Friday the first of September

This morning was terrible: I woke up with toilet paper in my ears, which didn't help for the snoring of an Italian tourist,... Man, never ever heard a sound like that one before. It was like an old tree giving way to a gust of wind that tore the world apart. You can guess I hadn't such a good night.

But hey, the Bergen - Oslo railway was on my schedule and (if I could believe the Lonely Planet) it should be one of the nicest railways in the world. Even when it wouldn't be the most beautiful, I like trains so that was a nice compensation for a bad night sleep.

The scenery was indeed breath-taking. (Some of the scenes of the original Star Wars trilogy were recorded here) In the train I met an American writer, mother of 3 children who have almost the same age as me. Had a nice chat with her about life and visions. Especially about the mysterious fact that people with the same interests seem to find each other everywhere in the world.

She, her name was Sherry, read me one of her stories she wrote. An interesting tale about success and accomplishment by believing in yourselves without setting the goal you want to reach as the highest value. Mmm, I'm making it difficult. Soit, the story was nicely philosophical, and a lot of my friends would appreciate it a lot (especially tint I think 'cause it was really her style) . In September Sherry might visit me in Oignies.

In Oslo we had a little drink before saying goodbye and headed each our own direction. I had to find Christin at her work, which is a cafe - restaurant named "Kristiana". Without a clue where to find the place I went to the touristinfo. They showed me a map and note with small circles my current position and my goal. With fresh courage I started to walk towards a street filled with shops and crowded by tourists, students and bums.

I arrived where the map showed me to go: Restaurant CHristiana! A high class restaurant filled with cocky bigshots and walking make-up advertisements. Obviously not the place where I planned to go. Well no problem, lets just head back to the trainstation and ask it there... But my ears decided different. Nice vibes found their way to my brain, and draw my attention. There was some sort of Christian-hippy-house party going on. Well if you know me a bit, you know what happened next.

A few hours later, and after a few splinters of glass that nestled in my feet while I was dancing bare-footed, I continued my quest for Kristiana (the old name for Olso btw). Nobody knew where it was and I bumped into it almost by accident. It actually WAS the station, the previous station that is, but integrated in the same building. Sometimes it appears difficult to find what's just a pace away :)

Finally I got to Christin's apartment, so... Well, just check the view:

Thursday 31/8

Spent almoust the entire day with Lotte, shopping, drinking coffee while reading a book in the sun @ the (by UNESCO classified as worldheritage) Bryggen. All wooden buildings by the waterside. Not much of a story, but it was fun and relaxing for me (which I need before heading back to Belgium).
(pic: Lotte from Germany)

Wednesday 30/8

The bus was a really good idea. It wasn't that comfortable as a real bed, but I was able to sleep in a dry and warm place while getting somewhere.

Arrived in the morning and headed straight to the youth hostel. The hostel was, let's just say to big. It wasn't as cozy as the youth hostels I've visited before (in Japan for example). But still, a (relatively) cheap place to stay over.

I had to check in before 10.30 but I wasn't able to get in my dorm until 15.30, so I went to check out the city. Visited Hakon's castle (his tower actually) which was nice to see, but not to spectacular. Afterwards it was time to visited the aquarium, I hadn't seen a lot of sea animals yet, so I thought it could be nice to see. Well, it wasn't as big as I expected, but they had a good and cheap lasagna :)





Once back in the youth hostel I met a few other travelers. Fabian (France), Lotte (Germany) and Gianni (A Brazilian living in Milan). We all agreed to go for a beer in a local rock cafe where we had some nice and especially funny conversations. The weariness was still in my head I noticed, so I was glad we didn't stay too long. In the bar we were joined by other two travelers from the youth hostel, an American and a Swiss girl.

almost all of them were heading off the next day, but Lotte and Gianni would stay until the next evening so I decided to stay for one more night.

Tuesday 29/8

OOh, I'm getting so tired. The night train provides you with a warm dry place, but not exactly a nice night sleep. The chairs go a little bit further back than normal seats, but it aren't beds @ all! But anyhow I arrived in Trondheim.

As I said before, nice, but not anylike the north. My backpack was stashed away in a locker in the trainstation so I went for a little walk. I went up to the fortress from where I had a nice overview over the city. Trondheim is just another western city (with a few nice wooden buildings) @ the coast. After a few hours and kilometers I ended up back @ the trainstation which was situated near the harbour.

There I met Andreas (I think it was), a 23y.o. guy who bought a second hand sailing boat. He invited me over for a coffee and talked about dreams and boats, and how such a boat became another dream to accomplish for me (have some saving to do :D )

I decided to take the nightbus to Bergen so I could have a warm, dry place again for the night and a few kilometers closer to my destination Oslo.

Travelling is nice but exhausting,... I look forward now to chill out and then head back to Belgium.

Monday 28/8

The leaving was once again hard for me,... Leaving again some friends.

I started hitchhiking again and it went not to good. The first 2 lifts were good, but short. Took the ferry in Stordal (I think it was, I'll have to check on that later) and I was so tired that I fell asleep on the deck. Stupid thing, because I woke up just before the ferry went back to the other side. Ofcourse every car already left so I was standing there alone, no cars passing. The only thing I could think of was walking, so I did. Beautiful scenery(see pics), but a hard time for me. Two more cars stopped to help me a few kilometers further, but the last one advised me to take the bus, because there were a lot of tunnels coming up where you're unable to walk through.

Good idea! A little bit further on the road there were a lot of tunnels, and you can not walk through them,... I took the bus just up to a railwaystation (again I forgot the name, but it was in the neighborhood of Bodo) to take there the night-train to Trondheim. While I was waiting for the bus, I noticed what people ment with "wach out for the mosquitoes" but it weren't really mosquitoes like we know them in Belgium, it were more like fleas to me, but loads of them. They were really putting my patience to a test! So glad I could leave that place.

I've got to say, once I left the island (on which Harstad is situated) a lot of the flair I experienced in Norway was lost. The scenery was nice, but no longer 'WOW'. Some people were friendly, but not exactly the hospitality I felt up north.

Sunday 27/8

Had a chill day, just went for a tourist's walk with Vera. I'll be adding the pictures when I get the chance. Visited the famous (?) church in Harstad and went to a "secret" spot where the students go. A tiny Island you can access by walking 10 meters through the water(pict @ left). Beautiful!


@ Wannes: This is the night that it would happen and it did! When I went back to Vera's place the norderlight guided me back there. We ended up watching Manga series (Bleach) which was really addictive,... After the 10th episode I fell exhausted asleep.

Saturday 26/8

Yep, still in Harstad. It seems I only make plans to change them. I had just too much fun with Vera and the two Bulgarians (and some locals as well!). That and being too tired to leave :)
I’ll be brief about this day, because I’m burning precious daylight here.
Chilled out in the sun havin’ fun with my hosts here, sun combined with a few bears, went to the store to buy some ingredients. I was going to make a quiche. My mom makes them for me so it would be the first quiche I ever made.
(<= quiche before cooking,.... and the quiche just before we ate it =>)


We had an international Frisbee throwing moment just until the day made way for the colder evening. The nationalities (one of each): Syrian, American, Norwegian, Bulgarian, German, Russian and me representing Belgium :)

After the frisbeeïng, Vera and I went back to her place to prepare the quiche. On the way over there we picked up another Russian girl that didn’t speak a lot of English, but we managed just fine to communicate. I’m getting the hang of it, understanding languages that you don’t speak. The quiche became an international experiment with a creative touch. Check it out for yourselves.

On my Christmas-list of this year is a good oven now, that’s for sure.
My wallet refused to go out again, so it became a nice an peaceful night. There were some people that I met yesterday who dropped by to say hello, and try some of the quiche. When everybody left Vera and I saw a film to end the day. Tomorrow it’s adding the pics to the blog, packing by bag and go to bed early I think so I can start off early in the morning. Two weeks have passed and I find myself still above the arctic circle :) so I’ve got to move a little bit…

Friday 25/8

Goodbye my Tromso-student-friends, hope to see you guys dropping by in Belgium! It’s off to Harstad with me. There another HC member is waiting for me. I’ll just drop bye there, get a good night sleep and hitchhike further to the south. At least that was the intentional plan. (So I'm leaving, on a fast-boat,... Tromso falling back=>)

Once I arrived in Harstad, the plan looked good. Not such a nice city, more and more concrete buildings, more traffic, more industry, well, you’re getting the picture I guess. Katya (the HC member) was a nice (Russian) girl who stayed at a student dorm. There as well, it was a nice place, but it didn’t feel,… that right I guess.

But this wouldn’t be these 3 weeks without faith interfering: Katya’s mom came by from Russia so it would be difficult to host me. So she would hook me up with a friend Vera (also HC member and Russian) who lives together with a Bulgarian. She had discussed it already with Vera and it would be OK for her. On the way to pick up Katya’s mom from the harbour we met already another Bulgarian guy, Ivo the best friend of Dimitri (who lives with Vera). –I hope I’m not making this to complicated :) –

Ivo told us there would be a gathering of some internationals living in Harstad tonight. So we decided to leave my backpack at Katya’s place and hit town, I could pick it up on the way to Vera’s.

The drink started slowly, but cosy. There were 4 or 5 Russians, I guess one or two Chinese and 3 Danish,… all students except for the crazy Belgian :) later on we went to the next pub where we met even more internationals, but there I lost count completely. The evening turned in a hot party (literally, I was sweating so hard!) with loads of dancing to some commercial BS (but Wannes you know we can party on that!) and some good Moloko. Although the commercial BS was fun to dance to for a while, it got boring in the end. We went to the coolest rock café I’ve seen in Norway so far, with scenes (not drawings or pictures but skulls and dolls behind glass) and graffiti everywhere.

Well to shorten things up: Met great people (local and international), drank to much (again), and when we came home (Vera’s place) Dimitri, Ivo and Vera made us a spaghetti!! A nice dinner @ 4 in the morning, with the most beautiful sunrise over the fjord. How about that for an ending of the evening :)

Thursday 24/8 part II

In the evening I went for my last night out in Tromso and there was a concert by ‘Hurra Torpedo’. Three crazy guys in old retro training suits, 1 guitar, 1 bass, and a whole load of household equipment that functioned as percussion. To name a few: a freezer, 2 big furnaces, a washing machine, mixer, cooking plate, vacuum cleaner, etc… (The percussionist was the singer of the Cumshots)

After the gig I went back to the students’ house because I couldn’t cope (financially) with another night out. Back at the house I noticed that Frits ( I always forget his real name ) was still awake and since the others told me he was such a good musician I asked him to play a little bit for me. Eventually it ended in a full hour during private jamming gig :)