Hey all. Though it doesn’t seem like it to me, my summer travels are almost half over. Here’s a quick summary of the trip thus far, and a look forward to my plans for the next month.

On Tuesday June 9th my parents and my sister, Solvejg, flew over for a visit to Trondheim! Bjorn stayed home to work for the summer. They stayed for three days, seeing what I had been up to over the semester, and doing some hiking in Bymarka, which I didn’t do enough of on my own. We then traveled south by rental car, visiting relatives in Soknedal and exploring the mountains and glaciers of the Luster Fjord in southern Norway (see the map). From Oslo we flew to Copenhagen, Denmark, rented another car, and drove south to Nakskov, Lolland, where our family spent a semester in 2001. There we visited many relatives and friends, and did some biking and sea kayaking. After that we flew from Copenhagen to Paris and worked our way down through France by car. Our destinations were Provence, the Riviera, and Chamonix, in the French Alps.

It was great to travel with family, as everything had already been planned out and I was able to just tag along. We did some great hiking, in the fjords of Norway and the alps of France, as well as some swimming in the Riviera. Last Tuesday, the 30th, my family drove back north to Paris and a flight home, dropping me in Geneva, Switzerland on the way. Thus begin my solo travels. From Geneva I took a combination of train, bus, and cable car to Gimmelwald, a tiny village up in the Swiss Alps. Which brings us to today.

The future is less certain than the past, but I do have a broad plan for the next five weeks. I’ll be in Switzerland for about a week, relaxing and hiking in the mountains, and then I’ll head south west to Spain. The European Juggling Convention takes place in Vitoria, Spain from the 4th to the 12th, and I’ll be there from the 9th on, seeing some amazing jugglers, and hopefully learning a lot. From there I’ll make an arc back up to Norway, stopping in Barcelona and Austria to visit friends, and Italy and Germany for sightseeing. On the 29th of July there is a festival in Stiklestad, just north of Trondheim, celebrating St. Olaf’s death there in battle. My relatives who live in the area have tickets, and so I’ll make it back up to Norway by then to see them and go to the festival. My flight leaves from Trondheim on the 5th of August, so for the remaining week I hope to keep going north, to Tromsø and the Lofoten islands, before returning for the plane ride home.

I’m not sure I will be writing any more on my trip, so have a wonderful summer wherever you are. I look forward to exchanging stories and photos when I get back. Until then, ha det godt!

hilsen Trygve

I just added a handful of photos from my recent trip. Enjoy!

Photos

I was kind of afraid to look at the date of my last post when I went to write this. I guess my ideal of a post a week never really happened. Sorry. Now here we are at the end. It is, as always, a beginning as well as an end, but right now I’m feeling the later more sharply. A lot has happened in a month, as usual more than can be told in a short blog post. But we must try!

Last time I was starting the final week of classes. Classes here finished on the fifth of May, with the following week and a half devoted to reading. It’s a strange concept coming from St. Olaf where we get a day to read, and I often spend that playing frisbee! They take their reading days very seriously here, though, and ought to, since the exams last 4 hours and count for 100% of one’s grade. This arrangement does encourage many to do little during the semester and then fill their short-term memory in time for the test. I can’t say I didn’t take advantage of this,  allowing myself to experience more and study less during the semester than I am used to. I had exams on the 18th and 19th of May, and the 2nd and 3rd of June. The 15th and 16th were both math, and I spent most of the time beforehand studying.

There was, however, a small break for festivities on the 17th. For those who aren’t aware, the seventeenth of May is Norway’s national holiday (Did you know it is also Ireland’s Famine Memorial day?). For details I leave you to Wikipedia. It does a much better job than I would, non scholarly though it may be. What I can tell you is that the seventeenth is huge in Norway, rivaling (if not beating flat out) our July celebrations. The main event is a huge parade (bigger still if you get to Oslo, but Trondheim’s was pretty impressive). Mostly this consists of any and every organization in town which feels like walking around. There are also several marching bands, but no firetrucks or floats. Everyone with a bunad (Norway’s national dress. Again, check Wikipedia for details (CAUTION: this article does not cite sources! Don’t use it in your English paper.) wears one, otherwise men all wear black suits and ties, and women, well, it seems all the women have bunads. Together with much flag waving this makes for a very colorful and beautiful event. Virtually the whole city turns out in their finest, if not to walk in the parade, then to line the streets watching and cheering. Before the parade I also went to church in the cathedral, where we sang the national anthem. After the parade we wandered around town a bit, admiring everyone in their finery, though I did sneak home in the afternoon for some studying, as I had an exam at 9 o’clock sharp the next morning.

You might have noticed that there was a 14 day gap in between my finals. I noticed too! Fourteen days seemed like an awfully long time to study, so I planned a 10 day trip to Great Britain in between. There’s no time for details, but the basic route was London, Edinburgh, Pitlochry (highlands), Stirling, Manchester, Peak District (national park – hills and dales), London. Check out the map for the locations of all these places. Highlights included couch surfing in Edinburgh, catching an annual Scottish highland games festival, hiking – quite literally – over hill, over dale, and hearing the St. Olaf choir sing Moses Hogan in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. Oh, and seeing A comedy of Errors in the Globe Theater for 5 quid. It was a great trip, and fun to see so many familiar faces in the choir that I hadn’t seen in so long.

It was very hard, though, to come back to the grindstone for three days. I got back on a Sunday morning, and promptly commenced studying for physics (Classical Mechanics) whose exam was the following Tuesday. Then on Wednesday I had an oral exam for literature history, in Norwegian. It went quite well, probably the best of all my subjects this semester. Then I breathed. Actually I did a good bit of sleeping in, because, funny thing, it’s hard to go to bed at night when it’s still light at one in the morning, and you don’t have anything to do the next day. Right now it’s 10:20 and the sky has just barely started to color in preparation for a sunset. OK, now it’s 12:06, and the sky is still blushed from the sun. Though the birds have no intention of sleeping, I do. I hope to post some pictures of Great Britain tomorrow. Trust all is well.

That’s Greek for Greece! I’m not sure when I’ll finish this, but I’m tired of slogging through special relativity, and writing seemed like a pretty good alternative. This, then, is the tale of my spring break travels.

In short, I and a friend spent the week before Easter in Greece, split between Athens and the island Naxos. My travel companion was Chenoa Albertson, who many of you know. For those who don’t, she’s a friend and fellow art major from St. Olaf. She has also been taking Norwegian classes, and is spending the semester in Bø, just west of Oslo (See the map). The motivation was a desire for warm weather, a free week, and cheap flight tickets!

Vigeland Park Monolith

I left Trondheim the evening of the 19th of March, a Thursday, and arrived by bus in Oslo on Friday morning. It was actually a little more exciting than that. I was confused about the bus’s departure time (11 pm), and thought I had an extra half hour and a bus ride down to the station. Around 10:20 I realized my mistake, at which point I began hurriedly packing. I set a PR for packing time of 20 minutes, and then flew through the rain and dark on my bike down to the station. I arrived at the station at 10 til, found the bus at 5 til, and we left at 11. Perfect, right? This episode began an exciting string of close calls with transportation which continued throughout the trip.

Chenoa took the train over, and we met at Vigeland sculpture park. We explored the park for a bit and then took the train an hour south to the Rygge Airport. We were planning to take a buss which would have gotten us there in plenty of time, but we missed it by three minutes, and so time was a little tight. Lucky for us the airport was neither big nor crowded, and security was a breeze.

Three hours later we were in Greece! The sun set somewhere around the time we landed, so our first views of the city were by night. We took a half hour bus from the airport into the center of bustling Athens – prettier at night than during the day, and then walked about an hour north up to our hostel. Our hostel was on a quiet side street, a bit removed from the noise, but still solidly within the center of Athens. We spent the following two days, three nights in Athens in three main pursuits: seeing a bunch of old buildings,

Acropolis and Us

wandering around parks,

Oranges

and eating.

Dinner on a balcony in the Plaka

All three were wonderful. Especially the food. Greek food is full of spices, intriguing seafood, and potent cheeses. A combination of somewhat bland Norwegian fare, three months of cooking for myself, and affordable prices didn’t hurt either.

After a couple days in the city we were ready for peace and quiet. We chose the island of Naxos for its hiking, and for being somewhat less accessible than Paros, and less touristy than Santorini. All three are destinations on my ideal three week tour of Greece (I planned it concurrently, as I read about all the places we just didn’t have time to see). The ferry left at 7:25 am, so we and 10 others from the hostel ordered taxis for 6:15 am. The first came soon enough, but the other two took their time, and so we wasted no time sitting around waiting for the ferry to leave. The ride took five hours, during which we caught up on sleep, and then tried some fast food squid.

Pension Irene II

Our time on Naxos was centered around the main town called, simply enough, Naxos. We stayed four nights in a beautiful pension close to the center of town where we had a kitchenette, bathroom, and balcony, for less than the hostel in Athens! Irene, the landlady, was an archetypal Greek grandma with a very limited English vocabulary. She could understand us just fine, but used single words, smiles, and gestures to get her point across. We had wonderful weather in Athens, but that ended the day of our ferry trip with a three day stretch of clouds and periodic showers. The weather gave us an excuse to sleep in a bit, though we didn’t let it prevent us from exploring. Our first full day we climbed up to a peak above the town to get a view.

The town as seen from the hills

Finally, on our last day on the island, we got some sun. In the morning we rented bikes and set off to explore the interior (see our route on the map). We biked through a couple cute little villages, and a lot of beautiful olive groves. Part of the way was on roads of varying development, but we also did some mountain biking, following hiking trails, which was more exciting. My favorite stop was an ancient abandoned monastery we came across. There was no sign, no fence, no tourist establishment, just some old stone walls to explore. The overgrown olive orchard nearby was equally beautiful.

Our ferry back – another close call – gave us a few hours in Athens before our flight. We spent the time shopping and eating. Of particular interest was a stop at the poet sandal maker for handmade Greek leather sandals. The tiny shop used to be run by Melissinos, who would give away copies of his poems along with his sandals. It is now run by his son, an artist and playwright, who went to school in the states and speaks the best English we heard. It was a bit of a surprise stepping from a street with merchants who have learned just the limited vocabulary necessary for attracting tourists into a shop who’s clearly Greek owner sounds like an American.

The rest of the trip was just a bunch of travel – bus to airport, flight to Rygge, bus to Oslo, train to Bø. I spent a couple days over Easter at Chenoa’s place in Bø. This entailed several more adventures – adventures for another story. Greece was adventure filled enough, and a great start to my travels in Europe. It left me excited for the summer, during which I will be exploring western Europe by rail and backpack. Plans are starting to come together, though there is still much to do. Right now I’m planning a ten day trip to Great Britain, in between finals. Yeah, I have actually been doing some work here. Three more days of classes though, then finals, and then we’re done! Only five more weeks in Norway. Crazy.

Guess where I was over spring break? Greece! Chenoa (A friend from St. Olaf, studying in a different town in Norway) and I met up in Oslo and flew down to Athens for a week of warmth, old buildings, and the ocean. I hope to provide a full story soon, but until then, here’s some pictures from the trip – Photos. Sorry, I know the gallery on this site isn’t ideal. If I had the time, I’d write my own, but then I don’t even have time to post pictures. Also, here’s a map of some of the places we went to on our trip – Greece. I’ll explain later, but I should really go to class. It’s Coding Theory, and my last class in that subject! My, how time flies.

Hello again!

This whole blog thing is harder than I thought. I guess it has not been very high on my priority list, and I can always find something else to do which seems more demanding. I will try to bump it up a few notches on the list. The following was started just over a month ago (eek!), and is way overdue. Here it is, with a second half and some comments.

Sorry, you’re not getting the second half of Wednesday the 25th.  That day seems like so long ago. But there are other events, from even further back, that demand attention, namely Iglbu (There are also much more recent items of note, but I’m trying for a minimum of anachronisms, to avoid confusion). As you might have deduced from the photos or the map, Iglbu is a cabin, and was the destination of my second cabin trip. It was just over a month ago (edit: two months ago!), from the 13th to the 15th of February, but looking back it has been the single most exciting and enjoyable thing I’ve done here (second to Greece, now), so I guess I ought to tell you about it.

Even on the other side of the pond, I have found that many things are just the same as back home. One of these is juggling club. Being an avid juggler, I was very excited to see that there was an official juggling club here. I have been attending the weekly meetings, and have confirmed my suspicions that juggling, like math, transcends languages and cultures. Within a half hour at the first meeting I was passing seven clubs with a Norwegian juggler, and finding out that we were familiar with the exact same techniques, patterns, and tricks. Of course not everything is the same, and there has been a lot of exchanging of ideas as well. Perhaps because of juggling’s international nature, the juggling club attracts a lot of international students. Attendance usually consists of about half Norwegians, half internationals, and so it has been a great place to meet both the locals and the world.

Cabin trips are certainly the thing to do with a large group of people in Trondheim in the winter, and the juggling club is no exception. The juggling club, I think, was more of an excuse than a motivation. We didn’t juggle at all on the trip, but then that wasn’t really the purpose. This time there were several differences from my first trip with my international friends. The biggest was that we had experience. Or at least, some of us did. One girl in particular is a member of the group which maintains the cabins, and has gone on upwards of 70 cabin trips! She and some of the others had their favorites, and so we ended up with one a bit smaller and more remote than last time. Given that it had also snowed quite a bit since my last trip, this meant that skis were a necessity. Thankfully I was able to borrow a pair from Anders, one of the Norwegians in the club.

The group

There were ten on the trip. Four were Norwegian, three German, two French, and an American. We met on Friday afternoon, right after my math class, and took the bus an hour and a half south to Soknedal (Coincidentaly, relatives of mine also live in Soknedal. I didn’t see them on this trip, though I hope to meet up with them at some point). From there we set out on skis. The first bit was mostly on country roads, but after about a half hour we turned off the road into the woods. There was a clear path through the trees for most of the way, but no one had been through recently, and so we made our own trail. This was still February, and we didn’t get on the bus until 4:30, so it was quite dark by the time we started skiing. It wasn’t too hard to follow the person in front, though, and the blue-gray snow, black trees, and shadowy mountains in the background made the whole trip somewhat mystical. The darkness did cause some exciting parts when the trail took a turn downhill. In the middle of the night, the snow’s shadows and highlights were replaced with a monotone blue-gray blanket that gave us no hint of small (or big) bumps in the hill (You just have to let go and hang on, if that makes sense. Kind of like a rollercoaster). Fortunately there were only a few of these, as the trail was mostly uphill. The trip took nearly 4 hours, with occasional short stops for refreshments. By the end we would have welcomed an “unfortunate” downhill as it was close to ten, and we were exhausted. The exhaustion helped with the cold, though, which was fortunate because the cabin was of course not warm when we got there. Since it was small, it didn’t take long to heat up after we got a fire started in the woodburning stove. We then started dinner – chicken and rice – and ate a midnight supper.

The mountain we climbed

Saturday we did what one always does on cabin trips – find the nearest (or highest) mountain, and get on top of it! In our case the nearest wasn’t the highest, so we went for the highest. It was a beautiful day, and we didn’t have packs anymore, so the climb wasn’t too bad (I’ve also had two months to forget about the hard parts). It did provide a demonstration and quite effective advertisement for modern technology. Several in our group had ski skins – a strip of fabric with a tooth in it that attaches to the bottom of one’s ski. They only cause a little friction going downhill, and uphill they prevent nearly all backward motion. This alows fortunate users to walk straight up the mountain. The less fortunate must resort to zigzagging and herringboning, as Anders is demonstrating so beautifully to the right. He makes it look easy.

Herringbone

At the top we got stunning views of mountains, trees, and snow – no sign of civilization except for a few other cabins. We didn’t linger at the top, though, because the wind whips across the peaks making it feel like the tundra (Not that I would know. I’ll add it to my travel wish-list). On the way down we learned that cross-country skis are made for going across country, downhill skis are made for going downhill. It’s very hard to stop and turn when descending on cross-country skis. Like the previous night, you sometimes just have to let go and hang on, though these slopes were significantly larger. There was a lot of falling, and a lot of zigzagging.

View from the mountain

When we got back we carried water from a mountain stream for drinking and washing. We had dinner at a more normal time that night, and then sat around the table playing games, singing songs, and chatting. There was also chocolate fondue for dessert, courtesy of our French cook. There are song books at all of the cabins, which contain a delightful mixture of traditional Norwegian campfire and pop songs, as well as a lot of well known American hits.

On Sunday we went part way up the mountain again before skiing back to the bus stop. The way back was nearly all downhill, and took approximately a third of the time. On the bus we all sat in the back, and our laughter, remnants from the previous night’s singing, and perhaps some of the perfume of a two day cabin trip gave us plenty of room to relax.

I am setting a new record for posting frequency. Also for my shortest post:

There are new photos.

Cabin Trips
Enjoy!

I’m not sure they have this particular expression, but literally translated it’s “a day in the life”. I’ve been writing a lot about walking through the wilderness and chilling in mountain cabins, but believe it or not that’s not part of my daily routine. So, in the interest of filling in the picture of my life in Norway, here’s the story of Wednesday the 25th of February – largely a normal day, though a particularly busy one, lending itself to storytelling.

I have been feeling tired, and almost fell asleep in Galois Theory on Tuesday, so I have moved sleep up a few notches on my priority list. Wednesdays I only have one class, Classical Mechanics, from 12 to 2, so I let myself sleep in until 9. For the first time in several weeks I changed my eating habits, turned American, and had a bowl of cereal and milk for breakfast. I have adopted the Norwegian custom of smørbrød (lit. butterbread – open faced sandwiches with jam, cheese, veges, ham, etc. as toppings) for breakfasts, but I had run out of bread, and so was forced to switch cultures. The lack of bread also prevented me from making a matpakke (foodpack) for lunch, so I guess I’ll have to comment on my eating habits another day.

Class wasn’t until 12, but I caught the bus at 10:45 so that I could do some work before hand. I have found it is much easier to concentrate and avoid procrastination if I’m not at home. Go figure. I found a place in the cafeteria in the building where I have Classical Mechanics, and actually made some sense of the homework problems for the class. In addition, the lecture that followed also made sense for once. Physics has been really interesting, and I have missed that type of thinking, but it has also been very confusing. Slowly, it has been making more and more sense, though. Language isn’t a problem, as the lectures are in English, but it has been a long time since I have done any sort of applied math, and longer still since I have fought the good fight against differential equations and symbolic integrals.

Classes at NTNU (Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)) are all on a very logical schedule. Each period lasts 45 minutes, starting at quarter past. Most classes meet for two consecutive periods, with a 15 minute break in the middle. Since most of my classes meet around lunch time, this break is a convenient time for eating. I usually try to eat slowly so that I have something to munch on during the second lecture. It helps keep my eyes open during abstract algebra.

So, I ate lunch during physics, and afterwards took the bus down to the center of town to do some shopping. I was out partly just to explore, but there were a couple specific things on my list, namely socks and ski boots. I can rent skis at the university, but unfortunately a size 48 (US 13.5) is slightly uncommon, and they don’t have any boots big enough. I started with a sports store on Fjordgata, and almost immediately became distracted (You can find Fjordgata on the map right across the river from the police station). The sports store was nice, but way to expensive, so I continued down the street and discovered an amazing succession of three little shops. I am certainly no recreational shopper, but the combination of old stuff, cheap stuff, and Norwegian stuff temporarily changed that. The first was a tiny antique shop that seemed made for a nisse, with low ceilings, cramped passageways, and walls entirely hidden by hanging clothes. In other words, a typical antique shop, but with a Norwegian twist. Next was Fretex, the Norwegian version of Salvation Army. They had a very similar array of wares, but much better organized, and more spread out. Both places had a few old ski boots, but about half the size I needed – from some kid with growing feet. Finally there was the Norwegian army surplus store! What a great place. I’m not into camo, or hunting knives, but they had a large selection of woolen clothing, for reasonable prices. I got a pair of wool mittens for skiing, and some wool liner socks, for future cabin trips.

All of this was quite fun, but I was getting short on time, and still wanted to find boots. Like in most cities, the shops within walking distance of downtown are relatively high-end, so I planned to take the bus north and east to a section of the city called Lade, which has several shopping centers. As often happens, I missed the bus, and had 20 minutes to wait until the next one. Being dependent on a bus schedule has largely been a new experience. In New Wilmington a second stoplight was a major sign of urbanization, and it takes five minutes to walk across the entirety of the St. Olaf campus, so public transportation is a little foreign to me. Or, at least it has been. After two months of using buses daily I am no expert, but I am certainly experienced. Anyways, there is a small grocery store called Bunnpris (lit. “bottom price”) near the bus stop, and so I went there to buy bread while I was waiting. All of the grocery stores, and even the seven elevens, bake fresh bread daily. During February the bakery at the Bunnpris has a special where every loaf of bread, from the Norwegian wonder bread equivalent, to thick, dark rye bread, is 20 kroner (about $3, a good price for bread here). Of course I bought the thick, dark rye bread, and felt very good about it.

Snacking on a fresh slice of rye bread, I caught the bus, and wandered around Lade for a bit. There I found Intersport, a sports equipment and clothing store, very similar to Dick’s. They had ski boots, of course, and just happened to have a pair of 48s for $30! Since every other pair was at least $70, and as much as $200, I was wary, but they fit, and they weren’t falling apart, so now they’re mine.

A very good day so far, and it was only 6! I think I’ve written quite enough for now, though, so the rest will have to wait until next time. Sorry there aren’t any pictures. I’ll try to put up a few from a recent cabin trip, if I get a chance. Hope all is going well, thanks for reading!

mvh,

-Trygve

p.s. I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it a permanent feature, but I’ll bring back the “Norwegian lesson of the day” to explain the abbreviation above. The letters “mvh” stand for “med vennlig hilsen”, literally, “with friendly regards”, the Norwegian “Sincerely”, though maybe slightly less formal.

WordPress tells me it has been 2 and a half weeks since I last wrote. My memory tells me it has been at least a month. Either my memory is failing – already quite well documented – or a lot has happened since then. This is also most certainly true.  I have finally realized that I cannot possibly relate everything of note that happens to me. Some will be told through pictures, certainly, and there will be more storytelling when I return, but I have belatedly realized that many will have to just become part of my private experience. This is a strange thought, and one that will take a while for me to come to terms with. So many of my experiences are impossible to capture with either words or pictures, and it is hard not to be able to share them. Not to mention that I don’t seem to be able to find time to share the ones I can.

I made time today though, and if I muse all day I’ll never get around to anything. Today’s topic is my first cabin trip.

My life here has developed a pattern: School work and social activities during the week, cabin trips, skiing, and exploring nature on the weekends. Studenterhytta was just the first of a string of weekend excursions into the Norwegian wilderness which have gotten progressively more adventurous and intensive. The weekend after Studenterhytta (January 31st to February 1st) I went on another cabin trip with my international friends here. The destination was Stakkslettsbua, a cabin a couple hours southwest of Trondheim (See the map for details).

Stakkslettsbua

There’s a volunteer organization at NTNU called Koiegruppa, literally “The cabin group”, which manages 22 cabins in the Trondheim area. To use one you (generic “you”. I got out of it this time.) get up really early Wednesday morning, show up at NTNU, and stand in line to put your name down for the cabin you want for the weekend. We got our second choice, and so Saturday afternoon we took a bus south to Vinjeøra, and then walked in to the woods! Actually, most of the hike was on a road, but by the time we started walking it was 4:30 – just after sunset – and so it quickly got quite dark. With a full moon and Venus to guide us, the shadows of mountains all around, and no signs of civilization, it seemed pretty remote. We walked for about three hours, at the end taking a trail that led up away from the road, into the woods and mountains. Because we were arriving so late, some of our group had managed to get a ride with a friend earlier in the day, so by the time we arrived they had the fire going and dinner cooking! That was the best part of Saturday.

Breakfast in the cabin. Through the door is a cooking area with a wood-burning stove, and then three bedrooms with a set of bunk beds each.

Since we didn’t get our first choice, the cabin was just a little small for our group. Stakkslettsbua is advertised as a ten person cabin, with six bunk beds. We had nineteen. Luckily the beds were plenty big, so thirteen people doubled (or tripled) up in sleeping bags on the mattresses, and the remaining six found places on the couch, on the floor, or on the table. I spent the night on the bottom bunk between two rowdy Catalans. Great fun.

Sunday morning the adventure really began. To the left of the cabin in the photo, outside of the frame, is a mountain. Somehow I managed to not get any pictures from the bottom, but I have plenty from the top, because we were there! Most of the way the climb wasn’t too bad because it hadn’t snowed for a few weeks. Most of the snow on the mountain had blown away, and what was left was a hard crust which made walking easy. When climbing was necessary, though, the icy surface made things interesting – the sort of thing you tell your mother about after the fact. At the top the view was amazing.

The view from the top

Amazing doesn’t do it justice, and neither does a panoramic picture, no matter how many pixels it contains. It’s one of those experiences that I can’t fully share. Just treat it as an advertisement for visiting Norway; I’m here until August – free weekend tours.

Going down was fun. Wearing snow pants, I could just sit down and push! There were enough ledges that it wasn’t too dangerous. When we got back we had lunch, cleaned the cabin, and then walked back to catch the bus at five. It was a wonderful trip, and a great introduction to the Norwegian wilderness.

Hey.

Thanks to a tip from a dedicated reader, I realized I was the only one enjoying the photos! There aren’t many of them, but now you too can see them. On the right hand side of the page (or at the very top) look for the link “Photos”. Be sure to click on the thumbnails a couple times. Once gives you a larger view with comments, and once more gives you an even bigger view. Some of the photos are really big, particularly the panoramas. All this clicking isn’t exactly how I’d design a photo gallery, but I don’t have time for that, so we’ll make do.