with the water.
Trolls are an integral part of Norwegian folk life. Everybody teaches their children the stories, and the first one they learn is one that I learned as a child about the “Troll under the Bridge.” They’re a part of the national consciousness, part of what makes Norwegians who they are. Like fairies in England, Leprechauns in Ireland, they lend a colorful aspect to the national ethos. Norwegians agree they’re ugly, but they’re ugly in a pretty way. They’re not grotesque or nasty, but rather: They’re trolls. What else would you think they looked like.”
We arrived a little early at the house of our hosts, so we walked from the house to the fjord a distance of about 200 yards, and I talked to a local ferryman about a tunnel which went directly into the mountain at the end of the village. Valldal has a population of maybe 1,000 if everybody is back from Vacation, and nobody has lost their cats and dogs, so the tunnel looked out of place. The man said that the tunnel went about 10 miles down the road and then stopped. It is literally the road to nowhere. So, naturally, we took it. When we reached the end, there was a lovely trailer park/camping ground, and what to our surprise – a Kraftmuseum. I said to Carol: “Oh crap, we take the road to nowhere and what do we find but a craft museum.” We laughed and she smiled when I said: “Do you want to go in.” So naturally we did, and guess what, it’s not a craft museum. Kraft in Norwegian means power. It was a disused power plant turned into a museum. Penstocks, turbines, the whole energy ball of wax. Carol had this funny little look on her face as we went in. The curator showed us around and explained things to us. I told him that I had lived in a PG&E camp as a child, and since we’re not talking about a major tourist attraction here, I showed him photos of Las Plumas which are on the net. He’d heard of the Oroville Dam, and hence had some concept of the history. There are some really cool Las Plumas photos on the web. Go to:
http://www.google.no/imgres?imgurl=http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/tf7x0nb3zs/hi-res&imgrefurl=http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/tf7x0nb3zs/&h=881&w=580&sz=132&tbnid=P2nJUlWkvioctM:&tbnh=146&tbnw=96&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlas%2Bplumas%2Bpower%2Bhouse%2Bphotos&usg=__rTZANE3RgJ6dt84wyuSbFecz7uQ=&ei=ELJgSoGtA4rT-Qay8OCXCw&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=1&ct=image
http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/tf7199n9h9/?brand=calisphere
.
The family was back at the house when we returned. Nina, Terje, their son, Grim, and his Lithuanian friend Indre. Yes, Geidre, we’ve met another Lithuanian Nina fixed one of Grim’s favorite meals, potato dumplings made with a piece of sausage in them, Norwegian sausage and salted mutton, and the requisite plain boiled potatoes. An excellent meal, except that we ate about 9:00 p.m. and finished somewhat after 10. They laughed at us. In the summer they go to bed around two or three in the morning and try to get up before noon so they can say they got up in the morning.
We were trashed from the day. We’d driven all of 55 miles, down from the 87 we made the previous day. We told them we’d make better time if we didn’t stop to take photos and clamber around the waterfalls So off to bed around 11:30 when they others were just getting into their evening coffee.
A day trip to Alesund provided a nice way to see our last day of fjords. We went over the trollstiegen. See:
http://www.trollstigen.net/
for some photos for our last dramatic day in the fjord/mountains. Naturally there were lots of waterfalls and…………….(grab bag, please) scenery. But mostly we just talked with Nina, Terje, and the kids. Lots to learn about Norway and Norwegians. Servas provides an excellent opportunity to do just that.
For example, the house that they live in was Built in Alesund in 1903, but was moved to Valldal in 1907. It is a timber house and it was not uncommon for people to tear down the houses and move them elsewhere. They just numbered the timbers for reassembly. This house was moved over 100 miles away. I neglected to ask how they moved it in those days before cars.
The house sits across a small street from the local church and its graveyard. Terje told me that his whole family was buried there. Seven generations of his family had lived in the house and he pointed to a corner of the room where we were sitting and said that he was born in that corner. So he could literally sit in his living room and look at the spot where he was born and through the window where his ancestors were buried.
The plots are filling and they’ve expanded the graveyard, but still they’re running out of room. Nina told Carol that her mom was buried in the same plot as her great-grandmother. They wait 50 years before reusing the same plot.
Heading south away from the fjords and towards Oslo we started the next phase of our trip. Along the way we stopped to climb up a mountain for an hour so we could stand behind a raging waterfall. Just how dumb is that? Later that day we drove to a glacier and again walked up for an hour to reach it.
Along the way a young girl of about 12 asked me to take her family’s photo. When asked to do this, I always say: “I’ll do it for a nickel. I don’t work for free.” I add that they can owe it to me or pay me later. It’s good for a laugh and lots of time it works for a way for conversation. Where are you from? Is this your family? Etc. In this case the girl got this really confused look on her face when I told her it would cost her 1 kroner. She shook her head, said no, and didn’t laugh as I took the camera. I could see her mom ask what that was all about and then laugh when she told her. Turns out they are from Barcelona, and so Carol and the mom had a good conversation while I bugged the girl for my kroner.
We saw them several more times in the coming days in places far away from the glacier. We just kept running into them even 300 miles to the south in Oslo. Each time the girl didn’t see us before we saw them, and I’d sidle up to her or come up from behind and say: “Pagame.” Pay me! She’d get this really pained look on her face, like: “Oh, no, not him again.” Mom and dad would burst out laughing while daughter was trying to cope. Mom tried to pay me with some potato chips, but I was holding out for cold cash. Mom wanted to know where we were staying in Oslo, and we told her about Servas. She was very interested and took the website to learn more. We’ve had the opportunity to spread the gospel of Servas on this trip. Anyway, it was all great fun, and even the girl learned to laugh at the whole scene.
For a photo of the Briksdal glacier and how it has changed in just the last six years, look at:
http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/visual-proof-of-global-warming.html
We made it to Lillehammer for the evening and had a nice evening in a good hotel. We try to change up our nights. Servas is great, but we also need to be able to spread out and simply relax on our own schedule not other people’s. The combination of Servas and hotels works really well for us.
Since we were in Lillehammer we drove up to the Olympic area where the 1994 winter Olympics were held. We clambered up the ski jump and then saw these guys going up the chair lift with skis. What’s this all about? Well, we were about to find out. The ski jump has two grooves in the middle of the wide downward shaft. We couldn’t get close enough to tell for sure but they looked like your basic four inch kitchen tiles all connected together. Then the hill where the jumpers land was totally covered with brushes like the kind on your garage broom. They were layered on strips about six inches apart, so the appearance was that of a shingled roof. Row upon row upon row. All the way down the hill. Then the water sprinklers came on to wet the whole run and jump area. A man sat on the bar at the top of the jump and then, clatters, clatter, clatter, he came whizzing down the jump over the wet tiles. I had climbed to the exact height of the take-off point and he went whizzing by me no further than 15 feet away. He hit the take-off point and all went silent for a second. Whoosh, he literally flew through the air. Carol was standing further down the hill and she could hear the jumper’s clothes making a sound like, as Carol described it: “The fluttering of wings.” It was like some giant bird was soaring through the air. It was too cool!!! We moved to different spots in the run to get different perspectives as they make several runs up the chairlift and then down the jump. It was just one of those moments in travel that you get lucky enough to experience even though you have no clue.
So we’ve made it to Oslo and enter the last week of our trip. I don’t know what’s to come, but I know that we have more great things ahead of us.
Until the next installment, here’s hoping everybody is safe and well.
We certainly are.
Love to all,
C and J
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