Blogs from Northern Norway, Norway, Europe - page 30

Five days in the land of midnight sun and reindeers If you follow this blog you know that I, Ake that is, two or three times a year can take a vacation when Emma has to be home working. As long as I visit places Emma doesn't want to see I am permitted to travel on my own. Emma is not very interested in visiting northern Norway but I have for several years been thinking that a trip up to the land of midnight sun and reindeers could be interesting. So to northern Norway I went on a trip this summer. The trip started with a flight from Stockholm to Tromso in northern Norway. At least that is what I thought. I came to Arlanda Airport in Stockholm and checked in on the flight in one ... read more

What's one way to get a homesick, grumpy, fish-loving Alaskan to lighten up and smile a bit? Bring on the fish!! Over the past week, the Faculty of Biosciences and Aquaculture have invited all of the International Exchange students studying Bioscience (aka me, Brad, and Libby) to join the Masters students on two excursions and then ALL of the international students from 29 different countries were invited on a cod fishing excursion with the Student Chaplain. It was nice to finally get out of my room and out to the seaside for a little Norwegian fishing introduction. On the first excursion last Wednesday, Brad and I joined the Masters students and headed to the Kjerringoy Gamle Handelssted aka the old merchant's centre on Kjerringoy. We got told last week at orientation that Kjerringoy is actually translated ... read more

Rain rain, go away, come again another day? I'm sure that is what most Norwegians are singing this weekend in Norway. It has been raining quite a bit which is kind of nice, but very wet! Of course, the rain is not the only thing that brought us back from the Lofoten Islands early. We set off Thursday morning around 8 a.m., caught the bus downtown, then walked to the ferry terminal to catch our boat out to the Lofoten Islands. Of course, given the early morning rising and my inability to get to bed before 2 a.m. yet, I was kind of grumpy and a little homesick still and stayed pretty quiet during our walk. The ferry ride was really nice, but one of the most bumpy spots ever. So while our boat was rocking ... read more

Dear Alaska, This is my first official blog entry from Norway, about Norway. I left you about 53 hours and it has been quite an up and down experience so far. I would be lying if I didn't first admit to you that I miss you. I have never missed you this much. It's true that I have often gone off for months before and left you behind, packed my car and waved goodbye, knowing that it would be awhile before we met again. But for some reason - this time was different. Could it be because the country in which I am now in goes by the metric system, has different currency, has food names that I do not quite understand, has limited street signs making it easy to get lost (yes, I have gotten ... read more

Emily and I just returned from a great trip the farthest north I will most likely ever go. We went waaay up north, 1500 miles from the northpole, 750km drive from my house to the town of Tromsø, Norway. We took a highway right on the Sweden-Finnish border all the way up past the point where Finland, Sweden and Norway all border each other. Once we hit Norway the scenery got much better. We saw a moose! and drove along fjords to one of the northern most cities in europe. We spent two nights in Tromsø. It was a quaint little town and twilight lasted until 11pm. Only a month left until they get the midnight sun. The streets were really confusing in Tromso. There wasn't much planning involved. A lot of streets were dead ends, ... read more