Bodø
At almost exactly 10 AM we arrived at Bodø, actually too late because Steinar wanted to start selling at that time, and we had just entered the city boundary. The first stop was at a shopping centre near the city, where Steinar's... associate? was already waiting. He was also selling berries, but at that location, whereas we'd be selling at the city centre. They exchanged some goods, and we drove on as the first customers showed up to buy some berries.
We drove on to the city centre, right into the pedestrian zone -- it was still empty -- and set up our stand. It was a cold and cloudy day, and the centre was pretty deserted. I was worried too that I'd get into trouble for working illegally, especially when the police drove by, though later I realised, why would they be worried about me in particular. My first duty was to pack 500g of strawberries into plastic containers.
After a while, the city got a bit busier, and business was running. The sun came and went throughout the day. We were also joined by Veronica, a regular helper of Steinar's, a cheery, friendly teenager who wants to be an "Advokat", (a lawyer) - it surprised me a bit, but I guess in my mind Bodø was a small town with small town minds, and I'm glad to have been proven wrong. She's been selling berries for a while and had regular costumers, for example an older man, whom she said has bought berries from her whenever she's selling them. "He must have spent something like 1200 Kroner [Maybe it was more] for berries, my God!".
It got quieter during the afternoon - I guess there were times where people delayed going out because of the weather - and I too got the chance to sell some berries. Because all I can say in Norwegian is "Jeg forstår ikke norsk" (I don't understand any Norwegian), I greeted the interested buyers with "Hi, welcome to an English lesson! Today, lesson 5, at the market!" or similar. I was impressed that everybody spoke English, and wasn't afraid of doing so!
At about 6 o'clock in the afternoon, we closed up shop. Veronica left before that, she was going down south to visit her boyfriend (too bad, I would've asked if she could show me around town). I sent my couchsurfing host-to-be Frøde an SMS asking how I could go to his place. He replied that it would be easier to pick me up (nice of him!), but that I'd have to wait an hour. So I walked around the city and found shelter from the cold and wind in a bus station/ferry waiting room full of tourists. It was quite subdued, with everybody sitting there waiting for something. Oh well, at least I look like I fit in, with my huge bags. At one point the sun started to shine again, it was great.
After a while, Frøde showed up. We greeted each other, and he drove me to his place. It was actually outside of the town on the road going into it, and the house doesn't have a number, making things like ordering pizza or describing it on the CouchSurfing website difficult.
Frøde lives in a nice house, of which he is the owner, he works in one of the fish "factories" in Bodø, and interestingly he works only in wintertime, but he still gets paid in summer, which sounded great to me. Because of that he has a lot of free time in summer to do things like travel or renovate the house, which was what he was doing. A thing we had in common was that we were both "computer guys". He had a lot of technology in his house, the centerpiece being his home theater equipment, along with a great collection of DVDs. He also has a spare computer for CouchSurfers, so I could enjoy a bit of net-surfing.
I spent the night relaxing, considering I'd been on the road since the afternoon of the previous day, and thinking about my next few days. I thought, because I'm going to the Lofoten islands, I better get ready for some real camping (believe it or not, the only camping I've had so far was sleeping under some trees the day before I met Dan the cabin builder) and for some of - what I expected to be - really cold weather. I also had to plan where to go! I wanted to do some hiking and a lot of sight-seeing, but somehow my time was limited because I felt I had to reach Narvik and my next CouchSurfing host Jimmy at a certain date - he is a prolific (i.e. busy!) hoster, and I didn't want to complicate his schedule.
At one point in my ponderings, I had to stop and think about how far north I've gotten. I was north of the arctic circle. Wow! In my notebook I have written down, found out using the help of Google Maps: 67.2916° North!
The next morning I woke up quite late. Sorting out my bags, I decided to lighten my load and throw away the unnecessary mementos of the trip - things like bus tickets (I wonder why I collect them anyway), but digitalising them before doing so. Now readers, remember the sandwich I was making on my first lunch of the trip? Well, as it happens that plastic lunchbox still contained the cheese and salami from that day, they've been accompanying me in my trip without complain, through the hot sunny days, sometimes living in people's fridge, but always in that lunchbox, unopened. On account of said heat, I guessed they were probably no longer edible, so I decided to throw them away. But I wasn't that foolish that I was going to open the lunchbox in someone's house, I decided to take it outside and dispose of the contents in the next available garbage bin.
I walked to the bus stop conviniently located near Frøde's house, carrying the container with weapons of mass destruction in my daily backpack. Just a few meters before that I found a bin, it did have a sign, which I believe said "not for public use!", but I chose to ignore it. So I opened up the container, and threw away the dead, molding, rat (well it smelled like one!) which was inside. Ugh! So much for not wasting food.
It was now a hot and sunny day, and the bus was still a lot of minutes away. Then a car came down the small road, it was the owner of the garbage bin (hmm...), he got out of the car, threw away some garbage, at which point I ask him if I could have a ride. He told me to get in. Result!
Ulaf is a neighbor of Frøde's, he's a fisherman, and he was going into town to get ready for his fishing expedition in a few days. At this point I was wondering if I could hitch a ride on his boat, maybe working as a fisherman. He said he was going to his boat, so I asked if I could have a look. Maybe he was skeptical at first, but he agreed in the end.
Getting off the boat, I found myself in the little harbour area, and took some panoramic pictures. It was a nice warm day out.
Interesting things in/about this picture:
- It's taken from approximately 67°16'51"N 14°22'11.08"E
- It's almost a 360 degree panorama, but the last bit would have just been a shed.
- On the very right side you can see some tall mountain peaks in the background, they are about 14 km away. Wow, good visibility!
- There's a festival under the white tent in front of the Thon Hotel.
- To the right of the hotel is the county governor's building. What a massive one!
- This picture overlaps with the previous one quite a bit, it's basically the right half of that.
- You can see the mountain peaks from before, and another one slightly further back, they are the Kvitinden and Rypsaltinden peaks (so Google Earth tells me),
Big Deal
Apparently the Sildefestival (Herring Festival) is a big deal, with chefs from different countries attending, Poland won the first prize.
Ulaf mentioned that the fish factories are having a day out, as one of the men put it, "to show what the fish industry does other than make awful smells". I spotted the big tent immediately with a lot of people around it. Under the tent there were tables with chefs behind them, and fish-based food on them. So, there is such a thing as free lunch (how cliché)!
Clothes Shopping!
In the end the gloves and cap proved to be useful as I was further north in Nordkapp, sadly I lost the awesome cap a few weeks after returning home.
My food needs satisfied (but not my thirst, for some reason the kids giving out the drinks only filled the standard plastic drinking cups to half its height), I set out to get some camping and cold weather gear for the expedition to the Lofoten Islands. I browsed in the sports equipment stores, looking for things I might need, e.g. a warm pullover, gloves, something warm for my head. Wandering around looking for the bargains, I got a bit annoyed after a while, because I couldn't really make up my mind on what to get. But at the end I got a hunter's cap with ear-cover at a military surplus store with strange people in it, a nice pair of gloves, and some light, warm wool underwear that boasts that it can be worn for a few days at a time without changing.
I also saw Steinar again, selling his berries, and poor guy was all by himself with a long line of customers. I helped him for a short while, but I didn't want to spend the rest of the afternoon so I said sorry and left.
The weather that day was also like the day before, varying wildly from sun to rain from hour to hour, in the afternoon it stayed cloudy. I thougt about going on a hike up in the mountains, unfortunately the rain spoiled that plan. I waited around town waiting for the rain to subside, sitting inside the shopping mall and people watching. I was more tired than I thought because I even managed to fall asleep sitting on one of the benches, in the middle of the mall!
I also wondered if I'd be able to go to the Lofotens by hitching a ride with a boat, so I decided to walk around the harbour to see if there's anyone on their boats that I might be able to talk with. But because of the drizzle no one was around, so I decided to take some more pictures instead.
360 degree Panorama!
Ship Parking Lot
Finally I decided to return to Frøde's place, but not wanting to pay the bus fare and having had luck by hitch-hiking, I decided to try that again. Besides, it's the main road to and from town, and sees a lot of traffic. But first I had to walk to the edge of the city, so I did, among the wooden houses and deserted roads (again, probably because of the weather) on the quiet Saturday afternoon, well evening, although it was still bright.
Making it to the edge, I put my thumb out, but had no luck. Then it started raining again, so I gave up and walked to the nearest bus stop, and took the next one "home". It wasn't very expensive, though as a hitch-hiker I felt I should pay for transportation only as a last resort.
Frøde was busy fixing up the downstairs area of his house, so I just hung out in the living room, surfing the internet and again trying to plan the expedition-within-the-expedition to the Lofotens. Later on he treated me to homemade Tacos (yum!). Being both computer nerds geeks who like to go to bed late, we were eating dinner at midnight. After that I was planning to sleep, while Frøde started watching the movie Deja Vu (with Denzel Washington!) on his home theater. The movie started with a big bang, which also shook the house. So I decided to join him and watch it. I guess it tried to be clever in the end with time travel paradoxes and loops, but in my opinion it didn't want to be too clever to not confuse people, so it just ended up an average movie.
So at 4:30 in the morning (I guess it was light anyway, I can't remember), I went to bed.
The next morning/afternoon I decided to go on the walk up the mountains that I was planning for the day before -- I even got a walking map of the area then. Waking up late, I set out at 6 PM. Yeah, that late! But considering it was summer I wasn't worried about the sun setting down (although it would get dusk-like at aroud 11 PM). I walked to what looked like the path that passes near the house, and continued on from there, and I was wondering where I was on the map after the first few turns. Apparently the paths marked "ski-path" get pretty overgrown with grass when there's no snow on them. I soldiered on for a while, following overhead electrical cables to a hill I wanted to get to the top of, but the grass just got thicker and thicker, so in the end I turned and walked back to the road.
Walking near a rail track and hoping no train decided to come at that moment, I tried the native American trick I saw on the TV series Lone Ranger; put your ear onto one of the rail, and you can hear the train coming from miles away. So I knelt down, and... crash! My camera, which I had put in its clipped to my belt, unzipped, bag, fell out. Aaaa! It was pretty scratched up. Luckily it still worked.
I walked back to the main road, winding up closer to the city, and walked next to the road for 1 or 2 km back to Frøde's House, feeling how my feet and legs were tired from the plenty of walking of the last few weeks. I returned at about 9 PM (wow, that was quite long after all!), and Frøde was still working on fixing his house, putting a coat of finish on the wooden floor, which meant he had to stand with his back bent the whole day.
I woke up late again today, I think I was planning to get up early and continue on my trip, to the Lofoten Islands. Unfortunately I didn't manage to do that. Instead Frøde asked if I wanted to see the aviation museum. So we went!
The Story of The Flying Tuk-Tuk
The Flying Tuk-Tuk is so called because of a story from a martial arts teacher of mine.
The Indonesian cousin of Thai Tuk-Tuks are Bajajs. I know of Bajajs, while Frode knows of Tuk-Tuks because he's travelled a few times to Thailand.
So one day the teacher was telling his class about his trip to the USA, including an excursion to the Grand Canyon.
There, someone asked him if he/the tour group wanted to see the canyon by plane. Thinking they would all get into a big plane, he said "Sure, sounds exciting!"
He was shocked when he saw the small Cessna plane that they would use, even more so at the manouvers the pilot made. He was scared, telling us "It felt like I was in a Bajaj, that could fly!".
It was a cool museum, divided into 2 parts, one documenting civilian aviation and the other focusing on military aviation, with the building built like a propeller, each part occupying one of the 2 propeller blades, with a model of a control tower in the middle. Bodø is a strategic location and the British built a runway there in WW2, and the Germans improved on it (after managing to occupy it obviously) and used it for bombing runs. After that war and in the Cold War it became a large NATO base located close to the Soviet, so I guess it must have been a fun place.
After that we took a drive up the mountain to see the views, and another drive around the area.
The City and the Airport
Later that evening we went to the supermarket so I could buy some supplies for my next leg of the trip, the supermarkets in Norway are open until 10 PM in summer, which is quite late compared to Germany's 8 PM (and they used to close at 7, or even 6 PM!), I guess with 24 hour sun it doesn't feel "late".
We finished the day by watching another movie, this time it was Ghost in The Shell 2: Innocence. I've seen it before, and Frøde was surprised that he hadn't, being a fan of the director, but he had it in his collection, so up it went on the projector.
After the movie I said my goodbye to Frøde, because chances were he would still be asleep when I woke up the next morning. He was a great, generous, host, leading a life which I think I would enjoy as well. I "lived" in Bodø for a few days, it was a nice, close-to-the-nature (mountains and sea!) place, and it was time for my adventure to continue.