Category — Norway

I decided that after every country I visit I will make a blog post summarizing what I (think I) have learned about its culture, people or customs. Starting out with Norway, here are some traveling and cultural tips:

• There are a lot of hot girls in Norway. I have no idea why girls are prettier in this country than in other countries, but it is true
• Drinking is often done in the comfort of the own home. Norwegians are reasonably private people. It probably also helps that alcohol prices are so high that many people create their own alcoholic beverages, be it housewine or spirits. If and when they go out, there is something called vorspiel, which is basically getting shitfaced on cheap stuff so you don’t have to buy so much beer/alcohol in the pubs.
• Norwegians have two languages: New Norwegian and traditional Norwegian. There is no clarity as to which one of the two is used the most. In some regions it is new Norwegian and in others it is traditional Norwegian.
• Norwegians have their own mile which is about 10 kilometers. This is widely used, especially in the north.
• The written Norwegian language is very similar to dutch, which makes it fairly easy to walk the streets as most signs make sense to you.
• That said, the spoken language is nowhere near similar to dutch and as such for someone not knowing any other Nordic languages completely ununderstandable
• Norwegians are very proud of their flag for some reason. You will find the Norwegian flag everywhere
• The average price level is about 20-25% higher as it is in Holland. It might not be 100% accurate, but generally I got the feeling that you spend 20 Krone as if it was 2 Euro, while it is actually 2,50 Euro
• Norway is an extremely safe country where you can safely leave your possessions unguarded for a while without worrying that it might not be there when you come back. I wish more countries had this morale
• Despite the towering alcohol prices, everybody drinks like it was some cheap eastern European country. Of course the incomes are higher in Norway, but still
• All strong alcohol is sold by one single shop. The government owns this company and as such has a monopoly on alcohol sales.
• People in the north seem a bit more friendly and willing to help you than people in the south. Of course it is no rule of thumb, but I found it to be this way.
• Norway does not have any bums or homeless people (or knows how to hide them _really_ well)
• Even though Norway is famed for it’s metal scene, I didn’t feel there were more metalheads in any public place than for instance in Holland. Did I completely miss it because it is ‘underground’ or something?
• Norway has some of the most breathtaking sceneries I have ever seen. Every part of my trip was beautiful, some even more astonishing than others.

The next morning I got up around 9.00 and when I got to the kitchen, Odd served me a nice breakfast: big fat pieces of salmon (on my own bread that I had anyway )! Apparently I was enjoying it so much that he cut the rest of the salmon up and put it in a box to give it to me for lunch. This was one of the salmons that he had catched this summer. He brings them to a woman in one of the fisherman’s villages close by and she salts and smokes them.

After breakfast he called the tourist information to figure out what the opening hours for Nordkapp were. It turned out that if I got there before 11.00 we wouldn’t have to pay. I asked Odd if he would drive me there for the fee that I would normally pay for the bus and he agreed.

We got into the car and made our way to Nordkapp. On the road there (it’s about 30Km from Honningsvag) we saw almost no other cars, so I was really glad that Odd was driving me there! We got to the Cape and it rained. We got out, I walked over to the northern most tip of land and we made a picture. All in all I think I was there for about 5 minutes. There is basically nothing to see, it’s just the awesome feeling of reaching Nordkapp. I said to Odd: “North is done, now all I need is south, west and east and maybe high and low”. Once again I felt like I could scream!

He drove me back to Honningsvag and even a little further to the Nordkapp tunnel. When I wanted to pay him for all he had done, he refused to accept the money and told me to have some good beers on the CS cruise next week (read more about that later ). What an awesome guy!

I got out of the car and it was raining pretty badly, with almost no cars on the road. I decided that waiting around here was not gonna do me any good and thought it was a good idea to walk through Nordkapp tunnel (close to 7 Km). This turned out to not be the best idea I’ve ever had, for several reasons. First, I didn’t think about the fact that the damn thing is not only 7km long, but also has a 10% descent and ascend as well. Not having any point of reference as to how steep you are climbing, you have to rely on your balance to figure out how fast you should be walking. As a result, especially climbing was very exhausting Second, since usually only people with cars pass through this tunnel it makes some loud and downright frightening noises. Third, I didn’t realize (and this is a big d’oh!) that no one is going to stop in a tunnel to pick someone up. Last, it was a little frightening to see water sipping through all the cracks in the walls. This is a very well maintained tunnel that runs under the sea, but you just don’t see this normally. So all in all, I was glad to emerge on the other side (where it was also raining ).

I took some rest, drank some water and then started walking further since there were still no cars. It started raining a little more and as I have experienced before, this makes people feel more compassionate and so I was picked up by a guy that probably wouldn’t have picked me up was the sun shining He took me all the way to the first split in the road, exactly where I needed to be!

I took another break, ate a nice sandwich with fresh salmon I had left over from Odd’s place and got back on the road. I was a little indecisive as to whether I should go back to Alta and head into Finland from there, or take the road directly to finland from where I was standing with the risk of taking a low-traffic route. Since it felt so pointless to go all the way back to crappy Alta, I decided to take my chances on the route leading into Finland directly. Maybe I would even make it to Finland today if I was lucky!

I looked at the crappy map I had and decided the next city to aim for was Karasjok at the Norwegian/Finnish border. I was picked up by two Sami guys (fat chance as I was at the northern part of Sami territory. They were very friendly and spoke fluent English, Sami, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish. They dropped me off in a good spot telling me that they needed to go some place but they would look for me when they got back to see if I was still there. They were going to some place in northern Finland, so I really got the feeling I would see some Suomi soil today.

Next I was picked up by a truck taking me to Karasjok. The driver was a Russian heading to Moermansk. Suddenly I realized that I was getting pretty close to Russian territory Since my Russian is still limited to telling someone that I don’t understand it (and ask them if they understand English) there was not much to talk about. We stopped in some crappy restaurant (the only one ) along the way to have some food and he dropped me off in Karasjok at about 18:00. I decided to spend some of my last Norwegian money (Karasjok is about 20km from the finnish border) on a decent meal. The meal turned out to be not that decent but on the upside I still had some money left.

I got back on the road, convinced that I was going to reach Finland today (on the other side of the border there is a town called Karigasniemi, only 20Km from where I was). I decided to walk as far as I could while traffic was pretty scarce. I passed a campsite on my way, but decided to keep moving. About 2Km later, I realized that if no one was going to pick me up, I would be stuck in an enormous forest that had warning signs for reindeer husbandry around it. Not the smartest idea in the world. The traffic was getting less and less, so I decided to turn around and head back to the campsite entrance, stay there for a bit and then go to the campsite should I not have been picked up before darkness.

When I was close to the entrance again, a car stopped, but they told me they were going to Alta. I found it strange, and after thinking about it for a minute I took out the only crappy map I had, realizing that I had been walking in the wrong direction This was the road leading west and then south instead of directly south into Finland! I realized that my chances of getting to Finland today were now close to zero, so I decided to spend the night on the camping and continue into Finland the next day. This was my first day of paying for lodging in almost a month of traveling. I guess it had to happen sooner or later

When we woke up the next morning, the outside of our tents was frozen completely. I hadn’t been cold, but I could feel that this was as much as my sleeping bag could comfortably take (plus my tent is only a toystore, single layered tent).

We made some tea to warm up, packed our bags and started hitchhiking. Or, well, we wanted to start hitchhiking. Instead we just waited and waited and waited for a car that was going in our direction and was actually not full. We tried hitchhiking together, separately and even hiding while the other person was trying to get a car. Nothing seemed to work.

After a couple of hours we decided this was not going to work and Jeff decided to turn back as he was on a limited time schedule. As I have all the time in the world, I decided to keep on going. I said goodbye to Jeff. It was very nice traveling with him, even if it was just for a day. Hope to see you again in some unexpected place soon, man!

Of course, 15 minutes after Jeff left, I got a ride. It was from a guy going 10 km in my direction (he was going hunting), dropping me off in the middle of nowhere (no, this time _really_ in the middle of nowhere). There was literally nothing there except the road and a small patch of gravel that I was standing on. Apparently that made people pity me, since I was picked up rather quickly.

I was dropped off at the point where the road splits off: north to Honningsvag (the only town before Nordkapp) and south to Finland. There were hardly any cars, so I decided to start walking in the direction of Nordkapp. I felt excited, even though I still had 120Km to go!

After 6 or 7 Km walking, I was picked up by some kids in a van, that only went 2 km in my direction. I took the ride and they drove me an extra 5 km. I was dropped in a little fisher settlement and continued walking up the road. By now I felt like Frodo trying to reach mount doom; losing all my friends along the way, determined to reach my goal. I looked around for Gollum, but he wasn’t there

Finally I was picked up by a friendly guy called Odd (ready for another Benny story, anyone? Read on!). He told me he was going to Honningsvag, but needed to stop at his summer house first. He asked me if I wanted to come along to see it. I did as I liked the guy and it seemed like fun (oh yeah, and he was my only chance to reach at least Honningsvag today ).

His summer house turned out to have a driveway of about 500m that was not exactly Ferrari proof. Basically, he just threw the 4×4 vehicle we were in off e pile of rocks and through some muddy grounds I thought were impossible to cross. Yet he did it with such calmness and expertise that I guessed it wasn’t his first time. This was the only way to reach the house besides going over water by boat. The house was located at the shores of the fjord and was very beautiful. In the middle of nowhere it had running water from a well and power from sun cells.

I helped him carry in some chairs he had just bought. Wondering how the hell he had planned on getting these big chairs inside without my help, he later would confess that that was the reason he picked me up in the first place

After that we went back up the hill taking another off road path and just when I thought the hardest part was over, he realized he forgot something, turned the car around and threw it back down. I was happy, since I liked the offroad experience

After we were back on the main road (an actual paved road, wow ) he told me that he lived a little outside Honningsvag and since his wife and three of his four kids were not at home, he invited me to stay the night at his house. I figured that was a lot better than spending another night outside in the freezing arctic cold and said yes.

Before we went there we made a little detour to a friend’s summer house. He lived even further from the main road We went inside the house for a bit and while they were speaking Norwegian, I was looking around. Some random things that caught my eye: a banana (I remember thinking what a hell of a journey that banana must have followed to end up in a house in the northernmost tip of Europe in the middle of nowhere ), a genuine Gorbatschov matroushka (I can feel in more things that we are getting closer to Russia ;)) and some radio’s and antennas that were used to follow ships and radio stations.

After this little pit-stop, we went back on our way to Honningsvag. We got to the beautiful house, which was beautifully located high above the fjord. Odd pointed me towards the shower (which I very much needed ), the washing machine (also needed ) and then he cooked dinner for him, his daughter and me. We had meatballs, mashed potatoes and mashed pees. A nice heavy meal that I could definitely use after a long hard day like this one!

After dinner we talked a little bit, I worked on my blog (the more things I experience, the harder it gets to stay up to date : )) And then I went to bed nto very late. I got to stay in his other daughter’s  room (she was not at home obviously ), and I thoroughly enjoyed the night in a real bed.

We got up early to make sure we were on the road by 8:00. We had decided to travel separately since it would much likely be easier for single people to get a hitch than for couples. Jeff (I’ll stop calling him French Jeff now as Canadian Jeff is out of the picture ) started from a gas station and I walked a little further to catch more on-topic traffic. We decided to meet up at key places along the way and then got started.

I got some good rides, including one from a photographer who could appreciate the awesome scenery and the beautiful colours. Fall was really at it’s peak here in the north, creating awesome sceneries with the most beautiful gold, yellow and red colours. Because this guy was going exactly in my direction, but well past the point that I would first meet up with Jeff, I contacted him and asked if he would be okay with meeting up somewhere later that day. He was (and at that point he was behind me, yay!), so I stayed in the car and finally got dropped off in some shitty little town.

It took me a while to get out of there, so I saw Jeff passing by. The woman picking me up said that she could only take me 5 miles but I still took the ride. Next thing I know I’m in her car for almost an hour. I just thought that she was _really_ bad at estimating distances (as were a couple of other rides the previous days. Weird?). The next ride finally explained to me why all these people were so bad at estimating: I just was an ignorant little fuck! Apparently there is something called the Norwegian mile that is about 10Km. Mysteries were solved and I could kick myself for not knowing this

Anyway, one of my next rides was a guy moving to Hammerfest, going exactly in my direction. He was even stopping in Alta for dinner (this was where I was supposed to meet Jeff), so I called him to tell him that he could come with us from Alta until the point where the road to Nordkapp and the road to Hammerfest split up (a little town called Skaidi). Jeff turned out to be only 10 minutes ahead of me (amazing after hitchhiking for 300+ Km!).

We picked Jeff up and went to Alta. This being one of the bigger towns in the region, we hadn’t expected to find a deserted little town where it was hard to get dinner. Dinner was not very good, but it was all we could find, so we were on our way pretty soon after reaching Alta.

After continuing our way from Alta, it was amazing to see how fast the landscape was changing. One minute we had beautiful autumn colours with all kinds of trees, the next we were driving through deserted wasteland with the occasional bush that looked like winter had settled in long time ago.

Our driver dropped us off in Skaidi (basically a big campsite with a gas station in the middle of nowhere) and we figured we wanted to go a little bit further, so we continued hitchhiking. We ended up not getting a ride and after an hour of trying with only 5 or so cars passing that were actually going in our direction and would have had the space, we gave up.
We looked for a suitable place to pitch our tents. This turned out to be across from the gasstation on a little piece of grass next to a parking place. It was getting cold so we made some tea and talked for a few hours in front of our tents. We had some good conversations and I really got to know Jeff a little better. We decided to turn in early and set our alarms to midnight to see if there was any northern light.

Around midnight it was already well below zero degrees outside, so we got out only for a short bit. We saw a very nice northern light. There was much more light, but it was less active. Back to our sleeping bags (damn, I’m glad I bought a good one before leaving Holland!) for the rest of the night!

The next morning we hung out at Jon’s place as most of us were pretty hung over (I was smart enough to drink only beer the night before, so I was doing reasonably fine ). Canadian Jeff came out of one bedroom with a girl and Jon (being the player he supposedly is ) came out of another bedroom with the girl that was telling us so proudly the day before that she was the only girl in Tromsø that he didn’t do. Guess that was settled

Matt and I dragged our asses to the nearest supermarket to get some breakfast. Along the way we both came to the conclusion that we had to leave Tromsø as soon as possible as it was a lot of fun, but also way too expensive. In addition to that I was getting annoyed by Canadian Jeff more and more, so I decided to prepare for leaving Tromsø the next morning. Matt would be leaving the same night with the Hurtigruten.

When we got back to the house with food, we were the heroes of the day as we were the only ones fit enough (or motivated enough ) to walk to the supermarket. I made some food (baked eggs with sausages) and when no one showed up for the first round fast enough, Matt and I ate that round. The rest cooked their own food, and we all felt a lot better after eating something.

We hung around some more and then decided to go back over to Eric’s place since Matt’s clothes were there (and he obviously needed to pick them up before leaving Tromsø) and Jon’s car was also still there. Along the way we met a very smelly French Jeff (he just came back from a 2 day climbing/hiking tour of the mountains behind Tromsø) and he decided to walk with us.

Jon cooked dinner for us at Eric’s place and we decided to hang out at Eric’s for the night (except for Jon who obviously needed to go to some party as it was only the fourth night in a row for him )

Somewhere along the day French Jeff first decided to travel south with Matt, but later on he decided that he still wanted to try to reach North Cape by hitchhiking. Since that was also my plan (being so close and then not going there felt stupid), we decided to travel together. We decided on a hitchhiking contest from Tromsø to Nordkapp (a good 600km!) the next day.

We said goodbye to Matt and then went to bed relatively early after a lazy night on the couch since we wanted to start early the next day.

The next morning I woke up (luckily without a hangover!) and said goodbye to Eric who was going to see his girlfriend in Bodo for the weekend. After he was gone, I sat behind my computer for a couple of hours, going through emails and couchsurfing stuff.

A couple of hours after Canadian Jeff (not to be mixed up by French Jeff ) woke up and Australian Matt joined us, we decided to go for a walk in the city. Eric’s downstairs neighbor Lars joined us for the walk. We walked into the city center and for lack of anything better to do, we decided to go to a terrace and have nice beer in the late afternoon sunshine (300Km north of the Arctic Circle and it felt like a cold spring day in NL). I talked with Matt quite a bit and told him about couchsurfing a bit (he was losing his virginity on Jon’s couch). We got along very well. After that we walked around a bit and went to another pub to check out the girls the beer there. Somewhere in between I bought some gloves as it seemed that I was finally getting north enough to justify them

After hanging out there, we went to the supermarket to buy some ingredients for dinner (I was going to cook my infamous spaghetti again) and met up with Jon, a couchsurfing host from Tromsø. We went back to Eric’s place and had dinner and some beers there. After that, we took a taxi (main mode of transportation in Tromsø when going out, it seems) to the center of the city and checked out some pubs.

I got talking to a girl who recognized my Wacken-wristbands. We talked about a while lot of things and sort of followed the rest of the crew to all the pubs we were going to. It was fun talking to a fellow metal head again

After pub closing time, we took a taxi to Jon’s place for an after party. Me, not being very good at sitting on a couch when not sober and stay awake, fell asleep after about an hour (I was actually quite proud making it that long ) and crashed on Jon’s couch for the rest of the night (with a full blown after party in swing around me ).