No beer for Australians

Well, I'm still on the ferry, and my attention is being divided between the cormerant nests we're passing (apparently they don't divide like germs either), and a floor show which appears to be where musicians go to die. I'm fighting back by using the artists inspiration juice, but coherence is far from guaranteed.



After the great ferry trip, we decided to stay up and check out the midnight sun - a decision that had nothing to do with Norwegian licensing laws (you can get beer almost anywhere - until 6:00pm. oops). The sun looses quite a bit of kick late at night - it feels like the sun you get just after dawn on a cold morning, and it also behaves a bit like a sunrise/sunset, with some orange tones creeping in. However, the brain tends to notice that it's still light, and doesn't really feel like shutting down.

We took the scenic route back to Kiruna, stopping in at a little village complete with a leather sailed fishing boat, and several dozen fat salmon beneath the jetty (I suspect they'd escaped from a nearby salmon farm - they kept compulsively trying to eat bubbles on the water surface, so I think it was about dinner time for them). There is a bit of mountain pass between Narvik and Kiruna, where there was still a bit of snow on the ground, and the lakes still had ice on them. No one decided to go for a swim.

Abisko national park is a little bit after the pass, on the Kiruna side. It has the start of the Kunsgladen (again, may have got that wrong, will correct later!), a long and famous walking trail, a summer skiing slope, and a few other bits and pieces. The Sami camp nearby was interesting, they explained the various types of huts they used for their winter and summer camps. As they migrate along with the reindeer from the winter to summer grazing grounds, they have a bunch of different storage huts for their winter and summer camp grounds. The huts were of various types, which were graded by their ability to keep the wildlife out. It appears that keeping foxes and wolverines out for half a year takes a bit of doing, when all you've got is wood, rock, and reindeer antlers. There was also a fox trap on display. It was a touch cruel, so I won't describe how it worked, but was pretty much just a stick in the ground. I sometimes wonder how people think these things up, but I guess spending a winter fuming about getting your reindeer skins chewed would focus the mind.

Harstad - the tourist version

Greetings blog readers, after another travel related interruption to the blog. Updating the blog requires an alignment of internet access, downtime, and lack of fatigue on my part - which doesn't occur that often. I'm currently on a ferry from Stockholm to Tallinn, in the main ship nightclub which is showing a bizarre tribute to Tina Turner on the big screens, so I've got the downtime. However the internet access is dodgy (I suspect carrier pigeon based) and I'm pretty fatigued (as a result of the great ferry catching debacle), so the quality of the next few blog posts could be pretty rough. Anyways, back to the travel story.

After discovering that not a lot was happening in Narvik, we decided to travel up the coast and have a look around. We got up to a little town called Harstad (or something similar, the internet is too dodgy to figure out what the town was actually called...), which seemed to be buzzing with a little bit more life. We managed to organise ourselves a scenic trip on the ferry that services the nearby islands. It appears that there used to be little island farming communities near Harstad, but they've devolved into little summer holiday places. Apparently spending winter snowed in on a little island, at 66 degrees north, is a little tedious.

note - the disco people have upped the volume, and decreased the quality of their offerings - the coherence of this blog will be decreasing shortly!

Anyways, the islands were incredibly picturesque - little hamlets of red wooden houses on patches of green, surrounded by blue water, with a background of rugged mountains. We also went past a seabird nesting site - first time I've seen something like that, but my excitement was tempered by the fact that they were common seagulls. At least I now know they don't just divide like amoebas.

Arrgghhh - the floor show in the ferry has just started - the spruiker has just let us know that the MC for the night's middle name is 'entertainment'. I feel he has little chance of living up to his moniker.

Kiruna and Narvik

We've been in Narvik for a couple of days now, after flying up from Stockholm, renting a car in Kiruna, and driving across. I've got reasonably fond memories of Kiruna from a decade ago, but they seem to be of the same quality as my fondness for cheap beer from the same period. This time, it seemed to be a bit of a bleak outpost in the middle of nowhere.

Hence, we escaped in our little rental (a microscopic Clio this time, which upped the difficulty of luggage tetris) to the seaside town of Narvik. Narvik is a little utilitarian as well (I guess any town that is an iron-ore port in the middle of nowhere will have a few rough edges), but it is nestled in a picturesque fjord, and is currently bathed in the midnight sun.

We spent today attempting to hire a boat to do a fjord tour, but the tourist season is yet to start in these parts, and no boat owner has answered their phone yet. We ended up doing a bit of a car tour around Skjomen Fjord, which was pretty impressive. We came across a couple of little villages, but I'm not sure if they where year round places, or just summer getaways. There was one little house where there was a bunch of drying fish out the front. Whether this was a hobbyist, or a committed bloke from the old days, we don't know.

Skansen and a Moose

Second day in Stockholm, and it was decided that we should spend some time touring the city on bikes. After discovering the first bike available was missing, and fixing the second one we were offered, we were off. Gamla Stan (??) was the first stop, where Ro discovered that salty licorice flavored icecream existed, and tasted good. According to her at least - I wasn't keen to sully my taste buds.

We then did a lap of the Royal Gardens (roaring with growth in the Swedish summer, and more than one gosling that was duly harrassed), then headed over to Skansen. Skansen is like a Swedeish Sovereign Hill, that has been running since the 1890s. We checked out a bunch of historical Swedish houses, and saw our first Moose!

The Moose was a bit intruiging - no tail, a boulbous nose, and some felt covered antlers. The baby ones were cute though, and Ro got to pat one. We also saw a Reindeer at close range, but he was halfway through molting his winter coat. I'm not sure how good he would have looked at his best, but he wasn't near it when we saw him. He made a disturbing arthritic sounding click with every step, but appaently this is a flaw of the species, not just our moth eaten specimen. The alleged purpose of the click is to make it easier for a group of reindeer to keep together in foggy conditions.

Fish speak and kyaks

Ok - we're still on the Bohuslan coast, and camping under the windmill. For our full day on the coast, we decided to rent a boat. We figured that we could check out the coastline, and also that Hugh wouldn't be left behind (he's on crutches due to an altercation with a car in Melbourne). The hunt for the boat turned into a bit of an epic, but we ended up seeing a bunch of the coast as a result.

Initially we tried asking around in Mollosund. This resulted in a helpful local putting introducing us to the owner of a rather substantial boat. We were pretty nervous about this turn of events, and in any case the owner said that he needed his boat that day. Possibly that was code for needing his boat again, but we weren't quibbling. Anyway, we ended up spending some time chatting with the locals, and saw a bunch of herring being dried in the traditional manner. Or possibly they were feeding the birds - one magpie in particular seemed to have a taste for the fish.

We then started a tour of the islands, under the guise of attempting to hire a boat. At almost every stop, we were either asked whether we actually wanted kyaks, then told that no-one had any boats. As we could clearly see boats (and more than one, at that) in the water, we pressed on. After about 3 hours, we finally found a man with a boat to hire. He promptly convinced us the boat was a poor idea, but that kyaks were 'not a problem', even if one of us had his knee in a brace. After a pretty random briefing (where the only problems appeared to be caused by German tourists), we were given a map and a route, and released into the wild like a group of freshly hatched ducklings.

The trip turned out to be great success. Our hire-man convinced us to kyak around the island of Flaton, which we managed after a lot of effort. None of us capsized, but we all wished that we'd packed a bit more food, or even some fresh water. But the scenery was amazing, it was a great way to get a feel for the islands and geography, and the kyaking was great fun. We all slept pretty well that night, and the windmill was once again quiet.

You can barely see the windmills

Ok - another out of order blog post. I'm not sure whether to go back and put my posts in the chronological order - I'm figuring that you don't tell all a trip's stories in strict order, and so I don't need to blog in order either. However, as people don't always seem to follow my stories, maybe I'll need to revise this idea.

Anyway, at this (I guess metaphorical, in-story point) point, we've just hired the car and departed from Malmo. We spent a night camping at a lake somewhere mid-Sweden, which taught us that mosquitos also enjoy lakes, Swedish camping fees are a bit steep (half a pair of jeans per tent!), and that the beauty of Rob's $20 tent is in the eye of the beholder. However, the lake and surroundings were idyllic.

Next stop was the Bohuslan coast, north of Gothenburg. It's a pretty place, where old fishing villages dot a winding coastline, that consists of a bunch of granite boulders and islets. So, we camped under a windmill. In our defence, it was the only bit of free ground that we could find, but it did detract from the scenery a touch. Thankfully, the windmill (or maybe the wind?) shut down at night, so its repetitive swoosh did not provide the sound track for our dreams.

Stockholm - out of order

Well, that is, this post is out of order. As far as a transplanted Australian can tell, Stockholm is currently in the state of harmonious order that we've observed throughout Sweden. The last week has been a bit frantic and out of range of wireless internet, so I'll be getting the blog up to date as I get the opportunity.

In any case, we've just travelled over from Gothenburg (site of a yet unblogged social event, otherwise known as Chad and Lisa's wedding) in the hire car (also unblogged, but referenced in passing), while hindered by a stomach disorder that I picked up at around the same time as the wedding (the stomach disorder will remain unblogged, but I will refer to it as "The Horrors", if I need to refer to it again. Which I hope I don't). We rolled into town at about 10 this morning, and returned the hire car without any scratches (meaning the money we effectively bet on not paying to reduce our excess paid off), and checked into a nearby backpackers without incident. After sitting around with numb expressions for a while, (an aftershock of "The Horrors" for me, hopefully the car trip for everyone else) Ro and I managed to get some site seeing in at the Vasa Museum.

The Vasa was firstly a boat, then a rather abrupt naval disaster, and is now a well preserved wreck. The brief story is that the King of Sweden at the time was involved in a war with his cousin (and as a result Poland), so he'd taken the step of taxing his country to the hilt to build a new warship (the Vasa). Said ship managed to sail a good 1300 metres or so before sinking due a wind gust in a calm harbour, in front of a large crowd assembled to witness the result of their taxes. Not a bad day's work for the captain, who managed to survive the sinking. However, the captain also managed to survive the inquest into the disaster with his head still attached to his neck, so he mustn't have been completely talentless.

In any case, the museum is big (it's got a whole man-o-war inside it), well done, and explains the story of the sinking, and subsequent un-sinking (maybe "salvaging"? ) well. Worth a visit if you get to Stockholm one day.