Landing in the Land of the Danes

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK -- June 22, 2006

It wasn't the night train from Oslo that did me in this morning. It was the unapologetic manner in which the train conductor blew off the fact that we arrived three hours behind schedule. Which wouldn't have been a huge deal. I can adjust to the quirks of daily travel -- it's a matter of being flexible and learning to think on your feet. But for my Danish host, Peter, who had risen two hours early and had taken a bus to meet me at my train platform, my absence was poor form.

I was frustrated with the train conductor, who no doubt was only trying to save face and avoid what would be a frustrating jumble of English-Danish explosions between us. Normally I am calm as a summer's day and carry off my frustrations with a fair amount of patience and poise. But I had been stewing in my sleeping compartment for three hours, watching out the grit-covered window with hope each time the train came to a halt, then realizing we were still somewhere other than Kobenhavn Hobengarden, Copenhagen's central station, the meeting place where no doubt Peter had long since given up on me.

Finally we pulled up to the platform and, feathers ruffled, I marched out into the chaos of the bustling station, my plan of attack spinning away as I counted out the steps it would take me to reach Peter and smooth things over. I hated the thought that this would brand me as a careless American. I didn't want to think that I'd already started out on the wrong foot with a stranger who had generously agreed to be my host for the next five nights as I explored Denmark.

I had met too many travellers, like the Vancouverite I chatted with for hours yesterday, who seemed to think that all the Americans he had met were slobbery, egocentric, closed-minded incompetents who were oblivious to their loud and ridiculous ways. It seemed to me that he was the closed-minded one, blinded by his own arrogance and able only to see that which he cared to see -- which was only to affirm his long-held belief that Canadians were much higher evolved than their next-door neighbors, the Americans. So be it, everyone is entitled to their opinions.

But among the many reasons I have attempted, wherever possible, to experience a homestay while travelling in a foreign country, is my belief that I can somehow undo some of the damage of the enduring "Ugly American" stereotype. That is, of course, is addition to saving a buck, and furthering my understanding of other cultures, and seeing a different side of a place than what the average traveller ever even knows exists.

After my pitstop at the ForEx to exchange my Norwegian crowns for Danish ones, I found an Internet cafe here and quickly logged in to retrieve Peter's mobile number. An email message from him seemed a bit on edge. Where was I? He had waited for me, but after several trains had come and gone, was at a loss. And the big one -- he had taken the day off to meet me. Guilt was rising by the second. I was mad at that damned train conductor for not caring about Peter's rearranged schedule.

I huffed down to the Tourist Info office to pick up some maps before honing in on a phone where I made the apologetic call to Peter. And I let out a sigh of relief as he understandingly accepted my apology. I guess I was expecting the pitbull approach, the likes of which Seb (my Paris host), clamped on me when I called him from some stranger's mobile after tramping around the Arc de Triomphe trying to find our agreed-upon meeting location.

So the story had a happy ending. I followed Peter's excellent instructions to take the local bus to his flat, and after several more apologies and some obligatory but enjoyable chit-chat, gleefully enjoyed my first hot shower in days. Two back-to-back night trains had left me feeling more than a little stale, and it didn't even matter that the shower was a drainage hole on the tile floor of the cramped bathroom, or that I had to hold the shower head with one hand while I soaped with the other. Some things just aren't that important in the grand scheme of things, you know what I mean?

~Melanie

The World Is Not So Small... Because the Same Rain Cloud Covers it All

OSLO, NORWAY -- June 21, 2006

I was so eager to leave rainy Flam behind and escape to the last place I'd enjoyed some decent sunshine, that it hadn't occurred to me I was heading into more of the same. By 6:30 AM my too-short night train had pulled into Oslo Sentrale, and my tired head was spinning as I tried to decide where to go from here. My camera batteries were both useless, thanks to my overindulgence during the Naeroyfjord cruise yesterday. And the foreboding gray skies were doing nothing for my muddled sense of adventure.

To be perfectly honest, the thought of wandering around in the rain was about the furthest most appealing thing from my mind. Looking for a solution to the camera-battery crisis, I searched all over the train station before realizing that free electricity in a country who charges $60 for pizza sounded about as ridiculous as eating spaghetti with a toothpick.

So, as my Plan B (and the only other plan I had), I trudged back to Anker Hostel where I had stayed during my first pass through Oslo less than a week ago, and asked for some charity from the attractive English guy standing behind the counter.

Ten minutes later, my camera battery was charging away quietly at the front desk, and I was curled up in the corner of a comfy couch towards the back of the reception room, timidly cutting into the Norwegian waffle with brown cheese I had ordered for breakfast. For 12 kroner (about 2 US dollars), I hadn't been expecting gourmet. But it became readily apparent that this undercooked waffle had been slapped together so quickly, the cheese hadn't even begun approaching melting point. It wasn't even sweating yet. The doughy waffles were no match for the strong, tangy, slightly sweet flavour of the mahogany-colored cheese, and I began regretting my decision to sample some "Local cuisine" before I was two bites into my breakfast.
It wasn't long before the angry clouds started crying, and I felt like crying with them. I had hoped to spend the day ferrying across to Bygdland, exploring the Viking Ships and Norwegian open-air folk museum, complete with a highly-praised stave church, which I'd seen in glossy tourist brochures. And I had been toying with the idea of splurging on a day cruise along Oslofjorden, kind of a consolation prize to myself for the disappointment that Flam had turned out to be. I had taken the Naeroyfjorden cruise yesterday and, damnit, even with the rain, it was still a beautiful sight.

But my heart had been stuck somewhere down between my ankles all day as I tried to flush the vision out of my head of mirror-smooth, sapphire-blue waters, flanked with steep mountains against a cloudless sky. It had just about killed me to leave Norway and the World Heritage fjords behind without having really been able to do them justice. Well, it wasn?t me anyway ? it was the crank, uncooperative weather that refused to do them justice. But I wasn?t about to flush even more money into Norway?s already-too-wealthy economy just for another rain-glazed fjord adventure.

So anyway. Now that the skies seemed to be plugged up with spitting, gray cottonballs, I just sat back with my brown cheese and waffles and sighed. I wished for a hot shower and warm bed, but knew I?d have to wait another day or so for either. I had a long ride to Copenhagen ahead of me, leaving on the night train from Oslo at 10 PM this evening.

~Melanie

Sail with the Seagulls, Run from the Wild Dogs

GUDVANGEN TO VOSS, NORWAY -- June 20, 2006

(continued) We laughed together as the gaggle of children clustered near our deck chairs threw bits of bread at the sea gulls trailing alongside the ferry. The gulls swooped to catch their meal-with-wings and then zipped up through the air as if propelled by some inner rocket. We oohed and ahhed as we cruised past cascading waterfalls, story-book cute villages, and mountain-framed fjord vistas that just left our jaws hanging open.

When I started shivering, she loaned me her thick woolly blanket to wrap up in, and I couldn?t help but feel comforted slightly by this stranger that had become a friend that couldn't help doing what moms just do without thinking. It made me realize how much I miss mine. Because I know she'd do the same -- give me her blanket and tuck it up around my shoulders and bring me something hot to warm my insides with.

At the end of the fjord adventures, we boarded a bus together to continue on from Gudvangen to Voss, from where Mary Kay was taking a train immediately on to Oslo. I, on the other hand, was sticking around Voss for the evening, when I would board for my midnight run to Oslo as well. As our bus snaked upward from the valley floor to the mountains, we looked over mountain vistas so dramatic, they reminded us both of Machu Picchu, Peru, and we both vowed that one day, we would be there, climbing among the ancient trails of the Andes. A few peppermints and ear pops later, we had exchanged emails and phone numbers and wished each other well as our journeys separated.

I left the station and walked toward the lake I had seen as we had pulled in to town. Since I had about seven hours to kill, I decided I should have plenty of time to circle the lake with my full pack. It would be good exercise, I told myself. Besides, I-ve been more or less sitting all day, and a good, strenuous walk will at least help me get some decent sleep on my overnight train ride to Oslo.

So off I went, strolling along the path running around the lake. It dead-ended forty minutes later, after leading me across a rickety bridge spanning a wide, rushing river several meters below, and taking me through a rather smelly part of town that I could only surmise was some kind of landfill or toxic dump. By the time I figured I had no alternative but to turn around, I was nearly knocked off my feet by a mangy, spaghetti-thin, soaking-wet flea pit of a dog that came out of the bushes and stood dead-center in the middle of the trail.

Remembering that dogs can smell fear, and realizing that was the last thing I wanted this animal thinking about me, I mustered all my anger and spat out, Get out of here! He seemed to understand, and took off, back into the shadowy overgrowth of the woods. I left out a sigh of relief and picked up my pace as I began walking back to town. But not ten minutes later, he emerged again, this time so close, I could see the foam dripping from his partially open mouth. Rabies. Now was the moment I regretted not getting that expensive three-shot series before leaving home.

With even more aggression than before, I barked at him again, and I levelled my eyes on him as he slowly backed up towards the woods again. He didn?t disappear completely, but with each purposeful step I took, I could tell he was keeping his distance. I was beyond relieved the lose him completely and continue the rest of the way back to the train station alone. Of all countries in which to encounter a rabid dog, I didn't think it would be Norway.
After such a warm encounter with Voss's welcoming committee, I thought it best to stay put in the waiting room at the train station, where I stuck my nose back in the quasi-romance novel I had traded in my Amy Tan book for back in Flam. It wasn't all that entertaining, but it had been the only English book on offer, and for the moment, at least, I was glad to have something to take my mind off of the slowly moving hand of the clock near the entrance. But try as I might, I was having some difficulty getting wrapped up in the pages of this book, as I had in The Bonesetter's Daughter and The DaVinci Code and Swahili for the Broken-Hearted. Reading, one of my childhood loves left long-forgotten, was quickly becoming again one of my favourite pastimes.

~Melanie

Sharing the Love on the High Seas

NÆROYFJORDEN, GUDVANGEN, & VOSS, NORWAY -- June 20, 2006

Do you believe in coincidence? Or is coincidence just the watered-down way we refer to the obvious but unexplainable occurrences of fate? Or am I somehow just a magnet for the slightly off, overly enthusiastic, and generally not-so-attractive portion of the male population? That all sounds a bit harsh, considering today's ending was far from charity on my account. But you have to admit, either the world is a lot smaller than you and I think, or somebody up there likes toying with me.

The day started off slowly enough. And I didn't mind. My body was still recuperating from whatever cold I had last picked up, and I was in no hurry to go anywhere, as the unseasonably rainy weather seemed frozen as if at gunpoint in the murky skies the seemed to stretch from one side of Norway to the other. Bergen I understood. Bergen is supposed to get a lot of rain. But Flåm?

According to the young girl who emptied my trash can and tidied up the ruffled bedsheets yesterday, Flam was supposedly the 6th driest place in the world (I find that a bit hard to believe, seeing as how there are more than six deserts in the world, and I?m pretty sure they get less rain than Flam, even in a good year? but maybe I misunderstood her. Maybe that was supposed to be the 6th wettest place in the world. Whatever. Does it matter? It didn't change the forecast any).

By 11 AM I managed to be at the reception to check out, and dropped off my bag in their storage room so I could wander around a bit and at least feel like I had made an attempt to see the place. For the moment, at least, the rain was at bay, and as I walked uphill toward the face of an impressive waterfall, I swear I saw the little pocket of blue sky peek through. Like someone had taken hold of the corner of a notebook page, and ripped it away to expose the sheet underneath. Come on, you can do it! I shouted to the skies. I just knew that any minute, that crack in the clouds was going to grow bigger and bigger, splitting open wider and wider until the blue sky pushed its way in. But it didn?t happen. In fact, things got worse.

Less than an hour later, I was done with my abbreviated hike, and lounging around the Tourist Office, trying to make up my mind whether to take the blasted Næroyfjorden cruise I had had my heart set on for so many weeks now, or save a couple bucks and just take the train back to Myrdal, seeing as how the forecast just given to me by the cheerful desk attendant was that the weather was only going downhill from here. I kept thinking that maybe if I kept asking God for a teeny weeny little miracle, He might grant me even just a few minutes of blue skies during that ferry crossing to Gudvangen. So I bought the ferry ticket. Because it was worth at least trying, you know?

The voyage started out fine enough. I scored a seat on the top deck, facing north along the fjord, and settled into the flimsy plastic chair that would be mine for the next hour and fifty minutes. I enjoyed some solitude and tried to ease myself into the mindset that, rain or no rain, this was an experience I was going to absolutely savor, until three minutes later, the seat next to me was taken and I had to kiss my solitude goodbye.

Her name was Mary Kay and, despite the fact that she was a middle-aged mother of two on-the-cusp-of-adulthood sons, she had more energy, pep, and zest for adventure than most women I know. Period. I listened to her talk, rattling on about her pilot's license and work with Angel's Wings, her 18-year-old niece whom she recently drove to a tattoo parlor, her husband -- stuck in Lillehammer for the day to deliver a presentation, who she kept trying to encourage to take more risks. (No doubt he was having a difficult time keeping up with her!)

As the wind -- and our ferry -- picked up speed, and the temperatures dropped, she disappeared and then returned with two steaming cups of herbal tea and some kind of sweet Norwegian filled bread that she had picked up for us to munch on. And as she kept talking, I realized that as different as she and I were, we shared this massive love for the adventure of travel. The being-out-there-and-doing-it kind. In some faraway place. With the freedom to stay and stay and stay. Not your package-tour kind of woman, neither of us. And it was so refreshing. There was something in her so alive, and I thought, yeah, I can hold onto this love. I don't have to let it die, ever. Look at this woman, as full of youth as if she just fell out of grade school. You would never know, looking at her, she was a survivor of brain cancer, or that just a few years ago she decided she was going to learn how to fly planes. It just made me realize that we all come in different packages, and that there is no way of knowing, if you don't take the time to peel off a few layers, what ties, dreams, similarities, passions you might share with the stranger standing right next to you.... (to be continued)

~Melanie

Flåmsbana and Blaming it on the Rain

From BERGEN to MYRDAL & FLAM, NORWAY -- June 18, 2006

Terrible weather had set in again. For whatever reason, my luck never seems to give out. I wandered Bryggen one more time before boarding the train for Myrdal, the end of the Eurail-covered Bergen-Oslo line leading to the fjordland valley of Flåm. From here, I bought my ticket aboard the Flåmsbana train, which descends a breathtaking 2800 feet in 50 minutes flat, carving its way through mountains and skillfully engineered tunnels to the sleepy town of Flåm, resting peacefully in the heart of the valley below.

I had entertained the thought of using Flåm as my base for exploring nearby trails, waterfalls, fjords, and glaciers, and my excitement for the portion of my European journey had been building for months. And yet, as I boarded the train in Myral, rain splotching the windows of my compartment, it was all I could do to bite back the frustration that was brewing like a dark cloud inside me.

The forecast was a disaster. Whereas I had more or less expected rain in Bergen (they average 275 days of rain a year!!), Flåm's rainstorms had come as quite a surprise. Flåm, situated at the head of Aurlandsfjord, and framed by tall, draping mountains, was by comparison supposedly the "Sognefjorden sunbelt." But for the next four days (three of which I had planned to stay in Flåm), rain would be my constant companion. I either had the worst luck imaginable or God really had it in for me.

So, I spent the next two days, instead of exploring the beauty of Norway's fjordlands, sinking $30 in phonecalls back to the States (it was Father's Day, after all, and my birthday, and besides, my Savannah-based brother was in town for the week, and who knew how long it would be until he and he had a chance to catch up again). The hours-long phonecall home almost didn't happen, which, after forking out big money for a phonecard that would only be usable within Norway phone, would have been enough to send me into quite a dither.

Fortunately, I eventually figured out the inane public phone system (which required a deposit of another US $2 just to place the call). So when an elderly couple started hanging around the phone booth waiting -- rather impatiently, I might add -- as the minutes ticked by, you can imagine I wasn't in any mood to hang up and call back.

It did get a bit ugly, especially as they didn't understand a lick of English. My apologies fell on deaf ears and were met only with the death stares of eye rolls of the woman who believed me to be the most insolent of phone gluttons. But I didn't relent. Amid the chilly rain that hung thick like a wet blanket around me, I was too wrapped up in the warmth of familiar voices to concede. So I made a few enemies that night. I'm sure it won't be the last time. But hey, I'm entitled every now and again, aren't I?

The rest of the two days I spent recuperating from the hours of missed sleep I'd rack up like a bad debt, curled up in my log cabin/dorm room with a few decent novels borrowed from the communal bookshelf.By the time my morning of departure came, I wasn't too sad to tear myself away from Flåm, but trying to be a good sport about the fact that Mother Nature, once again, had managed to flatten my high hopes and long-awaited plans. Oh well. What are you gonna do? I could have let out a few tears, but I figured the sky was already doing a pretty good job of keeping things wet and depressing around here, so I checked myself out instead, and headed off to the harbor for what I hoped would prove to be a less-than-heartbreaking ride along the Næeroyfjorden.

~Melanie