N O R G E - Oslo

Of all the European cities I've been to on my trip, Oslo is the one I've stayed in the longest. In a way this has been a great thing because there is a lot to see here but then again it can also be a not so great thing because Norway is an expensive place to be and the longer I'm here the more expensive it gets! Originally I had planned to stay here for 9 nights only because I needed to kill time until I meet with Angela in Prague next week but as usual it really played out well for me to be here that long anyway. I arrived on the 13th of May from Flåm and got settled into the Haraldsheim Vandrerhjem (Youth Hostel) which is located on a nice steep hill about 20 minutes from the centre. I would have liked to have stayed out in the west coast area of Norway a little longer but the Global Ecotourism Conference that I wanted to attend in Oslo was being held from May 13-15 so I headed over to the eastside to be there in time for that event. Given that the focus of my studies was ecotourism I thought it was only too perfect that this conference coincided with my visit and thought it is not something I should miss. It did cost me a bit to attend but it was well worth it. I attended three seminars relating to various ecotourism subjects and was able to catch a glimpse of what other ecotourism companies and organizations are doing in the field. I met some really interesting people as well and I'm not sure if anything will come of the connections I made but it was nice to be surrounded by likeminded people who are fully engaged in the type of work I would eventually like to be involved in. The conference was held in a really nice hotel fashioned after old Norwegian architecture like the stave Church in my last post, it was really impressive!

At this point I was (and I still am) battling a very stubborn cough so I decided to take it easy the next day by only going out to see one sight and not three or four in a day! I went to see the Vigeland Parken, a park decorated by hundreds of sculptures created by Gustav Vigeland, a native of Oslo in the late 19th and early 20th century. Very unique place! I spent some time here before heading back to the hostel to rest up a bit a kick this cough.




The next day was one of the most exciting days I've had here. It was May 17, the Norwegian National Day and it's the one day everyone gets dressed up in their traditional outfits and hit the streets to celebrate their national identity. Norway is still a realatively young country, they split from their union with Sweden only about 102 years ago so they really like to assert their distinctiveness. It was a very noisy, crowded, colourful day and I really enjoyed being a part of it! I really loved all the traditional clothing people were wearing, especially on the little kids, it was so cute! Each persons outfit corresponds to the area of Norway from which they originated so there were many different styles and types. The day always starts with a childrens parade made up of all the schools in city and their respective marching bands and students. Each elementary school had it's own marching band and I was quite impressed with the talent some of these young kids had with their instruments! Then later in the afternoon there's a processional for all the students graduting from secondary schools. During my stay in Norway I had noticed many young people wearing these red coloured pants with patches and writing all over them and was really intrigued as to what the purpose of this was. I thought it was just a really hot fashion trend here in Norway, but I soon found out that from May 1st onwards all the graduating students wear these pants as sign of their soon to be graduate status and party like crazy until the 17th where they participate in their right of passage processional on the National Day. I found out later too that the colour of the pants indicates what type of study you will be pursuing after graduation. Red is for those entering University, blue is for those studying at a minor college, and black is for those entering trade school. Like I said it was a pretty colourful day!

They were lucky they had such gorgeous weather for the national day as well because the next day was pretty cold and rainy. Of course I had bought an Olso Pass so for the 48 hours I was going to get my money's worth out of that thing!! I took the ferry to Bygdøy and visited the Norwegian Folk Museum, the Viking Ship Museum, the Kon-Tiki Museum and the Fram Ship Museum, all really interesting stops. The Viking Ship Museum was especially interesting because they had three enormous viking ships on display that had been unearthed about 100 years ago after being discovered in some swampy areas in the vicinity of Oslo. These ships had all been used as burial vessels, and had been buried with their owner and his\her various belongings. The largest one belonged to a viking queen and they found some amazing artifacts buried along with her. Things like jewellery, sleds, wagons, and even a couple of horses! (Which were not on display). I also was really impressed with the Kon-Tiki Museum. I really did not know anything about what was being displayed in the museum but it was included on the Oslo Pass so I checked it out. It was actually very cool as well. It documents the travels of Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian explorer from the early 20th century who wanted to prove his theories on potential settlements and interactions ancient civilizations may have had by way of sea travel. His original idea was that people from South America could have settled in Polynesia by way of Balsa rafts so he set abouot building a raft only using materials that would have been available back in pre historic times. He embarked on his voyage with his 'Kon-Tiki' raft and crew of 5 other men in 1947 and sailed across the Pacific until they reached land. They made a movie about the trip and it actually won an oscar in 1951!He made another journey later on and this time he wanted to discover if the similarities he noted between ancient egyptian and mayan architectural styles were due to contact that was made between the two groups of peoples in ancient times. He built a boat made completely out of reeds, the way it would have been done in ancient Egypt, and attempted to sail his reed boat, which he christened 'Ra', across the pacific to central america. His first attempt failed but on 'Ra II' he succeeded. This museum turned out to be quite interesting!

Anyway, the next day I visited the Nobel Peace Prize Museum and the National Art Gallery. Both were ok, but not exceptional. I had more fun just wandering the streets of Oslo watching the street performers! The next day, yesterday, I finally just stayed at the hostel to give myself a chance against this neverending cough of mine. I think it really helped because I feel a lot better today, but it definately sucks being sick when you're away from home because you don't have your space to just relax and get better. I also always worry that I'm keeping my hostel roomates up at night with my coughing, but they've all been very understanding thus far. One of my german roomates was kind enough to buy me some more cough syrup yesterday too! For that reason too I'm, glad I was in Oslo for so long because it meant that I could stay in one place to recoup and not have to worry about finding a new hostel in a new place etc. However I am leaving tomorrow for Prague where a private room and warmer weather await me! Should help kick this illness once and for all! I'll also be meeting up with a friend of mine from Winnipeg so I'm excited to have a travel buddy again!

N O R G E - Bergen & Flåm

Well...it's been awhile since I last posted and some you (Tricia!!) are getting anxious to see some stuff about Norway! So here I am at the library in Oslo with an hour of FREE internet (finally!) and some time to finally post some stuff about this wonderful place called Norway! I arrived here on the 5th of May after taking a train up to Bremen from Muenster where I had just finished visiting Anne. I spent an hour or two sightseeing in Bremen but I mainly just wanted to see the the BremerStadt Musikanten statue that depicts a german folktale that has been in my memory since childhood. If you're not sure what it is, just take a look at the photo and I'm sure it will come to you! From Bremen I flew with my 50 cent (!!) Ryanair flight to Oslo Torp. It's hard to believe that an airline can make money selling flights that cheap but if they're going to offer it I'm definately taking advantage of it! The flight was bare bones, no food or drinks or anything but really not any worse than a regular airline, I was actually pretty impressed I would definately say I got my money's worth! After stepping out of the plane I definately noticed that I come north. In Bremen it had been a warm sunny day and Norway (only about an hour north) was cold and cloudy. The landscape was also quite changed, instead of thousands of squares of farmer's fields there was a lot more forestland and open space. It almost felt like coming home to Canada! So the airport I flew into in Norway is actually about an hour and a half south of Oslo so instead of going all the way up there I stayed at a hostel in Tønsberg, a town that is close to the airport and had a train line that would get me to my next destination in Norway: Bergen. Bergen is on the west coast of Norway and the train ride out there took about 7.5 hours and went through almost every imaginable landscape this country has to offer, it was incredible to see the scenery change so often. At first it was raining as we ascended up the side of the Hardangervidda plateau which at it's highest point in Finse is 1222 metres. When we got to Finse it was snowing like crazy and the landscape up there was like taking a train through the tundra or the very top of a snowcapped mountain. I've never seen anything like it, not even in Canada. Really quite barren and beautiful at the same time. The coolest part is that there's still buildings up there where I can only assume people live in summer, how else can they get there? After descending down the other side of the plateau we lose the snow but we gain the fjords. I only caught minor glimpses on the way into Bergen of some fjord landscape but it was enough to get me super excited to explore them even more! Upon arrival in Bergen I settled into my room at the hostel almost directly in the centre of the city, really great location! There's a rooftop terrace there overlooking the Bergen harbour which was a great feature! I got some great sunset shots from up there one night with my singaporean roomates one evening. My first two days in Bergen were blessed by pouring rain so I decided it might be good to invest in an umbrella to make being a tourist in miserable weather somewhat more bearable. Bergen is well known for it's rainy weather, that's why almost every shop sells umbrellas for twice as much as anywhere else, they're really milking it from unprepared tourists like me! Anyway, I bought myself a Bergen Card and proceeded to do as much indoor stuff as possible on the rainy days. The Bergen Card granted me free access to a lot of museums and such so I did quite a bit of that my first two days. I went to the Marine museum, Bryggens museum, Haakon's Hall, the Hanseatic museum, the museum of Cultural History and a few more. The really unique thing about Bergen is that in the past it was a major player in the Hanseatic trading routes in northern Europe and has some really unique buildings on the harbourfront where all the German traders lived, did business and pretty well isolated themselves from the local Norwegians. Now they house lots of souvenir and touristy shops, but they still look pretty, even on a rainy day! I also decided to escape the rain on day and see a movie. Here they don't dub movies into Norwegian, they just put subtitles at the bottom so any movie in made in english is still heard in english. I saw *Next* with Nic Cage and Jessica Biel. I'd never heard of it but it was starting shortly after I arrived so I decided to try it. Wasn't too bad, a really unique idea for a movie! At movie theatres here they also assign you a row and seat number so it's not a free for all, very organized people up here! So finally on Wednesday the sky cleared and we got a nice sunny day, time for some outdoor adventure!! I took the Fløiyban up one of the 7 mountains surrounding Bergen and did some hiking around up there. The fjord scenery isn't as spectacular in Bergen as I had hoped but it was still nice to be outside with the sunshine and the from above views of Bergen. The next day, instead of taking the train to Flåm, like I had originally intended, I thought it might be cooler and more scenic to take a 5 hour ferry ride from Bergen to Flåm. So I embarked on the ferry at 8 am and proceeded to sleep for about an hour, which is ok because the view didn't really get good until about 2.5 hours into the ride, that's when the ferry veers off the coast and into the longest fjord in Norway, the Sognefjord. Flåm is located all the way at the end of one of the offshoot fingers of the fjord so I got to see a lot of amazing scenery. One jawdropping scene after the next. Western Norway is truly spectacular and deserves the UNESCO World Heritage Site title that was bestowed upon the western fjords a few years ago by the UN. I really was not regretting skipping the train ride and taking the ferry instead! When I arrived in Flåm I was greeted by a familiar feeling of having been there before. It reminded me so much of Field, the town in Yoho National Park in B.C. where I worked in the summer of 2005. Just a cute little tourist town surrounded by an incredible landscape, the only difference being that Flåm has an ocean front view instead of a riverfront view like it was in Field. Even the hostel I stayed in was like a mountain lodge, it was really pretty and I had a really comfortable stay there....I miss it now!Unlike my time in Bergen, my two days in Flåm were blessed by beautiful sunshine and I spent both my days outside making the most of it in spite of the fact that I've been a little sick the last few days. Sore throat or not I wasn't going to waste what precious little time I had in the fjord country being sick so I did a 6 hour hike instead! It was one of the hardest hikes I've done in my life but it was so worth the view in the end. I started in Aurland, a town 8 kms up the fjord from Flåm and proceeded to climb up the side of the mountain there along a cascading waterfall (one of thousands in this area) in the valley behind town. The higher I got, the better the view of the valley became, but I was workin' it to get to the top and see over the other side into the Aurland fjord. When I finally got close to the top I realized I had gone higher than I had originally planned, but that only means the view was that much better when I got up and over that ridge! Wow, absolutely breathtaking. I just lay down in the sunny mossy field up there for about half an hour and just soaked it all in. That was defintely the high point of my stay in Norway thus far, not only because the scene spread before me was so picturesque but because my butt is definately in the best shape of it's life after that uphill hike! I almost didn't want to leave the view but I still had a long way to go to get back down and I also sat in a berry patch so I had berry stains on my bum and wanted to clean up. I took the road down the other side so I was able to enjoy the view th whole way down anyway! Not a day I will soon forget! The next day I planned to take the ferry from Flåm to Gudvangen, a town in the neighboring fjord which also happens to be the narrowest fjord in Norway, the Næroyfjord. The weather once again was gorgeous and the air was still, no wind, so it was a perfect morning for a boat ride and for taking pics. It's really amazing how some of the Norwegian people have managed to live out here. I saw one house that was high up on a cliff with no road access and only a small boat in the water at the base of the cliff...what does this person do for a living, how do they even scale the cliff to get up to their home?? It's crazy! but I guess they make it work! After I arrived in Gudvangen I took the bus to the Borgrund Stavekirke, an 800 year old traditional norwegian stave church. Normally I might have skipped this site but the building is so unique I had to see it. I love the way it's shaped like a viking ship at the top with the dragon heads, a really clear look at norwegian architectural culture from 800 years ago. After I was done there I headed back to Flåm and decided to rest up a bit and relax before my trip to Oslo the next day. Yesterday, when I travelled to the Norwegian capital city I awoke to rain, how perfect for a travelling day! I've really been so lucky in a lot of ways, not just with the weather, even when things don't go exactly as I planned they always seem to work out. Anyway, I left Flåm on the famed Flåmsbana, a feat of railway engineering in that it has the steepest climb in the shortest distance than any other railway in the world. It was pretty amazing. Dad I know exactly what you would have said had you been there...*those engineers...they know their stuff, they make things happen!* or something like that! Just before we arrived in Myrdal, where I would catch my train to Oslo, we stopped right overtop to a huge *fossen* (waterfall). Really cool. So now I'm in Oslo and you're all caught up with what's been going on here at my end world. Tomorrow I will be attending the Global Ecotourism Conference that just happens to be taking place here in Oslo this week and then just taking in the sights and sounds of Oslo. I'm also super pumped about May 17 which is the National Day in Norway, should be a good time to be in Oslo I've heard!

Marvelous Muenster!

Ahhhhhh....what a week! I just spent the last 5 nights in Muenster, Germany with a really good friend of mine from Bible College waaaay back from the 2000\2001 school year. Anne and I were cabinmates there and it was so great to see her again and to see what she's been up to since I saw her last in 2004 when she came to visit me in Winnipeg! As usual it was really nice to stay at someone's home...it's always more comfortable and Anne has this amazing red couch that I got to sleep on! It was so cool, I really want to get one just like it! Anne was on holidays from her job at the hospital in Muenster so we pretty well just spent the week shopping, renting movies, riding our bikes around town, drinking Starbucks coffees (Anne's an addict too!) and just soaking up the amazing warm weather in the various parks around Muenster. It was really cool to just live like a regular german for a couple of days! May first was a national holiday here in Germany so her sister invited us both over to her place for a BBQ. It was really nice to visit with Anne's family! Her sister has 5 kids (well above the national average here in Germany) and they were all really sweet kids. The youngest two were so adorable! On wednesday we visited the weekly market and bought everything for our supper that night fresh from the market, including the fish! It was so yummy, especially the strawberries. I also caught up on some major movie watching with Anne, I think we saw about 4 movies together while I was there! It was kind of sad to leave Muenster today, I was getting so comfortable at her place but it was time to move on to my next destination! Anne also left for Vienna today as well so I really had no choice anyway! Yes Tricia, I am finally in Norway! I took my 50 cent flight from Bremen to Sandefjord Torp Airport and am staying in Tønsberg tonight. Tomorrow I'm heading to Bergen, I hope it doesn't rain on me the entire time I'm there like the weather network website says it's supposed to! I'll post pics of Muenster when I can!