Norway

Well my time here in Bergen has been quite enjoyable. I got to see
Snoop Dogg in concert, which was a pleasent suprise. I have been just
missing, or unable to get tickets to some huge acts here in
Scandanavia, so I was happy to get a little hip-hop culture in.

Met a pretty cool Thai girl that is living in the Netherlands, which
got me more excited for the asian portion of my vacaction.

Bergen is a pretty nice city, except it seems to be rather wet, it
apparently rains 200 days a year, not really my kind of city, but the
seafood, and the atmospehere is great. It is the only city with seven
fjords and seven mountains, although I would call some of the
mountains large hills, it is still a pretty scenic area. I took a
short fjord tour, but most of the views were hampered by clouds, but
it was a relaxing boat ride.

Tomorrow I head back to Stockholm to pick up my dead laptop, I have
decided on an Apple Macbook for my replacement, I will hopefully be
able to transfer over some of my data from my old laptop, I just hope
I turned off the hard drive encryption.. I will pick the laptop up in
London, which I am actually quite excited to go too, hopefully the
security isn't too crazy, and the weather is a little less wet, but I
doubt it.

There is a que to use this computer, so I will end this message short,
and am looking forward to having my own computer, and my own room in
London and exploring that city for at least a week.

Posted by Jason Willock

I have been through Hell. But it wasn't a bad thing. Actually I just drove past Hell Norway, a little town where tourists come just to take a photo. And a yearly death metal festival takes place.

This weekend was quite enjoyable, thanks to Peter, Rita and Svanhild. People who I met in Brazil during Carnival. Friday I went to Peter and Rita's for dinner, had a very tasty Reindeer stew. I quite enjoyed Reindeer. We then went to an observation tower restaurant and had a beer and I got a great view of Trondheim as the place rotated around, much like the Calgary Tower, just not as high.

Saturday I hung around with Peter and we ending up going to is parents place in a small village an hour and a half north. It was a great place, right on a large fjord, it was so scenic and fresh there, a nice break from the city life. We cruised around on a motorboat for a while, before having a great bbq dinner. I spent the night there.

Sunday was another beautiful day, nice and sunny, the sun is quite strong up north here. We took the boat out again and Peter and is brother in law did some water skiing, I was going to try but when they came out of the water frozen to the bone I decided to pass. I am too much of a chicken I guess. We then had a great elk roast dinner, before heading back to Trondheim, where I stayed at Peters. They where very great hosts and I got too see much more of Norway and learn about its culture than I had expected.

I am now at the airport heading to Bergen Norway, where I hope to see some great fjords. Internal flights within Norway are so cheap the one hour flight was much cheaper than the alternative 15 hour bus ride!

Posted by Jason Willock

I am typing this as I on the train to Trondheim, a lovely 7 hour train ride, through some very nice country, lots of lakes, rivers, waterfalls and forest covered mountains, some of which are still snow capped.

The last couple days in Oslo where pretty good, toured it with a nice guy from Slovakia, who is living in England, but looking to work in Oslo. It would be a nice place to live, everyone is very active and it is a nice clean city. You would need to be making a pretty good wage though, food in the supermarket is a little more expensive tan home, but if you want to go out for dinner, or to a pub it's easily triple the price. Chewing tobacco seems pretty popular, probably because bars and pubs are non smoking, even girls chew it, rather gross, but otherwise they are attractive.

Looking forward to Trondheim even if it is going to be a little chilly, temperature in the mid teens, hopefully it doesn't rain too much. Sounds like a nice laid back small city, and I will see some familiar faces of a few people I met in Brazil.

Doesn't sound like my laptop is repairable, which kind of sucks, so I will have to look at getting a new one, which I may have to make a quick detour to England or Scotland for, unless I can get one with an English keyboard. Then I am not sure where to go, there is still I would like to see, and it is now super busy season in western Europe, so I think I am really going to have to decide what I want to see and do, quite frankly I am a little tired of museums, churches and palaces, they all start to blur together after three months.

Posted by Jason Willock

Well I have spent a half day here in Oslo, and the rumors of it being expensive are certainly true. 4cdn for a pop or water from 7-11. I went out for dinner with a guy from the hostel, and for a basic dinner it was about 20cdn. But it is quite a lovely city from what I have seen. It is an oil city, so a lot like back home, you can tell there are some very wealty people here.

The train ride here from Stockholm was pleasant, so many lakes, it was really quite scenic. However traveling at 150km/h you don't get to look at anything for very long.

I am looking forward to a couple more days here, and then heading up to Trondheim, to hopefully meet up with some people from there I met during Carnival, and then from there I think I will head even farther up north well past the artic circle, but we will see how things go.

Posted by Jason Willock