Forests, Fun; Finland!

The ferry pulled up to the Helsinki Tallink terminal at 10am on Sunday in the pouring rain. For about 10 minutes I wandered around outside in the rain, looking for my next host, Sampsa, and soon found him before I was soaked. Twenty-five minutes later we arrived at his apartment where I had my own room, a first in a long time.

It was a wet Sunday afternoon, but we decided that we should probably do something as Sampsa had to work 6am-5pm everyday and would not really have that much time for me so we headed out to the local forest. Sampsa had a plan for us to do a ten kilometer round hike through the forest so we left the road and headed into the wilderness. This place was beautiful, even in the autumn with the baring trees.

Lead the way, Sampsa

We walked through the mud and passed the first of many lakes which we would see. What caught my attention, though, were these crazy-huge lumps at the base of many of the trees. Sampsa enlightened me, they were anthills, huge ones at that. He explained that they were always built on the south side of a tree so when you were hiking, all you had to do was look for one of these and you would always know where south is.

Anthill

We ventured further and further into the forest but soon it started to rain. We figure, though, that we would keep going because it wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately but the time we got about a third of the way through, the rain was getting thick and heavy, so we turned back. I fell down a bank and soiled myself, but it only took about half the time to return to the car.

That night, Annika, Sapmsa’s girlfriend, made a delicious fish soup. Later, I found a message on my Couchsurfing account from a girl who I had requested a host with in Helsinki but who could not take me in. Instead, she suggested that we meet up and that she show me around the town.

And so the following day I met up with Meri at the Kaampi shopping centre in the Helsinki CBD. We decided that we would go and check out a local art gallery but unfortunately she had forgotten that all museums and gallerys were closed on Mondays. Lost for ideas, we walked around a bit and decided to check out the Tumio Church.

Toumio Church

Afterwards, Meri wanted to show me some of the more intersting shops in the design district of Helsinki, and we took a tour of some interesting clothing shops, I bought an illustrated story book in an independent book store and we fouraged through a second-hand market. We also had lunch at a Thai restaurant, which was very nice, and checked out what appeared to be the only open art gallery (of which I can’t remember the name), which was showing an Icelandic photography exhibition of images contrasting nature with people who have intellectual handicaps.

I had told Meri that at some stage during my stay I wanted to vist the Helsinki island fort of Soumenlinna, and she suggested that we go that afternoon as it was supposed to rain over the next few days. So we hopped onto the ferry and headed over the sea to Soumenlinna, the fort which has protected Helsinki through numerous battles.

On the way to Soumenlinna

When we got there, the wind was blowing but we still explored our way around the fading buildings in which a few thousand people still live.

Soumenlinna Clock Tower

Soon the sun started to set and we decided to head to the seaside to see the sunset, which was rather subdued as the storm clouds were closing in fast. The wind was strong and blowing a freezing gale but we spent a short time there and ran back just in time to get the ferry back to the mainland.

Fort Walls

Meri and I and the Sea

Back at the mainland, we went out separate ways but not after arranging to meet again the following day so we could actaully visit some art galleries.

At 2:30pm the next day I met Meri at the Atenium gallery. They were showing an exhibition which displayed the works of five friends of Finnish author Mika Waltari, author of a famous Finnish book called The Egyptian. The paintings had nothing to do with the book and some were more interesting than others, but there was an actual mummy in a glass case which was pretty cool! There were also galleries of posters for the book and film, another of Japanese post-WWII photography and lastly one showing Japanese landscapes and scenescapes from over 200 years ago (watercolour).

After this we left and went to find lunch. We walked through What is known as Plague Park, a historic burial place of plague victims which has been converted into a park but continues to be littered with graves.

Plague Park

We went to the supermarket to look for a cheap lunch, and ended up with the Finnish specialty of Carelian pies, mashed vegetables in a crusty open pie. Actually very similar to the meat version eaten by the Lebonese (which I can’t remember the name of, sorry Sarah’s grandmother!). After this, we headed to the Helsinki modern art gallery, Kiasma, only to find that it had closed at 5pm (yes, a pretty late lunch) was closed. Meri had suggested earlier that I come over for dinner, so after a little bit of shopping we headed back to her place on the train.

That night Meri cooked a very nice salmon (yeah, I know), and we drank a New Zealand wine which she was adement to try. We talked about al sorts of things, listened to music, and at some stage, Meri the art student decided to sketch me. I don’t think it was too bad for a 5 minute job either!

Meri's Sketch of Me

The following day the weather was nice again, and Annika suggested that we go to Porvoo. Unfortunately it was too late because Meri still wanted me to see Kiasma and I had to be in town at 5:30pm. Instead Annika and I went for a wander around the forest and lake which was so close to her apartment.

Forest and Lake

We walked for about an hour through the forest which proved to be  some sort of squirrel breeding ground, they were everywhere! I’m going to miss these little guys when I get back to New Zealand.

Tree Squirrel

I made it into town with about five minutes to spare, but had forgotten where the gallery was, and after asking about three or four different people, I finally found it, only ten minutes late. Ridiculous seeing as I had been there only the day before. And now came the third time that I was to miss out on Kiasma. Meri had jsut recieved some bad news about a family member and didn’t really feel like visiting the gallery as the building is a very intense place to be in. We decided instead to do something spontaneous and walked down to the metro where she asked me “east or west?”. I figured at home, west is best, so we went west and ended up at a disused cable factory, Kaapeli, which now housed twelve galleries and a number of small theaters and other places.

Kaapeli

At Kaapeli we found only one gallery open. This was showing the works of what made itself out to be a prestigious art group called the Finnish Artist Group. Unfortunately for anyone who wants to be proud of artistic expression in Finland, this art was terrible. Both Meri and I spent the time in the gallery laughing at how unoriginal and prententious it was. Soon it was time to leave as Meri had TaeKwanDoe that night, so we took on last photo and headed back to the centre on the subway.

Meri, Me and Streetart

The following day it was time to leave Helsinki. My ferrry was at 10:30am and was headed across the gulf, the course set for Tallinn, Estonia. Goodbye Scandinavia!

Further North: Bodø

The train to Bodø was old, rickety, uncomfortable, and I couldn’t afford to buy a sleeping ticket so I sat awake for 10 hours through the night, listening to music and watching the darkness fly by. I must have fallen asleep at one point, because next thing I knew it was light outside and we were careering though snow-covered mountains which slowely morphed back into green, yellow and brown autumn trees. At 9:30am I arrived in Bodø.

I had about five hours to spare before I was picked up by my CouchSurfing host, Susanne. So I found myself a map, glanced over a local guide book and set out for yet another fort, this time at the end of a small peninsula which marks the entrance to the Bodø harbour.

Fort on the Peninsula

The walk took about an hour to get there, passing some amazing mountainous islands to the north before arriving at the very end of the peninsula which looked back over the city of Bodø.

The Mountains Beyond

By this time I was wearing four layers including a marino jersey and a down jacket, a polar fleece scarf, woolly hat, gloves (thanks Mum!) and more and I was still cold. It was all the fault of the wind – it was out of control and bringing down the temperature by probably around 5 degrees to what would have been close to 0 degrees. I couldn’t feel my face at all!

But never mind the cold, there was more exploring to be done. My next stop was the marina which I walked to the end of, took a few pictures and left because it was just as cold out there was it was at the fort.

I then walked all over the seemingly-small town for the next few hours, my legs almost ready to collapse, and soon it was 2pm, time to be picked up by Susanne.

She had told me that she was going to show me a few sights around Bodø, so off we drove, accompanied by Susanne’s friend Lynn to the world’s largest maelstromm, or whirlpool. It was hard to see the actual whirling of the water, but you could tell that the current was very dangerous.

At Saltstraumen

Afterwards we drove off into the mountains to try and get close to the snow. The scenery was absolutely stunning with fjords, rivers, forests, and snow-topped mountains.

Nature!

Later we returned to Susanne’s apartment, chatted nonsensically for some time, then she left to support the local football team. I knew they were yellow, so I watched a team of yellow-shirted players live on television lose to another team. She came home, they had lost, but it turned out that I had watched the wrong game!

The next day it was raining. I spend the morning hanging out in the public library. In the afternoon the rain died down and I decided to head out to the open-air Nordic museum. This place was cool, it contained a number of very old houses and boat sheds built on the rocky shores of Bodøjorn.

Ancient Boat House

After wandering around amoungst these houses, I decided to go for a bit of a tramp up into the surround bush where I found lots of trees bearing red berries, and old bunkers.

Bunker

I walked on and found a strange and makeshift looking bridge, so I crossed it.

Little Bridge

On the otherside I found a place that appeared to be named Løveskogen. It had a chillout bivowac of sorts and a number of hammocks and swings. It reminded me of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Løveskogen

Soon it was time to go so I started my trek back towards Bodø city, met up with Susanne, had some dinner and then she drove me to the airport. I was off to Tromsø.

Trondheim!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Norweige Adventuring!

On the 2nd I awoke at 6am. In half an hour I was ready and set off toward the central Oslo train station to catch the 8:05 to Trondheim.

The ride was long, the scenery beatuiful, the snow falling in the mountains, and some strange guy sitting across from me giving me odd looks. It soon was established that he didn’t have a ticket and was replaced by some young siblings who played cards and whispered to each other.

At around 4pm I arrived in Trondheim in the rain. Again I was CouchSurfing, this time with a French student named Florent. He had told me where he lived so I asked at the information centre as to which bus I had to catch; the attendent told me, I got on the bus, got off at the stop he’d mentioned and found myself in the wrong place. So I made me way to the local mini-mart where I asked the checkout girl if she knew where the street was, she didn’t. Luckily one of the customers knew and another offered to drive me (only after getting directions from the girl who knew the way!).

Florent was probably the easiest host to get along with that I have had thus far. He was an awesome dude and in spite of having heaps of work to do, managed to host CouchSurfers and hang out with them at the same time. We spent the evening hanging out in his flat and later on another guy, a Californian by the name of Skyler who was also staying with Florent, showed up. The direction of the night then changed and we, and a whole lot of other people from the building – all foreign students – headed into town to the Downtown night club.

This place was like a maze of party rooms. It was hard to tell with the numerous staircases heading off and twisting in all directions, but it is highly likely that the club had four or maybe five levels with five or six rooms showcasing different musical genres, none of which I was particularly fond off (except the sweet ’80s room).

Oh, and it was absolutely freezing.

The following day was a walking extravaganza. Skyler and I teamed up for a Trondheim expereince. First we headed into town and checked out their famous cathedral which reminded me a lot of some of the architecture which I saw in Belgium. We also saw the archbishop’s fortress which he used to hide away during war time and house his friends when they came to visit.

Crazy Cathedral!

Next on the list was Skyler’s wish to visit the fish market which turned out to be less of a market and more of the fresh fish shop which also sold fish related food like hot fishcakes. Our next stop was a cafe called Ramp which was supposed to be a venue for live music but currently had nothing on, possibley because it was far too cold! And after this we headed up to the fort (you need to visit the fort of each city you go to!).

Trondheim Fort

The view from it was pretty cool too!

View from Fort

After wandering around the fort for a while, we headed back to Florent’s place, had dinner, and had a quiet evening of drinking home made Serbian plum-brandy (which I now have the official receipe for) with some of the others living in the building, including some Germans, Americans, French, and of course a Serbian guy who had actually served in the Serbian army during the war with Kosovo! Something that he said he never wanted to ever have to repeat again. He also told me that I had to visit Serbia, and I was very interested – he even gave me a contact there – but sadly my rail-pass dosen’t include Serbia, so Belgrade will have to wait ’till another trip.

Day three was the day I had to leave but we still made the most of it. Although it was (again) raining, Florent, Skyler and I decided to make the hike to the local TV tower which also housed a restaurant.

TV Tower

As with most viewing towers, the view was pretty darned good!

View from TV Tower

Afterwards, we headed down to a place called UFFA which was known to be an anarchist hangout squat-type place, which Skyler had been to previously. Unfortunately it was not open but it looked like a pretty cool place to hang out.

UFFA

Finally, we headed back to Ramp in the rain, sat down, ate some awesome home-style fries, drank warm coffee and I learnt to play Speed (the card game) from which I whipped Skyler a few times over! After this it was time to head back to Florent’s so I could gather my things, head back into town, and board the night train to Bodø.

Norweige: Olso

From Gothenburg I was off to Norway. I decided that I definately wanted to make it far north in Norway as I could, so I’d come back to Sweden later when it was too cold to be in the far north.

I boarded a 12:45 train headed for Oslo and found myself sitting with two Canadian brothers from British Columbia; ex paper-mill engineers. Garth and Trace. We talked about all sorts of nothing and they taught me a card game which I had never seen before called Cribbage. This was probably the most fun card game I’ve ever played, if not a little hard. But in saying that, I managed to win the first two games easily, losing the third by only a small amount.

After 5 or so hours, we arrived in Oslo. Off went the Canadians and I made a phone call to my 5th couch surfing arrangement –  Bård. With in ten minutes he had shown up and we were on our way walking to his girlfriends place where I was to stay because he was also staying there. It was me, another CouchSurfer (from Solvenia),  Bård, his girlfriend Matinka (from Solvakia), and 15 other flatmates!

Now I would like to run through all the other flatmates, but I only really remember one. This guy was called Shaun-Thomas, and when I asked him what he did, his response was something along the lines of: “I do some modeling and I work in a clothing shop. I have also trained in cook, waiter and was in the military. Oh… and I’m a RAPPER!” You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought – this guy looked like a male model. He told me that he had been rapping for 10 years and had, at some stage, laid down a track with Wutang.

So he asked me if I wanted to hear a rap, and OF COURSE I DID! It was actually really good! But I was laughing throughout the whole thing, just because the situation  was so ridiculous. That night I had dinner with  Bård and Matinka and then we headed out to a club called Blå which had a free twelve-piece swing/jazz band playing. The music was amazing, the band members were really funny, and everyone was dancing like mad. Although a good time, I didn’t stay too long as I was pretty tired.

The following day I hung out with the other CouchSurfer, the Slovenian girl. We ended up taking one of the longest day’s walking that I’ve had in this entire trip. After heading to the train station to buy tickets, we made out way towards the Royal Palace.

Royal Palace

After we checked out the palace, we decided to take a look at a park which was apparantly full of statues. We walked for miles to get to this place, and all the time I was thinking, “I’ve seen so many damn statues”. But this place turned out to be pretty amazing, there were hundreds and hundreds of statues all made by the same guy – it must have taken him years to complete them all. Some were crazy, many were naked figures in strange poses, and then there was the totem-orgy pole.

A small few of many statues

Totem-Orgy

While we were at this park, I noticed something off in the distance which at first I didn’t understand. But through fancy 6x optical zoom techniques, I found that it was a ski jump! People I talked to were very surprised that we have skiing in New Zealand but do not have a ski jump!

Olso Ski Jump

We decided to try and walk to it. The 6x optical zoom was decieving because after walking for almost an hour and a half, we appeared to be no closer than we previously were. We then gave up and walked for about two hours, all the way back to Matinka’s place, where the rest of the night was relatively relaxed as we watched a few films with a few of the other flatmates.

The next day the weather was crap. I had already decided that I wanted to go down and check out the harbourside so I began to walk. The further I walked, the worse the weather got but I was determined, and soon I made it to the Oslo fort.

Oslo Fort

The harbourside the day prior looked spectacular in the sparkling sun. Today it looked so bad that I’m not even going to post a picture up here. I decided to get out of the rain so headed to the Museum of Contemporary Art. This place was  pretty cool, it was full of (obviously) contemporary Norweigian art and a few international exhibitions, one which I had seen parts of in London’s Tate Modern.

Next I visited the Astrup Fearnly Museum of Modern Art which is currently housing an extensive Andy Warhol exhibition which was absolutely crazy. I never thought that I would see some of these very famous paintings of soup cans! Then back for another night of chilling.

One last day I had, and the weather was just as miserable as it was the previous day. This wasn’t going to stop me. My first place of visitment was the newly completed Opera House.

Opera House

One last stop. The Senersen Museum of Modern Art (yes, another one). And another chilling night as the following morning I was up at 6am to catch an early train to Trondheim!

Oslo, over and out.

(I apologise for the terrible writing within this post, I’ve been walking all day after a night train on which I didn’t sleep at all)