Universal Traveler

Just a dude with a backpack, a plane ticket, and a nasty case of intercontinental wanderlust.

Name:
Location: Minnesota, United States

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Nidaros or bust!

Well, I hinted in my previous post that I had special plans for my time in Norway. In recent years, this country has held an increasing mystique for me. I think it goes beyond the fact that it's the source of the most "Old World" cultural heritage for me and my family. It also has to do with my appreciation for the Norwegian character (the way I perceive it, at least). I appreciate Norwegians' connection to nature and the outdoors. I appreciate their sense of social responsibility. I appreciate their quiet, understated confidence. Maybe these are all just outdated images of a culture that has changed with time, but at the very least, I want to find out for myself whether that's true.

I guess I was looking for something special to do while I was here in Norway, something that would bring me close to the Norwegian people and close to nature. It didn't take long for me to figure out what that was:

I'm going to walk from Oslo to Trondheim.

I only found out that this was even possible about two weeks ago. While doing an internet search for information about hiking in Norway, I came across this site. It's the Pilegrimsfellesskapet St. Jakob, Norway's pilgrimmage association. This is the organization that is, in part, responsible for reviving the ancient pilgrimmage route known as Olav's Way.

Let me drop a little history on you, if I may (compiled from various sources):

In 1015, Olav Haraldsson, a prominent Viking chieftan, sailed for Norway from England with the intent to conquer his homeland which, at the time, was divided into several small kingships. Aided only by several English bishops and clerics and the support of yeoman farmers, he soon succeeded, and ruled as the king of Norway for twelve years. His most famous acheivement, however, was to make Norway Christian (or, rather, complete the Christianization of Norway), a result of his conversion while he was in England.

Later in his rule, Olav's decision to conspire against Denmark's King Knut brought about a Danish invasion of Norway, and he was forced to flee the country. Two years later he returned to Norway at the head of a small army, but he was killed at the Battle of Stiklestad on July 29th, 1030. His body was smuggled away and buried on the spot where Trondheim (known then as Nidaros) cathedral now stands.

Almost immediately following his death, numerous reports of miracles began to surface. As a result, Olav was canonized as St. Olav on August 3rd, 1031. As miracles continued to be reported, an increasing number of Northern Europeans made pilgrimmages to the shrines of St. Olav in Nidaros. These pilgrimmages continued for over 500 years until 1537 when the Reformation put them to a halt and ended the official veneration of St. Olav. In recent years, however, there has been renewed interest in Olav's Way, the ancient pilgrimmage route from Oslo to Trondheim, and partial restoration of the trail was completed in 1997.

SO...I've decided to do the walk myself, following in the footsteps of the pilgrims who made the trek over 500 years ago. As you might imagine, it's a long way from Oslo to Trondheim: 643 kilometers, to be exact. The terrain is often hilly or mountainous, and the path is often poorly marked. These factors combined dictate that the average person usually completes the journey after 25 to 30 days of walking. Accomodation along the way is sketchy, often nothing more than a farmhouse with a few extra beds in certain places (which is why I'm packing a tent).

The logical question to ask at this point is, why am I choosing to do this? Well, I'm not exactly sure, to be quite honest. The factors that led up to my decision are intangible, for the most part. I guess you could say that it just felt right. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that I was somehow meant to do this walk. On top of that, there have been wierd little coincidences that, while probably circumstantial, make me say "hmmm" at the very least:

  • July 28, the day on which celebration of Olav Wake begins in Trondheim, is also my 25th birthday.
  • The home of the family friend I've been staying with in Oslo is located on a street called Trondheimsveien, which literally means "The Road to Trondheim."
  • Both of my parents are graduates of St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN.

Sure, probably just coincidences, but fun to think of nonetheless. Anyways, I'm going to be starting the walk in the next day or so, probably putting in somewhere around 35 km per day at first. I hope to arrive in Trondheim by July 25, which marks the beginning of a small festival especially for pilgrims. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get there that quickly, though. Who knows what could happen between now and then?

Blog updates between Oslo and Trondheim will probably be scarce, but I'll try to make short posts when I can to let everyone know about my progress. Hamar and Lillehammer are places where this might be possible.

So that's that. I'm excited to start walking, and I can't wait to get out into the Norwegian countryside. Now more than ever, I'll be needing all of you to send me good vibes from wherever you are. Wish me luck!

Århus, in the middle of our street...

As you may or may not recall, I met a couple of Danes named Mikkel and Lasse while I was in Denmark. Since they so generously offered me a place to stay in their home town of Århus, and I was heading to Scandinavia anyways, I figured it would be a shame not to stop by for a while. Which is exactly what I did. I ended up spending about 5 days in Århus, and they were actually some of the busiest days I've had so far in Europe.

I started out doing something that has been strangely foreign to me for the past 5 months: work. Let me explain. Mikkel and Lasse have a friend named Matthias who apparently owns and operates a very lucrative vegetable shop in Århus. I never knew that the vegetable business could be so profitable, but there it is. Anyways, one day he got it in his head that he would like to go sailing across the Atlantic with his buddies, and then do some island hopping in the Caribbean. So he took out a loan equivalent to about $100,000 USD and bought a 52-foot sailboat, the Rosa. It sailed fine but was in rough shape cosmetically. So, since he had invited Mikkel and Lasse to sail with him, but neither of them could afford to pitch in to pay for the boat, they decided it would be better for them to help out by fixing it up. So that's what we worked on for the first few days. It was arduous work...mostly sanding the interior wooden surfaces and applying fresh coats of lacquer, but it was good to help out with the cause. When they actually embark on their transatlantic voyage in a couple years, I'm sure it will be one hell of a trip.

For some reason I completely neglected to take any pictures of the Rosa, so you will just have to use your imagination. Here's some help: It's a sailboat. It's 52 feet long. It's currently a mess. That just about sums it up.

The next day I got the chance to take part in a uniquely Danish experience. Every year at midsummer, the Danes celebrate Saint Hans, although nobody could tell me why. I guess he was just a pretty cool saint. Anyways, they celebrate Saint Hans by recreating a medieval witch-burning. They make a huge pile of logs, sticks and hay and stick a cross on top, from which hangs the effigy of a witch. Then they set the whole thing on fire and sing songs about Saint Hans. And get this...they even cram the witch effigy full of fireworks and noisemakers, to simulate the screams of agony that a real witch would no doubt be belting out at that point. So I guess the Danes are some sadistic mofos.

Here are some shots from the get-together:

Before:

After:

Great Danes. From left: Julia, Hanna, Markus, Lasse, Mikkel, Me, Søren, Anna, Ingeborg, Julia's friend (never got her name):

At some point during the evening, Søren and Mikkel got a hold of my camera. Here is the result:

We spent almost all of the following day at the beach. The experience thoroughly confirmed for me a suspicion that I had had all along: Danish women are HOT. I almost fell over as soon as I hit the sand. Seriously, folks, you have no idea. You have to go and see for yourself.

Danish women. Hot. Hot hot hot hot hottttttttttt...

Whoa, I'm sorry, I think I lost myself there for a moment. Yeah, so anyways, the beach. As the sun went down we scored some food and had a barbeque down by the seaside. It was pølser-licious. Here's Mikkel rockin' out with his gee-tar:

Somewhere along the way, one of us had the bright idea to spend the night sleeping under the stars at the beach. This idea worked fine...until it started raining at about 2AM. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), we were all pretty much drunk, meaning we couldn't drive home. So we did the only logical thing we could think of: we slept under a railroad bridge. That was definitely a first for me. It's a strange feeling to wake up to the sight of pedestrians gingerly stepping over you.

Anyways, I pulled it together in time for me to catch the train to Frederikshavn, where I assumed I would be able to catch a night ferry to Oslo. This was not the case. Apparently they only run once a day, at 10 AM. So I had to spend a night in sleepy Frederikshavn. Not the end of the world, but more or less pointless.

The next day I made the 8-hour journey across the sea to Oslo. I spent most of that time sleeping and listening to my iPod, so nothing interesting to report there. But here's the view that greeted me as we steamed up the Oslofjord toward the city:

Well, I will say right now that the plans I've come up with for Norway are quite a bit different from my usual M.O., so I'll just leave that for the next post.

Go north, young man!

Normally, if I were to kick off a post such as this (i.e., one after a long period of nothingness), I would start with an apology to my loyal (read: dwindling) readership. Well, I've apologized so many times that I think it's starting to be a waste of everyone's time. So I offer this instead: It's been a long time since I last posted. Deal with it.

Now that I've got that out of the way, time to pick up where I left off. After I left Munich, I had a day to kill before I went over to Mainz, so I ended up staying with Calci, a German girl I met in New Zealand. I had given her a ride from Queenstown to Wanaka (back in the glorious Blue Steel days), and she gave me her email address, so I figured, why the hell not? Anyways, she was living with her parents in the tiny village of Haag, about 45 minutes away from Munich, which is where I met up with her. It was cool to see a part of Germany outside the huge metropolises (metropoli?), although she was more or less correct in her assertion that there isn't much to do in Haag. I did get some delicious, home-cooked German food out of the deal, though. After dinner we decided to play a game of Scrabble. I'll be honest...even though Calci speaks English very well, I assumed that the matchup would be inherently lopsided, what with me being a native English speaker (with a relatively large vocabulary) and all that. So I went easy on her at first...until she started to catch up and eventually surpass my score. This was not something I had bargained for. So I kicked it into high gear, hoping for miracle words like "quickly" and "quizzed," but it was all for naught. Ladies and gentleman, may I present to you my ultimate humiliation: I was beaten at Scrabble by someone who isn't even a native English speaker. I'm going to sit in the corner and cry now.

Anyways, the next morning I took the tain to Mainz where I met up with Nadja, yet another German that I had met in New Zealand. (This is proof that NZ is actually crawling with Germans). She is a medical student and had just finished a big exam that morning, so we celebrated with a bunch of her friends at a local club. We danced and drank until the wee hours of the morning, and it was a great time except for the fact that the club's speaker system was, to quote Spinal Tap, "turned up to 11." This made it almost impossible for me to hear or understand anyone, let alone people with German accents (i.e., everyone). The end result was that, after me giving blank looks and saying "what?" several times, people would just get right up in my ear and start screaming. I think my ears rang for about 48 hours afterwards. Yowza.

Anywho, I didn't really take that many pictures in Mainz, but here's one of me and Nadja right before I left:

After Mainz I tore over to Prague. By that point I had heard so many people gush about the place that I figured I had to give it a visit. Let me tell you, all the praise that Prague receives is well-deserved, for a variety of reasons. First, the city has some great history, especially if you are interested in the Soviet era, the Cold War, and communism. Second, everything is cheap! My hostel was less than $10 per night, and you could get a decent meal for a couple bucks. And last, but certainly not least: The beer is damn tasty. And cheap. And consumed in mass quantities by Czechs and visitors alike. They say that the Czech Republic has the highest per capita beer consumption of any country in the world. Now I understand why.

I was lucky enough to meet some really cool guys at the hostel: Brad from Colorado, and Connal from Australia. We usually did our own things during the day, but we'd always meet up in the evenings for meals and for nighttime excursions into the heart of Prague. On one day, though, we all made a daytrip to Kutna Hora, a small town about an hour outside of Prague. It's most famous for what most people refer to as "The Bone Church," which is basically a small church decorated with intricate arrangements of human bones. Yes, definitely weird, and definitely creepy. Here are some pics:

After The Bone Church we were all starving (go figure), so we tried to find the Kutna Hora town center in hopes of finding a restaurant. Well, either we missed it completely, or Kutna Hora doesn't have much of a town center, because we didn't find much. Eventually we stumbled upon a local pub/restaurant, and we went inside to eat. It was an interesting experience. Everybody stopped and stared at us as soon as we went in. Nobody spoke a lick of English. The food and beer were about 50% cheaper than in Prague. I ended up having a half liter of beer and a really tasty beef/goulash/potato dumpling meal for the equivalent of about $3 USD. Hot damn!

When we went back to the Kutna Hora train station to catch the train to Prague, I noticed one of those funny little typos you get when you translate between languages. Don't you hate it when you call up a taxi service, and the guy on the other end of the line is a complete tool? Well, not with these guys:

While I'm still feeling pictorial, let me throw in a few extra shots of Prague:

The famous(ly touristy) Charles Bridge:

Wenceslas Square, where all the protests during the Velvet Revloution took place:

A creepy, Soviet-era monument that I hiked up to. Supposedly that statue is the largest equestrian statue in the world. And since everybody knows how much I love equestrian statues, I just HAD to go:

So that was Prague. After that I continued northwards to Berlin, which was very different from all the other cities I had visited. Because it had the shit bombed out of it during WWII, and has been undergoing all sorts of construction since the fall of the Berlin Wall, it's all very modern and new-looking. And its most interesting history all happened within the last 100 years. Anyways, I spent most of my time in Berlin in its numerous museums. And since I don't really like taking pictures in museums, I don't have a lot of pictures of Berlin. But here's one of the good ol' Brandenburg Gate:

Thus concludes my ridiculously brief summary of my days in Germany and Bohemia. Afterwards I continued my northward trajectory to Denmark, but I think I'll leave that for a separate post.

Sunday, June 12, 2005

Sweet merciful crap, it's PICTURE TIME!!!

Alright, I'm just going to cut to the chase and say what everyone has no doubt been thinking lately: UT sucks. It's been a long time since I had a really meaty post. This is partially the result of my own laziness, but the unreasonable difficulty I've had finding a computer suitable for uploading pictures hasn't been helping things either. Well, it's time to recover the good graces of my readership, and what better way to do that than to knock your socks off with a pictorial extravaganza!

Let's start with some early Europe pics. Here's a shot of me harnessing the intermolecular forces of Brussels' Atomium. My future's so bright, I gotta wear shades:

On to Paris. I think everyone who visits the Musee d'Orsay takes this shot, but here it is again:

This is essentially the back yard at the palace of Versailles. As you no doubt can tell from the photo, these gardens are HUGE:

On to Madrid! I spent a pleasant, sunny afternoon at the Parque del Buen Retiro, where I snapped this shot of the pond:

The infamous bullfight. PETA members should close their eyes at this point:

I realized after I left Granada that almost all the photos I took there focused on the Alhambra. Oh well, it's a pretty cool place at least. Let's start with a few exterior shots:

And the interior. Note the detailed wood and stucco work. This is all original stuff, dating back to the 10th century. Very impressive:

When I wasn't busy getting completely and utterly lost in the Alpujarras, I took these pics:

Ok folks, time to switch continents. These are some random shots of the Jemaa al Fna square in Marrakesh.

Jemaa al Fna with the tower of the main mosque in the background. Note the ubiquitous orange juice stands...mmmmm, fresh OJ:

As the evening draws closer, food and craft vendors descend on the square, turning it into a giant restaurant/bazaar:

View from one of the dinner tables:

Tea with Ava, Chakir, and his neice, Maria:

A traditional Moroccan lunch spread, including "cous cous of the kings":

Chowin' down. The other guy is Kamel, Chakir's pal:

Hanging out with Chakir's mom:

Ok, I think it was at this point that I essentially stopped blogging about my travels, so I suppose nobody has any idea what happened next. I'll provide the Cliff's Notes version.

SO...the next morning Ava and I started a guided excursion into the heart of rural Morocco, beginning with a gruelling 8-hour van ride. The experience was made extra special for me by the fact that I spent the previous night alternating between puking my guts out and shitting my guts out. I think it was the result of some food I ate, or some water I drank, or a combination of both. Anyways, I didn't take many pictures that first day simply because I was too exhausted to even get out of the van. But here's on of an old Moroccan city that I did manage to pull off:

Another reason I didn't take too many pictures of the Moroccan countryside is the fact that it basically consists of massive quantities of dirt, sprinkled liberally with equally massive quantities of rocks. If you have a yen for the color brown, Morocco is the place to be. So I'll just cut straight to the good stuff: the sand dunes of Merzouga!

Dunes in the distance:

Someone took this picture of me right before Lasse the Dane beat the living shit out of me. Well, not really, but it sure looks that way. Somebody needs to take some photography classes:

Yep, we actually rode camels across the desert. And no, they don't spit that much, and they didn't even smell that bad. But I will say this: if you're a guy, that hump is REALLY inconveniently located:

Riding off into the sunset. Hi-ho, Ishtar!

And now for something completely different...Gaudi's Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona. Still under construction after over 100 years:

To be perfectly honest, by this point in the trip I was getting kind of tired of Mediterranean Europe, so I decided to head north to Switzerland. Iterlaken was my first stop. Now, let me tell you something about Switzerland: it's the most expensive country...ever. Period. Add to that the fact that Interlaken is essentially the Queenstown of Europe (i.e., filled with rich Americans eager to drop a huge chunk of cash on skydiving, canyoning, paragliding, and other "extreme" activities) and you're in for a fund-reducing experience. Which is why I only stayed a few days. But anyways, where was I? Oh yeah, Interlaken.

The giant Saint Bernard that greeted me at my hostel. Doesn't get much more Swiss than that, folks:

After a day of hiking, I got this view of Interlaken from above:

On my last day in Interlaken, I went mountain biking to a little town called Lauterbrunnen with some friends from the hostel:

After Interlaken, I spent a couple days in the town of Lucerne (a couple hours northeast). Here's a shot of the city, taken from the medieval wall that forms the northern border of the old town:

Lucerne's iconic covered bridge:

Okay, a little backstory: Maybe some of you have clicked the "CouchSurfing" link on the left side of my blog. Basically, it's a network of travelers (universal and otherwise) and hosts who meet up through the website. For all the gory details, go here. ANYWAYS, I CouchSurfed while I was in Lucerne. My host was a Swiss textile designer named Karin. Here's a pic of the two of us:

In front of the Lucerne train station, about to head to Munich:

You know, I really didn't take that many pictures in Munich. But I just had to grab a shot of this. Basically, they have a river that flows under a bridge in the English Gardens, and somehow it creates a permanent, immovable wave that's perfect for surfing. That's right, surfing in Munich. You heard it here first:

On another day, I took a daytrip to the town of Fussen, which features the famous Neuschwanstein castle, popularly know as "The Disneyland Castle." Well, here it is:

Well, there you have it. Those are pretty much all the decent pictures I've had a chance to upload up to this point. Since leaving Munich, I've been to a tiny German village called Haag, the college town of Mainz and (as if that weren't enough) Prague. But this post is big enough as it is, so I'll leave all of that stuff for another day. And if the past is any indicator, that day will be in the distant, distant future. But who knows, maybe I'll be able to get my act together and start posting more than once every couple weeks. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: stay tuned to find out!!!