Norwegian Wood

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We put Norwegian wood on our Norwegian fire in Geilo. A cool little ski resort half way across Norway where the local walking trails include ford crossings! It has been a while since my last update as we have been out in the sticks for the last few weeks travelling through fjords, mountains, forests etc and staying in Hytters which are these cool little cabins with grass on the roof.

Sven, Anna, Trent and Monique have now gone back to Australia after Cameron and Malin's wedding in Sundsvall, so my liver can finally have a rest and my wounds have time to heel. I think most of us were only carrying minor injuries after three long weeks, with the exception of Anna's broken foot which we are calling an accident.

From Geilo we headed across to Bergen, which is the second largest city in Norway. A great place except that a beer costs A$16! In Bergen we decided to go for a hike between the local mountain and another mountain with a cable car. We couldn't really see what we were in for but the mountains seemed close enough to walk. As it turned out they were 5km in a straight line, however they had a massive valley between them that we had to walk around. 15km and 4 hours later we made it.

From Bergen we took on the treacherous roads to Flam around fjords and through a 24km tunnel dodging oncoming campervans which live by the rule that smaller gives way to bigger. Lots of awesome scenery yadda yadda. This is where injury number one for the trip happened when Monique ate gravel on her bike coming down from the mountain railway. We did stay the night in a Hytter over the Fjord though. This made for a perfect morning fjord swim which made a few random tourists holiday photo reals.

From Flam we continued North to Olden, near a glacier. As fjord swimming was old news and the word dare had been used Sven and Trent decided to go swimming in a glacial lake complete with icebergs and a glacier flowing into it. For once Trent acually admitted it was cold.

Continuing further north we went to Geiranger (more fjord swimming), Alesund and then to a small fishing town on the Atlantic coast where we stayed in the best Hytter ever. It was a log cabin at the base of a mountain with a paddock full of horses out the front and its own white sandy beach with little islands dotted around the beach. From here we almost saw the midnight sun, 11:50pm sunset and went for the obligatory swim only to later find out we could have used the boat on the beach.

Next stop Trondheim, where I got a chilli bollocks pizza. I never really worked out what it was but it had meatballs on it, and combined with a burger and a few beers cost A$140. The thing that amazed me about Norway was that the entire country is built on the side of a cliff, even that major cities. No flat land to be seen, Lucky they have heaps of oil.

Back into Sweden and on the home stretch to Cam and Malins wedding we decided to stop for a couple of days in a camping area on a lake where we ended up hanging out to all hours with some Norwegians and generally doing ourselves harm.

After a couple of weeks on the road we finally made it to Sundsvall for Cameron and Malins wedding where we met up with the rest of the Aussie crew and some Swedish friends. As expected this meant we were put to work setting up tents and preparing for the big day.

The wedding itself was excellent. The Swedes were great fun and made us feel right at home. There was lots of singing, telling jokes, eating and of course sampling of local and imported beverages. We even had Moose on the menu.

We are now back in Stockholm on our last night in Sweden. Scandavia has been excellent, so good that we have decided not to leave just yet, and extend our trip to Lappland in the Artic circle.

Until next time we return to civilisation
Christian

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