Norway Day 3–in Which We Climb Waffle Mountain

Gaustatoppen, at 1883 metres, is the tallest mountain in the county of Telemark, and in Southern Norway. From the summit, which can be reached in a four hour hike, it is possible to see one sixth of the mainland of Norway. We’ve been staring at the mountain since we arrived in Rjuken and so we were anxious to get started. After an extra large bowl of muesli and several cups of tea, we packed up our lunches and headed off to the start of the trail. The parking lot is several kilometres away from the funicular railway that runs up the inside of the mountain but, this being Norway, they have thought of that and there is a handy bus that will pick you up and drive you from the base of the funicular to the parking lot, allowing you to hike up and then take the railway back down. So convenient! Anyway, that was our plan and so we parked and paid our 100Kroner to the nice Norwegian God of Parking Lots. It was at this point that Terra and Zoe became aware of the fact that we were not as prepared as our fellow Norwegian hikers who had all shown up in their technical gear and expensive back packs. 

We were absolutely fine, and in no danger of risking death by exposure, but it seemed that my backpack was the cause of extreme amounts of embarrassment to the girls, due to its schoolgirl nature, pink colour scheme, and pattern of union jacks. I like to think that youthful energy is the reason the girls marched ahead of me up the trail but truth be told it was more likely the backpack. But it was so breathtaking that it didn’t matter one bit.

You will notice that Zoe is wearing the backpack in this picture due to the fact that no one else is around.

The backpack, and the summit in the background.

It was a bit of a grind near the top but the best part about this mountain is that there is a one-hundred year old waffle hut at the top. The smell of waffles wafting down the trail provided inspiration to hustle it up to the top.

The place was packed and there was some confusion as to where the ‘vaffel queue’ was. We shared a table with an extended Norwegian family who were also delighted to learn we were Canadian. At one point, I was asked by the grandpa in the group if we had walked up the mountain or taken the funicular, I answered that we had hiked up and he said “of course you did – you’re Canadian!”.

When we came back outside after our waffles, the clouds had moved in and engulfed the peak. It was a bit eerie up there and I may have been a bit insistent that the girls not fall off the edge of the rooftop.

I also liked this stairway into the abyss and considered taking it to see what it was like, but instead I decided to descend into the mountain instead.

The way back down was quite a bit easier:

The funicular goes down at quite clip, and quite an angle for about 10 minutes before coming to stop in the middle of the mountain, which I tried not to think too much about, all those millions of tons of rock overhead, and all around…I felt like one of the dwarves from Lord of the Rings.

The train ride out to the ‘surface’ for lack of a better word, was a bit spooky, like they were filming some kind of a remake of The Shining with a child-murder just waiting for us all in the car ahead.

 

When we finally got out from under the mountain, the air was much warmer and the clouds hadn’t made it down that far.

We stopped in Rjuken on our way home to see if it had gotten any bigger while we were up the mountain but it hadn’t so we went back to our cabin for tea, dinner (delicious), and more Downton Abbey. It was an early night for us and we were all exhausted.

Tomorrow we drive back to Oslo for our final three days of this trip. I’m feeling very lucky to have had such a fabulous time so far with my fantastic travelling companions

Thanks for reading,

Cheers,

Jane

Norway Day 2 –In Which There Are Many Waffles, Heavy Water, and Giant Mirrors

Me: Hey, Norway, what’s for breakfast? No, no, don’t tell me, let me guess…

Norway: Ya, we yusually are having some kind of mu…

Me (interrupting): No, no. Let me guess, umm…Steak and Eggs?

Norway (looking confused): Steak and Eggs? No we are not having steak and eggs. It is not heal…

Me (interrupting again): Wait let me take another guess…umm..Fruit Loops?

Norway (really confused now): What are yeuw meaning by Freuoot Loops?  We like to have mue…

Me: (Interrupting yet again): OK one more guess about what you have for breakfast…Sausages, bacon and French toast!

Norway (rolling its eyes now): Are yeuou going to keep interrupting or are yeuou going to let me tell you that we have mue…

Me: Cold Pizza?

Norway: WE HAVE MUE…

Me: Coffee and a donut?

Norway: MUES…

Me: Is it MUESLI??

Norway: YA! I have been trying to tell you!

Me: Norway, do you really think I don’t know that? I’ve been having you on! The entire world knows that you have muesli for breakfast!. I’m just pulling your leg with all those other choices. Of course you have a bowl of muesli, with extra nuts and dried fruit sprinkled on top, and maybe some plain yogurt from your sheep and a bit of honey that you got from the hive that morning.

Norway: Would you like some now or do you want to tease us about hot dogs?

Me: Thank you very much, I would love a bowl of Muesli

Norway: It is right there on the counter beside the dried apricots.

Living up to almost every cliché you could ever think about them, the Norwegians are by far the fittest, most healthiest looking bunch I have ever seen: tall, devastatingly good looking, all kitted out in their technical hiking gear or the latest fashion, effortlessly covering great distances with their ridiculously long, super-ripped legs, munching a piece of rye crispbread, carrying a bottle of crystal-clear mountain water, they put the rest of us to shame. We are surrounded by them here at the lodge and they are a sight to behold. Their children are all poster-worthy and yesterday when Terra and I stepped out of our cabin to go for breakfast, the scene in front of us - picnic table, bowls of muesli, fresh orange juice, perfect little Norwegian children their blond hair shining in the sunlight - looked like it might be a movie set.

Interestingly enough, we are certainly an anomaly here, being Canadian, and something of a point of interest too. We are frequently asked where we are from, as if they can’t quite place our accents, and when they hear we are Canadian the response is usually happy surprise, followed by an exclamation of how far away that is, and how did we come to be in Norway anyway? Of course they all speak English (mostly) perfectly and many also speak Swedish and/or Danish as well. Jerks.

Anyway, after breakfast, we drove down the mountain and headed in to the town of Rjuken, which sits buried in a valley between towering mountains.

In the winter months, sunlight does not reach the town at all. In 2013, as a way to bring sunlight into the town, three giant mirrors were installed high up on the mountain to reflect the sun right into the town’s square. When we arrived we could see the sun reflecting off the mirrors and filling the square with sunlight even though there was quite a bit of cloud in the sky.

Even though they are 50 sq. metres each, the mirrors don’t cover much more than the square, but I hear it is a popular place in the winter.

We wandered the town centre, such as it is, but did find this cute little Norwegian knitting and sewing shop with an invitation to sit for a while and contribute a few rows of knitting. Such a great idea!

After we had seen the whole town in about 3 seconds, we got back in the car and drove a short way out of town to see the old Power station at Vemork. Now this may sound more boring than staring at a wall to some, but there is a lot of history here.

This power station, which is no longer in operation as it is now a museum, was originally used to make power but also to create saltpetre (potassium nitrate) for fertilizer and one of the by products of this production is heavy water (D₂0). Insert confusing/boring chemistry lesson here. Suffice to say,  heavy water was in demand during WW2 by the Germans (who of course occupied Norway at the time) as it plays a crucial role in the making of nuclear weapons. Allied forces made many attempts to stop the production and the Norwegians are especially proud of a group of Norwegian resistance fighters who sabotaged the factory, and then later, after production resumed, sunk a ferry loaded with heavy water that was bound for Germany. The story is fascinating but don’t take it from me: there is a great series on Netflix called The Heavy Water Wars and it’s worth watching.

To get there, we had to go across this suspension bridge and walk nearly a kilometre.  The curators of this museum must be the types who like to recreate scenes, as they have done with this radio communication cabin, in a way that scares the crap out of you when you peer in through the dusty window. I expected him to get up and yell something at me in Norwegian about getting him his muesli or cross-country skiing for a few hundred kms to pick up a reindeer carcass or something like that.

Inside the power station you can still see the huge turbines that did whatever it is that huge turbines do, spin I suppose.

There was a lot to see in the museum including watching a great film by National Geographic that tells the story of the Norwegian Saboteurs and how they managed to keep the atomic bomb out of Hitler’s hands. It stars some of the actual saboteurs themselves, who are all about 150 years old by now, and who still cross-country ski their way to Stockholm and back when the mood takes them. Or something like that.

After a reviving  cup of tea and a piece of cake, and another conversation about where we were from and why, we walked back out to the car and finished our day taking an adorable cable car ride up the side of a mountain to where locals used to go in days Pre-Mirrors when they needed some sun in the winter.

It’s been here since 1928 or so and drops you off at the start of a giant plateau which is the start of Norway’s largest National Park, Hardangervidda. If it were winter, the place would be crawling with cross-country skiers off to do their daily 200km ski, but in the summer, it is mostly tourists and hikers. There is a fantastic bar/restaurant that has recently opened at the top which we made a bee-line for because waffles. If I might say a word or two about Norwegian waffles: Yes please. There was actually a do-it-yourself waffles station there which we were all over.

They take their waffles very seriously here.

This is what I mean when I say that they mostly speak perfect English…

But who cares when there’s waffles  and strawberry jam to be had. Strawberries are in season here right now and every gas station we passed had a cart in the parking lot selling baskets of them. So good!

From the top we also had a view of Gaustatoppen, the mountain that dominates this town and which we are planning to climb tomorrow.

We rolled back down the mountain (in the cable-car, I mean) and headed back to our cabin at the lodge where we had just enough time to fit in an episode of Downton Abbey before dinner. After dinner, the girls went for a swim in the lake before we all crashed for the night.

More tomorrow including our climb of Gaustatoppen, which looks much nicer here in the evening light from the front porch of our cabin. And by evening I mean 11pm. So weird…

Thanks for reading.

Cheers,

Jane

Day 1073– Goodbye Denmark, Hello Norway

I think I have some sort of special status with airlines which dictates that I must always be seated either at the very back of the plane or directly over a wing. It’s like there are no other seats on the plane. Just an observation. Once again SAS (Shite and Shite) Airlines outdid themselves with a free glass of water on the flight. I tried to tell them it was too too generous and that, really, they shouldn’t but they did insist and so I took them up on it.

I was able to see a little bit of the land as we made our approach into Gardemoen airport in Oslo, which is, by the way, the best airport ever. There’s more room than needed, large walls planted  with Reindeer moss all over the place, cool public art is everywhere and the Norwegians are so very friendly and helpful. Copenhagen airport, on the other hand, is none of these things and best avoided if possible.

I spotted this plane while waiting for the second coming of Jesus, and for the plane to dock or get to the gate or whatever it is they claim they are doing on planes between landing and letting everyone off. While I like the fact that Norwegian Air puts famous Norwegian artists on their planes, having a reminder of The Scream on my plane wouldn’t be my first choice.

After picking up our rental car, we hit the road on our way to the town of Rjuken, and drove straight into what looked like anywhere in BC or on Vancouver Island.

The area around Oslo was so familiar to us we wondered where we had ended up, like we were back home but everything had shifted slightly.

We stopped for a bathroom break at  roadside truck stop/restaurant. There must have been 15 Tesla charging stations lined up around the place and most of them in use.

You could also charge yourself up at the Hamburger charging stations located in the parking lot as well. So convenient.

Our drive was four hours west into Norway to a mountainous area in the province of Telemark popular for outdoor pursuits like skiing, hiking and ice climbing, but also with a very interesting war history as well, which right there makes it very different from BC, even if it did look like this:

That mountain in the distance is called Gaustatoppen and is another reason for our visit here.  We are booked into a lodge, with a view of the mountain, for three nights and plan on hiking to the top. It also has an underground funicular railway built in the 1950s for use by NATO that goes right to the summit (the mountain, not the lodge…)

After a long day of travel, we were thrilled when we arrived at the lodge.

We arrived just in time for dinner, which was delicious. I was especially thrilled that all our meals are included here! No more $90 lunches. After dinner we walked down to the lake and lay on our backs on the dock with our feet in the water and looked for pictures in the clouds.

Green roofs are all the thing here and I am trying to work out how to bring one of these fantastic little cottages home with me. They look a bit troll-like with their grassy tufts on the roof that look just like shocks of hair.
Norwegians seem to think their country is overrun with trolls, and there are references everywhere to various piles of rocks that used to be trolls before they were struck by sunlight, just like Tom, William, and Bert from The Hobbit. And then of course there are the Norse Gods who, I think, walk amongst us mere mortals here on the ground…

At the 60th parallel here, it never really gets dark at night. It’s still bright out at 10:30pm, and still light at midnight. Once again I fell asleep to birdsong.

Quanks for tweeting,

Cheers,

Jane

Copenhagen Day 3–In Which Denmark is So Cool, and I Write in Haiku.

Denmark is so cool
All of those coloured buildings
Lining the streets

We’re back on the bus
We still have forty-eight hours!
The sun is shining

First stop Cathedral
The giant carved wood organ
Hanging over head

But the tower calls
We must climb four hundred steps
The thought makes me faint

On the way up, art.
Cherubs fill the bell tower
Wings under the bed

Inside all is fine
Outside the steps are so steep
I am sure to fall

Only half the way
Passed by girl with leg in cast
No word of a lie

Near the top such wind
Surely it will blow us off
”Tourists fall to death”

Back down I must go
Clinging to the copper wall
Everyone laughing

The view from the top
Oresund bridge to Sweden
Zoe took the pic

I looked up to see
This graffiti down below
I certainly am

Half-way down again
The houses look so tiny
Or special effects?

Back at the bottom
It’s time for a canal ride
The tower mocks me

At the Nyhavn
Ai Wei Wei’s installation
The Soleil Levant

Thirty five hundred
The number of lifejackets
Collected in Greece

Lesbos overwhelmed
Refugees lost lives at sea
All that’s left washed up on shore

So very moving
Stupid Yankee tourists said
Who is Ai Wei Wei?

Back on the canal
It’s all houseboats all the time
Such is the life here

More Little Mermaid
But here’s the alternative
Such an improvement!

In Copenhagen
The locals prefer to sit
on the pier and watch

A shopping trip next
Pedestrian Zones everywhere
Please no H&M

Really I mean it
Too many hours waiting there
Girls trying on clothes

Another two hours
I will never get them back
H&M, F.O.

Now we need some food
Replenishment of our souls
lost in H&M

Ice cream and churros
Ten thousand calories at once
It’s popular here

Danes love their hot dogs
No more ninety dollar lunch
Short bun looong sausage

Open faced sandwich
rye bread, lox, pickles, and dill
apples on top, yum

Your angle is wrong
Says Terra of my food photos
Bird’s eye view is best

Our day almost done
I dream of an early night
On the way home, Tivoli

Dreams dashed, we go in
A mini Disneyland park
Walt Disney loved it

The girls love it too
They swing, spin, drop, fly their way
through the park for hours

I watch from safety
It has a Disneyland feel
Walt stole some ideas

Finally we leave
No early night for us now
But good memories

The sun is setting
Our street is still full of life
From the balcony

We leave tomorrow
Next stop Norway mountain lodge
That’s it for Haiku

Cheers,

Jane