Mamma Mia(Abba) - Oppegard,Norway to Asa,Sweden -14th July 2016

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As expected sleeping was a challenge in the small ‘double’ bed and not a lot of sleep was had. I had thought about hauling the squab out from its location wedged between the wall and the bed but now regret I hadn’t.

Never mind the day will go on and here’s hoping to a more comfortable bed tonight.

We cross the border into Sweden today as we make our steady progress back to mainland Europe.

The Rema1000 supermarket was just up the road and we did some shopping for lunch on the road somewhere ahead of us. The road south in this part of the world doesn’t run through any of the few towns there are so we will probably just stay on it until we get to the exit for our destination.

There have been the usual beggars sitting outside supermarkets in Norway and this morning was no different. Many look to be Romanian and we are sure many are desparate.But they don’t do their cause any good when in a ‘quiet’ moment when not too many people are passing, like this morning except for us, they are chatting away on a fairly flash looking cellphone!

Many of the service stations in Norway are automated and do not take cash in payment and we had to try three before we found one where we could use the last of the Norwegian Kroner we had to fill the tank. The young woman was a little surprised when I paid with one note and the rest a collection of the coins with holes in them that account for the Nkr5 and upwards denominations and it is surprising how quickly they have accumulated and what they were worth in my pocket.

South of Oslo, as we were now, the E6 speed limit was 100kph and this was a change for us having motored around at often not much more than 70kph for the last couple of weeks.

The road scenery was, as expected,boring.The land got flatter as we got closer to Sweden and views both sides was mostly forest or open grass land that didn’t appear to be very fertile as there was not a lot in the way of crops growing or animals grazing. One of our impressions of Norway has been that there is an awful lot of country that is really not useful for anything except growing stunted trees.

Our impression did change a bit as we took a diversion to Frederikstad which is a port town and we thought might have somewhere to have a break and a stroll to exercise on the waterfront. There was more rolling type farmland closer to the coast that was fertile with crops of wheat and even some maize.

However as we reached the town rain started to fall quite steadily and we carried on through the town that might have had some interesting sights to stroll by.

Back to the main road and back to ‘car spotting ‘which has replaced ‘people watching ‘while we drive the boring highway.

I wasn’t quick enough at one stage to get my camera out as Gretchen spotted a four wheel drive ahead of us that she was about to pass with a ‘All Blacks Supporter ‘cover on the spare tyre on the back door of the vehicle.

We reached the border and crossed without any check. There was still evidence of buildings which could be put back into operation if necessary but the main checks the Swedes are doing on immigrants is now from Denmark heading north. We guess if they reach this far north it is such a vast area that they can ‘disappear ‘if they want.

We took another diversion off the E6 to Tanum,a UNESCO World Heritage site where there are Bronze Age rock drawings you can walk amongst in a ‘museum ‘like area. However we are only in Sweden for 24 hours effectively and we didn’t have any of the local kroner to pay the entry fee so had to give it a miss.

After a lack of sleep last night we were keen to get to our next destination and rest up anyway.

We did take our lunch stop next to the water at Greebestad, a small coastal village that seemed popular with tourists as the place was busy with people out and about.

It was lovely to see kids, who are of course on holiday, down on a little breakwater with their parents fishing. We just hope we can take our grandsons fishing when they get a little older. There is something very restful about the age old occupation of fishing.

There was a lazy cool breeze blowing off the sea and we were lucky to find a picnic table protected from the breeze by a tall hedge and we were able to spend a bit of time out of the car.

Back to the E6 and Goteborg was next on our route.

It is Sweden’s only city of any size in the west of the large land area that makes up the country.

Like Oslo there were major roadworks on the E6 through the city but traffic moved steadily.

We had read about a road congestion tax that you paid to travel through the city and to try and avoid going through the city would have involved nearly another hour’s driving.

Collection of the tax was by camera and automatic. However the good news for us was that if your car wasn’t registered in Sweden you didn’t have to pay.

We found this very welcoming to us tourists and perhaps the Norwegians could look at doing the same on their tolled roads.

Our overnight accommodation is a hostel type place at Asa just off the E6 and because Gina didn’t have the road in her ‘memory bank’, after a bit of driving up and down the main street of the town we finally gave over to the mobile phone to find the road which turned out to be outside the town a few kilometres in the very quiet countryside.

The owner hoped we wouldn’t mind having single beds(in the same room) and we were both pleased they were going to be big enough for us both to roll around in while sleeping after last night’s squeeze in the ‘double’.

We have two shared bathrooms in the corridor and a large shared kitchen where we can prepare our own meals.

The owner suggested a few places we might like to visit while we were in the area and we chose a walk through a nature reserve which wandered around on the coastline nearby.

We still haven’t seen any marine life when we have been on or near the water and that didn’t change during our walk around the rocky coastline here.

We went back for dinner and had some conversation with other guests from Sweden before they got together and had a family dinner. We had our own little Kiwi family dinner of left over cold chicken and a very tasty creamy potato salad we had purchased earlier in the day and continued the trend of a tomato to go with it.

It didn’t take much to get to sleep with the benefit of a dark blind on the window which shut out most of the very late sunset.

Tomorrow it’s the ferry to Denmark and a couple of night’s stay in Copenhagen, a city we are both keen to walk around and see the highlights.

PS:as you can probably figure out Abba's most popular song really has nothing to do with the days blog except we ended our day of travel in Sweden so better way than celebrate with Sweden's most well known modern pop singers.Bop along to it on Youtube of course.

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