August 13, 2013
First day in Norway: A great start!
The next morning I woke up at eight but waited until nine before I got up to rouse Cherno. I was not greeted with great enthusiasm from the grunts and moans coming from inside his tent. I tried to motivate him to get up, but he wasn't having it. "I think I need to stay here and sleep a while longer" he said, "you go on alone. I can't do more than 80 kilometres today."
I was very disappointed to leave Cherno. It had been really a lot of fun cycling with him. Under normal circumstances of course I would have waited for him. At 80 kilometres per day we could be in Oslo in three days instead of two. It was only one day. What difference does a day make. Unfortunately I knew it would make a lot of difference. I wanted to see the Norwegian fjords. I calculated I would barely have enough time as it was. I had to go. Once I packed up Cherno crawled out of his tent and said goodbye and crawled back again. For all I know, he may still be there to this day.
Secretly I was also a bit relieved. The wind was blowing the right way and I made fast progress on a long straight road all the way to the Norwegian border, the landscape becoming much less agricultural and more thick forest as I went. By the time I reached country number eight, I felt like I was in the wilderness.
Norway does not have a sign at the border saying "Welcome to our friggin' awesome country!!" but it does have this, which is almost the same thing:
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A few kilometres further through the forest and I came to a beautiful clear lake. The sun came out at just the right time and I went for a swim in the refreshing waters. And a few kilometres after that the road climbed a bit, through my favourite kind of landscape - forest and rocks, where the trees grow right out of the rock and everything looks so natural - and swept around with a great view out over a fjord. Norway had made a very, very good first impression!
The first town that I came to was called Halden and it was lovely. As in Sweden everything was very well looked after and looked nice. There was a huge fortress which overlooked the town as you can see here:
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I went to the town square and looked around. I asked a friendly-looking middle-aged woman if she knew where the information centre was and she told me that it would be closed. I asked about a library but she said that too was closed. It was after six in the evening so it wasn't that much of a surprise. She explained "It is because of the economic problems. Very bad."
I paused for a moment. Norway is the fourth richest country in the world right now. "I thought Norway was doing okay?" I said.
"Yes, compared to other countries. But here in this town it is very bad."
Hmm, I looked around at the pretty flower beds and the fountains and the statues and the spotless everthing and the people in their fashionable clothes. I wondered what the hell this lady was on about. "Wow lady, you need to calm down. Is this because Luxembourg is richer than you? It is isn't it? Well, I tell you what, I'm going to be going to Lithuania soon, I'll see if I can't get a whip round going, try and rustle up some cash to keep your library open until seven in the evening shall I?" And then I slapped her and said she needed to act a little bit more grateful. None of this happened, I'm lying. What I actually did was acted very polite and in fact asked her a million other questions (where can I get money? where can I buy food? what is the cheapest supermarket? are ther Lidl supermarkets in Norway? why aren't there Lidl supermarkets in Norway? and so on...) She was really helpful and friendly so in the end I didn't slap her.
I got some money, went to the supermarket and was surprised to find that you can buy some things cheaper than in Sweden, like a certain kind of bread and some fruits. I don't know why this bread was so cheap, it was just one type that was seven or eight kroner (one euro) and all the other bread was twenty-five kroner or more. And it was actually good bread. The guy on the checkout said Norway has much better bread than Sweden. So I was happy about that too.
That night I found a place to camp by a lake. In the evening it got very misty and the lake looked very mysterious. This photo doesn't really convey that, but it was a really nice camping spot and to be perfectly honest I was very impressed with Norway already.
13/08/13 - 146km (90km Sweden, 56km Norway)
Today's ride: 146 km (91 miles)
Total: 2,604 km (1,617 miles)
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