Heading Home

Out Flight was at 7:50 and the airport is about 30 minutes away so we set the alarm for 5am. We were on the road by 5:30 and light traffic to the airport. The car return was easy, just park the car and drop the keys, then to the usual bottleneck at airports, check in. They seem to work on those parts of air travel that save the airlines time and money, but not the parts that save the customer any time. Iceland Air had 1 person checking people in and a line of people strung out across the whole checkin area. They finally realized that they were not going to get everyone checked in before the plane left, so they added another 2 people and it got caught up. We thought we had lots of time, but went right to the plane from check in. I sat with a Danish couple who were meeting their 2 daughters in Iceland for a 2 week family vacation. The husband was a full fledged Dane but his wife was American and had moved to Denmark 35 years ago. So of course I had to flush out the idea of taxes, health care, retirement and why those Danes are so darn happy. He was a software guy for Hewlett Packard. His take on American health care was that America is too big to have a country wide health care program but is crazy not to have something better than what we have. Each European country has it's own system and they are all different because the local cultures are different. He was thinking each state should have their own system. The other difference he pointed out was that in Denmark people and businesses sort of proudly pay their taxes to support the public parks, transportation, health care, old people, etc so the idea of ducking out on taxes would be sort of shameful. At the same time he pointed out, they do not over-use their system or try to take advantage of it (more shame). Maybe that is why we ride on trains and noted that they do not check for your ticket and everyone seems to still buy tickets. Someone pointed out that nobody jay walks in Denmark and we noticed the same thing. There can be no traffic at all, and people still wait for the walk light. I suppose it would be shameful to do so. Interesting.

We landed at Reykjavik, Iceland with it's lava fields. Today it was pretty clear out and we could see the mountains in the distance. Iceland basically has one road that goes around its circumference and I am guessing you could drive around it in 2 days based on what the Danish couple told me. We had leftover Danish Kroners so we bought some Icelandic beer for Jacob as thanks for guiding us around Boston. We got change in Iceland kroners so I thing we have coins from every country. Watched 2 movies on the plane to Boston (5 hrs) which gobbled up the time.

Boston went very smoothly and Jake met us and got us on the SilverLine to the bus station with a little time time spare so we could chat. I waited forever to get bus tickets (same issue as the airport checkin) but we were soon headed north out of Boston on the bus. The bus takes longer but is very quiet compared to the plane and the seats have more room and for some reason our tickets were very inexpensive today ($49 each). Can't drive (or park) for that. It is also nice to have wi-fi so I coulld catch up on mail, news, etc. We napped a bit and realized that we had been awake for a long time. Fifteen minute stop at White River to stretch the legs and get a drink then the home stretch back to Burling. Got in around 7 pm and a taxi to work in Williston where our car was waiting (thanks Seth). We picked up the dog who was excited to see us (but he gets excited about seeing anyone, so who knows) and then home. Still no kitchen but it looks like it getting there. Now we are really tired so off to bed.

Fredericksborg Castle, Wind Turbines. Car Day in Denmark

Today is our last full day here in Scandinavia, specifically Denmark, and since we did the "city day" yesterday in Copenhagen, we decided to do a quick lap around the countryside to see how the Danes live. Breakfast and then in the car to drive north to Frederiksborg Castle which was built by Christian IV (my new hero) as his "usual place". We saw his place in Copenhagen yesterday and it was fantastic. So we used this castle as an excuse to get out of dodge and see the countryside. This castle, even after being partially burned down and rebuilt a few times is big and beautiful. It is a bit overwhelming and confusing because they filled it with what appears to be every painting of every monarch, every chest of drawers ever carved as presents to every royal family ever being royal. They also loaded it up with church stuff, knight stuff and anything else they had crammed into back closets and sheds. I went to see my hero Christian IV and ended up seeing all the Christian IV wannabees. It is nonetheless impressive, and the Danes have out of the public money kept it up and are very proud of everything there. I need to research who married whom before I go back so I can keep track of who all these people are.

Did I mention Denmark is also chock full of wind turbines? When we flew in I could count a couple dozen as we landed. Denmark has been developing wind turbines for decades and last I checked they were considered the largest maker of turbines. They get 20% of their electricity from wind energy. When you drive around, you will see 1, 2, 3 5, 20, all different number and also all sized turbines you can imagine because the small ones are the earlier ones that are still running today. They usually sit in fields with wheat growing around them, but many are off-shore. I drove by a bunch of really old ones today and then realized they were sitting in the back yard of Risø. Riso is the standards organization whose papers I have been reading for the last few decades and here they are 6km from my hotel. Very cool. Pretty clunky looking wind turbines though.

The countryside is covered with wheat and someone told us today that is is just about ready to harvest and because the weather has been so wet, they have to act quickly when it is ready and when the weather cooperates so it is dry enough.

We drove north to the coast and stopped in the town of Gilleleje. They have a walking mall down town (2 blocks so it is a small town) and a beach with free parking and nice benches for people to sit and relax. I have probably commented before on the "public wealth" here. The roads are in good shape, the public transportation, either train or bus goes everywhere and is simple but well maintained, and there are lots of simple, well-groomed parks for people to enjoy. They get free college tuition (only 4 year university, not grad school) and 1000Kr per month to live on while they are in school. Health care is provided (by the way we were told that if a foreigner gets hurt here, they are taken care of compliments of Denmark, although I doubt it would cover triple heart bypasses or the like), and maternity leave is pretty generous (read David Brooks pieces on the value of early childhood care based on statistics). What you do not see a lot of is really wealthy people, although we did see some nice oceanside homes today, so there must be some. Maybe I have rose colored glasses here but they seem proud to contribute to the public wealth and it shows.

So we tried to get lost on some rural roads, which is hard because there are not that many roads being a small island (we were not on the larger part of Denmark). We found a bakery and bought real Danish danishes for our son Jake (Jake, don't read this. It is supposed to be a surprise for tomorrow) and they wrapped it up special so it would last the day in a box, gift wrapped. Nice touch.

We were pretty beat from the almost 3 weeks of travel and decided to head back to the hotel and pack and get a last dinner in town somewhere. We actually stopped by the big Cathedral in town and took a few pictures, but never made it to the Viking Ship Museum. I think we hit saturation sometime in the last day or 2.

We picked up a few things to bring home, found some pizza for dinner (we've found Scandinavian pizza to be really good, and different than home), went back to the hotel, and packed. Tomorrow it is back to those thieving vikings at Iceland Air. This time we come prepared with real kroners (Swedish and Danish, so take that).

Rain in Copenhagen

So it was payback day (actually only the morning) for all the awesome weather we have had here. I could hear it pouring outside when my eyes cracked open this morning. The plan was to take the train to Copenhagen and get a walking tour with a guy named Richard who dresses up as Hans Christian Andersen. We have rain jackets but no umbrella so the hotel just happened to have an extra umbrella a guest had forgotten and we both tucked under it and walked to the railroad station in our little town of Roskilde. We bought a 24 hour ticket that as it turned out was good for all the transportation (metro and buses) in Copenhagen as well. It took about 30 minutes to get to the station in downtown Copenhagen on the nice smooth quiet electric train (we've got to get some of these). We asked about driving into Copenhagen but parking is sky high in the city and you can tell because this disincentive works because there are very few cars in Copenhagen and lots of walking streets and lots of bicycles and a few scooters here and there. We hit the tourist info place where we were supposed to meet Richard and loaded up on maps. Richard arrived in his top hat, coat and tails (the Hans Christian Andersen garb) and apologized that it was raining too hard to really give us a tour that would be much good because all the interesting stuff he usually does is outside. He did do another tour in the afternoon at Rosenborg Castle so we told him we might meet him there. So we decided to go to the National Museum but stopped at city hall (free admission) mostly because it was raining so hard. We ran into Richard (Hans), his old high school buddy from New Jersey (Steve) and a woman from San Francisco (Amy) and Richard decided to take us to the Bertel Thorvaldsens museum (whoever he was). I had actually seen his name on a few things over the last couple of days so we joined them. Richard didn't charge us anything but was going there anyway. He turned out to be like a non-stop encyclopedia and basically wore us out with all the info we got. If you walk into a museum or town and walk around, you have no idea what you are looking at but if you have a guy like this framing everything you are seeing, it is a whole different thing. It was raining so hard on the way to the museum that he stopped by a restaurant that he knew and chatted up the owner who gave us all complimentary shots of schnapps to warm us up. Class act.

So Thorvaldsens was a sculptor who worked with his dad (also a sculptor) but really had natural talent and blew by his dad quickly (sounds like dad was ok with that). He was a natural and soon became the most sought after sculptor in the world at that time (1770 to 1844). He had the talent but the market was in Rome so at an early age, he moved to Rome and set up shop to make sculptures for kings and rich folks all over the world. He first did plaster casts, then had his "students" rough out the marble version, then he finished the marble versions. He did a lot of plaster sculptures that did not end up being transferred to stone and many of these were on display as well. The style of the day was based around Greek mythology so most of the famous guys wanted to be dressed in togas, as did their wives. He also did a lot of religious pieces. All I could think of was another one of those lucky people who discovered their natural ability, loved what they did and made a long successful career out of it (and got wicked rich). He really did have the talent and it showed in the beautiful pieces he did.

So after that we went back out in the rain and dropped in at the Christiansborg Palace and saw the royal viewing rooms. where all the official royal events take place. The monarchy sort of dissolved in the early 1800's after they set up a Parliament, but the Danes still love their royal family and keep the traditions alive. We saw the most amazing tapestries that were done just a few years ago by a Danish artist that took 60 people 10 years to weave. They were full of Danish historical references and just the research must have taken him years. Another passionate guy with a really big project leaving his mark.

The history of royal families is fun to figure out because the marriages were to make alliances between countries and a lot of wheeling and dealing was going on to combine countries or territories. The most colorful monarch in Denmark is Christian IV (1577 to 1648) who took the throne at 19 and lived to be 70 and devoted each and every day to doing really interesting and edgy stuff. The public loved him, got behind him and Denmark truly advanced during the time of his reign. I have to read his biography when I get back because he sounds like a dynamo. He had a castle (actually he had a lot of stuff built) and was out each day while they were building it measuring the stones to make sure the workers got it right. He partied a lot, always participated personally on the front lines of any wars Denmark entered into on horseback (unlike our leaders today), and generally was a well loved king and role model (except for the womanizing parts). He built Rosenborg Castle as his summer home and this is the tour Richard was giving in the afternoon. This tour was inside so we had a group of about 10 people which was about the right size for this castle as some of the viewing areas are small. Richard gave us the entire scoop on Christian IV and a lot of his stuff was there. The Danish crown jewels were there as well under lock and key.
So at the end of the tour we said good bye to the folks we'd met and went to find something warm to drink. We ran into Richard and his high school buddy again at a bakery and warmed up with coffee and tea. We then decided it was too late to do the National Museum so we did a walking tour of our own out of the Rick Steves' book. These are great because they get you away from the fray and help you look past all of the modern stuff and points out the buildings on the back streets that have the richest stories. We did this until we got near the harbor and then decided to hop on the Metro and go out of the city, just to ride the super high tech subway with no driver (all done with computers folks). What a fantastic transport system they have here. It is weird to sit in the front of the train, where a driver might sit and go from stop to stop smoothly and quietly. We came back into the city and decided to stop in Christiania. This is a hippie commune community in the 1970's and there was a restaurant there that Deb had read about. The restaurant looked out of business and the community is still there, but it looked like it had gotten a little rough. They had signs saying"No Photos" everywhere I can assume because there are still drug deals going on there. We got out of there and back on the Metro, and found a restaurant to celebrate Deb's birthday. We found a great place which turned out to be the oldest restaurant in Copenhagen and had amazing fish on the menu. They brought out chocolate cake with a candle and the other folks in the restaurant seemed to enjoy my rendition of Happy Birthday. I did not know how to sing it in Danish, sorry.

It was getting late so we walked back to the train station (seeing the accordion street performer for the third time today - he must go from street to street all day) and hopped on the next train home which tonight took about 20 minutes. Oh yeah, it stopped raining midday so the afternoon was great. Tomorrow we stay around Roskilde to see the Viking museum and go for a drive to see Christian IVs winter castle.

Not so fast retreat from Bergen to Copenhagen

So we kind of misinterpreted the flight and we did not leave this morning but rather this afternoon, so we slept some more this morning, moved the car off the street to free parking (at 8am all the delivery trucks roll in) to a lot up the street, and went back to the hotel for breakfast. After that we packed up, checked out, rolled the bags down to the parked car and decided to walk all the way around Bergen and back. Today Bergen was crawling with tourists (that would be us). There were about 4 to 6 cruise ships in the harbor and the wharf was loaded with people. Being Bergen experts by now (very smug) we took the upper streets away from the wharf and avoided all that. We watched one of the big cruise ships back in and parallel park at one of the big docks (at least I thought it was cool). They have side thrusters so they can actually push themselves around pretty well. I did notice some dents in the back bumper so I guess it isn't always perfect landing for those guys. The woman at the hotel sent us off looking for pretty little white houses away from the downtown, which we found and they were indeed very small and white and quaint. We then found a back way into the ramparts above the fortified area of town and got a good view of the whole town. We were too cheap to ride the funicular up the side of the valley so this was just as good and free. Also got some great views of the back of the tenements (above) with the morning sun. So back to the car and off to the airport. I stopped for diesel (fill before returning the car) and gave our last kroners to the fuel guy. I sadly returned the car (it was fun) and we got to the airport, checked our luggage and then sat outside until we had to board. The flight was 1.5 hours to Copenhagen and uneventful. If you want a drink or snack you have to buy them. We are much too cheap for that.

Dehydrated and starving (just kidding) we got to the Copenhagen airport, got the rental car (actually more like a go cart, yippee), and headed west a half an hour to Roskilde where our hotel is.

This town is way older than Copenhagen and all the monarchs are buried here in the cathedral. It has a big downtown street for pedestrians only and I do not get the sense that they see many tourists. Copenhagen gets the spotlight. We checked in and did a quick recon walk around the town and found a great Mexican place under the tattoo parlor. Tattoos are big here, and most seem a little too big, if you know what I mean. We easily got money out of the ATM so that was good news after the saga in Norway, plus I am not sure they have deposit bottles here.

We checked out the grocery store in town which is always a good indicator of what things cost (less than Norway, which would not be a stretch), and also is fun to see all the weird stuff they buy here. Not much English on store labels so who knows what some of this stuff is.

The train station is right in town and the plan is to hit Copenhagen tomorrow and then stay around here to visit the Viking Museum, the Cathedral, and maybe drive around and look at wind turbines. It is supposed to pour for the next few days so we will see.

Final Fjords

For our last day in Norway we decided to do an all day road trip with the diesel sipping Fiesta. I love driving this car. It is small and fun to hammer (granted a tack hammer) down these skinny twisty roads. Mixing it up with the big Mercedes buses and Scania trucks is as close to my motorcycle as I am going to get this trip. Deb figured out a great loop that took us up over some mountains, along some nice hidden fjords not yet promoted to tourists (emphasis on yet), and a couple of ferry rides just to make sure we were doing our fair share for the Norwegian economy.

It was supposed to be beautiful today but the day started off overcast and a bit misty(remember Bergen is called the Norwegian rain forest). We took the same road out of Bergen then turned east and followed Rt 7 over hill and dale. Again, these Norwegians love to drill tunnels. They put them everywhere, and they put tunnels in places with very little population but where some of the best fjord viewing is (are you thinking what I am thinking, future tourist kroners..). I think they are using their oil money to develop their tourist trade. These tunnels are big enough for buses and big trucks so they deliver the ingredients for a successful tourist industry (tourists' plastic Norwegian moose (meese?) and soft ice cream). We also noticed that in these parts today, they are growing cherry trees all over the place. They sell them beside the road, but have enough to wholesale them somewhere. It must be the fact that down in the fjords, the temperature is moderated a bit by all the water. The big amusement ride today was ducking and dodging travel trailers, buses and trucks on the ever changing twisty roads with lane widths varying from 1 to 2 lanes. Nothing like cruising through a deep turn and discovering that the lane just went from 2 to 1 and a logging truck is headed right for you. By the end of the day I got used to slamming on the brakes, hugging the right shoulder until the mirrors just kissed the guardrail, and creeping by whoever was coming the other way. I didn't have to but a lot of folks had to back up. There were a lot of mirrors getting quickly folded back, especially on the travel trailers with those extra wide mirror extenders.

The bus drivers are amazing. I first witnessed this last week on the snow road (previous post), but today I saw buses go places I didn't think my little car would go. These guys are good. And the buses run to all these tiny little remote towns, not like home!!

At one spot we got stuck behind a half mile of cars, campers and trucks because a big truck did something at the entrance to a tunnel and blocked traffic both ways. We finally crawled past him but did not see the damage so not sure what happened there?

The ferries are very efficient and you no sooner shut your car off, than the thing is moving. The minute they hit the dock on the other side, the ramp drops and 3 lanes of cars jockey their way out. I got real low on diesel and had a tough time finding more until we almost got back to Bergen ($9.33 per gallon!). Fortunately, this thing is a miser and I averaged 57 mpg this last tank. Take that you Prius weenies!

So by the end of the day the sun was brilliant and we caught some dinner and walked along the harbor with wonderful late evening light (dark around 10pm). Street was full of people, harbor full of boats.

So tomorrow we fly to Copenhagen. I gotta pack.

Lepers, Composers, and Recycled Cheese Graters

It rained last night in the Norwegian Rainforest (what the locals call Bergen). It actually sprinkled here and again today, but not so much that we got too wet. First stop this morning was the Leprosy Museum. Believe it or not, the walking tour woman told us it was her favorite thing to go see. Not my favorite, but it was another walking tour and the history of it is pretty interesting and maybe tells a little about the damage done by stereotyping and narrow minds. Leprosy is a bacterial disease that 95% of humans are genetically immune to, but for centuries was associated with "unclean" living (as per Moses in the Bible it seems). Priests were not allowed to touch lepers for religious reasons (the unclean thing), but the nuns could, so the hospital out back of the church started filling with more and more cases of leprosy until it was full (140 at its peak). It was not until the late 1800's that someone started looking at the patterns of infections and discovered that the vast population (95%) are genetically immune to it, and it was spread through the air (coughing). This part of Norway had a lot of lepers because of the damp conditions around here. This hospital was seeing lepers since the 1400's so it went on quite a while. These days it is curable but many still suffer because of the stigma attached (let's keep those minds more open going forward).

Next we caught the tram (oh man I wish we had one of these babies going from Bristol to Williston) which is the "light rail" transport that goes from downtown Bergen to the outskirts and feeds all the buses along the way. We walked 20 minutes from the rail stop to the Edvard Grieg home, museum and concert hall. I did not recognize his name (red neck) but when I heard the music, I knew who he was from Bugs Bunny and Bambi Vs Godzilla cartoons (who said I wasn't cultured) (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPFxBzlFe94&feature=related). Being a late 1800's forward thinker he also built a "composer's hut" where he went to write his masterpieces, which was the predecessor to our modern day "man cave". This is where men go to endeavor in lofty pursuits (and also avoid the dreaded "honey-do" list). Norway is very proud of their famous folks and once again, even at this museum the other very famous musician showed up, Ole Bull. Gotta look him up because his picture is everywhere, his statue is everywhere, he has bars named after him, etc, etc. Sorry Edvard, you got upstaged again. Anyway, nice museum, nice calming music.

We were going to go to Ole Bull's estate but ran out of time. It was a tram stop south of here, then a bus, then a ferry ride away and we would have arrived just about closing time. The museums here seem to only be open between 11am and 3 or 5pm, sometimes 6pm, so you gotta be quick.

We took the tram back into Bergen and hit the other 2 art museums we missed before, The Contemporary Art Museum (lots of Norwegians painting just like the French painters, but Norwegian landscapes and people) houses the "classic" paintings of Norway. A couple of great ones and some very dark ones.

The West Norway Museum of Decorative Art, which had a silver exhibit (spoons, dishes, tea warmers, snooze fest,..) and some of the really creative, simple, fresh "thing" designs like furniture, kitchenware, lamps, pottery, etc. I love this stuff because it is all about function and simplicity and somehow they make it look cool (think Swedish office chairs from the 60's) . They had a special collection of stuff built with recycled stuff (see attached cheese grader lamp). We rested our dogs at the museum cafe and then headed to find supper. We got sidetracked by a guy named Bob (www.bobatlarge.com) who was keeping the street crowd entertained. We chatted him up a bit after and learned he's travelling all over the world doing street performing. He had just came from a Street Performance Olympics in Dublin so he is pretty serious about this stuff. We found a great place that looked more like a bar than restaurant, but we had some amazing fish souffle and mackerel.

Then a stroll around town, watched a ferry come in with some locals on it (island?), checked out some rich person's boat (complete with helicopter on board, Cayman Islands tag), then back to the hotel. I think we hit everything there is to see in Bergen. Maybe a long drive tomorrow..

Contrary to what the weather guys said, it did not rain today (actually it did a little tonight). We are having amazing luck with the weather and appreciate it. The first thing we did, and the highlight of the day, was the walking tour of Bergen. We bought a 48 hour Bergen Card which gets us into all the museums and lets us ride the bus, light rail etc. Bergen has about 250,000 people and after you walk around a bit, it feels smaller and smaller. The woman who gave the tour (in English thank you very much) was great. Bergen really got going around 1100, about the time everything else seemed to get started here in Norway. Bergen started fishing. For centuries they traded dried fish for grain. They specialized in dried fish. Cod fish was (and maybe still is), the fish of choice. Dried fish was valuable to the world because it can be stored for years (during shipment, on long ocean voyages, etc, etc). Bergen was also the capital of Norway for centuries. Around the late 1300's German businessmen came to town and stayed at first for the summer, and then all year round. The got special provisions from the Norwegian government to exclusive trading rights in the fishing industry and this kicked off a 3-400 year run of German controlled trade in Bergen. German boys (no girls) were shipped to Bergen at 13-15 years of age and put to work. If you see a postcard or hat or something from Bergen, it will more than likely be the 10 or 11 tenement houses right on the waterfront. These tenements were long houses that each housed about 100 German men who ran businesses in Bergen. Each had a central kitchen toward the back (run by boys), a communal room where they could hold meetings and socialize. On the back of each tenement was the "store front" where commerce took place. The boys were tested when they arrived to see if they were tough enough to live there doing hard work in dark damp conditions (Bergen winter weather), and they were sent home if not. They stayed there for 10 or 20 years and then returned home at middle age to take normal lives back home in Germany.

The Norwegians eventually nationalized all of this and kept a lot of the Germans to run the businesses in town. The feeling among Norwegians is that it was an okay arrangement because it increased commerce with the outside world, even if they did not control it.

The other historical theme is fires. Seems like they had fires that wiped out some part of the town every 20 to 30 years and they have a whole museum dedicated to fire. The big fire in 1702 wiped most of the city out, and the last big fire was in 1955. After this last fire, the old tenements were almost bulldozed and modern buildings put in but after poking around in the ashes, they realized that there were several cities buried under the ground and they decided to restore the city and rebuild it very carefully, put a couple museums in to show off all the stuff they dug up and maybe charge some kroners for tourists to see them. Great tour.

We then went to the Rosenkrantz Tower which has had enough rich and/or famous people or kings rebuild it that it is hard to tell which part was built when. But we climbed to the top and got some great pictures. One exhibit here was about all the intricate laws that were in place back on the 11-1200's. They were very organized and very fair.

We stopped by the Theta Museum which is basically one room that was restored to the way it was during World War II and served as a place for the Norwegian Resistance to report to the Allies the comings and goings of the Germans in Bergen, which the Germans used as a port to supply their war effort with ships, planes, fuel, ammunition and soldiers. They used radio signals from this small room to transmit over the pond to England what was moving through. There were 13 young men (19-22) running this and 9 of them lived until the end of the war. There is a weird relationship here with Germany, partly because of the whole 400 year of running things thing, and partly old wounds from WWII. They don't talk about it much.

We tried to hit the Leprosy Museum but it was closed. The small museums here only seem to be open a few hours a day, a few days a week.

So off to the art museum, or one of them. We only had 45 minutes to rip through the museum and we got through the entire thing, sort of drive-by art appreciation.

We walked all over town to find a place to eat and finally ended up back on the wharf.

The great news is we finally found an ATM that took our card and gave us money. No more digging those coke bottles out of the garbage cans..

Flam, ferries, high road, and Bergen

Today we leave Flåm after being here for 3 nights. I think we nailed it seeing everything there is to see. If you come here and do not have a lot of time, do the train, boat combo, and by all means, drive the snow road. If you are on a motorcycle, just drive around and buy some TigerBalm or BenGay so you can rub it on your neck at the end of a long day of rubber-necking.

We drove north through the loooooong tunnel again with the moon-pools every 5km to Lærdal (note the cool Norwegian character which for 10kr I will teach you how to do). We then took a really narrow 1 laner with pulloffs (man those things wear me out) to Fodnes where we took a short ferry to MannHeller. We then took Rt 55 (more 1 laner/pulloffs) to Hella and hopped another short ferry to Vangsnes. This ferry was a bit longer so I had time to go drool on an Italian guy's K1300RT (he spoke no English but told me everything about his trip and the bike in Italian (I think)). I then got to drool on a BMW 800GS with round the world stickers peeking out from under the mud on his dented and scratched alloy aluminum panniers. I got back in my diesel 4 wheeler and whimpered off the ferry. The drool on my shirt had just about dried when we got to the Hopperstad stave church in Vik that looked just like the other one at Borgond except it had more leftover 15, 16, and 17th century stuff in it. They showed us graffiti behind the altar which of course had no written words, since everyone was illiterate then, but there were lots of pictures of dragons (just to tick off the Catholics), sea dogs, and deer, but definitely lots of dragons. In the late 1800's they restored the church and included a lot of the Catholic stuff that had been taken out (some stored in nearby barns for a few hundred years and somehow not destroyed) during the Reformation in the 1500's (sent the Catholics packing and made Protestantism the official religion).

After the church it was on to my personal highlight of the day, the high road between Vik and Vinje. Not quite as nice as the snow road, but wicked decent. Not as many motorcycles up here, but lots of sheep with bells wandering around nibbling anything they could find. As you start the climb up here there is a sign telling you the road is open (just like the snow road) so I assume it closes when the snow gets too deep. How deep would that be, you might ask. All I can tell you is that the reflective markers beside the road are at the top of 10 foot high posts. Again it is barren and beautiful up here, with very little traffic. We were passed by a few bikes up there and it sure looked like fun. It is actually pretty warm so I did not see a lot of clothes on these guys other than riding suits.

I found this picture of the snow road (with a bike of course) just for reference.

So after coming down the mountain, we took the E16 all the rest of the way to Bergen. If you look at the map, the E16 looks like it would be an interstate (which is is now and then), but for the most part it is a 2 laner, and sometimes it is less (1 lane with pulloffs). We went through a gazillion tunnels today anywhere from 200 meters to 3,4,5 km long. The Norwegians pop a tunnel in just about anywhere so they must be good at it. Almost all are lit, but we found some rural ones that were one lane and dark (with sheep inside sometimes). I looked it up and Norway has more than 900 tunnels adding up to about 750km. They also have the longest road tunnel which we went through a couple times (moon pools).

We arrived in Bergen in a drizzle and quickly got lost and overshot the city and landed on the island beyond the city. The cheapo GPS app for the iPhone bailed us out and got us back into Bergen where the street to the hotel was under construction. Between this and the tunnels, the GPS app was going bananas, but we made it. There is no parking at the hotel but we can park on the street until Monday and then we have to move it to a public parking lot. We donned rain coats and walked downtown and tried a few ATMs but alas, no luck on cash. So we are hoarding our cash and exercising the credit cards which is way easy here. Everyone has tiny hand held machines that are wireless and they all take our antique, chip-less cards. We discovered today that they collect road tolls by shooting your picture, picking out your license plate, and sending you a bill (electronically I assume). I am beginning to think America is getting a little behind the times.

We had dinner at a place that sold seafood right on the dock and also cooked it if you wanted. Dinner for 2 for 255Kr is really cheap for here. That sugars out to $46. Maybe now that we are in the city, the prices will drop a bit. Slog back to the hotel and crash.

The Narrow Fjord and Steep Hike

Today we took the bus through the tunnels over to the end of the next fjord which is too narrow for the big cruise ships. We were 2 of 4 people on the bus so not sure where everyone was. We got to the town of Gudvangen where the road ends (kind of, more later) and the boat begins. There is a Viking camp there with Viking actors everywhere. Behind the cash registers, in the shops, hanging around the Viking village replica. These guys were into it and for only 10kr ($2) they would let tourists take their picture. A bunch of them were doing a fierce dance of some kind and whooping it up for a TV camera crew when we got there. So they brought the boat in and loaded us and a busload of Japanese tourists. The Japanese were from Yokohama and spoke no English, but half of the PA system messages were in Japanese. The other couple we came with were from France and very pleasant. A single older Norwegian man who also spoke no English was on the boat, and the most we could get out of him was he lived on the western coast of Norway.The narrow fjord is pretty quiet and only the smaller boats can come through. We saw a lot more of this later in the day. We got back to Flam and decided to hike a very steep trail above the narrow fjord. So we drove the car through the 2 tunnels to get to Gudvangen (deja vu) and found the one lane road on the other side of the gravel pit that leads up the side of the fjord to the town with 20 inhabitants. What is suspicious is that the boat man told us they just put a new $35M tunnel on this one lane road (that leads to 20 people) because of all the avalanches . They are up to something.

So drove to the end and headed up the hill with Deb in the lead with the backpack. Deb is a much stronger hiker and I am just out of shape so she disappeared up the hill. I got about halfway up, took a break, then realized I would never catch her, so I wimped out and came back down, laid on the beach (stone beach) and soaked my feet and tasted fjord water ( tastes like over softened water). Deb meanwhile had waited higher than me for a bit, left a water bottle for me and hiked to the top. A Swedish couple had passed me going down and told Deb I was heading down. So she got to do her hike, and I get to hang my head in shame. Time for Miller to lay off the Twinkies and get some exercise. Sorry Deb.

I hiked the lower road while I waited for Deb and found a stream that had delicious clear water, much better than the fjord. I also got to see just how quiet his fjord was when the boats disappeared. I watched some kind of otter swimming around when nobody was watching. Also snuck in a little nap. Pretty quiet.

Anyway, it started to rain just as Deb came down. She hiked 1.75 km each way (3.5 total), but climbed 740 meters, so pretty damn steep. We drove back to Flam, but missed the turn and ended up in Aurlund at the other end of the fjord. We found a nice cafe there and had dinner. Another family was there who were Americans but living in Germany. We do not normally see many Americans but in this area we are seeing a lot.

Back to the ranch to rest up for driving tomorrow. Goodbye Flam.

Trains, Bikes and Goats

We had a quick breakfast at the hotel amid a gaggle of excited youngsters. They were a big group on some kind of field trip and it looked like they were heading home.

We walked over to the train station, bought the tickets to Myrdal which included a ticket for the bikes. We rented 2 bikes from a nice guy (I could be nice in Norway for what they charge for everything), and since we had some time before the train went up the mountain, we rode down the fjord and walked the bikes 500m up the side to a farm that was really old and available to tour, get coffee and buy pancakes (they eat a lot of pancakes here). It used to be a multi-family (3), multi-generational farm and the last man held on up there until 1981 when he died of cancer. Imagine his children choosing between TV, cars, hot and cold running water and living up on this mountain with 60 some odd goats. A woman bought it after he died and has been slowly preserving it. She has been through only a few buildings (low budget operation). The house that the last man lived in has not been changed at all, as per his request so it should be more modern but it looked like he didn't go for anything new-fangled so everything was pretty old. He had a nice old radio from the 30's to liven up his evenings with Norwegian folk songs. There were 2 young women running the place. The one in charge, sort of in charge, was very quiet and shy and seemed like she had only given tours a few times and her English was so-so, but I had to smile as I quizzed her about growing up here, and learned that she was only 15. Very cute. The other woman was a college student from Finland who had never given the tour but was following the 15 year old around trying to learn what was what. I am guessing dad talked the younger one into helping out until they could get the summer student in. They did great. I like these small scale, low tech, sites. Thanks to the woman who is protecting this little peace of heaven. The barns had the standard posts tapered with flat disks carved so the mice could not climb into the barns to nibble the stores. The floors of some of the buildings had floor joists that hang below the walls. They use the crooked part of the tree as it goes out to the roots to make all kinds of interesting things. The churches did this too and I guess anything that is still working after 3000 years must be a good solution.

So back down the hill and back up the fjord to catch the famous train up the valley to Myrdal. A small herd of young guys in black jackets with red piping were riding shotgun on the tourists (that would be us). The tourist were in 2 rivers, one group from the big boat and one from the dozen or so buses. We joined the boat folks who seemed to be all Dutch and seemed like they would be more fun. They left Rotterdam a week ago and cruised all the way here. Mostly older folks, but having a great time. We sat with a trio of whom only the younger (a mere 70 or so) woman spoke much English. She was one of those people who enjoyed herself anywhere and dragged anyone she met into the fun. Very pleasant.

Speaking of old women, we kept seeing older women dressed in as much purple as they could dig out of their closets and all wearing red hats. There is some red hat society thing that people kept telling us had started in the US. Again as a demographic, these women were having fun and were not shy about it. Let's hear it for acting silly in public.

The train ride was great and the train climbed very steep tracks. I was expecting some kind of cog like setup but did not see any signs of anything but regular old tracks and wheels, so they must get enough traction somehow. I did see a box next to one of the tiny stations labelled "sand" which is a little un-nerving if you think about it. Gotta research that one.

Lots of tunnels going up and waterfall after waterfall. It takes an hour to get up, more if the train coming down is late (it was), and there are 8 or so stops at tiny stations that pickup and let off hikers and bikers. There is a road that also comes down the 20km from Myrdal, which many folks walk down all or part way. We, like others, planned to ride bikes down. We stopped for a 5 minute photo op at a huge waterfall that sprayed the crowd and the train due to the enormous amount of runoff right now. We saw pictures of the same waterfall and they were nothing like what is going on right now. This month of rain they have been having has to go somewhere..

At the top Deb bought some chocolate and we headed down the hill. We actually had to walk down the first few km of road because it is nothing more than a washed out road bed. They had tiny excavators (Kubota) parked here and there to rebuild the road. I keep seeing work sites in the middle of the week with nobody working at them, so not sure when anyone works here?

So the boulder strewn goat path (walk) turned to a steep gravel goat path (walk and ride) and we finally got down to where you could ride all the time (just plain old goat path).

We soon had to stop because lo and behold the trail was filled with sleeping goats (about 30). Two women have a milking goat farm right between the railroad and the road. So if you have 100s of tourists walking or biking by each day, you had better start selling cheese (and pancakes), and they did. They stay up here all summer pasturing and milking the goats and making chese, then head down the hill when the weather goes bad (and the tourists are all gone). From here down the road follows a roaring river of glacial clear blue/green water. The water is so clear you could read a newspaper on the bottom of the riverbed. We passed lots of locals and tourist picnicking beside the road. There are really no cars on these roads, so they must hike or bike in to picnic. One couple built a makeshift wood fire in the stone wall and were cooking something for their lunch (goat stew perhaps?). Now and again the train would go by (up or down) with pointing fingers and cameras hanging out the windows.

We stopped at the small church in Flam that the 15 year old told us to not miss and it was very old and cozy and looked like they had regular services (stacks of Norwegian hymnals). I think they leave these buildings alone so they remain the antiques that they are.

We turned the bikes back in careful not to disturb the rental guy from washing his Rolls, and decided a burger and beer sounded great, which they happen to serve at the train station. The tourists were all gone so it was pretty quiet. Nice end to another sunny day.

Deagali to Flam (Amazing, amazing amazing))

Woke up to the view of the high plateau with the sky bright and patched with grey overcast, probably like it is most days here from what people say. The news of the morning was that the train from Oslo to Bergen, which is the main train route across Norway, had to re-route passengers via bus becasue the tracks at washed out a short distance away. We had breakfat in the huge main room upstairs and saw the Dutch couple again and spoke briefly with the older Norwegian couple who were staying the week and sounded like they had a schedule of enjoying the solitude here above tree-line with some short car trips to local interesting places. Paid the tab, loaded the car and headed down the hill into "town", then off to finish climbing the next couple of peaks on high mountain road before descending into Geilo. This is a ski town and is on par with Lillehammer, except is not famous like Lillehammer. We tried the 2 mini-bank machines but still no luck on cash. Fortunately, bottles and cans have a 1 kroner deposti so we can pick through the dumpsters to get enough money to eat. OK, not really. None of these small banks accept plain old MasterCard ATM cards, but it appears we need a MasterCard Euro card. The debit card does work in the bigger brand name gas stations so I filled the tank (still mid 50mpg even with the mountain passes and me babying the throttle) and headed west (as much as you can up here). We followed Route 7 to Route 50 which are both spectacular high mountain roads with very little traffic. This was a surprising day because I have never thought of, or heard of Norway as having this high tundra kind of places, but it does. We did get passed by a couple of bigger trucks. The only kind of truck I have seen here says Scania (under the bugs on the front), so they must supply all the small towns up here. There are lots of sheep with bells that sort of wander all over the place and you have to keep an eye out for them up here. There are also lots of tunnels up here. One tunnel was very narrow to the point where you had to slow down and jiggle past the oncoming car when one came through the other way. The small rural tunnels have no lights inside so when you enter you need to let your eyes adjust. And of course, where do you suppose a Norwegian sheep might rest on a warm summer day but in the middle of the lane in the end of the dark tunnel. They love to lay in the end of the tunnel and combined with the darkness, it makes for some excitement if you do not slow down before you enter.

We got to our destination, Flam, by early afternoon. The fjords here are breathtaking, like the first time you see the Grand Canyon. Waterfalls coming off the sides of the fjord, the small villages at the end, and boats hauling tourists back and forth. The towns are surprisingly small and the "crop" here, probably for decades, is tourists. What is cool is that the town gets small again at the end of the day when the cruise ships leaves. They control growth really well so they have not lost the innocence and the image of the fjord. Flam has one dock and it seems like one ship pulls in every morning for milking. The mountain train goes up every hour or 2 and you can hike down or ride bikes back down. There are a few other boats you can tour the fjord on. There is the fast zodiac boat tour that looks exciting, and the big classic slow cruiser you can stop at towns along the way in. There is a bike/walking path that goes all along the fjord so you can walk or bike to the town (Aurlund) at the other end. Nicely controlled so it stays very pristeen, but they can still get a lot of people in and out. There are only a couple small hotels here so not much car traffic. The boat is the meal ticket here.

So we could not get bikes to ride back down the hill from the other end of the train, so we hopped back in the car and drove the old "snow road" between Aurland and Laerdal (can't spell it because I don't have those characters). Wow, wow and wow. This road is unbelievable.

If my brother Dave is reading this, you gotta see this road (think motorcycles!!). It climbs via one to 1.5 lane switchbacks (if someone comes the other way, you have to pull off or back up) and there is no sign in town telling you how to get on it. It is 1 to 1.5 lanes over the top and gets a bit wider way up. The road is 48km and is above treeline for the most part. There are lots of motorcycles, a few hikers, a few bicycles and believe it or not we met a couple of tour buses, and I have no idea how they make it down the switchbacks. This is what I would imagine Alaska to look like out in the tundra. Yes and there are sheep wandering around nibbling anywhere they like, and napping in the road.

Once off the snow road and back down in the valley, we drove to a huge stave church at Borgund. A college student showed us around with her flashlight (really dark inside) and told us she grew up in town and her elementary class had 2 kids in it (I assume she and one other). She is studying documentary film-making and hopes to live in Oslo when she gets out of college. She wanted to move back maybe to raise a family someday, but it might be tough sledding doing the movie thing here in Borgund.

So back to the hotel by 19:00 for dinner via the longest tunnel in the world. 25km long and it has 3 pockets that are lit up in surreal blue and yellow light just to keep people awake. They have places you can stop inside to take a break. We had dinner with an American couple from Seattle who were here for a week and heading back to Oslo the next day.

So a walk around town where we noticed the boat was gone (they apparently leave each day by 7pm) after dinner and off to bed.

Moss to Degali (Over the Alpine Hill)

Today we left the swankiest hotel to date on an island called Jeloy. Swanky but a little pretentious. We were originally going to cross over to the main part of Norway on the ferry to Horten, but decided that to save some Kroners, and I actually enjoy driving here. The plan was to drive north up the channel, fjord, bay, whatever it is called and cross over near Drobak on the bridge there. So we went north with light traffic and crossed at Drobak only to find the tunnel we were going to go through was closed (fire?). Last night we asked the lady at the ferry if the ferry was busy and she said yes because of the tunnel closing, which never registered that this was the tunnel she was talking about. So we asked a driver ed teacher having a break with his young female student (probably calming her or himself down), how to get across. His advice was to go north to Oslo and cross there. So Oslo was in the tea leaves all along, even though we were avoiding it (another city). So off to Oslo which was pretty busy, traffic wise, and then headed east into the Norwegian outback (aka boonies).

The first thing we noticed this morning was how many tunnels there are in Norway. We may have gone through 1 or 2 in Sweden but I don't remember. But Norway pops a tunnel through any place a hill or mountain gets in the way. They are anywhere from 300 meters to 15 miles long (Deb says longest in the world) which we may go through in the next few days. They must have gotten good at it. They also must be willing to pay a little (or lot) more to do tunnels instead of roads that go around and/or over. These tunnels are nice and smooth (and free) and well kept and well lit inside.

So Oslo looked like a port city with half industrial port and half cruise liner docks. We have seen a ton of cruise liners here and once you see them out on the fjords at sunset, you can understand why they like to come here to Norway. We have run into a few folks off the cruise ships and they seem to drop folks off for the afternoon with strict orders that the boat leaves at some exact time. No idea what happens if you miss the ship. I assume you pay for transportation to the next landing spot.

The other thing we had a hard time with is getting cash from the ATM machines. We tried a few before finding one that would take ours. Our daily limit is not that high so we have to be careful because of how expensive everything is here. The other issue is that our credit card does not get taken everywhere because it does not have a chip in it and the machines here do not read the strip correctly or at all sometimes, so you end up paying cash (or making a mad dash for the car before they can call the police).

We headed up into central Norway and very quickly after heading out of Oslo, encountered the wilderness. We were trying to figure out where else this country felt like and couldn't. It feels like we are travelling in Alaska (never been there but this is what we imagined) except the small remote villages there have been around for hundreds of years. There are some valleys with crops growing and small farms, but the forest is very alpine-like. We climbed and climbed up the valleys on a road that followed an old railroad bed and stopped at one of the stave churches which Norway is famous for. They used to have a thousand stave churches up until the time of the great plague (1349) that wiped out half their population. After that the number dropped and many of the churches fell down or were burned. Now there are 28 left in the whole country, and we passed 3 or 4 today. Stave refers to the wooden staves they were constructed with (basically 4 or more trees stood on end to make a really tall church). We went in one and saw the beautiful altar painted a couple hundred years ago. One of those objects that someone spends hundreds (more?) of hours on over many years and you just see how out of place beautiful it is when you see it contrasted with these rustic surroundings. Then a kid came in and said they charge 35 kroner a head to look inside the church, so we left and poked around the graveyard ($7 bucks to look inside a church seems pretty un-Christian to me). The graves covered a time period from very recent (2000's) back to the 1700's. We later found out that here they re-use grave sites after 150 years or so. If it is like home, stones did were not written on much before the 1700's and if they did it was on limestone which did not hold up. Anyway, nice church.

If my brother is reading this, this is where we should go someday to ride motorcycles. Beautiful twisty roads with roaring rivers and mountain passes. We hit the "chains required" signs as we climbed and soon were going up 7-9% grade roads over the first of what looked to be a few very high passes. We climbed above treeline to the top of the first pass and looked back at a spectacular view of the valley with its river/lake shining in the afternoon sun. From the top of the first pass we could see a broad plateau to the next pass with scrub trees and grass. There are also some seasonal cabins where people must come up to ski in the winter. We were told later that these are camps and not year-round (unless you were crazy enough to live up here year round). We were also told that they keep this road open all winter (yikes). We descended to the center of the alpine plateau and found our hotel in the tiny town of Dagali. It is only open part of the year, is very alpine town feeling and has several large gathering rooms with lots of places to sit and look out over the mountains. We went for a hike down to the raging river (they just had a solid month of rain), up a cross-country ski trail into town (wide spot with a corner store that might be in business, hard to tell), and then hiked back up the road to the church, then back to our hotel. There were only a few other people staying there, and a tour bus full of older Norwegians (bork, bork) that did not speak English as far as anyone could tell. We met a wonderful older couple from Sweden who were staying here for the week, and we befriended a couple from Holland who we exchanged questions and answers with the rest of the night (dinner was served at the hotel because there was no other place to go within many many km). They had travelled a lot and it was fun talking to them, very nice folks.

Believe it or not they do have WiFi but I am too cheap to pay 20kr ($4) for an hour!! Off to bed..

Good bye Sweden, Hello Norway

So here is the Norway moose which looks much more regal than the Swedish moose (look back a couple blogs). I still think that Swedish moose is sneaky looking..

We left Tanumshede and headed north on the E6 which was partially under construction so we followed some detour side roads which were nice. We had to use up all of our Swedish Kroners before heading into Norway, so we filled the tank. Diesel here is about $8.50 in Sweden and slightly higher in Norway. All our Kroners filled the tank. As with the plumbing, everything here is different. Green is gas and Black is diesel so I asked another customer just to make sure I was getting the right stuff in the right tank. I did not feel as stupid for asking when neither one of us could figure the gas cap (or lack thereof) on the Fiesta. Indeed there is no cap and the nozzle pushed through some kind of steel/rubber door thingy. Nice thing is you cannot lose the cap. Everything is different and handily explained in Swedish. We got our passports out expecting to need them to cross into Norway. All the usual signs were there to slow, and then slow again and then slow down again (20mph), but that was it. We never stopped, but just slowed down and then we were back to full speed on the 4 laner. They must just slow you down and look at you driving by. Works for us.

The next hurdle was getting cash in Norwegian kroners. Sweden and Denmark and Finland joined the EU, but Sweden and Denmark kept their own currency while Finland uses Euros. Norway did not join the EU (they are pretty rich with oil, so not to their advantage) and they kept their own currency. Credit cards here all have electronic chips embedded into them and everyone has a PIN number, which we do not have. Since we are staying in out of the way places, not used to Americans, it is a bit difficult to use debit and credit cards. Not horrible, but you have to go from bank to bank until one of them works. This was the case here. Also English is a little tougher here, but still not too bad. Much better than our Norwegian for sure.

We stopped in Fredrikstad which is a restored 18th century village they put together as original as possible and then hid shops inside the buildings so you couldn't tell from the outside. The town was a garrison with cannon and all for a few hundred years. Most of the plaques talk about attacks from the Swedes and one final tense moment in 1902 when Norway asked for a divorce and got it. We also stopped at Halden and toured around another fort on a hill with much the same story. War has defined peoples spare time and maybe someday we can use the human and financial resources for better things. When you see these old towns you realize that whoever is attacking who, life sort of goes on, maybe under a different flag or currency, maybe a little better or a little worse, but everybody still gets up in the morning, kisses their kids, makes the donuts and goes back to bed each night. OK, I am done with that..

We got to our hotel and checked in. Left is the view from our balcony of the fjord (I think it is a fjord). The restaurant here was a tad expensive so we headed in to town to ask around and explore. We were told of a great spot where a lot of locals seem to meet and had a great meal. We strolled down along the boardwalk near the water where all the boats were coming in. We had been told that Norway encourages more immigration than Sweden and at least in this town you can see a lot more ethnic diversity. Quite a few women with head coverings and the guy working at the ice cream place was from Afghanistan. He says American is "King of the World with our B-52s". Not sure where to go with that but it sounded friendly.

The sun sets here at 10:30pm and rises at 4am, so the days are nice and long. I babied the Fiesta today and was averaging over 60mpg, but ended the day at around 58 mpg. I like these little diesels...

Quaint, really quaint and quaint++ fishing villages

Today's mission is to drive down the coast and see fishing villages, and we have good news and bad news. But first, we stopped by the local UNESCO World Heritage site in Tanumshede (where we're staying) to see rock carvings from 1000BC or so. As you would expect, you go into these exhibits / parks not too excited about it (oh boy, rock drawings..) and come out with an appreciation of how far we have come, or not.. The ocean was higher so there was water where there are now farms. These folks did not yet have written language so they drew pictures. There was gobs of god stuff, horses dragging the sun around, etc, which helped explain the unknown, as more religions did/do. These guys happened to scrawl their stuff on rocks with other harder rocks and now it is up to anthropologists (detectives) to try and figure out what they were trying to say. It is important to stand there looking at something someone scratched out 3000 years ago and see them as not much different then yourself (food, shelter, family, worry, status, all the same things but we have different stuff (cars, houses, iPods,...). The other interesting side note is that due to the sulpher and nitrogen from industrial pollution (specifically a 2011 Ford Fiesta Diesel Car), the rock is breaking down and they are starting to cover them up so they do not erode. Same thing we heard about the Roman ruins and same reason Lincoln's nose hairs at Mt Rushmore stopped growing (made that one up).

We rented bikes to go visit those spots and the first bike I got had really loose handlebars so they got me the wrong wrench, then another bike that was not there, so they felt bad, gave us something free from the gift shop cause they felt bad, and then I got a working bike.

So then we headed down the coast to see the villages on the shore. It was Sunday so there were a lot of folks doing the same thing. We hit town after town, finding the free parking lot (usually a short walk from town), walking in and wandering around until we did (or did not) find the center of town, back to the car, and off to the next town. So the verdict is that my favorite town was Grebbestad which got high marks because it had the most normal working Swedes on Holiday there. Also high points for not having any Ferrari 458 Italias or Porsche GT2 RS's in them. Most of the rest have been over run with pretty rich folks that buy the quaint little towns up and make them even more quaint. The main thing to notice is the lack of fishing boats, which Grebbestad had plenty of, good scratched up, well loved fishing boats at that. The fishermen there apparently organized to keep the tradition alive there some how.

The village that was the most quaint (not too over the top) was Fjallbacka. Another nice one that everyone raved about, very rich, but also had the nicest rock islands (picture above) was Smogen.

At around 5pm we headed back north a slightly different way seeing a few more small villages, and once wandering off down a dirt road to find not much. I was hoping to find the Swedish trailer parks but I don't think there are any (remember socialist country, 45% taxes, etc..). The dumpiest houses we have ever seen would be well insulated, painted red, etc. A lot of people live in apartments here as well. All of these fishing villages are connected with a bus system so you can get back and forth.

We ended up back in Grebbestad and got good old American cheeseburgers at a place famous for tuna (go figure). Then an after dinner stroll down the boardwalk to inspect the fishing boats and then drive back home to the Hotel. Good and tired again, so off to bed so we can get up early and leave to cross into Norway in the morning. Maybe Oslo but there is another cool town Fredrickstad we may explore. Oh yea, 51MPG today, gotta love it. Diesel is 13.74 Kroner per liter which sugars out to $2.18 per liter so $8.25 per gallon. Stop your whining about high fuel prices!!

West across Sweden

This morning we slept in (actually I slept in). Last day in Uppsala and onward to the west. I had not driven much so I was ready to give the Ford diesel a nice long drive. We had a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, packed, got the car out of the cheaper lot the hotel provided, and headed west toward Norway. It got rural pretty fast as we got bedroom community distance away from the cities. I was expecting small farms and agricultural valley and what we discovered instead is northern Maine, Swedish style. They do grow a lot of crops which I think the wine infused women the other night said was rapeseed. There is another crop that they grow that is light green and we never did find anyone to ask what it was. But the lupines were everywhere. This part of Sweden is sort of like northern Maine but with a few more people and a few more valleys that have been growing crops. There are a lot of conifers which appear to be actively harvested and also a lot of paper mills tucked into the sparse towns. Again, unlike Maine, people have been living here a long time so it has a lived in feel with old roads and old wooden buildings. Also we noted that someone got a deal on red paint because pretty much every building is painted red with white trim. We also noted that McDonalds has moved in with one at almost every intersection along the 4-laners. We never did stop to see what was on the menu.

Most of the cars here are Saabs, Volvos, BMWs and Fords. It is interesting that a couple of times a day we see old restored big metal cars from Detroit so they are either brought here by car buffs or left over from when (if) they were imported back in the 50's and 60's. The roads are in wonderful shape (unlike home) which I read as Sweden taking care of the public wealth at the expense of private wealth (aka taxes).

The other item of note is that we kept seeing pregnant mothers and babies everywhere in what seemed like way out of proportion. I looked it up and Sweden has a birth rate of 12.5 per 1000 and Vermont has about 10 so it is not way out of whack. What someone here noted was that with the government focus on family, mothers and fathers spend a lot more time with their kids (Sweden requires 1 year maternity leave of companies), so you see them out and about more at all the parks and public spaces Sweden provides for its people. Sweden has a tax to GDP ration of 46% while we have a ration of about 24%, so they get taxed a lot more, but get retirement, health care, better roads, etc in return. So we took some back roads to see how things were out back and it was more of the same. We are sensing that our language issues are going to get rougher as we leave the cities and by the time we got to the North Sea this afternoon, it was pretty obvious we would have to work harder with the language thing. They still speak English but not nearly as well as in Stockholm.

We found our hotel after circling a bit and after asking around we were pointed to a small town on the sea where there were lots of nice restaurants. The village is a fishing village where the real working class Swedes come on Holiday. Lots of really fresh seafood eaten right next to the boats they came in on. The specialty is oysters, crawfish, and lobster. We did not order them, but most folks had mounds of crawfish either not yet eaten or picked clean on their tables. Again, it is light late here so it is easy to stay out too late. Tomorrow we poke around the small villages on the coast and explore some Bronze and Iron Age UNESCO World Heritage sites. Still have not seen a moose but will let you know...

P.S. I got 50 MPG today,yipee!!

Stockholm Day 2

Today we took the train again to Stockholm and visited the Vasa Museum which houses a ship built in 1628. The king at the time wanted to build the most impressive ship around and was pretty envious of those big Danish ships. They had a war with Poland going on so he had the excuse. It took 400 guys 2 1/2 years to build it and it had to be the most beautiful ship with colorful statues all over. The story goes that the king himself helped the designer and when they tested it for stability by having 30 seamen run back and forth on the upper deck (ASTM standard?), it was determined, but not exactly reported that the ship needed some work. It was way too top heavy and did not have enough ballast in the hold. It also had upper and lower cannon decks with 64 cannons on board. So nobody happened to mention this to the king (job security) and when they launched it with hundreds of people on board, it floated about 20 minutes and then tipped over and sank. So needless to say, the king called for whoever was responsible to have bad things done to them, and as it turned out, nobody got in trouble implying that he knew who was at fault. The good news was, it sank in the harbor in brackish water which means it did not rot. Everyone sort of forgot where it was for 300 years and some guy in 1954 looked for it and found it, talked the current king into paying to have it recovered and they did, restored it (98% original), built a building around it and charged tourists to see it. It is a wonderful story and wonderful to look at. Very nice museum.

We tried getting into the Vasa in the morning but it was packed with tour bus folks, so we went to the Nordic Museum, which was important historically, but not too exciting. The takeaway from the Nordic Museum is that being from America, I see the 1700s as the rustic, dirt floor, rough furniture and household goods, but here in Europe, they were, and had been, very established with modern households and comforts right back into the 1500's. Reminds me that America was the wild frontier then, and now maybe.

We walked to the Folk Museum and Technical Museum but they were pretty hard to figure out as there was very little English and the exhibits were a little sleepy. So back into Stockholm on the tram (flying by all the cars of course) and into the modern new part of the city where you could tell it was Friday after work and everyone was on the street.

We decided to catch the train back to Uppsala and find dinner there. We found a Greek restaurant near the canal and had a leisurely dinner. After we walked (strolled) along the canal and watched people relaxing after another week at work. There is a lot of night activity with people walking and riding bikes all around town into the wee hours. The sun sets so late and even after the sun is gone, the sky is bright with plenty of light. A pleasant night in a nice little town. Tomorrow we drive into he countryside and see how people live in more rural areas.