Bears and beers in Norway

Bears and beers in Norway.

Saturday 5:00 after I only slept for a few hours my alarm went off. YES, NORWAY HERE WE COME!! Even though I did not know anything about Norway and before I went to Sweden my opinion about Sweden and Norway were the same: “Nice ladies and expensive alcohol.” Now it was finally time to explore a new country and see if the rumours about Norway are true. At least I was completely ready for Norway as I had bigger bags than any girl coming to Norway. Swedish food, drinks and a lot of clothes were not superfluous luxury.

Someone overslept himself, so we only took the bus 6:30, but fine, VAMOS. 5 Hours and 20 card games later we finally arrived in Oslo, the capital of Norway. We got an apartment with 3 bunk beds and after we dropped our bags there it was time to see the city. The first thing we did however was buying some sausages and sauce for the barbeque the next day, as we knew we would be living in the bushes that day and there would be no people and definitely no supermarket located near us. Then we took a tour through the city with ourselves as guide. It was more or less observing the behaviour of Norwegian people as we knew we would have a bicycle tour a few hours later. And the first impression was not really to write home about: “Sir, can we please ask you something?” And he just passed by without a wink… So after a while we finally found a nice girl that tried to explain where we should go out that night (next to the McDonald’s, yeah right). At the end it appeared that she was not Norwegian but Swedish… The bicycle tour was about to start so we went back to our apartments to drop the sausages and sauce, that we found out was from the 10th of April 2015. So we went back and it seemed like we were the weird ones bringing it back.. The bicycle tour was quite interesting and we got some insight in the culture of Norway: The Constitution of Norway is the 17th of May and that day Norwegian people go from house to house, eat breakfast everywhere and every time and party all day and all night.

After this we made ourselves some dinner and decided to go out with Gabriele (Italy), Lukas (Germany), Fredrik (Sweden) and Luke (Australia) to see how Norwegian act when they are drunk. The first pub we went to was an Irish pub where they had more televisions than people. We felt all the time like we were standing in the way of the rugby match they were watching so after some time we went to a second bar and tried to see if a beer was payable. Some negotiations and information later we decided to buy the best alcohol amount-price ratio (some consumer behaviour in practice). For the third bar only Gabriele, Lukas and me were left over and before that we had to get my pocket bottle in my room and fill it up with some “cheap” Swedish liquor. And we also tried to buy some beer in the supermarket. Where you can only buy alcohol till 3.5% in Sweden you can buy till 5.0% in Norway. However, they did not want to sell us the alcohol, even though the supermarket was open. The shop is only allowed to sell alcohol till 6 PM. This meant that we had to buy 3 beers in the third pub, which resulted in my wallet losing 270!! Krono! Approximately 30 euro’s. After some dances later Gabriele and me went to the fourth pub. We wanted to go to the pub next to the pub we finally ended up in, but first they complained that Gabriele was too drunk (HAHA) and that my shoes were not good enough (even more HAHA). The clubs in Sweden close at 2 AM already, but in Norway we were able to go out till 4 AM that night, grab some breakfast at KFC and go to sleep for 2 hours, because the next morning at 6AM we had to leave to Gjerde, our second destination in the middle of nowhere.

To Gjerde it was like sleeping 2 hours, having a stop with a beautiful view, sleeping 2 hours, having a stop with a beautiful view, sleeping 2 hours, having a stop with a beautiful view and around 3 PM we got in Gjerde. In Gjerde we got really located in the bushes. But the view was stunning. They had around 10 small houses and looking to the right, left, front and back there was nothing to see besides mountains and nature. It felt completely like a camping as we had to pay 10 krono for taking a shower of 5 minutes. In the evening we had a great barbeque, my first barbeque in “winter”. We got some hamburgers, sauce that was up to date and beers we kept cool in the little river that passes by the camping side. The only possible to get food that side was to hunt for a pig, put an apple in his mouth and spin it around the fire. But everyone was prepared and at the end we got some marshmallows on the bonfire.

The next day was on forehand going to be the most amazing one, and it was amazing! First we went kayaking and as the water was a little bit frozen, I think it is called ice kayaking. Furthermore we hiked towards the glacier dressed like Eskimo’s and once we got the crampons we went glacier hiking, which was one of the most amazing things I have been doing. Hiking on the ice and during the stop drinking some hot chocolate.. We did this for around 5 hours and after that everyone was literally out of energy. We kayaked back, bought some bread which was also out of date (crazy Norwegians), tried to find a beer pong ball (or well ping pong ball), but the only thing the little shop could offer was tennis balls… not going to work. Back at the camping side we played some beer pong with caps, got some pancakes and waffles with weird Norwegian cheese and went tired but satisfied to bed for a few hours.

3 AM: The alarm goes and we have to wake up for Bergen (Harbour city with 300.000 inhabitants where it rains 300/365 days), our last destination. First we had to take the bus for 2 hours and then the ferry for like 5 hours. Once we got in Bergen we went sightseeing with ourselves as guides like in Oslo. As we were running out of money we decided to call on people’s houses and tell them we are international students who are doing a quiz and for every drink they offer us, we get 3 points and for every piece of food 5 points. But this day people did not really appreciate it and it wasn’t a successful mission at all. After this an organized tour took place and that done, we went to the mountains to get an overview of the city. This was really beautiful and we ticked some jägermeister down to keep us warm. For the night we first went to a “cheap” student bar and afterwards we went to a bar where they were playing some karaoke. We ended up singing “I want to break free”, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Money, money, money” with Gabriele, Fredrik, Kyle (Canada), Roy (Netherlands) and Jenni (Switserland).

The next and last day Gabriele, Lettie (South-Africa) and me went on the road to complete our mission. We had to get that free drink or food. So we tried a house in the harbour and we immediately were successful with some food. Mission accomplished and now I don’t know what to think of the Norway people in general anymore. Because house after house we got food (too much banana’s though) and if we wanted we could have gotten food for the whole bus for the way back. To spend some time before the bus was going to leave (7PM), we played super Mario on the oldest gaming device ever.

After 5 amazing days and many new friends (from 17! Nationalities) it was time to go back to Jönköping by bus. For 16 hours.. Norway is a beautiful country and I am glad that fate made me go to Norway and not to the Russia trip.

I got many good memories of the Norway trip and also a patch for my overall to make it official!

Now the exams are coming closer and closer and I am going to lock myself up in my room for the next week. After that, many crazy activities are planned again !!

I love it!

Kevin