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In Summer 2007 I went on a hitch-hiking and couch-surfing trip across Scandinavia. This is the story of that trip.

Background

I don't quite remember why I wanted to do this trip. But I think I said to myself, "I need to get out of here.". Just to have a break. I looked at the map and asked myself where I have not been.

North. The furthest North I've ever been was Copenhagen, in an IAESTE trip to an event called the Copenhagen Get-Together. It was a great city, and a fun weekend, but I felt one weekend was a bit short too see everything. Besides, we had a bit of a "package tour", so we only saw parts of the city the organizer wanted us to see (part of that was going to a coal powerplant, interestingly enough). So I looked at the map and looked at the northern part of Europe. Considering I am on a low budget, somewhere in my mind I had made it that I was just going to hitch-hike to get to where I want to go. I don't remember if I thought I'd go to Stockholm, or Oslo, or Helsinki, or all three, but all of a sudden the plan grew in my mind, "Why don't you go to Trondheim as well? Or Tromso?".

Then I thought, what's the northernmost point on the map anyway? I looked at the map, or was it Google Maps, or Google Earth, and I found out it was Nordkapp. So I thought, let's go there! And I'll hitch-hike there!

At first Finland wasn't part of the plan. Googling told me that hitch-hiking in Sweden is hard, so I thought I'd just go up north through Norway and avoid Sweden, except for a little stretch when I have to get from Copenhagen to Oslo. I suppose I thought of going down through Sweden, but I wondered what would be interesting in the north of Sweden, and then I thought, what the heck, why not go through Finland as well. When I found out the cruise ship from Turku to Stockholm costs as little as €10, I decided "I'm going to Finland!".

Actually it wasn't that decisive either. I thought it'd be a fun thing to do, but there was no certainty that I'd do it. I had the idea late 2006 or early 2007, and it kept me entertained at that time, that I had an adventure that I was going to do, something to look forward to. Mostly it was a fantasy, a pie in the sky that I thought was not achievable, but was nice to think about.

In January 2007, I started a new job. I mentioned this plan of mine to my boss, who was actually very encouraging about it. I was surprised about it, but I was glad that the possibility was being kept alive. Back then, I wasn't so sure myself that I would be able to do it, so sometimes I thought about just letting the idea die a quiet death.

Actually, I had been telling some people that I was going to "hitch-hike through Scandinavia", and when they ask about it, I'd say "I don't know. Nothing certain yet.". I told a friend, Elvy, that I might not go after all, it's just a crazy plan. But her encouragements kept the idea alive in my mind, and made me actually realize it.

Preparations

In September 2006 I started a semester project, which was supposed to last 3 months. But due to my own inefficiency, it took me 9 months, until July 2007, to actually finish it. I was actually planning to go on this trip in May and June of 2007, but I kept procrastinating the writing the report for the project that it took a real big deadline (the threat of the cancellation of the term project) that finally made me finish it. I saw a window of opportunity to go and do the trip after finishing the project. In June 2007 I reconfirmed with my boss about the trip, and he said "Go for it!". In hindsight I guess that's all he could say, he wouldn't have been able to say no, would he?

But his approval also encouraged me a lot, I remember feeling very happy that "Yes, I am going!", after he told me I could go.

As I said, I finished the report for my project in July 2007, and I decided to go after that.

The actual preparations happened at the very last minute, the Saturday before I left. I got myself a map of Europe, a pair of new shoes, a compass, toiletteries (toothpase, soap, shampoo, sun-screen (Don't forget to wear sun-screen!)) and a camping mat.

I got new shoes because I thought I would go hiking, but I didn't get hiking boots because they were a bit expensive, but I got myself walking shoes anyway because I have sneakers made for basketball, but I thought they wouldn't be suitable if I were going to walk a lot on different terrain. Besides, the shoes I've had were a bit too big, with me wearing them loose, and that had always ached my feet when I walk for long distances.

I did not have a backpack, but my cousin Christian did, and he kindly let me borrow it.

Another thing I had to arrange was the clearing out of my room because I was going to rent it out while I was gone. So on Monday, July 16th, 2007, I started packing my belongings into boxes as well as packing my (well my cousin's, but for this trip it will be mine) backpack. I did not sleep that Monday night, partly because I had so much to do, but partly because I was excited that I was going to do the trip!

The Way To Hamburg

I set myself a deadline of 10 AM. By that time I wanted to be out of my room and on my way on my big journey. After some last minute preparations, I finally left at about 10:45, walking towards the first hitch-hiking point, a gas station, which according to people from hitchbase.com, is a good place to ask people. I had with me the backpack, which was fully loaded, with some food on top, and a smaller school backpack I carried on the front. I have no idea now what I had in there, probably the food. I walked 1.4 km to a gas station, but seeing as there was only one beat-up car there (apparently I misread the website, it was another gas station), I decided to go to the entry to the Autobahn, near the superstore formerly known as Walmart. By this time I've been walking for, well, probably 20 minutes, and because my backpack felt so heavy, I decided to take the tram, and I even paid for it! It wasn't very good start to hitch-hiking, huh.

So 10 minutes later I was at the Autobahn on-ramp. This was my first time hitch-hiking in a while. The first, and last time I hitch-hiked was in 2003. I went to Monaco back then, to experience a Formula One Grand Prix weekend. Then I wasn't even by myself, I was with Zbyszek, a flatmate of mine from Poland. So after a few moments of being squeamish and embarrassed, I thought, "What the hell, let's do it!", and pulled out my sign. Which I had just written a few minutes ago, in the tram. A girl was watching me intently, wondering what I was writing down. I finished it, and showed it to her, and she smiled.

So, there I was, wanting to go to Hamburg. Watching the cars go by, grinning like an idiot (me, not the cars), hoping somebody responds to the friendly smile and stop. What do I see driving in my direction? An exemplar of the brand-spanking-new super sports car, the Audi R8! I wiggled my thumb, but sadly the driver did not stop.

The first few minutes of the wait were interesting. I wondered if it was going to work, if somebody was going to stop and pick me up, or if I will still be standing there at four in the afternoon, when I'll finally give up and go home with my tail between my legs, although I didn't exactly have a home anymore considering it's being rented out to somebody else.

But 45 minutes after starting the wait, I looked in the direction of the on-ramp (I was standing some 50 meters before it), and I saw a young man walking in my direction. Behind him I saw his car, parked on the pedestrian lane.

Hmm, did he break down? I first thought. I don't think so. I started walking towards him. Alright, got one. :) He spoke English to me, saying he was not going to Hamburg, but just to Frankfurt.

"Frankfurt? Can I come?" I said in German. And off we went.

Bastian, like me, was/is a student at the University of Karlsruhe. He also has a part time job (I googled him and he seems to be running the company!) and he was going to Frankfurt, or north of Frankfurt, to meet some clients. A student, who was also running his company. I was impressed. And he got to be my first ride on this gigantic trip to the north. We drove to a big rest area north of Frankfurt, which I'm lucky he knew, because my knowledge of the area was not that great.

It was a sunny, warm day. I got out of Bastian's car and wondered where to begin asking. There were so many cars, parked and their owners probably getting something to eat. I watched as a silver Mercedes Benz drove in to park, the driver a big, middle-aged businessman in shirt and tie. I saw the plates, that begin with "HH", for "Hansestadt Hamburg".

"Well, he's going my way, but I doubt he takes hitch-hikers.", I thought.

My hitch-hiking mentor Zbyszek taught me that I should forget waving my thumb at BMW, Audi or Mercedes drivers. "They never stop.". But anyway, my back hurt, I was sleepy and I was hungry, so I decided I would eat something first and then continue.

So I walked to the seating area (all next to cars), I noticed the driver of the aforementioned Merc, a big, middle aged man in a light-blue shirt, walking in the opposite direction to the stores. I held out my sign "Hamburg" but if he saw it he pretended not to. Oh well, somebody else will give me a ride, I thought. Sitting down to eat, I was in a really happy mood. I couldn't believe it, my trip had officially started. I suppose there's always going back and aborting it, but it would be embarassing to say "I made it to Frankfurt and I turned back.", so in my mind it was already too far (like in Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle). There I was, the sky was blue, the breeze was cool, I'm in nature (well, next to a hundred or so cars in a resting area, next to an Autobahn), and I was eating bread and some salami. Life was good.

Halfway through my quite bland sandwich, the driver of that aforementioned Mercedes Benz passed me.

"Are you going to Hamburg?", I asked in German.

"Oh, you speak German?". I supppose he asked because he didn't feel like talking in English for such a long trip.

"Yes."

"Yes I am going to Hamburg. Do you want to come?"

"Aaah, sure!", I answered, after a few seconds of being dazed, surprised by this question.

"But not with that.", he gestured to the messy crumbs my sandwich was making.

I looked to the big garbage bin next to me. Ah, problem solved. "Sure, no problem."

But then I had a better idea, to put the food in the plastic bag.

"Let me just pack this. One should never waste food."

Meanwhile, he was already on his way to grab my backpack, to put in his car. What eagerness and helpfulness!

He opened the front door, and the first thing I noticed was the "Mercedes Benz" marquee in Silver, written across the lower side of the door frame. The second thing I noticed was how spacious the front passenger seat was, the third, how clean the car was, and the fourth, the jet-black leather seat that I would be sitting in for the next few hours. (Wikipedia tells me now the car was one of Mercedes Benz W140 S-class series).

My driver for that 5 and a half hour journey was Mr. Vagt, an accomplished consultant who teaches people how to be a good salesman, because, according to him, you can't learn that in Germany, not at the schools nor universities. It was fascinating to hear him talk about business and the world, what he knows and what he's experienced. He's never had a job with a boss in his life, always an entrepreneur.

He also had a fondness for Asia, watching TV reportages about the region. When I mentioned to him I really don't like watching TV, he said he watches it for 2 things, reportages and commercials. "Why commercials?", I wondered when he said this. "To see how people are selling things." Haha, but of course!

We drove and drove and talked, or at least he was doing that, we went through valleys, road repairs and traffic jams, and all that time, we had an interesting conversation. In the end, he asked me if I knew where my friend Yvonne lived, and took me straight to her front door.

So at about 19:00, I arrived in Hamburg. Hamburg! I couldn't believe it. That morning I woke up in Karlsruhe, and in the evening I was sitting on my friend's window ledge, absorbing the Hamburg skyline.

From Yvonne's apartment I could see the harbour area, with the giant cranes dotting the horizon. Nothing you can get in Karlsruhe, and I was just in awe, that I made it to Hamburg!

It was great. But in my mind the thought was running, it might not get better than this: a maximum of 45 minutes waiting, just 2 rides, one straight to the destination, and inside an air-conditioned, leather-seated S-class! And this was only the first day! It will only get worse!

Hamburg

That night I went to bed quite early, although not that tired yet. I guess I was so excited that I got up the next day at 7:00, ready to go out and see the day. Since it was summer it was already light. My host Yvonne must have thought it was really strange of me to wake up that early, since she, like me and probably everybody else in the world, would rather sleep-in when on vacation. But I was excited because I wanted to see the city.

From Yvonne's place I walked towards the city centre, passing by IBM's headquarters and making a turn towards St. Georg, which is, as Wikitravel puts it, a "lively, trendy centre of Hamburg's gay scene". Well, I guess it was. It had quite fancy, old-style buildings. There's a church there too - I wonder how a church feels being in the middle of a gay neighbourhood.

I walked to the Alster lakes, with the Atlantic Hotel (where they filmed part of Tomorrow Never Dies) and Pacific Haus, and walked towards the main train station.

From the main train station, I walked into the city centre, which in Germany means main shopping street. Well, just like other shopping streets, it was a shopping street. This was a Wednesday morning, so it wasn’t that crowded. I went into a swanky-looking mall and I found the relative emptiness was quite peaceful. I hope it doesn’t mean they’re going bust.

I then visited St. Nikolai, a church that was bombed in WW II. Apparently the Allied Planes used church-towers as guiding posts in their bomb-runs. The church probably got bombed by accident. It’s still standing, well, sort of, its walls are there, but the roof was missing. It was incredible to see the inner court and to realize, if the roof was there, this place would be filled with church banks and feel like, a church, instead it felt like a concrete basketball court.

Also still standing was the church tower. With an elevator, which was sponsored by McDonald’s (amongst others). Yay for capitalism! The elevator costs 2 Euro, or if combined with entry to the museum, 3 Euros. The museum itself would cost another 2 Euros. Of course I chose to go only up the tower. The ticket-seller-lady asked proof of my student status, too, hrmpf.

After this I walked to the direction of Speicherstadt, a former warehouse area which is now a historically preserved area (so says Wikipedia (in German, but with nice pictures)), and then I looked for a subway station because I wanted to return to the main train station, I was going to meet up with Yvonne.

At this point my feet were hurting. I didn’t want to have loose shoes because it would just chaff my feet, so I bought tight-fitting ones. And they were now too tight! But anyway, I met Yvonne at the train station and we met a friend of hers to have lunch together.

What did I have for lunch? Yvonne treated me (she’s too nice) to Kentucky Fried Chicken.

After lunch she recommended we took a ferry tour of the river. The ferry is actually used for transportation, but a lot of tourists also use it to see the sights by the river. We went to a beach. Yeah Hamburg has a beach! Too bad the water is probably horrible, it was a bit rocky, and the weather that day was changing rapidly from sunny to heavily-rainy.

We then walked back towards the Slanty Building (apparently its name is Dockland), passing a domed cubic building which turned out to be a retirement home and some modern-looking office buildings, but which also looked decaying. Nice in a grim dystopian futuristic sort of way...

You can walk up to the top of the Dockland and have a nice view. Actually at this point my feet were already dying. I still managed to walk up the stairs, but had to take my too tight shoes off to let my feet relax.

While we were on top, we could see the dark clouds that was coming. It was already windy and the water was choppy.

I also noticed a sandy beach built on a pier. It was a few meters above the water, with a fence that separates the sand and the fall to the water. Isn't the whole point of a beach to get wet? Though with this water, I wouldn't want to swim in it willingly...

So we decided to go back to the Speicherstadt, because I haven't seen it. Despite the threatening clouds and winds, it only rained lightly, but the ferry ride was still pretty rocky. We stayed on the open upper deck, and did get a bit wet, as well as cold. This in the middle of July!

We walked through Speicherstadt, with its old warehouses. Being a protected heritage site, I guess the buildings can't be torn down. The warehouses probably house the highest concentration of middle-eastern rug shops.

We then walked (or subwayed?) towards the Alster lakes near the city centre. It has a nice promenade where I imagine people gather to enjoy sunny days. Afterwards we went to, what Yvonne describes, the neighbourhood where the rich people like to visit to shop and drink coffee. It was really a nice area. While there, it started raining again, so we decided to go back to her place (no, not in that sense you perverts!). It was still early, but we were beat, so we just stayed home that evening.

Hamburg, Day 2

The next day Yvonne took me on a tour of Blankenese - a village which is a train ride away from the big city. Well, not exactly a village, it felt more like a suburb, and somehow had a very American suburb feel, like what you get from Desperate Housewives - perhaps that was just in my mind. Later on the place had a feel of Montmartre with its narrow hilly streets and stairways. It also has a lot of villas owned by, well, I guess those who can afford it.

At this point I noticed many Mini Coopers, that I thought I should document all occurrences of them in my trip...

We walked down to the riverside, which also has sand and is a beach. This we all accomplished within an hour or so, but my feet were already hurting again from the walk and the tight-fitting shoes.

Next we went to the bus stop that would take us back to the train station . The schedule said the next bus would be a while yet so we decided to walk back to the station. But walking in the middle of the road towards it, we saw the bus, coming up behind us. And because we were walking on a piece of road that was being fixed, with netting to its sides, we had to find a gap in the nets to stand aside. As we did so, I put my thumb out, and ha, the driver stopped for us! So we got on!

We had valid tickets, but I think he didn't really care about it. The bus was air-conditioned too, so it was a welcome change to the humid day outside. Driving around I got to see more of the fancy villas the place had.

Arriving back at the train station, we had a "now what?" feeling. Yvonne told me of other things we could visit, although I guess I wasn't paying attention, because they all seemed not very exciting. We agreed on something, so we hopped on the train.

It was close to lunchtime, so we were wondering what to eat. Then Yvonne realized it's Thursday, and Thursday is Chicken-Tag at KFC. ("Chicken-Day", although the German word for chicken is not chicken, but hähnchen), so, being a member of the aforementioned KFC cult, I agreed when she suggested we ate there.

This KFC restaurant was located at St. Pauli's, the famous red light district of Hamburg. We went there at around 1 PM, so the place looked normal and just like any other city part. Actually it felt quite calm, probably because the businesses don't open till night...

After lunch we headed out to the direction of the river again, where the touristy sights are. On the way we visited a park with a giant Bismarck statue. I was amazed at how huge it was. I guess it's one of the rare statues of its kind in Germany, considering Germans find it somewhat taboo to feel pride in their nation and their heroes; the last guy the nation rallied behind was quite a nutjob. This statue was built between 1903 and 1906, where it was still possible.

Yvonne and I walked up to the top of a hill, where I had to take a break because my feet were yet again killing me. I wondered if I would have to get better fitting shoes, considering it was my second day on the trip and I had 2 more months in the schedule.

But I decided to wait it and see if it would get better. Continuing our sightseeing tour, we walked to St. Michaelis, a church. Loads of tourist buses there... But it was a forgettable place.

After this we were joined by Juan, Yvonne's friend. It wasn't easy getting him, one time he said on the phone "It looks cloudy over here", so he was reluctant to join us if it was going to rain that day. But after a while we finally managed to get together. We had another look of Speicherstadt and HafenCity, and as they asked me what else I wanted to see, I mentioned the Russian submarine which is parked in a corner of Hamburg, which I read about, somewhere.

"So, do we want to go there?"

"Do we know where it is?"

"We'll find it."

"But it's so far away."

"Come on, if you want to do it, just do it."

So we started walking through the great construction yard known as HafenCity. It turned out to be a hot sunny day. Did I mention my feet hurt? My own fault for wanting to see the sub...

After a few kilometers (well, one), we got there. It was what it was, a rusty, beat-up-looking submarine parked next to the quay, with a little kiosk that sold food, drinks and tickets. It looked a bit bland, like a toy sitting in a bathtub (though the water was black), and a ticket to see the sub costs 10 Euro per person, which we all felt was too much.

So we bought some cold drinks and sat outside the kiosk to cool off. We were dreading the way back. A double-decker tour bus that goes around the city does stop here, we noticed, as if making a gesture of giving this "tourist attraction" a recognition of its existence.

So we took the bus back into town and walked around some more. Juan is also a hobby photographer, and he brought his heavy gear (a Canon DSLR) with him. We walked around the Alster lake looking for objects to photograph. By this stage my feet were again killing me, so unfortunately I wasn't really enjoying the tour anymore.

We met up with Adis who got off work in the early evening, and the three of us (Yvonne, Adis and me) went home for dinner. But we planned to meet up with Juan later that night, because Yvonne had appointed him as my guide through Hamburg's red light district.

We went back out at 9 PM, to watch a free water display: it was an art performance consisting of jets of water being streamed out of a lake, with beams of lights giving them color, while they "perform" in sync to classical music.

Some 800 km north from Karlsruhe, the additional daylight hours was already quite noticeable, I wondered how it would be like further up north.

After that, we took the subway to St. Pauli, and Juan and Adis had a dinner at, you guessed it, KFC. Hahaha. We sat outside at the balcony (ah the joys of warm weather!) and I watched as all manners of strangely clothed people walked down the sidewalk.

Later on Juan took me on a trip around Hamburg's infamous Reeperbahn - the red light district. Well, it was nothing too weird. The area also had a lot of discos, with their respective bouncers and weird youth visitors. I feel old :) . There is one street in the area where women are not allowed - traditionally the, uhm, workers of that street would douse any women they find there with water. So Yvonne and Adis waited just outside this street, until they said they got creeped out by the men looking at them, and they went to a nearby fast food restaurant (no, it wasn't the KFC).

We went home taking a bus (it was about 1 AM now, but the trains weren't running anymore), and I went to bed thinking of my next leg of the trip: out of Germany, and into Copenhagen.

Goin' to Copenhagen

The next morning I got up at 9:00 AM, packed my bags, and wondered what my day was going to be like. Will I end up back at Yvonne's place at night? It's always a possibility, if no one offers to give me a lift.

Yvonne lived near a big roundabout, one exit of which is the entrance to the Autobahn, going to Berlin as well as north, where the road ends in a ferry terminal. So she walked me to this roundabout, where I then proceeded to wait, my sign "København" in hand.

I guess a hitch-hiker must stay optimistic, but I also remember this time wondering "Is anybody going to stop?!?". The roundabout was not that optimal because there was really nowhere for a car to stop without causing at least a bit of annoyance, if there was somebody behind him.

But after an hour somebody did stop. Wilhelm was going to Lübeck with his son and his son's friend, in a station wagon full of luggage. I was amazed that he stopped at all, lucky for me he was a very nice guy, although the kids would've probably preferred not having to sit under my backpack for the next hour or so.

At this point I've already disproved 2 common hitchhiker assumptions: somebody driving a luxury car will never give you a lift, and neither will a car full of family.

Wilhelm works in Lübeck but his wife and son still live in Frankfurt. So he commutes 500km (one way) every once in a while. I found it amazing how one can spend half his day on the road, driving, probably being bored out of one's mind and thinking of what else one could be doing then...

He was also driving to work (on a sunny Friday afternoon, poor man), so first he dropped off the kids in Lübeck (so I've been to Lübeck too, ha ha), and he drove me to a gas station quite some distance away north of the town, further than his exit actually, but what a nice man he was, going out of his way.

"Damn, only 2 cars here." was my first thought. But hey, the day was young, anybody going up this road must be going to take the ferry and to Denmark, so I was still optimistic. 20 minutes later I already got a ride to Copenhagen.

Again it was with a family, who were going to go to Sweden for their vacation: Ulrich, his wife Heidi, and their daughter whose name I unfortunately didn't write down. They were having lunch at the gas station, and as I approached them I was expecting a no. But they generously said yes as well. It turns out they also used to hitchhike to get to places as they were young, and that's probably a big advantage for me.

We drove north to the island Fehmarn (looking in Google Maps at the nice beaches, it looks like this region is worth a visit too), to the ferry station at the end of Germany - actually it was fascinating to see how the Autobahn ended: it ended at a ferry station (To be correct, it wasn't an Autobahn anymore at that point, having turned to a regional highway long before that). My ride said that they always have good luck at this point: the gate to the ferry usually closes just in front of them, and the ferry sails away. But today we didn't have to wait long and got on the first boat we saw.

It was a sunny and warm day, and it was beginning to look Danish: waiting at the terminal were many Danish cars.

It was my first time on a ferry like this, and it seemed everybody else knew where they wanted to go; there was a restaurant, a duty-free store - where a lot of people were buying tax-free booze, a money exchanger and one thing which doesn't involve money: the outdoor viewing decks.

It was a short ride across the Baltic sea (GMaps says it's only 18.5 km), but there were giant ships there, presumably because it's a shipping lane. Did I mention it was a blue skies warm sun kind of day?

Now I mentioned before about the tragic ending to the KFC saga. Apparently it makes my stomach a bit... well let's just say the trip to the bathroom was necessary, and I had to clench for the rest of the way...

The rest of the way, I napped. When we finally made it to near Copenhagen, I wondered where to get off. The family I was with were travelling further to a lake in Sweden, so they were just going to pass the outskirts of Copenhagen on the highway.

Now as I mentioned I've been to Copenhagen before, as an excursion with a car full of students on exchange. We needed to get to the Technical University at one o'clock at night, and after making a wrong turn we got utterly lost. Somewhere we took an exit off the highway, so that we could retrace our steps and take the right turn, although through the inability to coordinate, everybody wanted to be the navigator, and we got even more lost.

On this day, we decided to just take an exit on the highway, drop me off, and they could get back on said highway. So we did just that, and it was surprising to me how the exit looked like the exit we took that night. Wow, was I retracing my steps? But I wasn't a hundred percent sure either.

There was a bus stop on that road, that leads to Copenhagen, so I got off there and we bid our goodbye's.

Since I hadn't thought it through, there I was, some 8 KM's away from Copenhagen (says a road sign), with no Danish Kroners. Actually I had 17 DKK. A bus ride costs 19 DKK. So I pulled out my sign again and stood beside the road a few meters before the bus stop.

A lady which looked Indian looked at my sign and looked perplexed. Then a man said "Well, it's that way, but it's so close that no one will stop for you. You can take a bus from here and it will get you there.". After realizing I had no Kroners, he offered to buy me a ticket. Phew, I was relieved I didn't have to walk to the next money-changer.

The bus was quite full, and we rode across the busy suburbs of Copenhagen. I was amazed at how built up and busy the place looked, and at most, at how... eastern it looked. There were a lot of ethnic shops and people you wouldn't classify as "Danish", because a "Danish" in our minds (well my mind anyway) is white-skinned and blonde. The ethnic shops were also typical, with clutter decorating their entrances. I found it awesome, "Wow, a real life multi-cultural metropole."

I forgot to mention in the introduction that on this trip I was planning to mostly couch-surf, but yes I that's what I was doing. CouchSurfing is a website where you can offer people a place to sleep (for example a couch in your apartement), or just some company who'll can show them around your town, and in reverse you can ask people all over the world if you can sleep at their place.

So Inge in Copenhagen was about to be my first couch-surfing host. First I needed to reach her, so I needed to make a phone call. For that I needed money. I got off the bus at its final stop, Nørreport station, and luckily that area had a couple of money exchangers. I went into one, and was greeted by the hottest, friendliest Danish blonde ever. I asked her how much it would cost to stay in the city for 2 days and she was very helpful and friendly. Maybe it was standard procedure, but boy did I feel welcomed.

After exchanging the EUR 40 I had in my wallet, I made the phone call, which apparently woke Inge up. She had been partying the day before and was a little out of it. She asked if we could meet at 6 PM, which meant I had 1 - 2 hours to kill. After standing around the outside of the station people-watching (and seeing a few more hot Danish blondes), I decided to walk around the area. Only then did I realize, I was pretty close to the old city centre, with its pedestrian zone. I didn't walk far, because I had my huge backpack on my back, so I found a public square and just took a seat on one of the benches, trying to let the truth sink in that I was in Copenhagen.

At 6 PM I was back at the station, and met Inge, and we walked to her place to drop off my bags. Inge lives in Nørrebro, an area with a high percentage of immigrants (50% according to Wikipedia) and "counter-culture" supporters. She likes it because she feels it's more vibrant and colorful. The funny thing about the counter-culturalists, she says, is, they rebel and live differently because they want people to pay attention to them, but because Denmark is so tolerant, they are accepted too, making their rebellion mute. "It's hard to rebel when your mother always says 'I support you!'.", Inge said.

I felt the area was also a bit run-down, with bikes and bike carcasses all over the sidewalk and grafitti filled walls. Most of the grafitti was of the number "69", and behind it lies a fascinating story of a youth center that was torn down after it was bought by a crazy Christian sect. The story of the big March 2007 riots in Copenhagen made the news, but I paid little attention to it, so it was surprising to realize that an empty rubble-filled lot we walked past was the same building that had started it all.

It turned out part of the reason to the run-down look of the area is the destruction the rioters did, so perhaps the area isn't actually that bad.

Inge lived in a small one-room apartment, typical for Copenhagen which is running out of island-space. What I found amazing was her bathroom, which was a closet they modified so there's a toilet, a small sink, and connected to the same water-tap was a hose you can shower with. Where does one stand while showering? Inside the closet, covering the walls and doors with a shower curtain...

She also had big bookshelves and a lot of books, in particular in Russian, which I could not read at all. One amusing one was travel guide to the USSR, which she said she got because she wanted to collect books about countries that no longer exist. The book was cool too; with the dangers, tips and tricks for travelling to behind the Iron Curtain.

After a short break at her place, we went out to grab some dinner, grabbing some burgers at a hip little restaurant. It was a bit pricey, but damn, its size and taste justified the price, a whole plate full of burger and salad, which I sadly didn't manage to finish (that's how big it was). We went out in t-shirts, but because of the chill and darkness (the sun still sets in Copenhagen, but the twilight gave out really cool colors), we went back to her place to sleep.

Copenhagen

The next 2 days, I explored Copenhagen armed with a guide book from Inge - which was in German, coolly enough. I walked to places, first to the Søndermarken (featured in the film I Kina spiser de hunde (In China They Eat Dogs) as the best place to bury somebody if you kill them accidentally), and from there on east towards the city center. I visited the Tyco Brahe Planetarium because the guide book said it was really good, but what a waste that was! They did have an IMAX theatre, which showed the vistas of the Swiss Alps and made me thought "Hey, maybe that's a cool place to go on vacation!"...

Next I walked to probably the real center of the city: the big square outside the City Hall, which was also close to the main train station, and Tivoli, a big amusement park (this was conveniently across the street from the train station, making it a great destination for tourists). There were Hare Krishnas there, making a recruiting effort. The guy on the stage claimed because he's a Krishna, he can read your mind.

I walked further to where the most tourists go, the old city center. It felt more chaotic there, probably because of the density, architecturally old buildings and twisty roads. And the hordes of people there!

After this I saw to the popular harbour of Nyhavn, an area (to quote Wikipedia) popular with tourists and locals. Wikipedia was correct; there was a lot of people there. I didn't stay there long though; trying the local food wasn't high in my list. I walked further to the nice, modern harbour area, the Indnerhavnen (i.e. Inner Haven, Inner Harbour), went through the park at Amaliehaven (which, Inge later tells me, she didn't get; it looked weird to her. It didn't feel like a park to me, more like a green area you had to put to pretty up an urban city), and saw the yacht "Double Haven".

The yacht was a cool one. It was long, colored clean white and just slick looking. Next to it I saw a man in blue overalls smoking, looking like a machinist, so I approached him and asked "So, is this your boat?".

Of course not, but he works on it as the second engineer. Unfortunately I didn't write his name, he had the look and manners of an Englishman, but he said, to my bewilderment, he's from Hong Kong. (The fact that I can't believe this, surprises me.), and so is the boat, and her (the yacht's) owner. I thought of asking who the owner is, but I thought I would've forgotten it, and I can just google it instead. Apparently it's a mystery, but I'm pretty sure it's not Jean Claude Van-Damme as some people in the internet guess). But the man told me the owner's very rich (well, duh, obviously), he and his wife have at that time (Summer 2007) been travelling on the ship for two years, and he manages his business from the ship. Damn, two years! They came from Hong Kong to the U.S., then South America, and its previous port was Oslo (the internet provides so many things, including its itenary).

The yacht was docked in front of a 5-star hotel, so I asked the man, "So do they sleep in the hotel or on-board the yacht?". His answer: "Oh they're in Berlin at the moment. Flew there with a private jet.". Flabbergasting!

After talking to him, I wondered what else I could see. To the north is the statue of the Little Mermaid, but I've seen it before, when I went with IAESTE in 2004. Besides, by this point my legs were hurting, and I realized Copenhagen was bigger than the impression I got from the map. Adding to the problem was the fact that Inge was going to be out to have dinner at her friend's until about midnight, and it was only 9:30 PM at this point.

So I walked around a bit more, and took some pictures. With my tired legs I just ended up sitting on a bench at the square outside the City Hall (where the Hare Khrisnas were). It was a warm night, despite how north we were. Sitting there I saw something astounding: every few minutes, a person would show up, each time a different one. He or she always looks Chinese, carries a shopping bag, and a battery-powered bicycle lamp. Then this person walks to each garbage bin, turns on the lamp, and looks inside. They were collecting cans and bottles for the refund. Damn, I wonder(ed) who these people are, homeless people, illegal immigrants, legal ones? People collecting bottles also exist in Germany, but I've never seen them with bike lamps before!

Finally it was time to go home (luckily earlier than I thought). After chatting with Inge for a while, we slept.

The next day I set out to walk to Christiania. The weather was changing all morning, so when it looked like it stopped raining, I finally went out.

The first stop was to a cemetary near where Inge lives. Yes, a cemetary. It's a nice one, with some famous people buried in there. Gee, I wonder why that would be interesting at all, actually. Interestingly, it's called Assistants Cemetary (Assistens Kirkegård in Danish), because it assists the (probably full) main cemetary. Most famously, Hans Christian Andersen, the famous author of children's books. There's also Niels Bohr, the famous physicist.

After the cemetary I walked (my legs feeling the ache, having had not enough rest) to the direction of Christiania, which is on the other side of the city centre (east). (Copenhagen's really big!) But on the way there, it started raining. Badly. Really badly. After waiting and taking cover, I ended up going the Round Tower. It's a unique tower, in that it doesn't have steps going to the top, but it's all a smooth incline. Legend has it it's so people can ride up the tower on a horse and carriage. On top of the tower there is an observatorium, an old one where most of it was made out of wood! I tried to step out to the platform to take pictures, but it was so wet that it just annoyed me. The scenery was cool though, with the city spread out, every once in a while church towers would stick out of the landscape of roofs.

After spending a few hours there waiting for the rain to stop (it didn't), I braved it and went out again. Walking across the abandoned city centre, it started raining again, so I got fed up and went back to Inge's place.

We spent the evening cooking (or Inge cooked, a cool, I think Bulgarian it was, recipe for soup) and eating. The next day I was to embark on the next leg of my journey, to Oslo! After managing 628 km between Karlsruhe and Hamburg in a day, I was optimistic that I would be able to do Copenhagen to Oslo, 608 km, in the same time. How wrong I was...

Going to Oslo

The Monday was another slightly wet, slightly rainy day. I got my laundry done at Inge's (losing one sock in the process, oh no!), and started walking to the train station. Online, some recommended waiting at a road going north from Copenhagen, but that day I was thinking to just take the train to Helsingor, where people going to Sweden would take the 30 minute ferry across the small watery gap, to Helsingborg.

Before making the same mistake in Oslo like in Copenhagen, arriving with no local currency (damn Scandinavians and their 3 different Kroners!), I changed what money I had left for some Norwegian Kroner. It was interesting at the money changer's because I only had very little money. I really hadn't thought about getting cash from ATMs - how much my bank or my credit card company would charge me and which one's a better deal, and I didn't want to think about it, so at that time I ended up with 100 Norwegian Kroner from 10 Euro and 21.75 Danish Kroner.

The train ride was quite good, with interesting villages left and right of the tracks. At one point everybody had to get off and the train left without us! A new train then came, I wonder if that's a common thing in Denmark.

At Helsingor, the train station is directly connected to the ferry station, which reminded me of the computer game Transport Tycoon, but I wanted to get a ride before getting on to the ferry, for one thing that would spare me the ferry fee (which is only about 3 euros, but hey..). So I walked to the car's entrance to the ferry port (with my heavy backpack, it felt like a long walk) and started waiting...

And waited, and waited...

Hitchhiking is always an exercise in waiting and hoping, with your thumb out. Will this one stop? Smile! Oh nope, he drove straight past me. Oh another car, smile! Nope. Maybe this one... nope. I'm sure my ride will be one of the next 5 cars... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... nope, argh!

After 3 hours, I gave up, and walked back to the ferry terminal for pedestrians, and paid 21 Danish Kroner. This other passengers were also fascinating. Once again the beer-runners were to be seen; carrying cartons of beers in shopping carts. I guess beer's cheaper in Denmark than in Sweden...

After the short ferry ride, with me holding my sign saying "OSLO" on it and getting weird looks from the people, we were in Helsingborg, Sweden. Wow, Sweden, first time here, I thought.

Because I only had Norwegian Kroner, I decided to use my bank card and get some Swedish ones from the ATM. while doing this inside the terminal, I heard a lady scream, and I looked at her way. She was running down the escalators, being chased by cans of beer! The cans were in a carton, and the carton was sitting on top of a shopping cart, but while going down the escalator the carton fell down, and broke apart, leaving cans flying all over the place, mostly down, with the poor lady on the way. It was quite funny watching the owner of the cans collecting them from the floor, in my mind he was probably thinking "oh no, my precious booze!".

After having a short look of the city centre (its city hall is a majestic ancient building), I got a tourist map and started looking for the best place to wait for a ride. Walking to the entrance of the highway was be impossible, so I decided to wait at the exit of the ferry terminal.

Some people online write that hitch-hiking in Sweden is very uncommon, and people look at you with a huge lot of skepticism. I can verify this, with a lot of people giving me weird looks as I stood there. But maybe it's because my sign said Oslo, a destination about 500 km away.

The cars came in intervals, after a lull of a few minutes there would be about 20 or 30, all getting off the 2 ferries that travel between Helsingor and Helsingborg. All of them with people looking skeptically at me. After about 2 hours, one car finally stopped. But the driver and his wife weren't going to Oslo, which is north, but in the direction of Stockholm, which is to the north east. They took me anyway, to a gas stop near the highway, which is about 8km away, and then the pointless waiting continued.

While waiting, I wondered why the Swedes all look so grumpy and old, do they get their driving licence at 40 or something? I even got harassed by a fat girl in an A-class Mercedes Benz. For some reason they found it amusing to go round and around the roundabout next to which I was standing and taunt me. Heh, useless idiots. Too bad I didn't take a picture of them to put here.

But then, the sky was blue, the trees were green, and I thought, if I were back home in Karlsruhe right now, I'd be sitting in front of the computer at work, being bored. "I'd much rather be here!"

After a while I gave up on Oslo and decided I should get back to the city centre and find a couch to sleep on. This was a problem because I wasn't really sure where the city centre was. All I knew was it's about 8km away. I started walking...

Past a cute suburbia/housing project where kids playing probably wondered why there's an Asian with a huge backpack walking through their neighborhood, next to roads, under roads, and finally to a train station which is one stop away from the centre. The walk took me about an hour, and it wasn't easy with the heavy backpack and sore-from-too-much-standing feet.

After taking the 5 minute train-ride, I was back where I was 3 or 4 hours before; the Helsingborg ferry terminal. I started looking for couches online from an internet café. Some of the couch-surfers even left their email addresses and telephone numbers on the site, which I found great. So I called one of them, Christian, and asked him if he'd be willing to host me.

Such is my luck, he has 4 French guys staying with him that night. But he suggested we meet up and talk about finding a solution to my problem. They were drinking wine at the bay area just to the north of the ferry station, which was luckily not that far away. Walking there I got to see a bit more of the city, other than the hordes of grumpy drivers that pass it...

Christian told me what choices I had; either find a youth hostel, or take a bus to Oslo. "There's a bus?". Yes, apparently there was, leaving at half past midnight. Hah. Either one would cost about 30 Euros, so I decided to take the bus, because otherwise who knows how long I'll be waiting there the next day.

So all six of us (Christian, 4 Frenchmen, and I) walked to the bus terminal, which is actually just underneath the train/ferry (and bus!) terminal, and then I waited for the bus...

The bus finally arrived about 20 minutes late, enough for me to wonder if it was going to show up at all. Actually it came from Copenhagen over the Oresund Bridge, so in retrospect I could have boarded it there and saved myself one day of waiting, but well, hindsight huh?

The bus was not that full, so I could get some sleep. But the problem with travelling while you're sleeping is, you miss all the scenery. But considering it was dark outside, I wasn't missing much!

Sleep I did, although not so well. I woke up as we turned off the highway and stopped at Göteborg train station. For some reason this city fell off my list of destinations, although in my mind I would visit it on the way back. "So this is Göteborg", was what my half-sleeping brain thought when we stopped there.

The next time I woke up, we were already in Norway, sadly I wasn't awake for the border crossing. It was 5:45 in the morning, but there was already some sunlight, though covered by thick clouds, so I decided to stay awake and enjoy the scenery, because, hey, you can only have one first visit to Norway!

After a long windy drive, sometimes along tiny 2 lane roads, we finally hit a big city, with about 3 skyscrapers. "I wonder what big city this is. It can't be Oslo, it only has 3 skyscrapers.". The bus drove into the city, and I assumed it was going to drop off some passengers there. But it wasn't going anywhere else, we were in Oslo!

Oslo

It was a chilly, overcast morning. Having forced myself to stay awake and not being able to sleep comfortably on the bus anyway, I felt quite bleary and tired. I was planning to stay in Oslo with another couchsurfer, Charlotte. I had contacted her a few days earlier, but I couldn't give her the exact time I would be arriving (because as you can see, I didn't even know it myself). Because it was a Tuesday, I assumed she'd be at work. Worse was the fact that it was 7:30 in the morning, and she was probably still asleep at the time, and I didn't want to wake her up by calling. So I decided to wait, and explore Oslo for the day before meeting her.

But the first thing I did after getting off the bus was grab something to eat. I went to a newsagent and, surprised at the high prices, went for a 3-for-1 offer of bollers. Apparently a boller is a traditional Norwegian food, sweet bread you can have for breakfast or snack, so unknowingly I had tasted the national delicacy. They were very nice too!

The second thing I did in Oslo was be amazed that I was in Oslo. Damn, I had made it. I guess it felt unbelievable because it had taken me a whole day and night to get here. I remember thinking, every step of the way will be the furthest north I've ever been...

I wandered around the Oslo main train station for a while, looking for the lockers where I can store my bags. I liked the train station, which felt more like an airport, and one from the 1980's, or maybe 70's, modern, but retro-modern! It probably felt more like an airport, because other train stations (well, ones that I know) look like they were built in the late 1800's, with big exposed metal beams and curved roofs, this one looked like I was built in the golden age of aviation, i.e. the 70's.

In there I also saw an example of alcoholism. I wonder why this one stuck to my head, I mean it's not as if they have plenty of those in Germany. It was quite a young guy in the train station, at 8 in the morning, walking around quite unsteadily. Damn, that must have been a party!

After this tour of the station, I started walking around Oslo. I can't believe how deserted the city was on a Tuesday at 8:30 in the morning, do Norwegians/Osloians live in luxury so that they leave the house to work at 9 AM or something?

From the train station I walked south towards the harbour, to see the ocean, or better said, fjord. Despite the fact that it is "by the sea", Oslo is about 100 km away from "open waters", with the narrow fjord covering most of this distance. After walking to the water, my feet were already killing me that I had a sit down on a pier. On this pier there were several people fishing, what a relaxing way to spend a cloudy morning, I wondered if they didn't have jobs to go to. There were about 6 or 7 of the fishers, all about 3 meters away from each other. A strange social event, I thought, I guess they didn't feel comfortable sitting closer to each other. So I also sat about 3 meters away from the last person on the "row", and enjoyed the scenery.

The fjord looked more like a lake, because on the horizon it was surrounded by mountains. Across where we were sitting was another part of Oslo, under construction. On the water there were big ships and ferries, from far away distances I'm sure, ferries that I would be on if I took a more conventional way of travelling - I wondered how it would feel to travel 24 hours or more on them (actually from Copenhagen it would take 16 hours 30 mins - a bit faster than the time I needed).

Next to me a father and his son had set up their "base" and were setting up their fishing lines to also fish. The man threw his line in, and as soon as it hit the water, it was wrigling. "As!" he said, which I guess means "Ace!", i.e. "Hole in one!". That was pretty cool. He got the fish out of the water and in the air, it was a big one too, but it wriggled its way out of the hook and into the safe water. Damn, I guess that was disappointing after all.

After a few more minutes of staying there, wondering how fishes would perceive a dangling worm in the water, I continued my exploration of Oslo. Close by was the Akershus Festning, i.e. Askershus Fortress, a cool big green area surrounded by steep cliffs, with a few buildings inside.

By this time there were more people around, in the form of tourists, who came in buses. But the fortress was so large that it didn't feel full. A lot of times I would hear German conversations, I guess the place is quite popular for them. I wandered around the area, again and again feeling tired. There was an interesting museum with the history of Oslo, and at another place, there was a video presentation of the Kingdom of Norway. 2 versions of the video, in English and Norwegian, were played in alteration, with the change being done by a girl who had to do it every time the video ended. Being tired as hell, I decided to sit down and watch the video, and managed to fall asleep during the middle. I hope they didn't take my gesture as finding Norway's history boring.

After feeling that I've seen enough, I left the fortress and started to walk to the city centre. Turning a corner after the fortress, I encountered the giant hand. A wave of amazement hit me, because I recognize this sculpture from Top Gear, a British TV show about cars that I am a big fan of. In one episode, the 3 hosts had a race; go from London to Oslo using 2 different methods - by plane (to Newcastle), ferry and powerboat; and by car, but not just an ordinary car, but a McLaren Mercedes SLR. And not just an ordinary route, but through land, i.e. from England across the channel to France, through Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Sweden. Their finishing point was the sculpture of the hand in Oslo, and the episode had a great montage of the silver SLR being driven by Jeremy Clarkson (one of the hosts), going around the streets of Oslo as he was looking for it.

So, laughing like a dumb fanboy, I was amazed that I was at a place where one of my heroes had been, or maybe more amazed that I am at a place that I know from TV-land.

I took a few pictures, and I continued walking the rectangular streets of Oslo, enjoying the cool buildings. Eventually I made it to the main pedestrian area, Karl Johans Gate. At that time there were more people. I walked back to the train station (it being straight down the street) to try to contact Charlotte again. Trying the phone

any more to do what, to be honest. Retracing my emails I know I sent an email to Charlotte, I tried to call her before that, but the phone said something in Norwegian which I failed to understand. I also got lunch in the form of a kebab, paying 49 NOK for it, which is about 6.20 EUR. That's twice the price of kebab in Karlsruhe, so I remember thinking "this better be really good!".

After this, being really tired, I decided to try to nap on one of the waiting areas of the station. I looked for a place which was reasonably quiet, without a lot of people traffic. This seemed to be the case near the terminal for the train that goes to the airport. So I sat down on one of the not really for sleeping seats, closed my eyes, and tried to nod off. The few times I woke up I think old ladies were looking at me strangely.

After this half sleep, I decided to continue exploring. I walked back up Karl Johans Gate, where there's a lot of tourists and tourist attractions, up to the castle which is at the end of the road. Around this castle was a park, which I used happily as a place to sleep!

Some time after 4 PM, I got an SMS from Charlotte, who just saw my email. She had been out of the city on a driving test where she had to go on mountain roads, and didn't hear her phone ring. We arranged to meet by the tiger at the front of the central station, and so we did. We walked to her place, in the hip area of Grünerløkka.

Charlotte's apartement was nice and big, she had just moved in, and was going to be living with her sister, who was going to join her in August.

After having a refreshing shower (keep in mind I had been on the road since yesterday morning), we went out to go to a meet organized by the Oslo CouchSurfing group. It was a cool party, with a lot of Osloans (I'm sure that's not the term for people living in Oslo!) and their CouchSurfing guests. It was great fun meeting the people who had come to Oslo, to visit and to live there. One thing that I found cool was how international it was, with people from a lot of different places. Here I also had a glass of the infamous Norwegian beer, infamous because of how expensive it is - 60 NOK in this case.

Feeling a bit hungry, Charlotte and I left to find something to eat. We went to Aker Brygge, another district in Oslo, this time a great harbourside modern development with shops and café. We enjoyed a meal at a shop (I had calzone, Charlotte had sushi) and a nice walk home. I was always paying attention to the sky to see if I had reached the region of 24-hour sun, so darkness always felt like a strange weird occurence, and somewhat surprising. "I can't believe it's getting dark!" I would always think.

But the darkness had its advantages, we got to see some sights of the city bathed with lights. We also ran into "Spirit of the Wild", an outdoor photo exhibition of nature by Steve Bloom, and enjoyed his really cool photos.

I went to sleep on Charlotte's comfortable IKEA sofa looking forward to exploring Oslo the next day.

I slept quite well in the couch, she had to wake me because she was a morning person and she probably wondered when I was going to get up. After a nice breakfast, we went to the local library so that I could check if anyone's responded to my couch request in Trondheim (yes I had somewhere to sleep), and after this we went on a tour of the city.

The first stop on this tour was Vigelandsparken, a nice park with strange sculptures. It was a great warm day, and the sun was shining for a change. As to the park itself, Charlotte told me a lot of people found it weird, I'm glad not just me.

We stayed there only for a short while, and we were hungry so we went for lunch in a nice little café. After this we walked to the city centre. Having seen a lot of things the day before, we were wondering what else I could/should see today, so we took the day quite easily. We went past the busy main street again, and having noticed the red Viking cap/hat the day before at a souvenir shop, I decided to buy it. "My one souvenir for this trip", I thought.

Before the trip, I was wondering if I should email the company that makes the best web browser in the world, Opera, to ask them if I could have a tour of their headquarters in Oslo. Unfortunately I never got around to do it. I wonder if they'd find the story of a man on his trip to Nordkapp that interesting anyway. I mentioned this fact to Charlotte, and she responded that she might be able to arrange something, because his former roommate, and the boyfriend of his sister, works there!

So after a few SMSes and calls, we walked to Opera, and met with Thomas, a sys-admin there. He gave us an informal tour of the - surprisingly large - complex. I found it surprising that he could give tours, we were going to the server room as well, too bad it was locked...

After this we spent the evening inside, having a nice meal and watching The Big Lebowski . The first week had taken its toll in the form of tired legs, so it was good to relax.

Going to Trondheim

This day can be summarized as a lot of waiting, and not making it to my destination. It would be the first time I hitch-hiked in Norway (recall that I got here by bus), and with Trondheim 500 km away, I expected to arrive not on the same day, but needing 2 days to get there.

Charlotte and I left her apartement at 10 in the morning. We walked together to the train station as she was going to her parents' house at the north of Oslo. She wished me luck and we parted ways, her taking the train, and me taking the bus no. 31 to my hitchhiking spot, as described on a website on the internet, Aker Sykehus. Before this I took the bus to the end of its line, enjoying the view from the top of the hill and wondering if I could spot a better place to hitch-hike from. I didn't, and so the driver took me back to Aker Sykehus, which is a hospital (the word is quite similar to "sick house" in English, so I guess that's what it is). Why this place makes a spot worth mentioning I have no idea. The sykehus is a turn-off from a major artery road, but people on that road are too fast to be able to stop there, and people on the slow road are going to the hospital or are leaving it, and are pretty certain not going to Trondheim. There was also the Ring 3 road that crosses the Trondheimsveien, the road where the hospital is, but having not paid attention to the map, I wasn't really sure where I was and where I was supposed to go.

After waiting at a couple of different places (on the ring road before the roundabout, at the entrance of the highway from the hospital, I can't remember where else) while getting weird looks from people on the buses, I gave up and took the metro (there was a metro stop very close to the roundabout) back to the city. It's always hard to give up and say "This isn't working.", because there's always a chance the next car will be the one that stops. The hope dies last, as they say in German.

Back in the city, I hopped on the internet café and I looked at the map and figured out it wasn't such a bad place, but the road was basically a highway and I couldn't stand there. I looked at the alternative, a place further to the north-east called Grorud.

The spot didn't look any better, it was getting later in the afternoon, and it looked like I was going to have to spend another night in Oslo, with no couch yet. Not ready to call it a day, I took the metro to get there, feeling dumb for wasting the money on the tickets. Arriving there, I realized what a big journey I was undertaking. I was expecting to be able to see which direction I need to go to get to the highway, because the whole place would be "so small". But no, I wondered at first where the highway was (it was still the Trondheimsveien, but this spot is further from Oslo). I got out my snazzy compass, looked at it, and found the way.

To get to where I needed to stand, I had to cross the highway on an overpass bridge. I remember looking down at all the cars speeding on the highway, wondering why out of so many, none will get me there.

I got to the highway entrance, and waited. By this time it was raining lightly, and I was quite miserable. It was the entry to the highway from a small remote part of Oslo. Who would be going to Trondheim from here, I wondered. Only a few cars were entering the highway, and it was getting later.

I put on my Viking cap and hoped people would find it funny and they would stop (actually I was already wearing it even before, at the Sykehus). After about 45 minutes and 10 cars, a beat up white VW beetle (the old beetle) slowed down.

Yeah!!! Yeah!!! Yes yes yes!

The driver asked me something in Norwegian.

"Sorry, do you speak English?", I replied.

"Oh, you're not Norwegian?", he asks despite all evidence to the contrary (an Asian with a big rucksack screaming "Tourist!"). Maybe the hat confused him.

It turns out he wasn't Norwegian either, buat a Swede, and his name is Juan, funnily enough. He works in Oslo but lives across the border in his farm in Sweden, so he makes a lot of money in the city and lives quite cheaply in a village. Quite clever, I would say.

It was also my first ever ride in the iconic VW bettle, I realized. It was in a quite rough state, but Juan was fixing it, he said.

We drove for only a short while, across the cool green fields and gray drizzly skies of "outside Oslo", but he did take me to the E6, the highway that goes all the way to Nordkapp, and more importantly at the moment, to Trondheim. He was turning east to go to Sweden, and we parted ways on a gas station on the E6. Luckily it was a sheltered one, because by now it's quite wet out on the open.

The first person I asked at the gas station, an older gentleman in an SUV/pick up truck, said yes immediately (Woo hoo!). But he wasn't going to Trondheim, just to Elverum, about 140km from Oslo (and 360km to Trondheim). It was already 18:45, and not knowing how my luck was going to be, I decided to take his offer (I don't think I said no to a ride even once during the whole trip).

The man was very friendly. He even speaks German, and is married to one. He's been working in the forests in the south of the country, taking measurements, and the back of his truck was full of his gear. Like a lot of Norwegians, he's an outdoorsman at heart.

We drove - in the not-so-pleasant weather - next to Mjøsa, the largest lake in Norway, which goes all the way north to Lilllehammer. After a while, the road branched to highway no. 3. It is a branch of the E6 that later rejoins it before Trondheim, meaning both roads lead to Trondheim. Highway 3 is the shorter way to get there, while the E6 is the more scenic route.

The man was going to Elverum, which is on the highway 3. He asked if I wanted to be dropped off there, just before the turn-off. There was a small resting place, which looked really abandoned, and besides, it was still wet outside. I decided to continue with him to Elverum and try my luck there.

32km later, we were at Elverum, or to be exact, Grindalsmoen, about 1km away. The man dropped me off at a gas station, and went home to his wife. It was past 8 PM, but because it was summer, the sun wasn't setting until really late. The waiting game began again. For the next 3 hours, I switched from walking up to people and asking them if they were going to Trondheim to waiting with my thumb out at the gas station exit.

At 11 PM, I gave up, and wondered where I could sleep. It was my first night in the "wilderness", without the comforts of a couch. I had a tent, but have never had to pitch one up in all of my life. And I couldn't see where there's a big empty field (or forest) I could pitch it up on/in. (If only I had Google Maps :).)

Next to the road (as you can see in the picture above) there were wooden walls acting as sound barriers. I walked along it until I found a gap for a pedestrian footpath, that led to some houses. The houses were not directly beside the wall, but having a gap where trees were. I decided to sleep under one of those trees, quite close to the first house, actually, and violating the "you can camp anywhere, but at least 150m from any structure.".

Because I was being sneaky, I couldn't really pitch up my bright red tent. So I just unrolled my sleeping mat and sleeping bag, and tried to get some sleep. It wasn't a good sleep, with so much light outside, and mosquitos all over my face (I solved this problem by pulling my pullover up to cover it).

I did manage to sleep, and got up as it was getting light out, i.e. just before 5 in the morning. I packed up all my stuff and walked back to the gas station, to continue on with the hitch-hiking. Maybe I'd get a ride with people on business who have to go to Trondheim early in the morning, I thought.

A Little Detour

After only waiting for a short while at that gas station, the car that stopped for me (was it the first car that I saw that day?) was a dirty Toyota pick-up truck. The driver was going slowly after refuelling, and it looked like he was going to stop near me. I was getting ready to run away from trouble, because in my mind I was expecting the driver to be the sort of person you get when you see a dirty pick-up truck in small town in movies (all set in USA), a hick who doesn't appreciate foreigners and doesn't even a language other than his native tongue.

How different it turned out to be.

"You want to go to Trondheim?", he said in very good English.

He was only going for 30km on that road (well, not much, but it was actually close to 10% of the total distance I had to cover to get to Trondheim), but I decided to accept his offer anyway. The driver's name was Dan, and his passenger was his loyal dog, Yippee, so named because he looked sad when Dan found him.

Dan was a carpenter, building a summer cabin up in the mountains near there.

After the half an hour ride - the road having a speed limit of 60 - he was turning off. There was a small gas station, and I wondered if I should stand there, or on the road, because that gas station looked very abandoned. We drove to the gas station, and before letting me go, he told me what he was doing in the region, and said he could use a bit of help, "Would you like to help?"

I thought about it for a few seconds, and I said "Yeah, alright, why not.". Later on Dan would tell me he was very surprised when I said so. As for me, it was a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, and how much more adventure can you get if you don't accept strange detours?

So we drove a further few miles through the tiny road (with the woods to the left and right) through the damp morning. At 7 o'clock, I was inside a messy wooden trailer eating breakfast (an open-top-sandwich, proper Norwegian!), and half an hour later, I was standing on the roof-top of a half-finished cabin using a nail-gun to nail down a protective water-proofing layer.

Dan was making the cabin for his friend. It was on a great location too, on the hills with forest all around, and a view of a lake on a clear day.

At first it was difficult walking on the extremely slanted roof, but after awhile I got used to it - it reminded me of my childhood as I used to climb up to the roof of my home (we had a flat roof and a "pyramid" in the middle, so there were no dangers of falling).

After a good day's work, Dan asked me, "Hey, do you want to see a movie? Let's see what's on.". So we drove to Elverum to see the Transformers movie. It was a great afternoon, the rain had stopped and the sun had come out a bit. It was a Friday but strangely the city and cinema was quiet, there were only 6 of us in the cinema: a father and his boy, 2 teenage girls (who were bored of the film), and us. Maybe it wasn't late enough, or the city wasn't big enough. It did feel like a remote mountain town, something you'd get in the middle of the USA or something.

Transformers was quite lame, but we enjoyed it anyway, laughing about how dumb it was. There was one romance scene that felt so fake that we both had to laugh out loud, the 2 girls, who were sitting in front of us, turned around wondering we were laughing about.

After the movie, we went back to our trailer (ha!) and slept. I slept quite well after the manual labor.

The weather the next day was still cloudy, but a lot better. We finished the water-proof layer on the roof (Dan said later he'll put grass on it) and put walls on one side of the house. Other than that, I did not get a lot of travelling done ;) .

Dan decided to go out that night, because as he claims, he stays up for two days in a row and only then can he sleep. I met him after half of a two-day awake period and he slept the night before, so that day was another half of his stay-awake period, and he decided to spend it out on town with his friends from the region (he used to live in the area). But before that we took a drive to have a shower; it was a half-hour drive to a camping ground which had a real shower, with hot water. After that I managed to clean and organize the trailer a little bit.

The Sunday began as a very warm, sunny day, great for working, except for the fact that Dan wanted to sleep! He woke up later in the afternoon, but then it started to rain. We ended up just playing cards. I had a great weekend staying with Dan (and Yippee), wishing I had more time for my holiday so I can spend it building the cabin, but I decided I have to continue on to Trondheim the next day.

Later that evening Dan treated me to pizza at a restaurant, which for some reason to me also had a quiet American middle-of-nowhere mountain town flair to it.

The day began with another stop to have a shower (such luxury), and continued with quite a long drive. At first Dan took me to the place he originally was going to drop me off (Rena), and I hoped to be lucky. But he decided to drive further north to a gas station he knew about, which was a lot bigger. It turned out to be quite a long drive, but Dan said he was glad to take me. I was quite grateful for that, and I thought about the great weekend that I just had, making a new friend.

After that quite a long drive, looking for a gas station with a giant chicken as a symbol, we found it and Dan dropped me off. He went in to get a hotdog, and I started hitching again, asking a father-daughter couple who weren't friendly at all - well the daughter was friendly, then the dad showed up, shaking his head, pfft.

A few minutes later a pickup truck reacted to my thumb and slowed down. It was Dan again! I hadn't noticed from the shape of his car. He was just leaving after the hotdog. I had to laugh when I realized it was him.

"Hey, are you going to Trondheim?" I asked him jokingly. We wished each other luck and parted ways again.

Easy Ride to Trondheim

Soon after that, I met Hallstan, who promptly answered "Yes, yes, I am going to Trondheim" and agreed to take me with him. He was a pretty cool guy, a systems engineer, and quite geeky man I feel, but he has a boat and a Russian girlfriend. He's just returning from a holiday where he went boating with her. He was going home to a place north of Trondheim, so it was great for me, making it all the way there with one ride.

We did make a great backtrack because he was afraid he was going to run out of fuel. I went to the bathroom, and it was funny watching him jump around while filling his car with gas because he hadn't realized he too needed to go to the bathroom so badly.

While being fascinated by the steep cliffs on the side of the road, Hallstan told me how he was driving a car a long time ago when a big rock landed on it. It got him into a hospital. Freaky story!

Trondheim

After a 4 hour drive through the sunny day, we got to Trondheim, and hit a traffic jam as it was the city. I was excited to see another city, after a few days in the wilderness. We said our byes and Hallstan dropped me off at a corner, and I had to find my way to the train station to catch a bus, to go to my couchsurfing host Hanne, whom I previously told I was going to be 2 days late because I was going to stay with a house builder. Communicating via SMS, she said she was just chilling out with her friend drinking beer at her place, and that I was welcome to join them. Sounds like a good plan, so off I went to find the train station.

I didn't rush to get there, having a look of the city and its sights. Hallstan had dropped me off at the Nidaros Cathedral, so I was in the right spot as a tourist. But with my backpack I didn't feel like going inside, so I decided to do that the next day. The city itself was charming, I felt, with old wooden buildings that were built before everything had to be symmetrical; so there were unstraight lines and misaligned wooden planks, making the whole thing more natural and human.

Walking from the church towards the city center, I ended up wandering into a mall - or the only mall of the city, probably - looking for an ATM machine. It was amazing to see the hustle and bustle, maybe I had just been in the "wilderness" for too long.

I then walked to the train station - the most northerly stop of Norway's rail network NSB, although the Swedish rail company goes to Narvik which is much further north in Norway - trying to find out the schedule for the no. 52 bus that would take me to Hanne's place. It was going to be a wait, but the day was getting warmer and I was tired from carrying my backpack, so I didn't want to walk around the city anymore - so I decided to wait there. I got a sausage and a cold bottle of Coke and rested a bit.

For some reason I also needed to use the internet - actually it was to find out the directions to Hanne's place which she sent me per Email, which I cleverly enough did not write down before leaving Oslo. There were 3 kiosks inside the train station, two of them providing access to the internet for a lot of money per minute, and one of them providing access to tourist information, but without any way to enter your own URL, just clicking on links with www.trondheim.no as your starting point. But there were otherwise no restrictions, so I found my way to Google, and I could enter any URL I want in the Google search bar!

So I got a bit of net-surfing done, mainly checking CouchSurfing for hosts on my next stops of the journey, and getting the direction to Hanne's place. After this, I went back to waiting for the bus. I remember feeling dead tired at that time. Finally the bus came, I got in and wondered why it smelled like Durians in there!

After the bus ride (crossing a highway for some reason), and what for me seemed like a long walk (in the sun with my backpack), I arrived at Hanne's place. She's a student, but surprisingly she owns (if I recall correctly) the apartment, a nice place with 2 bedrooms and a large living room. One of the bedrooms is hers, and the other is for couch surfers. Wow, a guest bedroom, I was impressed!

Hanne was hanging out with her friend Anne-Marie, talking and drinking beer. They were friendly and very welcoming, and it was great chatting to them. Later that night another friend of theirs showed up and joined us. I told them about my plan of hitch-hiking to Nordkapp. They asked me if I was going to visit the Lofoten Islands. It wasn't in my original plan, so I said, "Probably not.". But they persuaded me to do so, because otherwise I would miss a great part of Norway.

We went to bed around midnight. Hanne mentioned that she was having another couch-surfer, arriving the next day, so I looked forward to that. But first, sleep.

Trondheim Sightseeing

The next day I woke up quite late. Hmm, I guess being on a holiday doesn't change the fact that I like to sleep-in. As I was sleeping another couch-surfer had arrived, Laura. She is a girl studying in Tromso (one of my later destinations), originally born in Germany with middle eastern roots (I think Lebanese) who grew up in Holland. She was going to fly back to Holland for vacation, and because she was changing flights in Trondheim she decided to visit the city for a few days.

After having some breakfast (from the fridge of artefacts left by other travellers), we started walking towards the city for some sightseeing.

We then decided to walk up the hill to see the city's fort. While walking there we encountered the famous Trondheim bike lift. I must admit, the hill was pretty steep, up and down. Cars going down the hill look really scary. Walking up the hill, we passed by an old man who was riding his bike, without the lift! It sure impressed us. And going the other way was a thrill-seeking kid who probably wanted to see how long and fast he could go without applying brakes.

Unfortunately my batteries ran out after that picture. Half an hour after that, it started raining, hard. So we took the bus and went back to Hanne's, to sit around, talk and watch TV. And eat dinner.

The next day we did a bit more sightseeing. Hanne joined us and took us to a nice little café in the old town area. I had a chocolate drink, and chocolate cake, which was too much chocolate goodness. The weather outside was cloudy and cold, so it was great sitting in that warm café and being full, I could've had a nap. Hanne had to go to work, but she sugested we walk a walking trail next to the fjord, so Laura and I did that. We took the bus that went a bit outside the city, and after following a path through a, well, garden, we were in, what I felt was wilderness, despite the fact it was so close to civilization.

We walked for a few km's, taking pictures along the way, I tasted the water (it was salty, yes it's really the sea although it was surrounded by mountains), but after a while we decided we should head back, to get some food at a supermarket so we can eat at home (i.e. Hanne's place), because we planned to go see The Simpsons Movie later that evening.

So we took a turn into a direction which looked like it was civilisation, and we walked into a nice area with a lot of office buildings, but with high fences around them... it turned out to be the psychiatry department of the local hospital, i.e. a mental hospital. I hoped nobody would mistake us as escapees.

We walked some more, and made it to sane (I presume) civilisation, went to a big supermarket, which somehow still felt remote - the place felt like a satellite city - found the bus stop, and made it back home.

After a short meal at "home", we went out again to the cinema, to see The Simpsons Movie! Hanne was meeting us at the movie theater, and she brought along 3 of her friends, Anne-Marie which I met 2 days ago, and two others which names I unfortunately can't recall anymore.

We went to the cinema with the biggest movie hall in... Norway? well it had bragging rights, and it was, well, pretty big. If I recall correctly it fit 350 plus people (or is that nothing to brag about?). It was quite fun watching a movie with so many people. The movie itself was in its original language of English, with Norwegian subtitles (not like in Germany, where the movies are dubbed and come out 1 or 2 months later than in the rest of the modern world), and it was interesting because sometimes there were delays in the laughter, maybe because the readers were still processing the subtitles wheres the listeners were already laughing.

For me, The Simpsons Movie itself was worth it, it had a rapid fire of cheap jokes, in my opinion they came so fast that you had to laugh before you could think about it, because if you do, you'll miss the next joke. The cleverest one was when Bart rummaged through a suitcase on the train, put a black bra on as a hat and said "Look at me, I'm a mascot of an evil corporation!"; he was mocking Mickey Mouse and Disney.

Afterwards we went for some drinks in a goth pub which was in a building basement, where I had a glass of the famously expensive Norwegian beer (39 NOK, 5 Euro). After that I walked home with Hanne, Laura having left earlier. When we went into the theater (and when we left) it was raining, luckily we walked home in dry conditions.

The Road to Bodø

Despite being on this adventure, I was still a lazy ass, and woke up quite late that day. As an excuse, I did have some alcohol and we did come home at 2:45 the night before! I think I got up at 11:00, much later than I wanted. I packed my things and said good-bye to Hanne and Laura. Laura's flight to the Netherlands was leaving from the nearby airport later that day, so she was in no hurry. I started walking to the bus stop planning to go to the north-east side of the city. The day before I had already been looking for good places to stand, because the actual E6-"highway" passes through the city center and returns to a highway (if you can call it that) in that area. But near the bus stop near Hanne's place there was also the entry/exit of the highway. Deciding to save time and the bus-fare, I decided to wait there. In hindsight, I wonder if it was such a good place to wait. At least there was a tree I could stand under, since it was such a hot day that day (compared to the weather of the previous days). So I stood there and stuck my thumb (and Bodø sign) out.

For some perspective, Trondheim to Bodø is 713 km. So it was quite an optimistic goal. I guess after managing Karlsruhe to Hamburg (625 km) in one day I felt it was do-able.

After waiting for an hour and 15 minutes, a car finally stopped for me. It was a family of three, (a couple and their little baby), who unfortunately wasn't going far, because they live in Trondheim. They had just returned from holidays, and was just a few miles away from home. The husband said the palce I stood wasn't a strategic place to stand (I knew that much), but unfortunately he wanted to let me off at the side of the busy highway. I didn't like that idea that much, so he got off the highway and let me off at the entry road, which was not a bad place. Looking at the map now, it was plain to see that most cars leaving Trondheim going north would take this entrance to the highway, if they haven't entered the highway before...

Nevertheless, it was another one and a half hours of waiting before I got a lift, no one probably was going 700-plus kilometers so late in the afternoon. Funny thoughts start occuring to you when car after car passes you. I tried changing the world through will-power: "Come on, one of the next 5 cars will stop!"

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, nope.

"Next 5 cars!"

Same thing.

I also started to wonder if I should move to a different place, maybe it will be easier to get a ride there. "But no, keep waiting here, a few more cars, a few more minutes, then we'll move."

After almost 2 hours of waiting, a car stopped. YEAH!!! It's always an exhilirating feeling, maybe like winning the lottery after playing for many years. The driver was a lady named Somie, a girl from - some country which I unfortunately have forgotten - who's moved to Norway. She's was very nice, she wasn't actually going far, but she drove out of the way until we found the next gas station. Before that we made a stop at a house she and her husband was renovating, for a refugee family who was coming to Norway. What kind people! The village - if you can call it that - was idyllic, houses next to the water, warm day, blue skies.. hah!

We also drove past Hell! Yeah! Too bad I didn't get any pictures! Had I known it wasn't that far I would've taken the bus to visit the place.

Åsen, where we parted ways, was still the middle of nowhere, but luckily it was on the only piece of road - to be more accurate: on the major road, the by now enough-mentioned E6 - that leads to Bodø. By then it was 17:00, so I wondered where I would sleep that night. I was basically standing near a gas station, the gas station was next to the road, and it was the middle of nowhere! Just empty fields with tall grass (don't ask me, I'm not a botanist) all around.

I thought of sleeping outside that night, I had a tent after all (a virgin unused one), but i didn't want to sleep next to the road, and everything was pretty open, I didn't want to the village people (not saying that in an insulting way) wondering why there's a guy camping on a field near them either.

After hoping for a bit that waiting at the small gas station would bring luck (it didn't, it was a small gas station, and it was at the wrong side of the road), I started walking towards the village proper, along the E6. By this time it was no longer a highway, so there was a footpath next to it, separated by one meter or so of grass.

I ended up at the village proper, where there were bus stops, a grocery store, and parking outside of that store. I stood at the bus stop (so a car would have a place to stop if he wants to pick me up) some distance away from the store. I suppose the people going grocery shopping was wondering why there's a guy with a huge backpack and a sign that says "Bodø" standing next to the road in their village/town/civilization in the middle of a long long road. As usual, I was thinking of plan B, what if I didn't get a lift, where would I sleep that night. The sky was graying too...

In the middle of being amused at my situation (how did I end up at this place from Karlsruhe, Germany!), a car pulled over and stopped. WOW! Yeah, my next ride!

The driver of that car was Pål (pronounced Pol, or Paul for the Anglophones). He had stopped his car quite abruptly, it surprised me. I said to him, if I were in that situation I would have not bothered stopping, considering it could've been dangerous too. He said something along the lines of "no need to thank me, I have to stop and pick hitch-hikers up!". It turns out he's also a traveller, he'd recently spent time in Australia, and he felt travellers should help each other. I was grateful, especially as it started raining really heavily as we cruised the highway.

Paul was going to Snåsa, to a friend's party. We spent only a short time on the road, but he was very friendly and helpful. He was even thinking how he could find me a place to sleep at a friend's place if I didn't get a ride.

We parted ways in Steinkjer, he was getting off the E6 way and down a quieter, less-travelled road. He told me I should go to a particular restaurant that the truckers like to stop at - it was still a far way aways from the city - and he gave me his business card and told me to call him if I needed help. Heh, like I said, great guy.

The sky was still grey when I got out of his car, luckily it was under the roof of a gas station.

Steinkjer was a nice looking town on the side of a a big lake fjord with a small river that goes through it. The dark clouds moved quickly and a few minutes later I could see the blue sky coming my way from over the water.

So I returned to the job: stand on the grass next to road and poke my thumb out.

After a short while, a yellow VW minibus slowed down, and the driver waved at me. He turned the road to stop, and as I ran to him screaming internally, I noticed it was more a cargo van then a bus, with a collapsible loading platform at the back. The back had windows, but no seats, and it was partially filled with crates. Whatever, a ride is a ride, I wondered where the driver was going as I got on.

Steinar was going all the way to Bodø. Which was great, no more waiting and wondering, just sitting in the car and getting to your destination. He was carrying berries - strawberries from Trondheim, raspberries from... somewhere - but he was getting some more on the way there. He said "I'm going to Trondheim, but with a few stops along the way."

"That's okay.", I said. I had the time and I was sure I'd enjoy the ride.

Steinar was a one-man berry-selling operation, transporting and later selling them to the people who stop at his stand in the Bodø city center. He wanted to get to the city early the next morning - which meant almost non-stop driving. He was hoping I could drive so he could keep going all night, but unfortunately I couldn't.

So we drove in the sometimes wet, sometimes sunny afternoon, going along the roads between the farms and making stops there. We got some strawberries at one, and at another place cloudberries, or Molte as its known in Norwegian. What? Yeah, never heard of it before either.

From where I sit I could reach the raspberries. They were nice and sweet, and Steinar said I could take as many as I want. I regret that I was too shy to take him up on that offer, I only took a few handfuls.

We made a stop at a gas station - by this time the sky was grey again, as well as getting darker (hah, that photo was taken at 22:24!) - and while Steinar was filling the van I looked around a bit of the area and wowed at the long tall mountain range that seemed to cover the sky above the station. My picture of it doesn't do it justice.

We got some chocolate and cookies -- previously I had eaten some Jubelsalami with bread (very nice salami too!) and continued down (or up I guess) the road. The drive through the scenery, the secluded road and the dusk was getting more romantic now, the only think lacking that would make it more romantic for both of us was the companion we had! The solitude of the endlessly winding empty road with almost nothing but the forest left and right and darkness above was great though.

Shortly after midnight Steinar decided he needed a rest. He was planning to reach Mo i Rana and sleep for the night before continuing to Bodø in the morning, but he said he was too tired, and he needed a nap there. We stopped in front of an empty building - it was a karate school I think - in a little town called Mosjøen - and I got to spend a few minutes outside because he needed to lay down across the front seat of the car.

I wondered what sort of shady people might be out in town that night, in the background I could hear people who were playing with their cars, I was slightly afraid they would be thugs and beat me up. Also I was worried a police car might come by and start wondering why there's a foreign-looking person wondering around the place at night, taking pictures. "I'm a tourist" would have been a funny answer.

Steinar wanted to sleep 15 minutes or so, but I let him sleep for half an hour, he probably needed it. Soon we were back on the road again. He had to keep his cargo cool, so it was pretty chilly in the front area too, but I kept warm by sticking my feet in his sleeping bag. I was getting sleepy as well.

Soon after that we reached Mo i Rana. Steinar has 2 containers "parked" there, one of them was a freezer with a stock of blueberries, and the other was full of his junk - like a sign that says "Strawberries". We loaded up the car with some blueberries, and then it was 2:30 AM, time to sleep. If it had been a routine drive, Steinar would've slept in his car like before, but today was not routine; he had a hitchhiker. So he said, "you can sleep in here", and then gave me a tour of the container.

Oh well, it was better than sleeping outdoors.

After I got into my sleeping bag, it was pretty comfortable. Wait, no it wasn't, the floor was hard, my head was cold, and I didn't want the door to be fully closed because it was pretty dark in there! Then again, I managed to sleep.

Passing the Arctic Circle

At 6:30 we were on the road again. Scenery-wise, this was probably the most interesting drive of the whole trip. At one point, we entered the Saltfjellet, which is a mountain area. I knew we were supposed to be crossing the arctic circle soon, and Laura had told me that in the north there are no big trees - just thin ones - so when we got to Saltfjellet, I was amazed. It was a barren landscape, it was green but it was empty - a big empty space with no trees as far as my eyes could see. It felt to me like the Iceland I've seen on TV. I was excited, thinking this is the way it looks like throughout the north of the arctic circle.

Unfortunately it didn't stay that way, there were no trees because (I think) of the altitude, and once we went down the mountains, the trees returned. Lame. :)

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),

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)!

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.

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!

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.

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.

The Lofoten Islands

I woke up early-ish and packed my bags. Frøde was unfortunately still asleep, so I left him a note thanking him for his hospitality and I went on my way. I needed to go into Bødo, to the harbour and take the ferry going to Moskenes in the Lofoten Islands.

Stepping outside, it was a hot and sunny summer day. Great weather to visit the islands! As previously mentioned, there was a bus stop "next" to Frøde's house, so I went there to wait for the bus. There were a lot of cars passing by, so I pulled my thumb out.

Another neighbor of Frøde's stopped at the entry to the big road, to check his mail if I recall correctly, so I took the chance to ask him if he was going into the city, and if I could have a lift. He didn't seem willing at first, but said "Oh, alright, get in!" at the end. In hindsight, Rulf was a scary looking guy, with a big body, white beard and tattoos, the "biker" look, but he was friendly. He is also a fisherman. He asked me where I came from, and when I said Indonesia, he said he was there as a sailor, in Belawan, in 1966. Actually I had no idea where that place is in Indonesia, so I just said, "cool". I started to imagine how life was back in the 60's. Indonesia was a land in political turmoil back then. We started talking about the past, and how everything was different back then. But it was a short ride, we reached the city after a short while, he let me off near the ferry terminal with some tips, and I thanked him. I still had to walk a bit to get there, and returning to life with a heavy backpack was quite hard, especially in a very hot day!

The ferry terminal of course had other travellers, some backpackers as well, all waiting for the ferry to arrive. I sat outside in the sun and it was a warm day, but the blowing winds were actually quite chilly too. I wondered if it'll be like that at the islands, and if I had enough preparation.

Soon enough, we were allowed to board, paying 149 Kroner (about 17 Euro) at the drawbridge (the bridge that drops down from the ship and cars drive over to get onto). Having a schedule was quite different to waiting uncertainly for a driver to stop, and I also knew what time I was going to arrive that day! Some people went directly into the cabin, which I thought was foolish, I was going to enjoy the sea, the sun and the air!

After a wonky (it got pretty windy in the middle and the boat swayed from side to side) 3 and a half hour ride (I don't remember it being that long, but that's what the timestamps on the pictures say!), we got to the destination, the city (village?) of Sørvågen at Moskenesøya (Moskenes Island). Even with the chaotic gathering of information I had done on the internet the last few days, I was still not sure where I was going or what I wanted to see. My plan at that moment was to go up the small hill/mountain to a cabin called the Munkebu Cabin, sleep outside of it (because it would have been locked, and borrowing the key would've required money and membership with the Norwegian trekking association), and to go the next day to a beach someone on the internet described as the best beach on the world, Bunesstranda (in English, and some more pics.), or to have it reversed, go to the beach, camp there for the night, and hike up to Munkebu the next day, although that means I have to go back down to Sørvågen to catch the boat, because hiking from Bunesstranda to Munkebu is doable, but the other way around is apparently very hard.

Unfortunately I had already missed the last boat that could take me to that beach that day, so I decided to hike to Munkebu instead, and to go back down to Sørvågen (actually I would have to trek to Reine, which is slightly north of Sørvågen) the next day and catch the boat then.

I made this decision after looking inside the tourist office for more info (especially the boat departure times), and I started walking to the beginning of the trail, which is just left of some shop, 3km away. Outside of the tourist "office", I met 2 German girls who were also backpacking. They wanted to go to Å (that's what the village is called, for real!), which is the same direction as where I was going, but further away. There was a bus, but it was going to be a long wait, so we decided to walk. I took some pictures along the way.

According to Google Maps (see "An Overview" above), I would have to walk about 3km on the road until I reach the start of the trail, and as I said before, it wasn't going to easy with my heavy rucksack and the hot sun (heh, I should've been thankful it was a cloudless day!). Walking next to the road, I stuck my thumb out just in case, watching the campervans and cars drive by (a few of them had German plates, one was even from Stuttgart, basically a neighbour of Karlrsruhe!), until a black small Suzuki hatchback with NL plates stopped. Woohoo! But because I was just walking a short distance (or so I thought then), I asked the two girls if they wanted to go with the Dutchman, who was going to Å. His car was actually full of things, so it would have maybe fitted 2 people, but not 3. The girls told me to go ahead, so I got into the car and said my hello to Klemens, the Dutchman going from the north to the south of Norway. As he drove away he yelled to the girls, "I come back!". As it was just a 2km ride, it was really short, he asked me where I am from, and I said, "a former colony of the Netherlands, Indonesia!", and that was all of our conversation. I got off at what I thought was the right spot, and he turned the car around, to pick up the girls, his kindness amusing and bewildering me.

I still had to walk a bit to the real start of the trail, doing so I saw some kids ahead, sitting next to the road talking to each other. I was preparing to be made fun of, as I thought kids tend to do to foreign-looking people (that's what Karlsruhe/German kids do!), but I asked one of them, in English, where the trail starts "is it this way?", and one of them answered, also in English, "yes, that way!". I was amazed! One, because they spoke English, two because they were curteous, or at least they didn't make fun of me!

I then thought, "Well, they're basically village kids, without any stupid influences that city kids are exposed to, no wonder they're nice. Amazing that they spoke English though! I wonder what they do for fun around here?".

Soon enough I was behind the houses that faced the street, and was at the start of the trail. It was well-trodden, with plenty of footsteps. I walked along a small stream, crossed it on a tiny bridge, and kept walking, towards the mountain.

The various information sites say it takes 2 and a half hours to get to the Munkebu cabin, but after that much time hiking, I had not yet seen it. But I knew I was a lot slower with the the huge backpack, I took a lot of breaks (and pictures!), the thing wasn't easy on my shoulders.

At around 22:30, it started getting dark. At that point I had reached a small plateau (on research for writing this I found out it was the highest point of the of the trail), it was windy at the top, and I was wondering too if I was lost, maybe taking a wrong turn. It didn't help that the signs pointing to places was broken, and were unreadable anyway. The place had great views though, of the (Djup)fjord, with a bridge at the end of it, and beyond that, the ocean that separated the islands with mainland Norway. I couldn't see the mainland though. It was all quiet and peaceful up there...

Not knowing how long I had to go, and considering it was getting dark, I decided to camp at that plateau. This was to be my first time building a tent, and sleeping in one in this journey. I found a grassy patch of area, next to 1 meter tall rocks that would cover me from wind, and set out to build the tent.

Building the tent was easy enough (actually the picture timestamps say I took the before picture at 23:11, and the after picture at 23:46), I didn't stick the nails right in, but oh well, it was still standing. The inside was surprisingly roomy, it fit 2 people, or me and my backpack. After this I had something to eat, being amazed at where I was (on top of some mountain, in the middle (well roughly speaking) of the Atlantic Ocean). Then I climbed into my sleeping bag and slept.

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