Back to mine

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With the long (thrice delayed) trip from NYC to Melbourne having finally been made, I’m now happily and safely ensconced back at home. Tomorrow I restart my job – the final proof that the two year adventure that I’ve undertaken is coming to a close. And what a good two years they have been. I can’t see the point in trying to summarise such a lengthy trip which contained such disparate experiences, and nor do I currently have the energy to reflect on anything in particular. I learnt a lot. I met a lot of amazing people. I saw some fantastic places. I’ve gained some wonderful friends. That’s it really. So instead I will simply say farewell blog readers – thank you for your time and your comments – they were very greatly appreciated.

I’ll leave you with this final explanation of the titles behind the blog entries. We left off back in January, so in reverse order from today, here are the explanations:

Back to mine is a compilation album made by… just about everyone.
The fortunes of solitude is a play on the Brooklyn themed novel “The Fortress of Solitude” by Jonathan Lethem.
Big exit is a song by P.J. Harvey.
Culture snub is the second time that Culture Club got a reference in the blog titles!
Ecstasy and wine is the name of a compilation of two obscure My Bloody Valentine E.Ps.
The French Connection is a film, isn’t it!
Ålesund’s starting to dampen is a riff on the Lemonheads song “Alison’s starting to happen”.
Midsommar Nights is a variation on Swedish outfit Sunday Brunch’s “Midsommer nights”.
Bleaker streets? is a reference to the Simon and Garfunkle song “Bleeker Street”.
Hey, that’s some way to say goodbye! keeps the folk vibe going with a poorly reworded tribute to the Leonard Cohen track “Hey, that’s no way to say goobye”.
Defender is the title of a Svek Records compilation.
The Graduate is a movie. I think you knew that.
We the people who attend gigs at Blå is a tribute to the late, great Curtis Mayfield and his song “We the people who are darker than blue”.

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The golden age is an album by American Music Club
Happy Trieste Friends and Friends is actually a TV reference (Sound the alarm!! A naming rule has been broken!!!). Yes, a TV reference to the bizarre animation show “Happy Tree Friends and Friends”.
Grand parade is a song by The Reindeer Section
Where do we go now but nowhere? is a cheery little Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds song.
Children stay free is an album by the Telemetry Orchestra.
Parklife is a song, album and perhaps way of life. By Blur.
Bygdøy in the Norge is a little bit similar to the Black Grape song “A big day in the north”. Well, it is if you can’t pronounce Norwegian words properly. And I can’t. So there.
I started something I actually could finish is a riff on the Smiths song “I started something I couldn’t finish”.
I want to sing that rock and roll is a song by Gillian Welch.

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Hello Opera-tour is, I believe, a rather clever variation of the White Stripes song “Hello Operator”.
Trying your luck is a song by The Strokes. Where have they got to these days? Seriously, I’m starting to worry…
The unbelievable truth is of course a work of genius film-making by Hal Hartley.
Totally confused is a song by Beck.
A wonderful life is a classic dance track by Carl Craig
The dinner game is a great French farce that still cracks me up after a million viewings.
It’s acclaim about Rey is another Lemonheads tribute, this time to their album “It’s a shame about Ray”.
Walking in my shoes is a Depeche Mode song.
Festen er ikke over is the title of a CD I won in a quiz in Norway. It’s not very good.
Tues Life invokes little of the generational zeitgeist that the “Choose Life” speech (and subsequent song) from the film Trainspotting managed to capture.
More news from nowhere is yet another Nick Cave song title to make it into my blog.
What I do in my bedroom is what DJ Shadow once called an album of his.
Blown a wish is a My Bloody Valentine song.
‘løkka star gets all funky as it references the Basement Jaxx/Dizzee Rascal collaboration called “Lucky Star”.

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Slip inside this student house is a bit like the old Primal Scream dance classic “Slip inside this house”.
Undersea community is an old, faded moment of glory from Melbourne’s own Avalanches.
Blue Monday was a song by some 80s chancers from Manchester. I think.
Oh delay is a beck reference. Odelay was the source. Geddit?
Long time fan is a reference to the Nick Cave song “Long time man”.
Red Roo Land… Nick Cave… yes I know… lack of blog title imagination… guilty… 12 months hard labour… fair enough… where’s my spade…
Match point is the only good film Woody Allen made during an 8 year barren stretch.
Taxi diner is the clever and not all that subtle play on the great film, “Taxi Driver.

And that is all from nordicgreg.blogspot.com

Ha det, moi moi and ciao to you all.

The fortunes of solitude

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Solitude. On one level solitude is not an easy thing to come by in New York City in July. The heaving mass of people that pump through the veins and arteries of this city night and day see to that. The beeping horns and sirens, the late-night road works, the packed subway: all of these things re-emphasise the inescapability of other people. Staying, as I am, about 50m from Times Square exacerbates the feeling. Yet on the other hand, travelling to this city on my own, has left me very much alone. I’m drained of energy and desire to meet new people at this stage of the trip home, so my efforts to chat with others at my hostel have been a little half-hearted. So my meals and days have been spent without company – happily enough – and devoid of much interaction. This is a fine but somewhat strange situation to find yourself in in one of the western world’s most densely populated areas. Solitude is simultaneously impossible to experience and utterly unavoidable. Such is life in NYC.
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As this is my second trip to this unique city I have much more freedom to do and not do than I realistically possessed on my first trip here. While no gun is held at the first-time visitor’s head requiring them to go up the Empire State building, there is a checklist of 5 or 6 things which it would be difficult (and ultimately self-defeating) to avoid doing. Seeing the Met and MOMA, wandering Central Park, taking the Staten Island ferry, and so on. These things are all great but having to pack so many essential sights into a few days when I first came here left me feeling a bit overwhelmed by the city. On this visit I definitely still feel overwhelmed, but this has more to do with the fact that I’ve become accustomed to living in relatively quiet places like Oslo where the machete attacks on asylums seekers and drive-by shootings outside hospitals are still viewed as something of an oddity. New York is rather different.

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No, this time around in NYC I’ve had relatively little pencilled in on the must-do list. There was the Frick collection and the desire to make an effort to extend my horizons a little further than last time I was here, but that was all really. It felt quite liberating. Extend my horizons I have however. I’ve wandered neighbourhoods far and flung. Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), Park Slope, Boerum Hill, Harlem, Morningside Heights, East Village, Nolita, Soho, Greenwich Village, West Village, the Meatpacking district, Chelsea, the Upper West-side and of course Midtown. My poor little abused feet haven’t always enjoyed my adventures, but my other senses are getting a lot out of it. Actually my nose also has some complaints – he feels that the odious odours of New York are reason enough to side with my feet in some regard - however the other senses remain loyal. Some of the neighbourhoods that I’ve visited are vastly over-rated. DUMBO is a poorly executed idea – one that seems to have leap-frogged part of the coolification process and proceeded directly from dingy, noisy hole to real-estate agent wet-dream without actually making any alterations whatsoever. Chelsea too was a disappointment. To me it looked a lot like Harlem, albeit with people busy appropriating black culture rather than having many actual black people. The East Village has also disappeared even further up its own collective arse than it had on my last visit here 3 years ago (when I stayed in the area) and is in rapid danger of becoming a self-parodying district of self-obsessed try-hards who have no idea who they really are, who they want to be, whether they can be bothered with… you know, life and stuff, whether they actually exist or what they want to drink at the bar. Boring freaks…

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Otherwise its all been pretty good. The oppressive heat of the first few days has given way to simple, regular heat. Not too hot to be too stressful, but warm enough to remind me that the northern hemisphere does get some warm weather now and again. The food has been good (there is a great, if somewhat overpriced deli downstairs), the Frick Collection was excellent, and the walking good. I had a great day out in Brooklyn taking a Jonathan Lethem-inspired self-style walking tour along and around Flatbush avenue and all the way out to Prospect Park (better than central park and 1% as crowded) and Park Slope. I've also enjoyed ood little things like hanging around the playing field at Central Park, watching overly-competitive company teams play softball and kickball. Not serious fun but actually an enjoyable thing to do - and quintisentially New York! I had a good trip to fantastic Williamsburg (also in Brooklyn) and also like the confusingly labelled streets and alleys (how can W 4th and W 10th streets cross at a 90 degree angle!!) of the West Village. And I’ve just generally enjoyed the vibe of the city. Or rather I enjoy the vibe in certain places at certain time of day. If I’m in the right mood. Yeah, NYC is a lot of fun, but more of in a sideways glance kind of way rather than via the full-frontal sensorial assault that the city seems to fling at unsuspecting visitors.

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Of course my entire perspective of the place has been hampered/altered by the fact that I’ll be home to lovely Melborsk in just two days. My excitement about going home is probably making me a little impatient with New York. I think a similar thing happened a decade or so ago in Vancouver, which I visited hastily en route home to Melbourne, and which pretty spectacularly failed to hold my interest, leading me to believe that perhaps Vancouver is the universe’s most over-rated city. So I’m aware that any negative judgements passed on NYC by me now could well be influenced by my relative proximity to my return home rather than any particular flaw on the part of the city as a whole. I mean, it’s not a particularly attractive place for the most part, but it is hard to argue it is anything other than beguiling for a visitor. I have less than But my overwhelming thought now is that I have just 24 hours left here and then I make my long, slow way home. A happy trip (providing that my QANTAS 747 doesn’t develop a massive great hole!). Home to a place which I don’t plan on leaving for a good long while to come….

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Big exit

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It’s time to go home. After 24 months of travels, 21 countries, numerous studies, beers, bands, cod served 25 different ways, student houses, one big thesis, countless new friends and enough rain and snow to last forever, I’m heading back to my favourite place of all: Melbourne. I have a little detour via New York City for four days en route back to Melbourne, but the packing up and boxes around me suggest that the trip home is very much underway. I’m thrilled to be going home. The last two years have been brilliant, fantastic and an almost unbelievable opportunity to live and study in Europe. But after a while the lure of home grows from a happy background buzz to an undeniable roar and that’s the stage I’ve reached now. The comforts of my own home, and being amongst my family and friends from home seems so incredibly appealing that I feel 100% ready to leave Norway. I’ve had a nice last few days: a few museums, some souvenir shopping, and a nice final night out at jazz club Blå. I have mixed feelings about Oslo. On some levels I feel at home here and know my way around the place quite well. But on the other hand it’s hard to deny it is an expensive and not overly interesting place with truly appalling weather. The amount of rainy miserable days this summer is almost comical! I’ve certainly had a great time here overall and it’s my second home after Melbourne, but right now the year (all up) that I’ve spent here is enough for now.

So – onwards to NYC and then home. Away from the dreary Norwegian weather. And what’s the forecast for New York? Storms every day. Oh dear…

Culture snub

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With less than a week to go, time to cram in the various cultural offerings of Oslo is rapidly running out. I’ve been waiting for a nice day (well, perhaps more accurately a non-dismal day) to visit the Folkemuseum – the world’s oldest open air museum. This wait has been quite a long one. We had some nice weather here in May and early June, and apparently there was a nice week while I was away, but other than that this has been the summer that never came. I have been hailed on twice and possibly snowed upon in the last month! Drizzly grey days of 14 degrees have been the norm. It’s been rubbish. But today saw Oslo blessed with at least a few hours of sunshine, so off I went by ferry over to the Bygdøy peninsula to see the old buildings and “culture” of the Folkemuseum.

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If you, dear reader, find yourself en route to the Folkemuseum there are several things you could do. You could proceed to the museum, take in the sights, enrich your awareness of Norwegian culture and history and have a smashing day wandering around in the sunshine. Alternatively you could stumble around, wonder where the actual culture is, and gorge yourself on boiled sweets. Or you could get back on the ferry and go right back to whence you came. Now I love morose cows and small wooden buildings with grass on their roofs as much as anyone, but I’d have to advocate the latter option every time. This is one crappy excuse for a museum. I just couldn’t get into it. It was like a low-rent version of what “Sovereign Hill” would be like if they’d never found gold in Ballarat. Poor. In fact it was so poor that it nearly put me off bothering with the second museum I’d planned for the day, the nearby “Fram” museum. Luckily I did put in an appearance as I got to see the "Fram" itself - the actual ship that has sailed further north AND further south than any other vessel. Impressive. After that, with heavy clouds predictably gathering, I decided to put in one last visit to my favourite Norwegian cultural institution : the Nasjonalgalleriet.

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Norway’s national gallery is ace. I’ve been there before, a few years ago, but it is worth a second look. They have, predictably enough, a great collection of Norwegian art. The Munch room is great, and fantastically it appears that the authorities have now managed to avoid having “The Scream” stolen for at least 6 consecutive days now, so I caught another glimpse of that. There are some other great works their too from a range of artists, and the many landscape meant more to me now than when I saw them in my first weeks in Oslo back in 2006. Time spent there is spent so much better than wandering around some frankly dull old buildings. And with that I conclude my tourismy type activities in this city. Now I just have to start packing up all this junk I've collected over these past few years...

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Ecstasy and wine

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Last entry left off in the sunny environs of Dijon. While Dijon is lovely, it wasn’t quite lovely enough to prevent Liz and I choosing to hop down the road 30 km or so to the wonderful town of Beaune – unofficial capital of the Côte-d'Or and wine capital of Burgundy. Beaune is great. Well – it’s great if you like wine, as the town seems 98.44% occupied with matters wine and has sod all to say about anything else. So as I said – Beaune is great! We had just five or so hours in town, so after a fortifying late-morning rosé, it was down into the cellars of the Hospices de Beaune to do a little wine sampling. And of course when I say “do a little wine sampling” I actually mean consume great swathes of wine. The sommeliers of Beaune are accommodating folk. While they do roam the cellars in search of Australians and Canadians quaffing too much happy juice, they generally do leave you alone if you pander to their ego by asking the odd inane question here and there. The wine was great. The cellar is set out to allow a self-guided tour, with a stop every few metres to fill you tasting glass (more like a tasting saucer, actually) with some very tasty drops indeed. So, three whites (all Chardonnay) and fifteen (yes that is 15!) reds (all Pinots) later I was a rather happy chap. There were some pretty ordinary wines in the mix of course, but I’d say about 5 of the reds were really top notch, and another 7 very good indeed.

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After all that wine there was little left to do but roll back to Dijon to collect our belongings and then head up to Paris! Ah, lovely Paris. We were staying with my sister Ngaire, in Paris attending a conference for the week, who had rather cleverly booked an apartment for the week on the rather cool Rue Mouffetard. Mouffetard is on the bottom edge of the Latin quarter in the 5th arrondissement. It’s only a little, cobbled thing, but after spending 5 days there it’s definitely my favourite part of the city. It has charm, it has that elusive trait “character”, it has good restaurants, it has crepes, it has decent metro connections. It also has noisy garbage collectors, but nowhere is perfect I suppose! Rue Mouffetard is just around the corner from the Pantheon and within 15 minutes of casual strolling you can find yourself in the Luxembourg gardens, the Île de la Cité or at the Gare Austerlitz, which conveniently was where we arrived. Over the course of the day various combination of me, Liz and Ngaire took in all the classics (well, only the outsides of some of the classics): the Lourve, Notre Damn, Montmatre, Marais, Arc de Triumph, Tour Eiffel, and many others. The 5 (nearly 6) days I spent in Paris this time was by far the longest I’ve spent in that city and I really loved it this time around. The hordes of people do bring me down a little bit, but given that (a) I am clearly part of the problem, and (b) I had my Mouffetard retreat to escape back to whenever the noise got too great, I can’t really complain. I even got to catch up (briefly) with my old mate Amelia! I got some pretty nifty photos of the Tour Eiffel one night too which made me happy. I’m easily pleased…

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And having mentioned food in the previous post it would be remiss not to touch on the topic once more. The big surprise was price! Liz and I both found that in general, Paris was far cheaper to eat in than our previous destinations in Burgundy, Alsace and Lorraine. Odd. The food was possibly a bit more gimmicky in Paris too – escargot was served in snails, rather than the little pots that are use elsewhere. More tourist menus were to be found (not always such a bad thing) and the wine wasn’t as good. But in general the gastronomic feast of the first week of France continued while in Paris, with more pastries seafood, desserts and cheeses.

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We did also take one daytrip out of Paris, to the city of Dieppe. Dieppe is a nice enough little town on the channel, and was the site of a big battle in World War II in which a very large number of Canadians were killed. A few hours there was enough to see the sites – the church and castle on two different hills, the white cliffs, the long pebble beach. And to have lunch of course too. Given that mussels were literally lapping around the town’s bridges it seem churlish not to partake, and once again the non-Parisian cuisine shone through as the very nicest.

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The final highlight of my trip suitably came on my last night in Paris: the My Bloody Valentine gig. I prattled on about MBV before when I bought the ticket back in February, so I won’t do that again, but I must write about it a little. The band was amazing! It wasn’t as noisy as promised (more about that later), but the performance of the band and the set-list that they chose to perform was flawless. They played equal numbers of songs from their two famous albums, plus a smattering of b-sides. The vocals were mixed extremely low, but even that worked out OK as the waves of guitar flooded over the venue.

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The sound problems emerged in the last song of the gig. MBV apparently require venues to sign a contract guaranteeing that they can perform at 120 dB, but French law prevents artists from playing louder than 105 dB. Singer/guitarist/genius Kevin Shields doesn’t speak during the gig (no “hello”, no “goodbye”) but did break his silence mid-set to apologise for the fact that the PA system had been turned down lower than they wanted. In the final song of the night, the immense You made me realise, the band launch into what has been dubbed “the holocaust” in which the middle section comprises of a 20 minute extended feedback assault. This is supposed to be very, very loud, and is the climax to the whole thrilling evening. It didn’t work out so well. Three times during “the holocaust” the sound from the PA system dropped to about 20% of what it had been. The band’s own amps were still working, so they played on oblivious. Each drop in sound lasted 1-2 minutes, until about 10 minutes into the feedback the entire sound cut completely with a clean break. I’ve read since the gig that the band was in fact playing throughout the gig at a volume of around 110 dB. The suggestions is that to stop the noise limits being exceeded that French venues have sensors that cut in at a prescribed volume to limit excessive noise, and after multiple infractions cut the power to the speakers completely. This sounds about right to me, as the other theories (blown amplifiers, engineers using their discretion to reduce the sound) don’t really add up. Needless to say the band weren’t happy. After some pretty dejected looking wandering around and arguing with sound technicians and miscellaneous others the band were eventually persuaded to finished the song, albeit plagued by yet more sound problems. So the grand climax was ruined, but if that final 15 minutes is ignored, the gig was absolutely blistering.

Oh - I believe the set list was pretty much as follows:

Only shallow
When you sleep
(When you wake) You’re still in a dream
You never should
Lose my breath
I only said
Come in alone
Thorn
Nothing much to lose
To here knows when
Slow
Blown a wish
Soon
Feed me with your kiss
Sueisfine
You made me realise

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So, in summary – France was great. Liz was a great travel companion, the French were lovely, the food was great, the wine even better, and it was fantastic to see Ngaire. All in all a fantastic two weeks away. Now I’m back in Oslo for 12 days to pack my life up, say goodbye to my friends, say goodbye to the city and head for home. And eat vegetables – God knows I need some vegies!!

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The French connection

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France is really nice - I don't know why more people don't choose to come here! It's an interesting little country nestled between Luxembourg to the east and Andorra in the south-west, but from what I have seen so far it is well worth dropping by for a few days to see what you can see. Come and check it out before word gets around about what a great little country this is!!

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I've been here for just under a week now and I'm really enjoying pretty much everything about France. It is crowded, yes, and rather hot, but these are issues for which I shall not hold the country itself exclusively responsible. The scenery, architecture and most of all the food and wine have been brilliant. Even language has not been too much of a problem - I am travelling with my friend Elizabeth, who speaks fluent French, and my own bumbling attempts to speak the language have so far also been treated by one and all with good humour. So far we have been travelling in the east: Lorraine, Alsace and Burgundy. Our plans to travel south to Bordeaux were thwarted by the bizarre policies the French rail use regarding their fast TGV trains: they sell rail passes that require the user to make a reservation, but then release only a tiny number of reservations for such a use. So despite having a ticket, travel by TGV around France has proven super-difficult (and sometimes impossible) necessitating some ingenious and circuitous re-routing by yours truly, as I endeavour to find us a way to travel on regular trains.

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But enough talk of trains. The highlight has been the food and drink. The names Petit Chablis, Sylvaner, Auxerrois blanc and Pinot Gris , amongst others, will live as long, if not longer, in my memory as the names of the cities and regions in which I have travelled. And the food! Escargot, flambayed prawns, mustard-marinated mussels, escalopes, the wing of a stingray (yes!), amazing pastries - France has been a culinary dream come true! And there is of course so much more to come.

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The cities themselves have been really good too. I actually started my trip in Trier, south-western Germany, which claims to be the oldest city north of the Alps. Regardless of the truth of that claim, it is rather nice and has a nice mix of Roman and German influences. Next was Metz, which is a calm and relaxing city, and then we moved on to Strasbourg. While the name, location and history of Strasbourg suggest a strong Germanic influence, I wasn't really prepared for quite how German Strasbourg would feel. Petit France, the centre of the tourist area of Strasbourg resembles a stylised German pavillion in Disneyland more than a "little France", and the centre of the city abounds with German architecture and restaurants selling wurzt, saukraut and other Alsacian specialties which are very German by nature. Now, after a welcome cooling in temperature, we are in Dijon. Dijon is excellent. It has a nice centre, great little hidden districts with distinct personality, more great food and a very nice atmosphere. Tomorrow we will day-trip to Beaune before heading to Paris in the evening. I'm loving France and happily still have 6 more days here before returning to Oslo!

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Ålesund’s starting to dampen

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“Midnight’s Chilled-man”, “The frozen one”, “Raindrops keep pounding upon my skull like 7,431,626 angry bullets despite the fact that it is allegedly the middle of summer”: these were some of the apt yet ultimately rejected alternative titles for this blog entry. For despite purposefully delaying my trip up from Oslo to coincide with long days and supposedly warmer weather, my trip to Ålesund was punctuated with storms, cold air and biting wind from start to finish.

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After celebrating Midsummer Swedish style in Halmstad a few days earlier, I hoped to double up on the fun by seeing the Norwegian version of the same festival in what I had heard was one of Norway’s most beautiful cities. Ålesund is on the west coast of Norway – about halfway between Bergen and Trondheim. This means that at this time of the year it never gets completely dark, with the sky settling for a deepish dusk for an hour or two in the middle of the night before the sun rises once more. Perfect, you’d think. But you’d be so very, very wrong. Over my three days in Ålesund the temperature peaked at just 10 degrees. It rained, with no more than the odd hour or two’s respite, from when I arrived until about 3 hours before I left. It was cold. As I sat atop a lookout at midnight on Midsummer the rain lashed down in a biblical storm, smashing chairs against the balcony walls and sending people scurrying for shelter. I’d climbed the same hill 3 hours earlier in similar weather, and for about 2 minutes, I am 90% certain that it snowed. If not snow then very soft hail (and what is snow if not softer, colder hail?) Did I mention that it was cold? I’d refused, on principle, to bring my winter coat to Ålesund on the grounds that it is actually summer. This was stupid of me. Midsummer: Norwegian style. Bizarre.

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In any case I do agree that despite the more than inclement weather that Ålesund is a pretty spectacularly situated town. It stretches along a series of island that pop incongruously sharply out of the Atlantic ocean, looking for all the world like the plates of a half submerged Stegosaurus. To my eyes the scenery around Ålesund has an ancient air – it looks like it will remain, relatively unchanged, for millennia to come. Attempts to conquer it, such as the farms placed on absurdly steep cliffs, have been defeated by nature and with storms of the ilk that I witnessed, you wouldn’t bet on humans ever coming to grips with the stark and intense grandeur of the region. Ålesund itself is mostly built on the more welcoming bits of flat land that ring these mini-mountains. The town was largely destroyed by fire in 1904, but thanks to a construction depression that was occurring in Norway at the time, was rebuilt quickly and beautifully in an Art Noveau style, using bricks instead of the timber that was fashionable at the time. The centre of the town is now really rather lovely, bending around hills and waterways and being pretty much in tune with its surroundings. Away from the centre the good old fashioned Norwegian functionalism kicks in and the buildings are less nice, but this is a functioning town and it is churlish to complain about that. There’s not a lot to do in Ålesund itself, but to be honest, if you come to Norway looking for exciting metropolii then you’re going to be solely disappointed – it’s all about beauty, calm and nature.

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And so to the nature we proceed. One of Ålesund’s most useful features is that it is the nearest decent sized town (and airport) to what is considered Norway’s most beautiful fjord: the Geirangerfjord. Having been messed around by a bus driver who was intent on confusing me with a misinformation campaign, I eventually made my way by a combination of public bus and ferry down to the town of Geiranger, at one end of the fjord. It was bucketing down with rain of course, but the trip down to the fjord was really impressive. The final stretch of road is known as the “Eagles road”, presumably because the sounds of all the package tour buses ploughing up and down its twists and turns is marginally less irritating than listening to “Hotel California”. But I digress. Geiranger itself is a nasty little place infested with woollen-sweater/troll-doll/flag selling tyrants, but happily enough I didn’t have to linger there long. It was pretty much straight onto the ferry for me, where I was squeezed in amongst the loudest group of Russian tourists you’d ever be unlucky enough to meet. Elbow to elbow we were, with nary the room to swing an over-sized camera lens, let alone a cat. Scarily enough all of these Russians looked exactly like 1980s Australian nurses union leader Irene Bolger (men and women alike!), which is enough to give all but the hardiest of souls enough nightmares to last the next decade. The trip down the Geirangerfjord was nice. It should have been outlandishly spectacular, but couldn’t attain this status due to the fog and rain and wind. I stayed outside as long as I could survive the temperature and took lots of photos, but to be honest they’re not great. I did however get a feel for what the fjord is like and I am happy that I took the trip – it’s just that when I show my pictures to anyone else they’ll probably wonder what all the fuss was about. Something worth comment is the delicious local sweet that I had inside while warming up. My host in Grimstad a few weeks ago (Mr Sævareid) had tipped me off that I should try the Svele, a sort of folded waffle. Very good it was. Without my coffee and Svele I may well not have survived the cold.

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After an hour on the ferry the least fun part of my trip began. Because of the aforementioned disinformation from the mischievous bus-driver, I’d taken the reverse route to that taken by most tourists visiting Geirangerfjord from Ålesund. This meant that my only option had been to take the various modes of transports at such times as would leave me with a 3 ½ hour stay in the town of Hellesylt. Hellesylt is not the sort of place one chooses to spend more than 3 ½ minutes in. Lonely Planet lists the town of Geiranger as having 270 inhabitants. It doesn’t say anything about Hellesylt. I’d estimate that Hellesylt is about 1/8 the size of the former, so I’m going to say it has about 35 people in it. There is a petrol station, a hotel (appeared to be closed – after all, the day after Midsummer could hardly be considered “peak” of the summer season, could it!), and luckily for me, a kebab/ice-cream/pizza café. Bless that café’s little cotton socks. I stayed there for about 3 hours slowly eating my kebab and drinking a beer. 3 hours. Who knows what the owners thought I was doing there. To make matters worse it was just after I left the ferry in Hellesylt that the sun broke through the clouds for the first time that day. Three or four minutes after the boat trip ended at most. Do you know what happened then? A rainbow. A stinking, scummy, Greg-mocking rainbow. Bastard. Rain and fog all the way up one of the world’s most beautiful fjords and then afterwards, in the one horse town, I get a rainbow. The trip back to Ålesund ended with more bus related shenanigans – this time the bus driver decided that because the bus wasn’t very full that we could all get off about 15 km from town and catch a taxi (paid for by the bus company) instead – God help any poor sod waiting for the bus (the last bus of the day) at any of the other stops on the way into town, as we took a shortcut and bypassed them altogether.

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Wednesday left me with a whole day to do nothing, as my flight home to Oslo was not until eight in the evening. I awoke to more rain, which somewhat limits options in Ålesund. I couldn’t even take the trip to the island of Runde (home of hundreds of thousands of migrating birds, including Puffins) because… it is not yet “season” for boat tours out there. The birds have been there since May, but not the boats! I find it hard to believe that in late June, after the freaking Midsummer festival, that Norwegian tour operators still don’t consider the summer “season” to have started. It is preposterous! So with rain falling down, no tours to be had and no other interesting towns within striking distance, I reverted to what I now know to be the main Ålesund summer tourist activity. I sat in a (very nice) café with a blanket over my legs reading my book. 25 June. Norway. 10 degrees. Rain. Book. It was a very good book, thankfully. I was reading Will Self’s latest, “the Butt” which makes an interesting juxtaposition with “Carpentaria” by Alexis Wright, which I have been reading, but put on hold. “The Butt”, you see, is set in a re-imagined yet undisguised dystopian version of Australia. It uses this ridiculous version of Australia (parodying everything from the accent, to the geography and through to the tourism campaigns of recent years) as the backdrop to a social commentary about cultural paternalism, racism and liberalism. It’s interesting to see Will Self twist Australian culture like this, and even more so when read alongside (or back to back) with “Carpentaria” which portrays life in rural Australia in an altogether different manner. I’m glad I had “the Butt” with me or my trip up north would have been considerably more boring than it was.

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Finally, as mentioned earlier, the sun cam out for a few hours before I left for Oslo. I scurried back up the mountain for a third time (at 420 steep steps each occasion, this is a reasonable feat for my feet) to catch a glimpse of Ålesund from above bathed in sunlight. Compare and contrast the picture below with the rainy midnight view from two days earlier. It was bittersweet, as although I was glad to have seen this magnificent view with some sunlight, it made me regret how nice the whole two days could have been if only the weather was a bit nicer. In summary, I’m pleased that I went on this trip. Weather is what it is, and no time of year guarantees sunshine and warmth. The town of Ålesund is indeed beautiful and its setting spectacular. The Geirangerfjord is quite majestic. Hopefully my poor luck with weather on this trip will be reversed in France next week.

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