Scandinavia, take 2

Hi three (maybe 4) readers -- each section of this posting was written by one of the travelers. In the comments, take a stab at who (Joe, Karla or Liz) wrote which part. If you get them all right, then the next time we see you (no matter what country), beers are on us. Polling open for 48 hours.

Copenhagen & Oslo (1)

It has been well documented on this site that the Scandinavia trip scheduled for June 2010 was not meant to be, thus we looked ahead to June 2011. Looking back, giving ourselves an extra year to prepare was well worth it.

We met up Karla in Copenhagen and started our trip immediately with a quick trip to the De La Cour to drop off bags, enjoy a few adult beverages, decide a game plan for the remainder of the day, and lock our suitemates in the apartment for an unknown length of time. The weather was a bit overcast, but we walked around the city a bit only to stumble upon a festival of sorts, in which a band was playing directly out the side of a 18-wheeler semi. We had no idea what was going on, but beer was for sale, so, hey, we checked things out for a couple minutes. We ended up trying true authentic Denmark fare by stopping at the Mexican restaurant. Not the best, but certainly not the worst. At some point we stopped in at Christiania, the hippy town-within-a-town, which was established in the early 70s and is now completely self-governed. We’re not sure what the Copenhagenites think of their little hippy neighbors, but it was definitely an interesting concept.

The following day we took a canal tour, which allowed us to see the city from another vantage point. Some sights include the queen's ''sailboat'' (see pictures below), the opera house, Copenhagen’s famous (for no apparent reason) Little Mermaid and a church or two. We also checked out the National museum and the best part about that place, in my opinion (and the opinion of my fellow travelers), was the smell of the museum cafe. My favorite part of the day was having a beer with my other two traveling companions sitting along the NyHavn. A perfect 20 minutes enjoying the sunny afternoon only to get interrupted by a man looking to recycle our beer cans for us and in return getting the deposit. Ahhh, memories.

The three of us made it to Copenhagen without any transportation issues, so why would we even allow ourselves to think anything different would happen as we were trying to leave and make our way to Oslo. After waiting far too many minutes for the train to get its shit together, which quickly turned into the best hailing of taxis that town had ever seen, we finally arrived at the Copenhagen airport with about 25 minutes to check-in, check bags, get through security, and get on the plane. After seeing a sign that said GATE CLOSED, Karla promptly decided to slow down to a mere walk, while Liz perhaps sensing a glimmer of hope decided to book it like no other to the arrival gate, only to find that the gate was still accepting passengers,. Adding salt to the wound, several people arrived to the gate after we did juggling all sorts of Duty Free purchases, which was Joe's number one priority at the Copenhagen airport. Running through an airport is definitely an interesting experience, one I'm not eager to repeat. However, with that said, next time I see someone sprinting through an airport, I'm still going to chuckle a bit to myself thinking, ''sucks to be you".

After making it safely to the Oslo airport, Joe was able to FINALLY purchase a few items from Duty Free, which definitely served us well since alcohol in Norway was quite pricey. A quick trip to the grocery store and a subsequent dinner was later followed by a walk to Frogner Park, a huge sculpture park. The amazing thing about visiting Scandinavia during the summer months is that the day never seems to really turn into night. For me, visiting this park so late at night was the first real proof of the permanent sunsetting sky after about 10:30pm.

The following day we headed down to the waterfront to visit the Norwegian Resistance Museum, where we learned several interesting facts about how important a role Oslo played during World War II. None of those facts are coming to the forefront of my brain right now, but at the time, we each remembered at least one thing. Obviously money well spent. While in Oslo, we also stopped in the National Museum which had some Munch paintings, as well as a shoe-less, texting security guard. Classy. Too bad the line to get into the cafe was so long, otherwise we would have made a stop. The remaining part of our time in Oslo was spent either shopping or visiting the Viking museum (guess who went where!).

Fjords (2)

Joe picked up the rental car, a jazzy Prius named Bridget, the following morning and once all packed up, we were westbound on E16. After a few days of city touring, everyone was excited to get into the Norwegian countryside. The fjords of Norway didn’t disappoint. We arrived at Eplet B&B in Solvorn after a scenic drive from Oslo, including our first car ferry. Eplet was certainly the most memorable of our hotel stays. It combined a variety of actvities (vegetable picking, croquet golf, feeding the eco-grasscutters aka sheep, BBQ’ing, relaxing in the hammocks) with wonderful views, and it was a great base to explore the area.

Our first full day consisted of the glacier hike. Joe and Liz took to the mountain and Karla took a nice long nap. Our hiking guide was short on words and long on hiking. Fine for us. The whole group was roped in together for safety, but it didn’t seem all too safe to have inexperienced hikers all tied together. If Joe went over, Liz and the chick behind him were certainly coming with. No worries, though. No one has ever fallen and there weren’t many tough steps. Liz conquered her fear and went strong the whole way though. Great experience. Our evening activity consisted of invading the local midsummer party to roast marshmellows on the bonfire (pretty much fuelled by trash and waste). What we thought would be a nice way to meet some locals wasn’t received so well. We promptly scared everyone off. Awesome.

The second day we took advantage of the free bikes to make the 16 mile roundtrip ride to the Feigefossen waterfall. Highlights included a 0.5 mile ride through a pitch black tunnel (only moderately helpful mini flashlights provided), continuously dramatic views and the waterfall itself. We found that biking the hills of Norway to be a bit more challenging than the hills of Chicago, but all survived. We took advantage of the grill again and Joe had the opportunity to continue grill-mastering. Like a pig in shit with a beer in hand, view in front and meats grilling.

Our last day of fjording consisted of an overnight in Aurland. We decided to get a different perspective by staying in another town on the fjord, but there was no perspective to be consumed. We might have been the only ones staying at this cabin-like hotel. Felt a little Hitchcocky. Further, we were one week too early for troutfishing. So we finished off our Duty Free liquor (which served us well throughout Norway), got a good night’s sleep and headed off to Bergen in the AM.


Bergen & Stockholm (3)

I was told to expect a lot of tall, fair, beautiful people in Scandinavia, especially in Stockholm. So I was honestly a bit disappointed to find the people to be only marginally better looking than the Swiss. Again most everyone was fit, spoke English beautifully, but up there in the north they smiled too. What a long way a smile can go sometimes.

So it was days seven through ten of the trip and I think we were starting to grow a bit weary of it all. Our hotel in Bergen was bunk beds, dirty floors and a very smelly communal kitchen. Around town, despite its cute, very old town, were throngs of Asians walking around on guided blue tooth style tours. People were everywhere and we were all immediately a bit put off. Definitely the most memorable part of Bergen was the sitting in the sun (finally!) and the beautiful views from up the FUNicular (yes someone insisted on calling it that). Even now, not two weeks later, I couldn't tell you what else we really did there that would be worth mentioning.

Luckily Stockholm was another story. I can't say it was the most beautiful of the cities we visited but it's built on the water and has a cozy little tourist district/old town called Gamla Stan. We ate easily the largest and tastiest salad ever seen in Europe. It was delightful. We took a nice boat ride out to check out the archipelago and walked around a very small, wooded island. We dipped our toes in the water. We debated over what to eat until all reputable places were closed and we had to end up eating in a biker bar that also doubled as a casino (I'm sure our Swedish friends would question how we even found a biker bar in Stockholm, but we did. In addition, we ate there). The following day, we went to the Vasa museum which houses a huge war ship which took its maiden voyage in 1628 and promptly sunk….on the maiden voyage. It barely passed through the port before it sank and was later excavated and restored where it now sits in a temperature controlled museum. We don’t have A/C in offices, apartments or on public transport, but a giant boat gets it. Sure, cause that makes sense. We ate delicious, mad-huge muffins and drank at a delightful English pub with a huge range of beers on tap (unfortunately these events did not take place at the same time; we like to spread our gluttony out a bit). We had some intense conversations and some seriously dead-shit ones; we woke up in the middle of the night to pink skies and went to bed to dusky ones. All in all, a fabulous way to spend 10 days.