Hamburg

Hellloooo Everyone from Australia, Holland and beyond - although I have named the 2 most important countries in the world so who cares about the others'.

A lazy 250,000 euro for a year...and Hamburg came 8th!

No no, we left Denmark after a long morning in - and headed to a bunker along the west coast of Denmark - apparently part of the Atlantic sea wall defence or something.  We got there too late (due to some website misreading/mistake on the website - haven't bothered to look again, and it was about to close. So we wasted time pretty much. We were then going ot hamburg, we are staying with Wilton and Claudia - a couple from hamburg (one from gemany, one from the UK) funnily enough the same town that Andrew's parents were born!! Rochdale for anyone who was wondering (small world hey..) We got there a little late, but we were greeted to a nice dinner of chilli and rice mmmm. ( I love home cooked meals more than ever now) and then we went to bed after having a chat with Wilton. Bad night for me though, getting/am sick now and was a horrid night. I needed to be home in bed being in get rid of cold mode, but I was instead the other side of the world in 'lets see the world mode' lol. Anway the first day included buying a train ticket with the stuid machine giving me 24 euro in 2 lots.. thanks germany. Then we got turned down by a bank for exchanging money - then I rejected the bank rates on the swedish kroner I was going to get at another place. We arrived at the tourist information center to try and find something to do in the city. It wasn't looking good until we found that they do tours of the football stadium - supposed to be good. - So we navigated our way across the city to find it - walked through the (still pouring) rain to get to teh stadium - it was pretty cool. We got ourselves a tour in german! All was good - ahhh except that I or andrew didn't speak german. But the nice tour giude translated for us! yay. We got to see the rooms, they all have spa's in the change rooms!! BAWBAW!! what iss going on!! And boxmeer.... pick up your act! We then went to the museum there - but it was boring. We then came back had a dinner with Wilton (at the local hangout pub, nice meal and drink for 13 euro - not bad Germany, bye bye Scandinavia!!! and then went to bed. - As to where I am writing this now.

They knew the potential damage we could cause so they were correct to rope off the field.

Denmark - Odense and surrounds.

Biking and the 'castles' garden

Middelfart. after we left the poor brewery aka carlsberg, we headed off to the town of middelfart. Andrew was pretty tired, so after a power nap, (with me reading my book) I drove the rest of the way. We arrived through some again friendly rain and traffic to make it to our next hosts place - not a hostel thank goodness. Jesper and his wife were lovely. He met us outside and made us feel right at home straight away. They recommended that we go to the waterfront cafe called the Rass. Amazing - we had to wait 45 minutes, but the burgers are great, - well I think that they were better than great, but it did rain a little bit while we were there. We left to get home and chatted to Jesper for awhile, was a little bit reserved for a couch surfing couple, but they gave us our space and we got along fine. The next day was possible of sailing day - but rain and rain and rain. Great weather for summer in Europe! Well at least northern Europe anyway. I whacked on my coat and got wet going for a bike ride around the coast - the islands that I wanted to see to start with. Glad I did, it was a nice ride - probably contributed to me getting sick, but oh well I will have plenty of time to get well when I get back in Australia.

One of the paths next to lake in middelfart

So I saw some more wild deer, and walked along some muddy paths with the bike, good fun. Arrived back to find guess who in the same place a I left him, and then went to bed.

The next day was sailing day, fun fun, although i was surprised that jesper being a person that lives near the coast was not more experienced in sailing, me and tarks could have sailed better I think. He was a little scared when we got going - but it was cool to be out on the water, we had to be back by 12 to go to the football in odense. Football in odense. Well firstly a major gripe! We arrived and I got my bag checked, fiar enough, but then to find out that there was NO FOOD allowed! none, not my banana, not my bread, nothing, GRRRR I was so annoyed, they are monopolising the ground - fair enough that they can, but made me so angry, until I realised I wasn't really hungry and I would just eat it at the car, so I walked out - despite the womens repeated attempts to throw it in the bin... Why would I want it thrown out if I wanted to eat it? Grrr... She also tried to throw out my water bottle. But I wasn't really fussed, we just thought it was very strange. YOu would be lynched in Australia for making that rule at the footy I am sure.The football(soccer) was very very low I thought, when you watch a game you expect not to be able to do many of the things that they were doing. But the home team lost 4-2 (with a garbage time goal at the end). It was not very full, and the chants were not very loud - probably cause they were losing - but it was entertaining. We came home and I went straight to bed - extremely tired - slept from 7 till about 3am - then up for a snack, and then till 6 again. Which for the hours we had been sleeping, was huge.

Sailing in Denmark

I didn't want to use this as it is blurry, but it's my best shot of the island.

 

The next day was our road trip to the island called Langeland, to the cold war museum. It was really good, we saw huge anti air guns, submarines, mine sweepers (if anyone knows how these work tell me), and a bunker about the cold war which was unfortunately in danish and German. I actually learned what the cold war was about. I also learned about why the danish military took the time to build such a huge defense base.

We then went for a drive around the island, I really really enjoyed this part, the island is so cute almost, they have soft rolling hills with small cottages and small lakes with green everywhere. Nice nice. There wasn't anything to do, just drove around looking at things. We got back latish after a supermarket dinner and then went to bed.

This anti aircraft gun actually still moves! 

Copenhagen

So – Copenhagen.The drive from Ripsa to Copenhagen was nice – the rain held off for a little bit despite what the weather man forecast. The drive along the lake was nice, and we arrived to cross the bridge between Sweden and Denmark at about 2.00, which although expensive to cross was not really all it makes out to be – maybe because you can’t see the bridge as you cross it.

So we found our hostel quite easily, and checked in. Now as you will hear I am now the almost hater of hostels. We were going to try and find the Guinness book of world record museum, which was poor. It had a bit of information that was impressive, such as the tallest guy in the world, and the fattest guy in the world, but also contained a fair amount of useless information. But it filled in the time and then we had some so so thai food from a karaoke bar in the city… We then went back to the hostel for a few hours before going downstairs to use the internet – which was patchy at best. What you may know or not know about the brand of hostel called Generator is as follows. It is a hostel brand that is focused around partying – you would be forgiven for thinking that it is a university bar – cheap drinks, people everywhere drinking, and stupidly loud music all over the bottom floor. This transcended to our room, which entailed a bed that was too small for us, people coming and going at crazy times of the night, and the thump thump of the music coming through the floor. But – we weren’t in bed that night – it was the next night that we were subjected to that – as well as a snorer in our hostel room – which you will well hear about soon. Our first night in Copenhagen we met a whole range of people – other travellers from Austria, Belgium, USA and Germany. The problem with a hostel is that you don’t get to meet people from the actual country! *sigh* but the night was fun, we stayed out late talking about german history of course, and aboriginal history and the sorry day ect etc.

The next day we got up and took a walk around the city – seeing the harbor, the domed church and the resistance museum. It seems that Denmark wasn’t much better than Sweden in terms of war time ‘resistance’ they had a go but the government allowed them to come in and occupy the country as long as they didn’t do anything bad – ok that was a lie, but they did seem to have quite a peaceful time in Denmark compared with other countries. The Germans would have smashed them if they resisted, but is that better than letting your country be taken over by tyrannical murderers. But anyway – the Danish resistance museum was decent to read about – also some sad last words of people that were murdered that sabotaged some German train lines.

The next place we went to – and the highlight of the day was going to a restaurant in the city - which sold some amazing food, my pasta with chicken was really really good, it was 3pm for dinner, but we didn't care. Stomach doesn't know what time it is - just whether or not it is hungry. So we made it back to our hotel, and planned to sit around and then go downstairs again - we didn't make it there, we were pretty tired, and we wanted to sit on our computers for a bit - well we got more than we bargained for. A huge snorer! like a massive chainsaw style guy who not only snored, but snored on his side! no rolling over time for us... a 1-2 hour sleep night... wow..

The next day we went to a 'free' tour in copenhagen. I don't think that they should advertise it as free, because you are expected to give a donation, it should be - tour by donation, I don't mind paying for a service, but don't like false advertising.. Me and andrew left early - so it was free for us haha. Take that free service! We then went to a place called christriania - or something like that. Now they say that it is the worlds only free city inside a city, used to be an old military base - a bunch of hippies went there and took the land as their own, now they sell dope there and sit around south east asia style. For us, it was a dump. A dump in the middle of a city that isn't seen anywhere else in the world (apparently) - To the people of copenhagen, there is a reason that this isn't found anywhere else in the world!!! - but it is worth a look for those people who are visiting.

We also went up the tower, and then went to the tourist office in copenhagen - nice place - go here if youa re just arriving - screw teh research - just go there. But anway, we then went and chatted to a bartender in an english bar for a few hours - and then tried to catch some sleep (at this point we were running on about 5 hours sleep over 2 nights). It was better - but not great.

The next morning we went to see the football (soccer) stadium of copenhagen - boring, we couldn't even get it, so we went to the carlsberg brewry. Now - if you are thinking of going? DON'T!! we have been to many many breweries - the carlsberg one was very poor - limited info, and well... just not very interesting.

Ripsa

Disclaimer: The following and previous blog entries (including this one) are without proof reading of any type, probably containing many grammatical and spelling errors. Meh.

Preseason is getting harder by the pancake...

We arrived to the town of ripsa, but not without a little bit of help from Tuscany and her host sister. It was lateish when we got there, met the incredibly shy Johnny(another exchange student living in the house) and Tuscani’s host sister and mum. We had some left over salmon and rice stew? It was good, but talking lots made it cold J) Tuscany’s host mum was cool, she set us up when she got home, and then had to go to bed as she was working the next day. We worked out a mini plan on what we were going to so the next day – funky then went to bed, and me and Tus talked until late, too late really, as the nights before that had been quite late – so this ended up making the next day a coffee day (how work has taught me about coffee days). Their farm is located in the south east of Sweden in ripsa, basically in the middle of no-where (how is that spelled in english?) and had many things that are traditionally normal of farms back in Australia (wide open spaces, big yards, fruit trees and no traffic) – warranted there are many types of traditional farms in Australia, the ones that I have been to and had experiences have the above characteristics.

For the teachers... Note that there is no table up the front...
The one on the right could fit barely a book and a laptop

 That morning we were treated to breakfast (well I was as Andrew didn’t have breakfast) and we set off early as they had to be going to their first day at school for the “year” but get this – and lucky for us, they only had 1 hour of school! Crazy. The first week at Swedish schools seems to be some sort of O-week introduction type deal.  But in the morning we got our own little personal tour of the town, seeing all the major sites in Nykoping! Haha. Well there was a castle, and following the traditional model of Swedish castles, it was small and amusing! Haha. So not worth seeing really if you are thinking of going to see nykoping. We let tus know! We then went off to see the second biggest attraction of nykoping! The harbour, which had the longest pier in Scandinavia (for about 5 seconds until Tuscany told us that it wasn’t true), but it was worth a look, and nice having a walk around the town. We then had to hightail it back to tuscany’s school so that we weren’t late, she took us up stairs to the school (office block) foyer which was located on the 3^rd floor. Strange here, all students walk around without shoes, and have huge areas for coats – not real lockers to speak of, Books from the library can be taken and read or borrowed without being recorded and also the students (which may I remind you are of high school age) have their own coffee machine and area to prepare/eat meals. If only we didn’t have a convict background! (although they have a viking background…) Good luck trying that at Traf, even the staff would take the books probably – and although sad, things do continue to go missing from the school.

I bought two books from the library, which although I haven’t read or even opened yet, I think that they will make it into my package home before I start going home. We then ate some Swedish crepes(or pancakes) with very generous amounts of cream and jam… mmmm. The 100kg club is getting closer I think, stupid metabolism.. We got picked up and tried to talk to Johnny (the other exchange student) my goodness he was like a vault, nothing got in or out. One wonders what kind of people choose to go on exchange – the shy that need to “broaden” their horizons that end up just going even more into their shell under the scrutiny of the unknown, or people that are already outgoing and have decided that they want to meet people that are different. It’s probably a little mean and unfair to categorise exchange students into those groups, and I’m sure that there are people that fit outside this. Poor Johnny, he didn’t seem like he was enjoying himself at all. That afternoon after lunch it started raining, a little bit of stuffing around on the computer, and I couldn’t take it anymore, I had to get outside and see the countryside – the fields that were behind their house were lush green, and ran all the way up to the woods (I love writing woods) to which all the light that was radiating off the green grass was trapped – almost creating a mystical atmosphere like in the Sherwood forest in England. I convinced Tuscany to go for a walk and then bikeride down to the lake, and then along the lake through the forest, it wasn’t as nice as the stream mushroom picking in Are, but still pretty good. Nice to talk and share ideas with someone that has done something similar to you (excluding people that you are traveling with). Now – I think that it is much harder to travel as an exchange student as you have to try and integrate yourself into a new society and social group. We had to do that, but it is easier I think with a sport – less contact time. But going back to the forest, it started to rain, and the splattering of the rain on the lake was pretty cool, as well as the prospect of not outrunning a bear (visited too many zoos recently). We got very wet on the way back – as I write this 4 days later, my shoes are still not dry. We got back and cooked pancakes (yes again) and sausages for dinner, tried to talk to Johnny again without success and crashed as the many nights of little to no sleep came crashing back to meet me. I spent the last night talking to tus in her room, trying to buy a new digitial camera, which finally was successful (on the net) I (for those interested ) bought a lumix dmc tx3 ( I think) it is the rival to the olympus tx810. The feature that swayed my decision – the full HD video. Reading multiple and many reviews, getting stressed about which camera to buy – finally came to a decision. Lets hope it is the right one.  

We left that morning, and after forgetting my jacket, my shoes and my towel (although the latter was not left by me) behind we tried again with better results, arriving in Copenhagen at our hostel at around 2:30. Traffic was light, and the views were quite nice. I leave ripsa and surrounding areas, mainly the area where they were living with fond albeit brief memories. Wrapped up Sweden for me I think, and I’m glad I went.

Copenhagen. Well – that can wait.

Lake Vanern - well it was Skoghall

Swedish people - can you guess which 2 are related?

So I continue with my blog - I am still behind, but trying to catch up. (there is some photos of Gothenburg in the post below)

We headed to Karlstad to meet with Stefan’s family – Karin. Our drive was quite quick, although our GPS said that it was going to be about 4 hours, it turned out to be about 2 hours 30. We had a few stop-offs as well – but nothing significant to put in here (mainly food). We arrived at our hosts house which would be our home for the next few days, they being Karin and Sofia. We arrived to a very very nice welcome, some drinks, some food and talking for a long time. At this house we couldn’t have felt more welcome, they chatted to us about all sorts of things, made us feel so comfortable. We went to bed late as we were chatting till late. The next morning our plan was to sleep in till lateish and then either go golfing, go boating, or go canoeing. It turned out that we did none of the above, but it still turned out to be a good day. We slept in – me till about 10, Andrew till 12, and then we went to see what to do, Stefan’s brother michael came around and we chatted to him for a while, it was very fun talking to him, he was a Swedish guy with an irish accent. Amusing talking to him, as his language and his language (if you get what I meant) was very irish. We went to go canoeing but they were closed, so we went for a run through the forest which I enjoyed very much, Andrew did also, but boy was he sore the next day. Unlucky. The run through the forsest I thought that I might elaborate a little more on, in Australia running through the bush consists of gravel and eucalyptus trees usually, here it was woodchips, ferns, and pine needles with dead silience again… what is with Europeans having such quiet places to run. Maybe it is because in Australia we have crazy animals making a racket. I unno. We then went to a house party in Sweden, which we met some nice Irish girls, and some nice Swedish people which we chatted with for ages, - in multiple languages. Although our Swedish wasn’t good, (lol) we had fun conversations, about Swedish snow, kick sleds, and towing behind a car on a toboggan!. We then went home – reasonably late and slept in till late. The nexy day I dragged funky out of bed kinda after a morning of researching Copenhagen and seeing if we could spend an extra day at Ripsa – tuscani’s ‘home’ town. We then went canoeing on lake Vanern, which was good. Waves were plentiful for a lake, but still fun. We said a goodbye to Karin and their family – and headed off towards Ripsa, I must mention here that there family were so so nice, they cooked us an awesome meal of moose and potatoes which was great! So delicious, they also let us catch up on some washing, and were just such great hosts, I hope that other people have the pleasure to stay with them. It was also the first real hot meal that we had for a long time. Mmm. Anyway we headed off towards ripsa (a swedish town near Nykoping to see Tuscani, Jo’s daugheter who is currently on exchange in Sweden.

I will leave it there, and let you know about what happened in ripsa tomorrow.

bit behind

The mother of all cannonrides!

Tame Sheep - note the rocks and grass - that was the whole island.

Note very interesting - but this was how the food was set out.

Bridge on the way to the island.

Hey hey – it has been a lazy couple of weeks with the blog. Apologies to anyone who actually reads this.

I am struggling to keep up with everything and something had to give, my blog was one of the things that suffered. So, we currently are driving from Karlstad (well a town called skoghall with a lovely family there) to go to meet Tuscany!

But I will start back where I left.

We left Stockholm to go to a town called Linkoping (pronounced Lin-shoping) (o in show) to meet Stefan and Jenny, members of couch surfing I had contacted many many months ago. We had lunch (bread and cheese, which has been easily 75% of our diet since we left Holland. – interesting that we are eating more cheese now we have left Holland… Anyway we arrived to Stefan’s place to Stefan sitting on the balcony saying – “Hi bruce bruce bruce” now that was weird – only later did we find out that “bruce bruce bruce” is from a monty python skit. We were warmly welcomed and chatted to him – we all seemed to be pretty tired for some reason, maybe traveling does take it out of you more than we think.. But – onward we went, Jenny his Girlfriend came home, and she was tired (not even in the same league as us) because she had been at a horse show all day (would you not be tired cause you were riding the horse all day? *kidding) and was a little delirious which was funny.

Stefan took us into town for a few drinks, and to our amusement and annoyance, they tried to charge us an entry fee to the pubs… grrr – it was 120 Krona. (15 AUD) stupid Sweden. It is not like drinks are free inside or anything. We found another place that was admittedly quieter but cheaper to get into, and talked about a lot of things, I love talking to people and finding out new things about people and cultures. We stayed out quite late (3am) for two reasons – 1. Jenny had to be up at 4am to go prepare the horses again for the next day, and 2. We lost track of time. Enough about random evenings though, the next day was pretty much a write-off, we watched tv, watched Stefan play the computer, researched a lot of things on the internet. It was nice to spend some time doing ‘nothing’ I guess, cause you need a recharge day every now and again. That day was our recharge day. The next day which datewise was the (  15^th) I planned germany almost in 2 hours. Or a proposed itinerary anyway and then we took off (late – 4.00) We were driving  to find a spot to camp (supposed to be a nice area) and it was raining very heavy(the night before I had sent a couchsurfing request to a person that is in-between the two big lakes in Sweden (the massive ones) and I only got a reply when we had found a place to camp (not our best choice of places) even though we could of gone then to meet her, we chose to stay at the camp site as the rain had eased. We quickly put up our tent, I manged to get a fire going with some wet wood, and we had a nice evening sitting around the fire. We also had the owner come past and politely request that we don’t burn her house down, which was a reasonable request I thought J (we couldn’t see her house)

The next morning we saw a castle, and I realised that I just didn’t care about the castle or the history that came with it. It was called Lakco Slott ( I assume slot must mean castle or something in Swedish?). The castle wasn’t impressive, we had seen bigger better ones in Luxembourg, and the information was in Swedish, the garden which you had to pay to go into was poor (it was just a garden!) So we had a brief look around and hit the road again – towards Gothenburg. We stopped at a town called Trollhatten, this was much nicer, we stopped to see a series of lochs and the water being released to form some rapids. Kinda cool, it was finished as soon as it started, which wasn’t such a bad thing as Tarks had to catch a train to Copenhagen to fly to France. So we dropped tarks off at the station – tarks phone was flat so he couldn’t get his online ticket haha. But he made the train and Andrew and me were going to see Ver, our next couchsurfing host at a Japanese Anime get together. (the description of event  that I was given was as follows) people get together and watch movies, play games or just chat. Well after finding a park… grr @ gothenburg’s parking officers, we arrived to be feeling very very out of place, not having dyed hair, long baggy jeans, a piercing, or anything else that seemed mandatory to be here. Sore thumb stickout… We were thankful in a way that we left with Ver to watch some music. So after talking with ver and his friend Thomas who also was staying with him for a night, we went off and saw some slow drumming and a lacklustre carney performance. (juggling, magic and some Englishman make some bad jokes at the expense of the Swedish crowd.) The bad things was that they kept waiting and upselling the next trick that they were going to do. JUST DO THE TRICK ALREADY!!! GRRRRRRR. But it was something to watch.  The funny thing was that we were at yet another random festival. J (there was stalls, music etc everywhere. Called kaltrefestival or something like that.

We took a tram into the middle of the city, and we were treated to a great great time, there was food stalls everywhere, my inner fat man screamed for joy, all the major countries were represented, so we had german sausages, French chocolate, thai curry, aussie bbq burgers, English fudge,  Dutch small pancakes (icing sugar and lemon juice on pancakes everyone!!!*5), crepes from somewhere and polish stew with cabbage. This was over two days, so it wasn’t one sitting!

Then we went to the maritime museum in Gothernburg. I really enjoyed it as I hadn’t seen/been on a warship before, it wasn’t modern (1970’s) but it was modern enough, and the guns were big enough. We also got to walk inside a submarine. Sub life must have not been a job for the claustrophobic! Not a lot of space to move around down there, although it wasn’t as small as I thought. Compared to the submarine, On the ship there was much more room, had rooms to eat, not just a small pop out table like on a sailing boat. I got a couple of illegal, but fun cannon (well it was more like a jet rocket)looking shots also! We met ver after his work, and we went and saw the same semi entertaining circus folk as the night before – ver went home early the night before.  We has a nice evening talking to Ver, he was really nothing like us, which made it all the more interesting. We asked Ver if we could spend another night as he strongly suggested that we go out and see the islands to the west of Gothenburg. So we took off the next  day to see and walk around the island. We saw and walked around the no car island, it was not really that interesting, it was peaceful, but if we were in a bad mood, I think we could have hated it as there was nothing to do there. But it was a nice walk, we saw some very tame sheep and some cool houses. The contrast between the city and the islands was remarkable. One was like an island in Asia, the other was a bustling student city. We were going to play board games that night with a couch surfing group in the city, but we couldn’t really be bothered, plus our tyre had gone flat again. So we put the spare tyre on – which was probably a good choice because the tread was low. I haven’t written much about the countryside in Sweden, but there is a good reason for this, it seems almost too similar to Australia. (north isn’t) but in the south, it’s just normal. Maybe I’ve been in Europe too long to notice the differences. (it is green though) Ver had 3 people from Slovenia stay at his house that night which was very fun, they stayed the next day which was raining, as we watched the hawks beat carlton. They had never seen/heard of the game before, if you get a chance, look up on youtube “Japanese pole game” which was our halftime entertainment. Looks fun and crazy! So we missed a stuffed blue whale which would have been cool, but we would rather watch the game and talk to the Slovenian people than try and hike around the city in the rain. We left to go to – weirdly enough stefan’s mum’s house – which lives near Karlstad a town on the north shore of Lake Vanern. We said goodbye and a small stopoff at the supermarket and we were on our way again. I will finish this and put in some photos later on today

Stockholm

Our first day in Stockholm was an early one, we got up at 7.30 in order to make it to the vassa museum by 8.30-9.00 because I read on the internet (trip advisor – which hasn’t seemed to be wrong so far) that the crowds there are quite large, having some experience from paris about crowds it turned out to be a magnificent decision. As we were leaving  the museum at 11.20 – the line was hundereds of meters long, with busloads of tourists bypassing the line – which means it would have been even longer! We had about a 10 minute line up till inside time. The first time that you walk into the  museum, the huge preserved ship that had been recovered from the bottom of Stockholm harbour in the 1600’s hits you in the face. It is pretty impressive, not to mention the funny side (it sailed for a total of 20 minutes before it sank!) They had worked tirelessly to recover it from the harbour, and the most impressive thing was that the ship had survived! (it was only 30m deep the water it sunk in) But it was worth the price of admission. When we had finished there we went to see the other major tourist attraction – the changing of the guard. It was pretty cool, considering that we just don’t anything like that in austrailia. The pipe band came out, had their little play, and then did some marching, some yelling salutes and then promptly left. The whole changing took about 20-25 minutes I suppose. We ate lunch then headed to the army museum which was cool. They had a list of all the wars/conflicts that have been recorded in history. I will put the photo in – but the writing was so small, and there was 2 boards full of them. Stupid humans… They had there a lot of history about Swedish war times from the 1300’s all the way through until the cold war, and then a small mock exhibit of the American rifle code. The most interesting part that I learnt was the role of Sweden in WW2. Neutral… yeah very funny.. The only neutral part of Sweden was that they didn’t fight. Selfish that they didn’t help both their neighbours (finland and Norway) from being obliterated and also provided Germany with iron ore and other supplies that they needed. They also agreed to transport troops across to the Norwegian border! Ok, they did originally only allow Red Cross personal, but they ended up making massive troop transfers across Swedish land. We left and did a bit of shopping, walked through gamla stan and then headed back to our hostel. We walked around most of the day, and were totally spent by the end of the day.  Bed early.

The next day we went to the teknic museum in Stockholm before heading to our couch surfing hosts (Stefan and Jenny) the museum started with an audio tour about the space race and everything else to do with space travel. Very interesting, suits, replicas of the various types of shuttles, history about who helped in the technology creation and all sorts of other interesting things. The rest of the museum contained exhibits about women inventors, (they invented kelvar) and some exhibits for kids that we had a go on, but skipped through quite quickly.

 

Jarvzoo and Lake Siljan

So we arrived at the zoo in Jarvso, called jarvzoo haha. Anyway, it consisted of a longish boardwalk viewing animals such as lynx, moose, reindeer, and lots of owls. The enclosures were quite large (not for the birds though)  and the setting was a forest with a slight incline up the boardwalk. It was interesting enough for us as we hadn’t even seen the animals before (except for a brief sighting of a moose and a few stray reindeer on the road on the way). You have a problem when you go to a zoo. You are almost sacrificing the animals enclosure so that you can see them. In the larger enclosures you just cannot see the animals. I guess it is a tossup between the conditions being goodish, and the conditions being like a indo zoo – concrete floor and mouldy food. One you get to see the animals, the other you might not. I prefer the latter. We then drove our way to orsa – near lake siljan. We were arriving at the hostel after the designated times of reception. There is something that you must know about swedish hostels. If you arrive outside the reception times, then it is quite difficult to get into the place – if we hadn’t  of booked a room it would have been impossible. Anyway, the whole hostel was locked up tight, the only way we got in was a person eating in the room open the door – he gave us the wrong code to the lockbox (which we assumed had keys) I had a few guesses and fluked it. Keys! And a note saying welcome. How he expected us to get in without a code, and without a phone number I don’t know. But we were in. That night involved a call to get the internet password to update this blog, and a late night due to some camera research.

The next morning we were up (well 2 of us were) for breakfast and enjoyed our first swedish breakfast (we think.. it was cereal and muffins with jam and spreads, fruit and vegetables. Could have been anywhere we thought. Anyway we went to the nearby famous bear park, and had another go at seeing the animals we missed at the park beforehand. It was much better I thought. It had interactive scenes (eg: how fast are you compared to other animals.. well I can outrun a squirrel quite comfortably, but a bear is catching me in about 20 meters. It also had a lot more information in English which is always good. We saw polar bears, snow leopards, lots of bears, and  finally the wolverine. Andrew stayed at the hostel to do washing. We then went for a drive to the longest pier in scandanavia on lake siljan– 728m long I think on a lake that was caused by an old meteorite. It was interesting for about 5 minutes. But to be out and about was good. We continued around the lake to the tower with a museum with a few stuffed animals that we had seen that day and went up the tower to see good views of the lake. Most of the museum was in Swedish, and as we were leaving we saw the sign saying that they had an English booklet! Dah!... oh well. We headed back, had dinner and accidently went to bed late again. 2:00…

It is quite difficult to find somewhere to stay in major cities in summer in Europe with couchsurfing. I sent a few requests to stay in Stockholm but got nothing. So we waited until this morning and booked a hostel, which wasn’t our first choice but the other ones we wanted were booked out.  We stopped at fulam, the site of an old copper mine and had a tour there. It was interesting, the guide knew her stuff, but needed to have a few pep pills like the brewery tour guide in brugge. An Australian company is currently drilling for gold down here to see if it worth digging up. The interesting thing being – that I had recently gone to the Bendigo mine, I knew a few things about mining there – it was very different. Things were not done the same way, very primitive and not so big. So we then headed off via an icecream stop to Stockholm. When we arrived at the hostel in stockholm, we saw we had a hot plate and sink, so we went out and bought heaps of food for dinner to return to find out that the cord had been cut - and the sink didn't have a tap!!! so some wood fired pizza later, and stockholm tomorrow.

Photos on norway blog are now finished

The Duck Farmer

The mushroom picking area

Arriving at the duck farmer’s (peter) house was not without an event. The GPS led us a little astray, which was not the first time, as we were looking for a petrol station on the way it led us to an old abandoned house! Not an old petrol station – a house! Anyway, after a call from peter we found our way there (about 10pm) and enjoyed our first hot non camping meal in about 2 weeks. It was delicious. There was also a Russian girl (kinda couchsurfer) that was living and working there while we were there – but that is another story. We chatted until about 12-1am and then went to bed to finally a dark room. Now what I first must point out is that the facilities at this farm were not first class. Some of the door handles didn’t work, and consequently the door had to be propped open or else it was a window exit that would be required. There was no running water – big jugs of water would sit next to the sink, and we worked by candle light for dinner. The shower was a gravity fed system where the water would be heated on the stove in big pots, poured into a larger 25 litre jug and then a hose was connected to the jug and fed through the floor to the shower below. So the comforts of life were not so evident there. The toilet also was a drop toilet. Now for me and the guys – we didn’t care 1 bit. Not only had we been camping for around 2 weeks, we had cold baths in ice glacial rivers,  went to the toilet in the woods,  and  ate bread and cheese for our meals… We were grateful for having a roof over our heads. The Russian on the other hand was very bitter by the time that we came. She complained about not being in the 21^st century, and was very rude to peter. It was amazing. She was earning 10 euro an hour with food and accommodation included. Sweet deal I thought for a genuine Swedish experience. His farm was almost a self-sufficient farm – the water he used to get from the stream/river close by (he got it delivered as he got a bit older) he tapped elm trees and made syrup from the sap, collected duck and chicken eggs, collected mushrooms and lichen from the nearby forest and harvested snails in wooden boxes. All these were sold to various restaurants. He also painted houses when he had spare time to help makes end meet. So that morning we slept in – pretty tired, and walked around his small farm. I wrote my blog – my last post was about 5000 words – take that tus! It was disappointing that his internet was too slow to upload pictures, have some stunning shots from Norway. So after writing my blog for 2-3 hours (hope you found it a little bit interesting cause it took me ages!) mark was keen to go mushrooming with the duck farmer. So we drove a little way down the road (Andrew stayed back – maybe watching movies?) and walked down a small forest track in hunt for our mushrooms. The last time I went mushrooming was in Kyneton I think with my parents, but the mushrooms we collected were much much different to the ones we have in Australia. – see picture. They went against the rule of ‘the more colourful it is, the more poisonous it is. We had orange ones, ones with red, yellow and white ones… We started to go upwards – through a logging area. Peter was visibly annoyed about the logging going on in the forest. I don’t think that it is a good thing, but when someone has lived in the forest their whole life and it has provided for them for 30 years, you start to understand about why people are so passionate about the issue. We then moved sideways to a mountain stream, now I may have mentioned it before, but mountain streams are awesome! especially where the gradient is high. We were ‘rooming’ all the time, looking for perfect ones to sell and not so perfect ones to cut up for dinner that night. The mountain became very steep, walking through the clouds of mosquitoes, but the forest was so nice that it didn’t matter. Hard to describe, peaceful, quiet, moss everywhere, ferns, huge trees, and a stream running down with crystal clear water. Peter took us through some caves which were almost as impressive as the caves in Norway (not as big - it was a crack cave almost) which contained an underground waterfall! It was pretty nice. We headed back down and bumped into a german father and his daughter playing a type of find the GPS game. The aim of the game is to find various GPS points around the country - There is a website that you can go to for clues and the points, I guess it would be a modern day version of orienteering. If you are interested I think Australia has it too. Go talk to google about it, I’m sure you would find it. It was a long day hiking up the hill, but well worth it and we arrived back – had our gravity fed shower after some preparation, and had dinner very late (11pm) and went almost straight to bed. That night it rained a lot. We were glad that we weren’t camping, and slept in again. Waking up to geese and ducks again was a nice change. That day we went to see some moose carvings in the rocks not too far away made by the sami people 6000 years ago (4000 BC), it was mixed feelings – they weren’t that good, but you had to remind yourself that they are ridiculously old. We then went to see some moose trapping pits (they used to fence off areas and then build pits with spikes in to catch moose) All the board we saw there were in Swedish and peter was more than happy to translate them for us. The rain held off enough while we were out walking, we stopped off for coffee at peter’s friends house and then headed off for the library in ‘are’(name of town). We booked a hostel for 2 nights, and I put in a few requests for couchsurfing in stockholm. It is difficult without constant internet because you need to put in more than 1 request in order to get a place to stay (the first person might say no, then you will run out of time to ask another when you get internet, but you don’t want to say no if more than 1 person says yes… A conundrum I say. So we left after an hour – went shopping and found some reindeer and moose meat and had an excellent dinner. Here is a challenge to you people. Put an egg in water that is about 60 degrees, and then turn off the heat and leave it for 3-4 hours. Apparently after that it will be hard boiled – and taste much better.. Try it – and let me know.  I am sceptical.. We chatted till early in the morning (2am) and bed time it was.

Today we are heading towards a zoo – hoping to see some Swedish animals – elk, moose, wolverines and bears. Saying goodbye to peter and on the road again – about 3 hours to the zoo.

Norway - camping, fires and mountain passes

Ok, so I have about 10 days worth of blog to finish, I don’t think that I will be able to finish them all today – we have arrived in Sweden after camping our way through Norway for 2 weeks. I will go back to the start to where I think I left it.

We had a lazy day at the hostel organising and booking things for later on at the hostel, (plus an AFL game or two) and also found a couch-surfer that would kindly accept us for the night. His name was Erland – he was just new into couchsurfing, and had lived in queensland for a year before that. Him and his family were so nice, and the crazy thing was that his dad spoke Indonesian… Of all my hunting around Holland searching for someone to speak indo to, I found someone by chance in Norway of all places! It was very interesting to note that he mispronounced some words also, but I could still understand him. He taught Indonesian to Norwegian students in SE Asian countries. Our plan was to meet the dutch guys at Erland’s house, then hopefully that we would be able to see a bit of Kristiansand in the morning with Erland. They arrived about 1:00am from the ferry and we all stayed up lateish talking to them. The very disappointing thing was that willy wanted to get driving asap, and didn’t really leave time to meet the family that we were staying with etc. So we had no tour of the town, it really felt like we just used them for 1 night free accommodation – not what couch surfing is about. 

Day 1 – 25^th july

But oh well, we took the coastal route heading to camp near a huge platform that has a drop of about 800m straight drop (called the preachers chair). Now in norway you can camp where ever you like as long as it is 100m from a house or road. You might think it would be easy to find somewhere to camp then.. Not the case really, we camped in a field that we thought was empty – only to be moved by a reasonably angry farmer. We moved towards a lake squeezed in between two other campers. Camper vans by the way are EVERYWHERE in Norway. They would outnumber tents 4:1 easily. So we had ourselves a fire to try and hold off the mosquitoes, but to no avail. They came pouring in and forced us to go into our tent to sleep. Note that it didn’t get dark till about 11.15!

Day 2 - 26^th july - The next morning we woke up at 6am to go to this preachers chair (preikestolen). It was not a hard walk, but it wasn’t easy – climbing up rocks and steep inclines for about 3kms one way. But the early morning and climb was well worth it. As you can see in the pictures, the drop is very very sheer and the view from the top is amazing, the fjords that we wanted to see will be stuck in my memory for a long time. The best thing was that we went at 6am we had it almost to ourselves. On the way back we passed literally busloads of tourists, some to our amusement wearing sandals, dress shoes, thongs etc. Steve’s top tip – go early, take a bottle of water and wear decent shoes!

  

After that I really wanted to go and see the boulder in the rock, stuck between 2 cliffs… But we weren’t heading in the direction of the rock…. Hold on… can’t you change the way you go based on what you want to see??? GRRR that was very annoying, it was the thing that made me want to come to Norway in the first place… and we missed it.. So, we continued to “drive north” and the next few days consisted of a lot of driving and not stopping to see a lot. That day we drove past and had lunch at a huge waterfall which was cool, and we drove over a mountain pass that reminded me very much of the Scottish highlands (not that I have been there though) and we found some snow for funky (his first experience with snow). We had a snow-fight for ten minutes on the top of the mountain (in july – middle of summer might I add) and continued driving. A strange fact that we saw on the way was that some of the houses had a thickish layer of dirt on their roof with grass (or weeds) growing on top of it.. We figured that it was for extra insulation in winter.. makes sense I guess. (not all houses had it though) We arrived at our next campsite after searching for a while. It happened to be next to an old woodshed.. Well… our fire was a little bigger than the last one J It did get dark – around about 11.30



This wasn't the glazier
we tried to climb up, it is the 10 second stream



Day 3 27^th The next morning I had myself a “shower” in the stream.. my goodness in was cold, very very clear, but also so cold. That was the first of many cold showers in Norway. That day was another driving day, we were heading towards a glazier. Note that now we had gone from the south of Norway, to past Bergen in 3 days… I had planned for about 6… Anyway, we followed the dutchies across many expensive ferries, about 13 euro a time * 8 maybe) which you can’t avoid in Norway cause the whole country in the south is interconnected with islands. Today was our first real good weathered day at the glazier, and on approach we were in awe of the view that we were given. Green hills, glazier river, blue sky, and the contrast between the colours was perfect. We stopped for a photo shot, and mark and I walked down to the glazier fed river. My goodness the water was cold, the coldest I have ever felt I think, we put our feet in the water for ten seconds, and it was hurting. I can now understand why people just die when they fall off boats, they don’t drown – they die of hypothermia well before they drown.

The magic lake....

We continued on to the other side of the glazier – 3 hours’ drive to the most amazing lake I have ever seen, this I would say pipped the Slovenian lake except that it didn’t have a running track around it haha. The whole time we were driving to the glazier past the lake was just magic. We regrettably didn’t camp next to it, but it was pretty cool. We arrived at the glazier with a short walk to the bottom to view it, and you could walk up the bottom. We wanted to walk on the glazier so we tried to climb up the side of the rocks (there was a raging river below so that path was out). It was very slippery and the drop into the river was well… a little hairy..  We made it a bit further than we probably should of, with bongo (the dutchy) following thinking we were crazy. We turned back when I thought that risk vs reward was too great. A wrong footing and a misplaced boulder would have sent us 5 meters into a nice and cold river that would have taken us quite quickly back to the start of the track… We left the glazier pretty tired, and left looking for a campsite. Again it was hard to find, the questions kept on coming “Can we camp here?” Are we allowed to camp here?” etc. We ended up finding a place on a helipad next to a large river. Just enough space for 3 tents, no fire could be lit. Mark caught a smallish fish with willy’s rod which we cooked on the fire – I know I said we didn’t have a fire, but we made one away from our tents, but there was no room to sit around it, or anything like that. I had a plan to get up and run in the morning for the last two mornings, but I have been so tired, that just getting up in time to get going is enough.

This was the "path" that we tried to take to the glazier... it's much steeper than it looks!



When woodruns need to be done.. we improvise

 Day 4 – 28th The next morning, we packed up our tents and headed towards Trondheim with the view of seeing a few things in Trondheim. We drove a long way. – Saw some very cool scenery on the way though. What had happened is that the dutchies had bought/brought a book and a map, and wanted to go north and see things on the way. Fine with us, we had made the mistake of not knowing what we wanted to see before we headed out. With my lonely planet only on my computer which was flat, we were driving blind, through awesome countryside – not stopping a lot. So I finally got my computer charged and transferred (With difficultly) my pdf lonely planet onto my ipod (as we have chargers in our car for the ipod it was no trouble) so now we could know what we wanted to see as we arrived. I think that the trip got a little bit more enjoyable after that point, as we could discuss what we wanted to see the night before, and plan accordingly. We arrived a little bit too late to the outskirts of Trondheim to see what we wanted to see, (the largest wooden palace in Scandinavia, and the cathedral of Trondheim. Our camping spot was on the edge of the sea (very windy) but after a few nice ‘Woodruns’ we were warm enough.

Day 5 29^th We had an amusing start to the morning, while trying to rinse some glasses in the sea, Funky slipped and went swimming – fully clothed. Mark went to help him and almost ended up with him!.. We arrived in Trondheim in the morning to see the palace – disappointing. Enough said. But there happened to be a festival on there, so we had some free samples of weird raw fish and cheese and dips, also a pig was being roasted and they had music going on. It was the place that I thought we could have stayed a while, but the Dutch north roller coaster must not be stopped. They cathedral was very impressive, even for a short stopoff in Trondheim to see that. We also went up to an old fort for views over Trondheim – that was not as impressive. We stopped off for Mcdonalds – charging my laptop for 20 mins – ducked over the border to Sweden for some much cheaper supplies, then headed north as far as we could… 

This was taken from our campsite - there is a waterfall
to the right about 15m

We stayed near a Breide, and we ended up finding a gem of a camping spot, river water, plenty of wood, waterfall to have a shower in, not many cars going past on the road – very very peaceful.  We introduced the dutch guys to marshmallows on sticks over the fire, they were suitably impressed – I hope that it catches on. Darkness – still faint twilight at 12:15



Day 6 – 30^th

This is the bike train going through a tunnel.

Today we went to a town called Namsos. Our destination being a couple of german bunkers built into the solid rock, and the second being a bike pedalled rain trolley. (see picture) It was about a 2 hour drive to Namsos which we found the tourist info center, and then walked up the hill (well we drove) to see a view of namsos and then a walk down to see the german bunkers. The engineering was impressive, but a little puzzling as there was no memorial or anything there. We then found the ‘bike train’ which was pretty cool, but it was a fair chunk of exercise. 13kms one way along a disused trainline, with a stop with some wild berries at the turnaround point. We had reached the end of the line, and then these stupid other tourists wanted to get past, even when we pointed towards the big red sign and boom gate saying that they couldn’t go any further. So when we arrived back we were well and truly stuffed, lunch at the camping place that the train left from, and off we went towards Mo I rana. We felt good after today, maybe because of the endorphins released from exercise, but also because we had actually done and seen something in Norway. We arrive at a place near a river – a glazier coloured (that kind of aqua colour that has silt in it I think) and set up camp – two awesome camping sites in 2 nights! It wasn’t even that difficult to find this time too. We had wood everywhere, made a huge fire, and I had a bath/shower in the glazier river…. My goodness it was cold, like ridiculously cold, 20-30 seconds maximum I was in the water, when I slid in it was so cold the water takes your breath away… Tired so bed was near - I set my alarm for 8 – with the intention of going for a run along the river the next morning. That day was excellent, the train ride wasn’t magnificent, but it got us out of the car and doing things. 

Darnkess – I went to bed at 12:00 – still light. I think it was dark about 1am.

Day 7 31^st July

The glazier day. The real glazier. I overslept my alarm, but the guys were still asleep so I quickly got up and went for a run along the river, it was nice, there was mini rapids along the way –it was pretty difficult to get going as I haven’t ran for 5 weeks almost.. 20 minutes was enough. Another crazy bathe in the river, and we set off for some underground caves. A charging station was setup in the café there, and we waited around about 30 minutes till tour time. The Gronligotta caves were.. well mediocre at best, they were cool (temperature wise) but after seeing the caves in Slovenia – these were like watching a Traf Vs Yarragon AFL game after watching the grand final of the AFL the week before. We then went off to see the glazier The Svartisan Glazier – care of the lonely planet’s kind directions. We had to take a ferry across the lake to get there, so glad we did. It was amazing, it left the other glazier for dead. Multiple times.

This glazier was nothing to be sneezed at – literally, it looked like at any moment it would tumble down into the lake and into the lake below. We walked across into the “Danger Zone” and took the time to look in awe of the sheer size of the glazier. I didn’t feel too safe going any closer, but eventually I walked up to it and broke off a bit – about 20 seconds was enough next to the thing, I didn’t intend on being the unlucky tourist that was too close when it slipped! The glazier looks like snow ice, but on a much closer look it is very very clear ice blocks. Tarks and I walked up for a better look, and ended up having a run back across the rocks to catch the ferry, making it just in time. We passed through the polar circle that night as we were making our way to Bodo. We had a lost in translation point where the dutchies drove past where we wanted to camp but we found a camp site which took us a fair while to find, - very windy even though we sheltered by a big mountain. A fire of course, and a waking up in the morning to a stinking hot tent. Weird – yes.
Sun went down, but it was still light at 3am when I woke up during the night.

Day 8 – 1^st august.We had a gayung style bath in the tiny river that morning, then headed off to catch a ferry to Loften. Bodo to Mosksins (spelt wrong) is more expensive, but if you are going to Lofeten, then the best place to start is A – pronounced ORE. We arrived to the ferry a little late (30 mins! Before it left and the line was huge, we kicked the footy for a while to the bemusement of some of the other travellers. Our wait was approximately 3 hours. Before we went to the ferry we went to see the Maelstrom. Which is where the tide comes in on a fjord, and creates a whirling, fast, crazy current where whirlpools form and get carried along by the current and then dissipate away. We got there in time to see the current at its highest speed, one you would not want to jump into. We threw a long in the water, only to see it become a tumbling mess being thrown around and being sucked into a whirlpool. Highly recommended.

On the way into Lofeten, (it was very cold on the deck) we saw the huge mountains and craggy cliffs as we were on approach. Amazing scenery again – such is Norway.

So we arrived and camped on a ledge in A. It was maybe a 3 minute walk up a pretty steep hill (grass) to camp, but the guys wanted to cook in the car park, and not eat on the ledge with the view… Grrr.. So I said that I would carry the cooking and food gear up the hill – took 2 trips… And now looking back, I would have done it for 3 or 4 trips.. 10 minutes work for a few hours of views… which is why you come to a place like Norway…

Anyway, no fire that night as there was no wood, and sleep came easily.
No was still light. But no sun.

Day 9 – 2^nd august.The day our first stop was the tourist office, we went to a whale museum. Now Norway is still a current whaling nation. I read into some bias that the museum had. There was a lot of information regarding the new killing techniques that they have – eg: They strap TNT to the harpoon so that it dies instantly. (they also have a gun on board if they go wrong…) they also went on to give various stats on current numbers as well as numbers of whales caught etc etc. I’m not going to take a stand either way on the issue, but it was interesting to see a whale museum take a stand that was not quite impartial. But it was interesting and worth a visit I think.
We organised a fishing charter. Now – for those who are uptodate with my fishing level – it is 0 or nill, or whatever the level is. My record of catching fish currently stands at 1. That day a guy next to me caught 11.  So we went looking for a camp site – got nothing, so raced back to the fishing charter. It was cool, we met a crazy Norwegian fishing captain, and sailed of to do some fishing. Like normal, everyone was catching fish except me, until finally…. I caught 1. Small but it was a fish. Another larger one soon followed, and the day was complete. The only downer to the day was tarks’s hatred of fish smell not letting us take all the fish to eat that night. – We had enough, but what is caught should be kept. (On the way we saw some dolphins in the bay feeding)

We camped on a road, small fire, and darkness did not come.

Day 10 3^rd of august. Daylight became sun and we headed off to a viking museum. It had a festival there, and we were hoping to see fighting action. I was pretty tired, so I couldn’t concentrate on all the history that they had there, so not much was read. We did some axe throwing, some archery but all in all the festival and Viking museum was poor, the fighting scene we were waiting for was changed from 1 till 3, and we couldn’t burn 2 hours there after waiting 30 mins for the fighting, so we cut our losses, and aborted to bleik – the place of the puffins. We went to find a tour that night, got a phone number and a time, and headed back to our camp place – very good, sheltered by mountains, lots of firewood, and enough space for us easily. Near the village there was huge amount of aerials or transmitting devices – also a huge sattilite that said “nasa” on the side… wonder what is going on up here Norway…

The orange dot down there is our tent - 

Day 11 4^th of august.We got up late with a sleep in and there was a mountain behind us. Mark and I climbed this mountain. Now it didn’t look so steep in the night light, but once we got on the slope – boy it was steep, and it wasn’t grass like we thought either, it was knee deep growth. But, after 20 minutes of climbing, we made it to the top – to spectacular views. Coming down was hairy. We then headed off to see the puffins, (350 kroner for 1.5 hours) and saw some puffins..(ok, about 100,000 nest there) We didn’t see the eagles taking any puffins out of the sky – despite them circling the entire time we were at the island.   That afternoon we had planned to go and see the Adolf gun in Norway. But we arrived too late for the last tour – now, the book that bongo found the gun in did not have any times or information in it. This would have saved us some grief if it did. Steve’s top tip. Get a guide book that tells you specific information about tour opening times!

We camped nearby – on a military base oddly enough, and it took us AGEES to find a spot to camp. It ended up being a great spot, big area, fireplace, enough wood, etc. It did not get dark. Not even for a bit, and it was cold – really cold. 0 degrees at 3.30 in the morning with a stiff breeze.. Ice on the tent etc. We went on a drive to find the midnight sun at midnight, but unfortunately it was covered by a mountain… stupid Norway and it’s mountains.

Day 12 – 5^th of august.

The gun. Well if you are at all interested in war things go and see the Adolf Gun, it is in a town called Hardstad (near anyway)  and really has to be seen to be believed. We had a guide who was very informative, and knew everything there was to know about the gun – and quite a bit about the war also. The size of the gun was crazy. The stat that I remember the most was there is a gun a bit smaller nowdays on the US Missouri. When that gun shoots it moves the whole ship 5 meters sideways in the water – and the weight of the ship is 800 tons!!! (note – figure of ship weight may be wrong)  But the germans could engineer things. Pity they were part of the dark side.. The gun could shoot 52 kilometres, and the weight of the projectile was 1600 pounds – so just shoot your car from Warragul to Traralgon!  Yes now we have rockets etc, but back in the 1940’s it was amazing.

We were then on a bee line for Sweden. Leaving the dutchies near narvik, and a brief stop at the northenmost golf course we found a place to stay alongside a lake – although we didn’t have pole postion. The drive past Kiruna through the mountains was amazing. Lakes were doing the mirror thing again, and the mountains on the other side were covered in Swedish or Canadian style pine trees. We had ran out of gas for our BBQ, but a trench fire and hot coals allowed us to cook our dinner easily.

Day 13 6^th of august.Today was a big driving day, we first stopped off at a Sami museum in Jokkmokk – sami being the culture that lived off the land back in the day. It was interesting, and had notes in English, but would have been better if we could read swedish – I took some photos of some of the boards for tus – lets see how much she has learnt haha. We then moved on to a huge set of rapids nearby, a delta at the bottom – impressive enough. In the park they had these tables with fireplaces on them… people had a fire on the table that they were sitting around – it was awesome. It was a pity that we didn’t have a lot of time to spend there.  Our last stop was kinda amusing. It was an old train museum, with nothing but swedish notes. We took some pictures and tried on some hats – but that was about it. We then drove 6-7 hours through northern to central Sweden to meet the duck farmer. (we found it after a bit of stuffing around looking for his house.
That is where we are now