Norwegian Wood (This bird has flown) - 26/09/08

We left Reykjavik for possibly the last time on a Saturday evening.  We headed east again, and over the next few days had pylsur in Hvollsvollur, coffee in Kirkubaejarklauster, and waffles and hot chocolate at Jokulsarlon.  Just afer Hofn we passed through the tunnel from south Iceland to the eastfjords and revisited beautiful Djupivogur.  We camped at a secluded lagoon and waterfall and toured the eastfjord towns of Reydarfjordur (home to the infamous ALCOA aluminium smelter), Eskifjordur, and Neskaupstadir and stayed at the Icelandair Hotel Herad in Egilstadir.  We picked up two Polish girls hitchhiking just to make crossing the pass to Seydisfjordur that little bit harder!  Under cover of fog and driving rain we slipped out of Iceland on the Norrona ferry.  I doubt anybody saw us waving goodbye.

Leaving Seydisfjordur

Luckily the Norrona is a bloody big ship as the passage was pretty rough.  We were sleeping in the couchettes, the modern equivalent of steerage I guess, underneath the car decks.  The only thing between the couchettes and the north Atlantic is the gym, pool and sauna.  I had a top bunk with about a foot of clearance to the ceiling, propping up 2 car decks (holding 800 vehicles), and above those 4 decks of cabins, restaurants, bars, shops and a casino.  A hell of a weight to have on your mind as you try to sleep. 

The next morning we docked at Torshavn, capital of the Faroe Islands. We had a few hours onshore to admire the old town which was very clean and well preserved and it was a pleasant surprise to be amongst trees, shrubbery and grassy lawns, things Iceland sorely lacks.

Torshavn Old town, Faroe Islands

Back onboard and out at sea the weather worsened and the ferry was bombarded by wind, rain and huge swells.  It bludgeoned its way through.  We were not put off the seafood buffet however and as the boat shook and swayed we gorged on caviar, crayfish and calamari, mussels and prawns, herring, haddock and all sorts of salmon. There was also beef, pork and lamb, chicken and duck and chilli con carne, all of which are hardly seafood but I was not going to be pedantic about it. 

The boat creaked and cracked all night and I was trying to make a contingency plan, but my only reference was Titanic and I remembered that Leonardo died because Winslet was too selfish to share her piano lid, so that was no help.  I went up to the lounge to watch telly and they were showing ‘Deadliest Catch’ a documentary about crab trawlers in the Bering sea.  At the end one of the trawlers capsized.  Great.

An admin error (Monika’s card being charged for 12 dinners instead of two) led to us receiving free vouchers for the breakfast buffet which was like a scene from a Norman Wisdom film.  People chasing cups of coffee whilst waiters cleared up another stack of plates or tray of buns that had crashed to the floor.  And do you know how hard it is to eat a Full English whilst fighting the sensation you are about to fall backwards off of your chair?  I should have held on to the table with both hands whilst sucking the food straight off of the plate, instead I did a one-handed job, gobbling quickly before the boat plunged over another wave, spilling cups of tea over me in the process.  If there is a nationality most suitable to share these experiences with it is the Danish, they are not known as the worlds happiest nation for nothing.  They face everything with smiles and giggles. They also seem to drink a lot, which helps explain things.

Before reaching Bergen the sky cleared and the sea calmed.  Out on deck we could see Bergen from quite far, due to a large fire and several plumes of water trying to extinguish it.  Later we found out that a serial pyromaniac has been burning down several of Bergen’s old wooden buildings, which is a horrible and pathetic thing to do. We had our own introduction to Bergen’s dark side on our first night as a drunken youth tried to pull our wing mirror off.  Unluckily for him we were in the car at the time. Idiot.

Bryggen, Bergen

Bergen is a beautiful city though, especially the old wooden buildings along the Bryggen.   We spent a day wandering around before heading off into the famed fjordland of Norway. We took a few days to drive up to Geiranger, the UNESCO sight, winding along the coast, through tunnels, across bridges and over passes all with stunning scenery as a backdrop.  No wonder Slarty Bartfast received an award for his work on Norway.  The weather was beautiful, good enough for a swim in a fjord.  After we had dried in the sun some locals gave us a tray full of prawns, caught the day before, and left over from a big birthday bash.

Fjords, Norway

Geiranger and its surroundings justified its position as one of Norways most visited areas as did Jotunheimen National Park nearby.  We had intended to climb Galdhoppigen, Norways highest peak, but the weather changed on that day and we could not see the summit through the mist.  Also there was a budding Bungalow Bill in the park.  He didn’t have an elephant but he did have a rather large gun and so we cut our trek short in fear of any stray bullets!

Geiranger

We headed south again, stopping in the Olympic city of Lillehammer before heading on to Oslo.  We had heard that Oslo was a nice city, just not as nice as Bergen or any of the other major Scandinavian cities.  Which pretty much sums it up.  A highlight was the National Gallery with Munch’s ‘The Scream’ as its centrepiece.

Uppsala

And so to Sweden.   We drove straight across the country, stopping over in picturesque Orebro and Uppsala and ancient Sigtuna, with Swedens oldest streets, before reaching Stockholm.  Whilst not as big and, allegedly, not as cosmopolitan as Copenhagen, I found Stockholm to be the jewel in Scandinavia’s crown.  Built on a coastal archipelago each island has a distinct style and feel, from bohemian Sodermalm to the old buildings and winding streets of Gamla Stan and the hustle and bustle of Norrmalm.   Escaping the city is easy as well and we spent some time wandering around the gardens of Drottingholm Palace, in the Ekero district west of the centre. 

Stockholm

From Stockholm we re-crossed the country, passed again through Orebro and on to Gothenburg.  A nice quiet town built on the river, people spending the afternoon basking in the sun on the ‘ghats’.  We intended to continue south to Malmo but by now we were a little tired with conservative provincial Sweden and the feeling that at every village people were spying from behind their curtains, places where rumours spread like wildfire, fuelled by bored housewives with nothing else on their minds.  So we took the ferry from Helsingborg to Helsingore in Denmark.

Helsingore was the setting Shakespeare chose for Hamlet and walking around the castle evoked memories of a hundred GCSE questions and the importance of soliloquy! Denmark is much smaller than either Norway or Sweden and so it did not take us very long to get around.  We spent a relaxing sunny Sunday in Copenhagen before passing through Roskilde, crossing the mammoth bridge to Funen and on to Jutland.  One morning we visited Abrenra, the last Scandinavian town before entering Germany.  A small town with small town mentalities and lamentable service standards.

Helsingore Castle

In Germany we spent a rainy afternoon in Hamburg and a rainy morning in Potsdam (somewhere I have always wanted to visit).  Before we knew it the sky cleared, the sun came out and we were back in Czech Republic.  We took the back roads to Litomerice, admired the old centre and enjoyed proper, tasty, draft beer for the first time in almost one year!  Fittingly the rain returned the next day as we visited the former Nazi concentration camp at Terezin.  It was predictably depressing but maybe more so as it was actually built in, on and surrounding a town.  Today blocks of flats overlook he gas chambers, a lovely sight to wake up to.  Something I always admired about Auschwitz was that, despite the huge investment in the restoration and exhibits entrance was free to all to discover the horrors and help ensure it would never happen again.  At Terezin the entrance fee is around four times the average fee for a Czech attraction, which I found disgraceful. In any case places likethese leave one feeling lost and empty so we soon left, stopping only in Melnik to see where the Vltava and Elbe meet before arriving back in Nove Jirny.  Our car survived the 4800km journey intact!

We realised from this trip that travelling with one’s own transport makes it hard to come into contact with the local people and therefore any conclusions I would make would be nothing but sweeping generalisations.  I have never shied away from these however so here goes:

I found all three countries (Norway, Sweden and Denmark) to be very conservative and right-wing, despite their liberal reputations and history of social welfare achievements.  The governments seem to feel handicapped by these old liberal laws, such as the one in Norway and Sweden allowing camping on any public land and they use various means with which to lessen the impact of such laws.  Outside of the cities people seem to be overly suspicious of strangers, even those with Icelandic number plates (which I thought would give us a bit of protection), often to the point of unfriendliness.  Of course this is not always the case and certainly it was the first time we had been given a full tray of steamed prawns from total strangers.

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