Thursday, July 06, 2006
Having fallen into old habits and generally "stopped travelling" whilst in Norway, a part of me was thrilled to be on the road again...
My parents drove me onto the E18 just outside Oslo, the main road to Stockholm. At some point I will give the various countries "hitchiking grades" as I travel through them, but I can straight away reveal that Norway is not going to score very high, and that Sweden is even worse!!
After an hour or two, Espen (on his way to a family holiday) pulled over and drove me to Oerje, very close to the Swedish border.
Espen on the need for security.
"The need for security" is of course a very valid suggestion to a common human denominator - it is a basic psychological need - but why is this such a common answer in Norway and Sweden, arguably two of the most secure countries in the world? If you achieve security, then what? Everyone in the world can probably be nearly 100% secure, you just have to imprison everyone. There are many kinds of security, though...
I once did the voice for a Norwegian in-car GPS system ("turn right in 100 metres" and so on), but it wasn't the one in Espen's car... I've yet to hear it. A bunch of Japanese people were listening in as I did that job, and it struck me how funny it could have been if I'd read "hard right now!" when the script said "straight ahead for two kilometres"...
I was stuck in Oerje for hours. Eventually the Norwegians Morgan and Simon took me across the Swedish border in their beautiful wreck of a car... The squeeking noise was indescribable, so I made a recording!
Getting a lift from Töcksfors was even harder. I walked to the other side of town and waited patiently, accompanied by my mouth harp and mp3-player. The friendly trucker Kenneth came to my rescue and gave me lift all the way to Karlstad, at least a hundred kilometres. I asked to be dropped off just before the town so that I could stay in my tent in the forest.
Kenneth: "Er... I just exist!"
I spent a fairly pleasant night in a mosquito-infested forest close to Vänern, Sweden's biggest and Europe's second biggest lake, I think. I made those mosquitos regret they were ever born when I got out my ultimate-African-malaria-killer-mosquitos-killing-substance.
Travel tip: Getting ultimate-African-malaria-killer-mosquitos-killing-substance on your lips is a really bad idea.
The morning after I found myself on this beach resisting the temptation to jump in as I had to press on to Stockholm - I'd been invited to Uppsala the day after.
Hitchhiking in Karlstad... I could say a lot about it. But one shouldn't expect charity, right? So I'll just calmly conclude that Jonny and Mats were very, very nice to take me about 10 kilometres from the beach in about 5 hours. Yes, about 5 hours later I still hadn't left Karlstad, I'd just made it to the other side of town. It's only when it started pouring down that I was on the verge of getting a tiny bit annoyed.
Hitchhiking under my umrella... not best pleased.
Yolanda was as unlikely a participant in the game of coincidences as an Amazon goddess in a Swedish small-town supermarket on the Norwegian border:
Yolanda, of Peruvian descent.
Together we rode 300 kilometres through hail and rain storms and petrol leaks (!) and boiling sun with no air con like two troopers, at one point even pushing the car. 300 km - a new hitchhiking record for me! 300 hugely enjoyable kilometres to the outskirts of Stockholm, she dropped me off at the station and I got on a train to the centre...
Total travel costs Oslo - Stockholm: 2 euros!
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