Blogs from Trøndelag, Norway, Europe - page 4

What can possibly be crazier than a bunch of Serbs deciding to get to Norway by train with little money and plenty of homemade alcohol? Perhaps the fact that those same people were responsible for disrupting the order in Trondheim, a perfectly maintained and organized city. The second day after our arrival there was an announcement stating that several unknown people brought alcohol to the famous student center. According to it they could have lost the license if the ‘problem’ persisted. Considering Norwegian prices and the age of participants it was the only logical thing to do, or at least that’s what I thought back then. It was my second time there, and I decided to prepare much better than the last time. Unlike the previous time when I stayed in a student flat, this time ... read more

Hello from the high seas! The North Sea to be exact. We are sailing from Iceland to Norway now and arriving in Trondheim tomorrow afternoon. It’s a sea day and we need a bit of a rest from the exciting things we did in Iceland. After we left the pub the other day we trudged back to the ship in the pouring rain. It was wet and miserable but not really cold. Strange place Reykjavik, they have a penis museum. Fortunately we missed this delight! So off we went about 6:30pm to find the Northern Lights. The Northern Lights, Aurora Borealis, are the same as our Southern Lights Aurora Australis, both of which are a response by the earth’s magnetic field to sunspot activity on the sun. In there is a museum for everything so it ... read more

The Troll Ladder or Trollstein 16 June 2014 We left Alesund and traveled along the Storfjord to Sjoholt, Stordal and onto Andalsnes. The road from Stordal to Andalsnes is the Troll Road. Everyone that we had spoken to has told us that we must drive along the Troll Road. The meaning of the name Trollstigen is probably The Trolls Ladder, but in the local way of saying the name as Trollstien, it gets the meaning of The Trolls Path. It has connection with the Trolls, and as the only place in Norway you can here find the official road sign with a troll on it. At the parking area before you start going upwards you can also see the One and Only official road sign in Norway with a troll. The meaning of the sign is: ... read more

Geo: 63.4346, 10.3985Today we finally landed in Norway, our first stop being Trondheim. Our first impressions were slightly underwhelming. Inland, in still waters, Trondheim is Norways third largest city. It consists of beautiful colourful houses on a forested and hilly backdrop with a canal running through the centre. With no tour planned for the day, we elected to explore on foot. An ATM gave us our first dose of the Norweigan Krone. A 1,000 Krone note basically = $190AUD. We continued on, dodging swarms of straggling, stumbling elderly cruise critters, before reaching the Nidaros Cathedral. Starting as a church in 1070 and named after the original name of the city, the cathedral was finally completed to stand as it does today around 1650. We bought a multi admission pass to the cathedral, neighboring Archbishop museum and ... read more

New Year! Slept well and woke with one hangover between us (Yvonne). Slept a bit too well as we had missed a good two hours of the ship’s stay in Trondheim. However after a quick breakfast egg or two we set off in the wintery wastes of Trondheim docks to walk into town to see what we could see. Insofar as we had any specific objectives they were to find the place Cillian worked and lived 35 years ago and to see Nidaros cathedral. We achieved both of these which was just as well as Trondheim on New Year’s Day is as closed as a closed town can be. Kjopmannsgate was Cilian’s old address and it was obligingly close to the docks so we found it easily enough. The houses that formed the site of ... read more