Leaving Scandinavia

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Judy

Hard to believe we have already been away a month, and have another 4 weeks’ travelling to go before we get back to the Land of Oz.

We’re spending tonight in Riga, Latvia which is a stopover on our Air Baltic flight to St Petersburg. All Air Baltic flights hub through Riga, so we picked the flight with the longest time between landing here and taking off for St Petersburg to give us a chance to explore another central European city. We’re staying in a hotel in Old Riga. Greg has already been out for a walk to check out the local sights by night. We’ll do more walking and exploring tomorrow.

Before I get distracted by more sights and experiences, I thought I’d write down few observations about our travels in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. It was all great, and I would love to re-visit any or all of these countries in the future We found all the ‘locals’ we talked to wherever we went to be universally friendly, helpful and nearly everyone speaks excellent English. Prices of most things in Sweden, Denmark and Finland were around the same as at home, with the exception of fuel which cost more everywhere. In Norway, everything was expensive. We had read about it before we left, and I think I was secretly hoping it wouldn’t be as bad as people claimed …. but it was. Everything just cost a lot of money. Getting a $165 parking fine didn’t help much either. We were very glad that we were able to spend most of our time in Norway camping and self-catering.

The economies of all 4 countries seem to be in good shape, with little or no foreign debt, limited exposure to the GFC, and Finland and Norway have both covered their future age pension commitments … I’m not sure about Sweden and Denmark.

People in Scandinvian countries seem have children earlier than they do at home. We saw lots of young parents out and about with babies and toddlers. Good, secure, well-paid work, generous parenting payments and parenting leave probably go a long way to bringing the average age down – this is just our observations, I haven’t gone hunting around for any statistics.

Summer is short. Very short. When we left Stockholm 4 weeks ago, everything was green and lush. Yesterday we went to Uppsala for the day and lots of the fields are now golden with grain crops, flowers have started going to seed and some of the trees have started turning yellow. Berries, currants and chanterelle mushrooms are the hot seasonal sellers in markets everywhere at the moment. In Finland there were also lots of peas in their pods, but I looked for them in Stockholm and didn’t find any. Must be a Finnish thing.

And I have to mention one last thing, even thought it’s not really relevant to anything else much, I just want to remember it – at the apartment complex we stayed at in Helsinki, the area around the car park and near the 4-storey building had been landscaped with white- and red currant bushes which all had almost-ripe fruit on them. I don’t know if anyone picked them to eat or preserve, but every time I walked past one, I would pick a handful to eat!

The dry fields around Uppsala

Viking burial mounds at Uppsala dating back to 600AD

How to pay a parking fine in Norway

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Judy

This post probably won’t be of interest to our regular readers, but after spending ages searching the internet for information after we got our parking ticket, I thought it might help any other unfortunate tourists who get caught like we did.

So, a few nights ago we were staying in Tromso and decided to go out for dinner. In a restaurant, our first restaurant meal in Norway. We parked in a small private car park which had a parking metre in one corner. I went to buy a ticket and noticed that it gave a price of 23 kroner per hour, up until 2100 hours, or 9pm. I didn’t read any further, just put in enough coins to get to 9pm, took the ticket , put it in the car and we left. I really should have read all the instructions because there is also a charge after 9pm, of 10 kroner per hour. We got back to the car at 10pm to discover a yellow parking fine on the dashboard. For 760 kroner.

The parking fine is, of course, all in Norwegian, but it’s fairly self-explanatory. You can either pay with a bank transfer, or they give a website where you can dispute the fine. I visited the website and then searched all over the internet to see if I could just pay with a credit card online, but there doesn’t appear to be any option to do so. Paying with a bank transfer was really just all too hard to organise with one of my Australian banks … not to mention costly. So I did some detective work and by searching on the SWIFT code given with the banking details, I learned that Europark Norway uses DNB Bank to accept payment.

We found the DNB Bank in Tromso and I went to see if I could pay the fine there. Success! Kind of. They will process the payment, but they charge a 75 kroner fee on top of the 760 kroner fine. I had to show ID (passport) and got a receipt for the payment … and I made very sure that all the reference numbers on the yellow fine and the receipt matched up so that there would be no further issues.

Of course, it goes without saying that it’s better not to get a fine in the first place, but if you do, I hope the above information helps.

More about the Midnight Sun

Posted on July 18, 2013 by Judy

Why do people applaud natural phenomena?

That’s not the start of a riddle, it really does baffle me when people clap in the presence of natural awesomeness. My brother John told me years ago about visiting Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park and seeing people clap, and we saw the same thing when we visited last year … so I guess it’s probably happened nearly every time in the intervening years. And it happened at Nordkapp at midnight last night when the sun stayed high in the sky. Well, not really all that high, but definitely well above the horizon. And it was awesome. But I didn’t feel like clapping.

My mum asked me a couple of questions and maybe other loyal readers are wondering too …. Have we seen the Northern Lights, and can we see any stars at this time of the year inside the Arctic Circle.

The Northern Lights are a winter phenomenon, occurring when the sky is dark. We’ll have to come back in winter to see them, and apparently in Tromso they are at their most spectacular at 6pm.

I must find out more about them, but at the moment I’m still trying to get my head around the whole ‘sun doesn’t set for 10 weeks in summer’ and then the ‘sun doesn’t rise for 6 weeks in winter’ thing. I know it is to do with the earth’s tilt, and I’m sure there are plenty of Youtube videos about it all that we’ll watch when we get home. Or I’ll ask Dr Karl. He probably know lots about this stuff.

And the stars. We haven’t actually seen a star since we left home. Even as far south as Copenhagen, there are only a few hours of night at this time of the year, and the sky just never gets dark enough to have any visible stars in it. Within the Arctic Circle, the sky is always light, although at midnight it’s not quite a bright as during the day, and it does cool down by a few degrees overnight. Our Lonely Planet Guide gives lots of dates of when the sun sets in various parts of Norway. It will set in Nordkapp around July 29th, for the first time since mid-May. And then the first star/s will be visible in late August.The sun sets for the last time in late November and rises again in mid-January. I know, I know – it’s all just strange for us who live in places where our days and nights only vary by a few hours depending on the season ….. and to people who live close to the Equator and have equal durations of day and night all year round it must be almost inconceivable.

And I’m by no means an expert, but if anyone wants to know anything else, ask us a question in the Comments and one of us will try to answer it for you.

We got to Nordkapp yesterday afternoon and paid the hefty fee to go into the Information and parking area. On the way there Greg had been looking out for possible camping spots, but I was fairly sure that there was only one place for us to camp last night … at Nordkapp itself. And we did. There is a field just outside the toll booths into the Nordkapp area and people are allowed to camp there, and lots of people with RVs just stay in the car park overnight. We went and looked at the lookout and read a few of the many obelisks, markers, monuments and other assorted items of interest, took photos and I sent a postcard to my 6 year old nephew to let him know that we’d seen Santa’s reindeer and would keep an eye out for Santa. There’s a pretty good chance that we’ll find him in Finland …. Lapland to be precise.

So then we pitched our tent and waited. For our dinner to cook … for midnight …. for the sun to go down (or not). And it was well worth the wait. We were lucky that it was a reasonably clear sky with not too many clouds. Tour buses kept on arriving and disgorging passengers from cruise ships, motor homes and motor bikes rolled in and one young German woman arrived on foot. I had a good chat with her and found out that she was there to start walking the E1 Walking Trail, which is a 4900km route that starts at Nordkapp and finishes in Sicily. The route was officially opened just last month. She hadn’t been able to find the start, so I took her to the stone marker and took a photo of her with her camera. We had a nice chat about walking – she has walked the Camino de Santiago, so have we – and I took her to our tent, gave her some water, we wished her ‘Buen Camino’ and she started off on her very long walk.

Greg put a few more photos on the post below this one, to show where we have been so far this trip, and to give an idea of where we would be if we were in the Southern Hemisphere. I’m just going to state for the record that I have NO PLANS to camp at 71 degrees south, or anywhere within the Antarctic Circle. I’m not that brave. Or silly.

Nordkapp

Posted on July 17, 2013 by admin3

71.1711 degrees north

Judy and Greg at Nordkapp

Where we would be in Anarctica if we were the same distance South as we are north at Nordkapp

Where we would be in Antarctica if we were the same distance South as we are north at Nordkapp

Midnight at Nordkapp. Hundreds of people viewing the midnight sun

Bay to the west of Nordkapp

Just some of the campervans parked (overnight) at Nordkapp, there must be at least 50

Cloudberries we picked at last nights camp

Our route from Stockholm to Nordkapp Norway

Midnight Sun – Tromso

Posted on July 16, 2013 by Judy

Picture taken of Tromso from our hotel room at about quarter past midnight. The sun is still up but hidden behind mountains

Eating Rudolph – Reindeer steaks

We spent last night in at the Scandic Hotel in Tromso, our first night in a hotel on this trip. It gave us a chance to hang wet washing all over our very own bathroom and walk around in bare feet without worrying about them getting cold and wet, and only unpack a couple of small clothes bags rather than half a ton of camping gear. Such a difference from last year in Portugal and Spain, where we spent every night but one in hotels or the very occasional auberge. The hotel is a few kms out of the town centre, close to the airport. It has a great view of the fjord, and looks across to ‘the mainland’ and the mountains beyond. Most of Tromso is on an island, including the town centre, the airport and the university. It connects to the mainland via a very impressive bridge.

We went out for dinner last night, to Aunegarden. It’s a cafe/restaurant in a beautiful old wooden building that spent most of its long life as a butcher’s shop. There are lots of rooms and little nooks and crannies. We were taken along hallways past a couple of other rooms that were set up for dining, to a room with 4 or 5 tables and a lot of large old photos of downtown Tromso that were probably taken early last century. The menu had lots of choices, but we were really only there for one thing … the reindeer. Anyone reading this with young children, please don’t tell them we ate one of Santa’s helpers!. It was a fillet of reindeer, served with mashed potato, red cabbage and lingonberry sauce and it was delicious! Lean, tender and not too ‘gamey’. The meal cost as much as the hotel room, but we both really enjoyed it. Best (and only) restaurant meal we’ve had in Norway.

But then! We walked around the main streets of Tromso for a while – lots of lovely old wooden buildings and interesting things to look at … got back to the car and found a parking ticket on the windscreen. For $150. Damn. I had paid for parking and mis-read the instructions. I thought it was free after 9pm, but actually the rate is reduced overnight. So I paid until 9pm, and we got the ticket at 9.30. Annoying, expensive and a good lesson to read instructions properly even if they are in another language. The worst thing about it is that the only way to pay is to do a bank transfer. I spent ages trawling the internet last night trying to find out if I could pay online with a credit card, but couldn’t find anywhere to do so. I have found out which bank is on the bank transfer details and we’ll go to the Tromso branch today and hopefully I’ll be able to make an over the counter payment.

On the bright side, we stayed up late enough to see the sun at midnight … well actually it was on the other side of the mountains, but it was definitely still there, shining.

Inside the Arctic Circle

Posted on July 14, 2013 by Judy

Our “wild” camp-site on Lofoten Islands

We drove into the Arctic Circle about 15 minutes after we left the campground this morning. There’s a big tourist information centre/cafe and a small sign marking this amazing geographical fact. Amazing to us, because neither of us had ever thought we’d get to such lofty latitudes, although Greg has wanted to since he paddled his folding kayak in Iceland and Greenland 10 years ago. So we drove along for a while reminding each other that we’re inside the Arctic Circle. We were at high altitude when we crossed into The Circle and it was all quite bleak and typical high country terrain, and I noticed that the outside temperature was 6C, but when we dropped lower it all looked just like it has for the last 1000kms or so – fjords, forest, farms and little villages. And the temperature has hovered around 12 – 14C for most of the day.

When it was raining yesterday, we decided not to take the ferry out to the Lofoten Islands, even though we had read about how stunning they are and how it’s the highlight of any trip to northern Norway. It all seemed to be a bit of a waste in the rain, so we headed up the main road. Today the weather is better, and we have seen some blue sky and sunshine. At Bognes on the main road going north to Narvik, there is a ferry across to Skarberget on the main road, and there is also a ferry from the same point across to Lodingen on the Lofoten Islands. Greg initially drove to the queue for the ferry to take us across to the main road, then when we realised where the other ferry queue was going, he turned the car around so we could catch the one to Lofoten.

We’re currently sitting in our tent, surrounded by wildflowers, beside the water and overlooking some magnificent mountains. It really is breath-taking.

Roadside stop for Lunch

Travelling along fiords

Waiting for the Ferry to the Lofoten Islands

Just outside the Arctic Circle

Posted on July 13, 2013 by Judy

It started raining just before we started packing up the tent this morning, and it didn’t really stop raining all day. We had planned to drive the scenic route along the coast, which involved several (more) ferry rides, but it all seemed to be a bit of a waste if we weren’t actually going to see anything. So we headed back to the main (inland) highway, the E6, and headed north. The scenery along the main route is still incredible, at times going along the sides of mountains and fjords. It seems like every time we go around another bend, there’s another perfect postcard-worthy picture of green fields with assorted red, cream and yellow buildings, or a granite mountain with stripey white waterfalls running down, or fir trees growing all the way down to the deep, clear water of a fjord.

I’m really hoping it stops raining soon and we get some blue skies, but even with cloudy grey skies, this scenery is amongst the most beautiful I have ever seen. We are still driving through a combination of forest and farmland, mostly grain crops with an occasional small herd of sheep or dairy cows. It’s just at the end of the hay-making season, and occasionally we have seen fields of cut hay being dried on long racks – I guess the ground is too damp to leave it lying there as it would never dry. Today we drove through 2 really, really long tunnels. One was 5.9kms, and the other was 8.6kms. The Norwegians are incredible tunnel-builders.

The ‘free-access camping‘ we had planned to do hasn’t worked out as we thought it would. We thought we’d be able to just drive down smaller roads off the highway and find somewhere to pitch our tent for the night, but there are little villages, farms and houses just about everywhere. Last night we camped at the campground at Vennesund and enjoyed using their cosy camp kitchen. An unpowered tent site cost us $30. Tonight we’re in a cabin at Krokstrand, just 20kms south of the Arctic Circle. A few reasons for being in a cabin – an unpowered tent site here is $40 (!!), and a 2-berth cabin with fridge, hotplate, heater, table & chairs & covered verandah is $60. It took us less than a nano-second to opt for the cabin and forego putting up a wet tent on wet grass in the rain. Funny about that.

Update: 300Kr does not give you a hot shower, that’s extra 5kr (A$1) for 3 minutes.

Eating lunch at a roadside stop in the rain

Cabin near the arctic circle

On the road

Posted on July 12, 2013 by Judy

We’re feeling pretty lucky in the aftermath of the flat tyre mishap. The replacement car is so, so much better than the little tinny Kia Picanto we had, and the fuel economy is amazing. We put 60L of diesel in it yesterday, which cost us $170, and the fuel economy calculator thingy in the car reckons we’ll get 1800kms! Every time I look in a place I haven’t looked before, I find another panel of lights and buttons. It beeps whenever one of us does something ‘wrong’. We’re somewhat concerned that we’ll accidentally lock the keys in the car or something equally catastrophic, but I’m sure we’ll get used to it all … eventually.

We’re heading north up the coast to the Arctic Circle. For the last 2 days, we have driven through rural areas, mainly farmland and forests. It’s all so incredibly, impossibly green here, with such beautiful scenery it’s very hard to resist stopping constantly to take yet more photos. There are lots of little villages everywhere, and they look like thriving little communities, most of them with a service station AND a supermarket, and often a school and one or more churches. Most of the buildings are timber, the houses are white, cream or yellow and the outbuildings are red.

I’ve seen the most beautiful wildflowers growing beside the roads – lupins, linaria, foxgloves, canterbury bells, daisies, mostly in shades of white, pink and purple. I found some ligonberry bushes yesterday but the berries weren’t ripe yet. Swedish meatballs are traditionally served with mashed potatoes, a cream-based gravy and ligonberry jam. We had meatballs & gravy (out of a can) with mashed potatoes (out of a packet) for dinner last night.

I found something cheap here ! A 1 litre stainless steel thermos for $9. Although it’s been a long, long time since I priced one at home and maybe it’s not so cheap in comparison, but I bought one in anticipation of needing lot of hot drinks as we head further north. We’re in a little town at the moment – Namsos – where the sun sets at half-past midnight and rises again at 3.30am.,

Greg checking to see if the water was really cold in the river – it was

One of the many fantastic roadside stops in Norway.

We have driven around many fiords, this one had a waterfall flowing into it.

Camped at Vennesund

We have passed many buildings with sod roofs. This is a cabin at the camping ground we are staying at at Vennesuns

We have passed many buildings with sod roofs. This is a cabin at the camping ground we are staying at at Vennesund

Close-up of the sod-roof “garden”

Problems and solutions

Quote

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Greg

We have decided that Oslo doesn’t like us. We had problems when we arrived in Oslo, and we had problems when we left. We had been driving along Freeway Route 4 for only a few minutes when a rock appeared on the road which I thought I missed – but didn’t and it made a very load noise as it passed under the car. I thought we had escaped unscathed but a kilometre or so down the road I suspected there was something wrong, and a few minutes later I was sure. We pulled over to find a flat tyre. We changed the tyre and got to a service station. We ran Avis (the company we had rented from) but got not much joy after being transferred around a couple of Swedish call centres. However the end person we got said – get the tyre fixed and we can work out later who pays.

We pumped the tyre up at the servo only to find the sidewall ripped, so that tyre was gone. We were next to a mechanics shop, so we went and asked him, but he didn’t have a replacement tyre, so he sent us about 5km away to a large tyre firm. We got to the tyre place, but it was no good there either, they didn’t have the size we needed, but she kindly gave us the address of the distributor in Oslo. So back to Oslo we headed finding the distributor eventually. However they didn’t have a replacement tyre and didn’t know who would. Stumped, we decided we would head for the local Avis branch in Oslo and see if they had some ideas. They couldn’t solve it but they got onto Stockholm Avis, found another Swedish Avis car sitting at Oslo airport, and sent us out to the airport 40km north of Oslo.

We swapped our tiny Kia for a $53,000 Peugeot 508 with more electronics than I have ever seen on a car. It took me several minutes to figure out how to put it in reverse. No extra charge from Avis.

So we left Oslo delayed by a few hours but with lots more room for our camping equipment! We are camped at a commercial camp ground just south of Ringebu next to a nice lake and forested hills all around. ($36 a night unpowered site).

Out and about in Oslo

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Judy

Yesterday, our second full day in Oslo, we decided to see a few more things on the ‘What to do in Olso’ lists. We drove into the city because Greg had purchased a wireless broadband modem and it hadn’t been registered properly when he bought it, so he took it back to Netcom shop for them to sort out. We found parking on the street surprisingly inexpensive, ranging from $1.60/hour to $4.00/hour depending on where we wanted to park, and we found empty spaces with no trouble. We didn’t venture into any parking stations, so I’m not sure how much they cost.

First tourist stop of the day was the Viking Ship Museum on Bydgoy Peninsula, which is also home to several other museums and 2 beaches. Every major Scandinavian city we’ve visited has a Viking museum, so we thought we’d better go and see one. This one was excellent with just enough (and not too much) to see, and we were surprised that the entry fee was just $12. The museum has 3 Viking ships, which were all pulled ashore and used as burial tombs for people of high rank. They were all buried at least 1000 years ago, and then unearthed in the late 19th-early 20th century. In addition to the ships, a lot of Viking artifacts, tools, implements, 3 sleds and a carriage were unearthed from one ship which contained the remains of 2 women, one of whom was thought to be a queen, the other thought to be her maid.The Vikings believed that the dead needed to take things with them to the afterlife and provided everything they could think of, including horses and other animals. I did wonder if the maid had been dead or alive when she was buried with her mistress. You can read more about the ships and their contents here. As most of you would have guessed by now, we’re not great museum-goers, but this one was really good and I’d strongly recommend it to anyone visiting Oslo.

Next stop was Vigeland Park, a very large green space near the city centre that showcases the sculptures of Gustav Vigeland. There are over 200 granite and bronze sculptures depicting people at all stages of life, doing and feeling a wide range of activities and emotions. We sat under a row of trees and ate lunch and did some people-watching. There seem to be a lot more (mostly) women out and about with babies & toddlers in pushers here than we see at home. I guess it’s a combination of good weather and a generous paid parenting scheme.

And so on to our last touristy thing for the day, up to the hills just above central Oslo to see the beautiful old timber Holmenkollen Hotel and the terrifyingly high Holmenkollen Ski Jump, where the annual World Ski Jump Championships are held in March. The Ski Jump is also used as a concert venue.

Dinner last night was what our Lonely Planet guide tells us is Norway’s national dish - Grandiosa, a brand of frozen pizza. I think they were only partly joking. Those things are stacked up high in every supermarket we’ve visited. We bought one, but when we went to heat it up, of course it wasn’t as big as the box, so I nipped down to the Kiwi supermarket on the ground floor of this apartment building and bought another one. They tasted fine, although it’s a long time since I’ve had a frozen pizza at home.

Viking Ship, this ship was thought to be a ceremonial ship for calm waters

This Viking ship was a strongly built serious ocean going craft, the boards are riveted to the hull with iron rivets.

Just some of the many bronze sculptures

Lots of tourists at the stone sculptures

Norway’s food of choice Grandiosa Frozen Pizza

Tents, Trains and Tales

Judy and Gregs travels across Scandinavia and Russia

Category Archives: Norway