My trip to Norway - CurvedSpace Forums

Here's a little report from my trip to the cold, dark Norway.

Day 1: We drove to a port town and sailed to Norway. Then we drove the rest of the day through Norway, on so-called "highways". Thing is, they were so curvey and small (2 tracks, one for one direction, one for the other), that I would hardly call it a highway. But I'm not Norwegian. We arrived at a hut and slept there.

Day 2: First day of trekking.

A little river we passed.

Then we eventually had to leave the asphalted road, and we ascended into madness. There was no road really, we were just walking on rocks. We kind of asked ourselves how this could be a beginner's route. Pfff, this was probably one of the easiest chapters of the journey... So we (or rather I) felt like getting to the top of the mountain we were supposed to walk around, since I always wanted to reach the top of one of those, and I figured I would never get the chance again on the trip, since I had expected us to walk in valleys all the time. Silly stupid me.

The first snow.

Snow shoved into a bottle. It was really nice when it melted. Tasted really clean, plus it was supercold.

After a while, we reached what we thought would be the top. But then we found out it was actually even higher. This event repeated itself thrice. Oh well, we moved on. We eventually reached our hut after our first encounter with the freezing cold rivers of Norway. Holy noodle, it's cold. We got some REEEALLY nice food. Steak and potatoes with gravy and chocolate pudding for dessert. Plus some hot chocolate. How I was gonna miss good food for the rest of the trip.

Day 3: On the road again.

A bridge we had to cross. Looks very sturdy, doesn't it?

Then we just walked and walked, and it started raining and we walked and walked and eventually we reached the next hut. Some more ice cold rivers we had to walk through in our spare shoes and no pants. Cold.

Baaaah. Some sheeps that were outside our hut. Why I took a picture of them? I dunno.

Day 4: Some more walking.

If you like crossing odd looking bridges, Norway is the place for you.

Don't look down.

Froggy

Well we did reach the hut eventually.

Day 5: Now this was where the fun started to wear off a bit. We had to through lots of snow and cold rivers, plus the mountains were pretty steep. Although we did get to walk around in the snow wearing no pants.

Here's proof. And in case anyone was wondering, yes, my underwear does say "I love when chocolate chop cookies follow me", and yes, that was where I got my MSN name from.

Again we made it to the hut alive.

Day 6: We took a resting day, so no trekking and no pictures. This day I kind of really started getting tired of crispbread, which was the only bread that was available among the long-lasting food products in the unmanned huts.

Day 7: Walk walk walk.

The road goes ever on and on

Well we kind of reached a dead end. The red line shows where the road was SUPPOSED to be, but UNFORTUNATELY it happened to be flooded. So we had to spend about 2 hours walking around the lake. Pfff I was really down that day. It just seemed so stupid and hopeless. We ended up walking for about 11 hours that day.

Day 8: More walking. We actually had a hut with electricity for the night for a change, so we got our clothese nice and dry.

Pretty clouds.

So we walked and walked some more. We decided to walk off the road, since the map we had, which wasn't a very detailed one, since we hadn't originally planned on walking this way, so we hadn't bought any map for the area, showed that the road did a really long detour. We got so lost. We had no idea where we were until we almost accidently found the road again. Then when we, by looking at the map and our surroundings, came to the conclusion that we were probably almost at the asphalt road again, we met some locals who were out fishing. We asked them where we were on the map. Turned out we were only halfways. Blah, and it was already 6 PM. At least it all went downhill from here. Except it's not a good thing that it goes downhill, since when it's this steep, it's really exhausting going downhill. When we reached some summer cottage area, it started getting really foggy, and it was hard to find the path. We had to ask some more locals, but we seriously couldn't find it.

At long last, we found it. Thing was, it was a really bad path. It would probably have taken several hours and lots of exhaustment going all the way down. But then luck finally smiled 'pon us. Extreme luck. At a trolley cart like thing, almost like a rollercoaster that was only for people who were a member of something that we had tried to see if we could get a ride with earlier, we saw some people stand. We went over to them, and we were allowed to ride it down. And darn, it was steep. I have seriously no idea how we were ever going to have gotten down that mountain alive if we hadn't gotten a ride on that thing.

The asphalt road at long last. Actually, the asphalt wasn't very nice walking on. It really made your feet hurt.

My favourite picture of the trip.

At long last, we reached the village, and got a room at the hotel. Their restaurant was closed though, since we had walked for about 13 hours and it was around 10 PM. So we went to bed with no food, since I was too tired to even eat some of the food we had brought ourselves.

A swan that flew in through the window in the hotel. Nah, it's actually a towel. Pretty nice.

Day 8: The breakfast was the best. It had been more than a week since I had had juice, and I'm so addicted to juice. And I find that there's a juice machine refill thingy, and since we had already paid for the food, I could just take as much as I wanted to. I ended up drinking 7 glasses. Then we took the bus back to the hut where we had slept the very first day, and where our car was. We slept there.

Day 9: Drove to the city where the ferry was. We arrived 5 hours early though, so we had to waste those 5 hours. BORING. At least we got some nice china food. Norwegian food is durn expensive. It's like 2,5 times as expensive as here. We slept on the ferry.

Day 10: Back home, yay.

I might've gotten the days and the day photographs were taken a bit wrong, since it's quite a while ago, so I don't remember every little detail of it.

So what have I learnt about Norway?

- Their highways are small.
- Their food is expensive
- The have two different languages, which is really silly
- They seem to like crispbread
- They use their flag almost as much as we do. I've yet to see a country that has their flag out as often as in Denmark

The trip was the most physically and mentally challenging (and probably challenged) thing I've ever done. It was exhausting, it was sometimes unbearable, and it was painful. Definitely doing it again, yep.

If anyone actually read all that, kudos to you.

P.S. I have loads more pictures if anyone's interested. Those that are in this topic are the only ones I felt were show-worthy, though.