How (Not) To Pick Up A Norwegian

In the vast majority of Europe, just being female seems to be enough to attract the undying attention of nearly every male in a 10 mile radius. While this might initially make for a nice little ego boost in those of us who are raised to feel that we have to compete for attention in our own home countries, (I was once followed three blocks from the pharmacy in Paris where I had gone to buy medicine to fight off the head cold from hell. No makeup, hair a mess, dressed in sweats, and spreading the plauge...Really? This is attractive to you?) the novelty generally wears off pretty quickly. In Norway, a country packed to the gills with tall, broad shouldered, blue eyed Vikings who I wouldn't necessarily mind following me three blocks in any given direction, I have had no such luck. Maybe it's down to the fact that there are so many conventionally attractive men here that they don't feel the need to be as...outgoing...as some of their Southern European counterparts...or maybe it's just down to the bizarre set of "dating" rituals they seem to have come up with around here that I still can't quite wrap my head around. 

"Dating" was never a high priority for me on this trip, but I am single and I am alive, so I kind of can't help but notice the abundance of men here who are in line with my type...and by "type" I basically just mean tall. Plus, the majority of my couch surf hosts have been single women so the topic of dating does tend to come up in conversation a lot. What I've taken away from these conversations is that dating in Norway is a convoluted and confusing two-way-street of secret codes...and I'm no Alan Turing. These are some of the things I've heard from local women since I've been here:

-If a Norwegian guy likes you, he'll just stare at you from across the bar. If you like him too, stare back. Game on....

-Its perfectly acceptable, and in most cases required, for a woman to approach a guy in a bar and give him her number, or invite him to join her. Score one for 'girl power'. 

-If a Norwegian guy does actually approach you, and says what sounds like "har du en pris?", he is not, in fact, asking if you have a price- the literal translation of that sentence- He's asking if you have chewing tobacco, which is weirdly popular here. Best not to ask if he's calling you a hooker. (This one I learned on my own) **Edit: I've since been told that Snus, as they call it, is NOT chewing tobacco. It's similar, but stronger and pre-divided in individual little "tea bags" that eliminate the need for spitting**

-"Your place or mine?" (or the Norwegian equivalent thereof) is a perfectly acceptable opening line at a bar, often met with an actual answer, rather than a drink in the face. Here they shoot first and ask questions later. 

-Out hiking a mountain? Wear a green headband. This signals you're single and looking to mingle. Red means "back off I'm taken". Seriously, this is a thing...

In short, if you're a woman who likes to be pursued a little bit by the opposite sex, Norway is not your country. The work goes both ways here, for better or worse. Factor in the language barrier (nearly everyone here speaks English, but some can be shy in doing so, and my Norwegian is elementary at best) and its next to impossible to break the ice with anyone. Needless to say, the good old American female standby "sit at the bar until someone comes to talk to you" does NOT fly here. I know. I've tried it on multiple occasions. At best you get a sideways glance, as if to say "what's wrong with that one?" Generally you're just ignored...that is, until the booze starts flowing. 

Alcohol is the game-changer in the Norwegian flirting scene (I suppose it is in most places, but not as markedly as it is here, I think) By 1 or 2am- remember, they don't even go to the bar before midnight- all of those reserved, skeptical sideways glances give way to a drunken free-for-all of pickup lines and inappropriate gestures. The codes go out the window and its straight down to business. If you're in the market for a quick hookup and not particularly choosy about it, this is your Valhalla.  

I've never much cared for drunken advances, and generally don't have the motivation to sit at a bar alone until 2am anyway, so this doesn't really help me any. But now I'm in Stavanger, and there's a food festival that's taken over the bulk of downtown that promises to lower the inebriation threshold from 2am to a much more manageable 8 or 9pm. Maybe I'll actually stand a chance of catching someone in the sweet spot between quietly skeptical and uselessly drunk.  If not, I've at least bought myself a green headband ;)

Still Living in the Moment (Part 2)

One of the more difficult parts of solo travel, for me, comes when I find myself in a proper city.  Being constantly surrounded by people tends to make me both more self conscious and more acutely aware of being alone. Nothing is as simple as it would be were I with another person. Want to go out to eat? It can take me hours sometimes to settle on a place with just the right level of patronage, so I can blend in to a bit of a crowd without being overwhelmed by it.  The same strategy applies to bars, but the selection process becomes even more meticulous once alcohol becomes a factor. I also tend to drink beer instead of my usual whisky so as to be sure I possess the mental faculties to find my way home at the end of the evening. My stomach has been less than thrilled with this particular strategy of late. Needless to say it helps a lot to have a little bit of company when getting acclimated to city life.  Thankfully, I managed to secure a couch surf in Trondheim, and it was one I was particularly looking forward to as, from her profile, I had a very good feeling that my host and I might have a fair bit in common.

As it turned out I was very right! Some of the best parts of the couchsurfing experience for me, in addition to having the advice of a local to guide my exploration of a new city, are the conversations that happen between host and guest, which oftentimes reinforce the notion that there is so much to the human experience, even across societal and cultural borders that is universal. Topics that might be swept under the rug, or just plain ignored on your own home turf are suddenly fair game in a new setting, and they're infused with a new sense of curiosity and a different perspective.  As two single, childless women in our 30's, my host and I had plenty of mutual experience to bond over as she took me on an introductory walking tour around town, and later to one of her favorite bars, situated in a neighborhood called Bakklandet which, were I to relocate to Trondheim and in possession of an unlimited supply of cash, would be my neighborhood of choice in which to live. 

I also did a good bit of wandering aimlessly through town on my own while she was at work, which is one of my favorite ways to get a feel for a new city. It was, as has come to be the Norwegian standard, a beautiful place, and a unique moment in its own right, different from the others that have come before.

Trondheim also marked the beginning of a week and a half long stretch of hopping from city to city, giving the tent a break, and breaking out the "fancy wardrobe" (read: clothes WITHOUT holes in them...) Which brings us back to the mountaintop above Bergen. I've been on my own here, having been unable to find a couch surf host who was not away on vacation, and as a result seem to have gotten a little overly contemplative, which was not my intent in starting this blog (it seems a bit arrogant to assume that the general public should be interested in the inner workings of my mind moreso than, say, the time I misunderstood the Norwegian guy who was trying to chat me up at the bar and asked him if he was asking me if I was a hooker...he was not. More on this later.) Sometimes, though, you just need to take a step back -or a cable car up a mountain- and let the bigger picture come into view. And what a pretty picture it is...

Living in the Moment...Part 1

EXT. MOUNTAINTOP ABOVE BERGEN, NORWAY - DAY

I've ascended by cable car to the top of Mount Ulriken, the highest peak surrounding the city of Bergen to bring a little perspective to this latest blog.

It's been just over a week since my last post.  I've been meaning for days to sit down and write a new update, but seem to have hit a bit of a writer's block. Not to say nothing of any interest has happened over the last week...it certainly has. But whereas some stories just have a tendency to write themselves, others happen in such a random and haphazard sort of way that they're hard to capture in one consistent blog post...so lets call this Part 1!

For starters, the sun came out! The day I left Sandnessjøen, the sky was clear, the sun was shining, and it was a proper 70 degrees Fahrenheit.  It felt like a miracle.  When I got to the campground in Mosjøen, it was more of the same. Everyone was out basking in the glory of summer and the sheer joy of it all, I think, went to our collective heads.  And so the International Coalition of Campground Singles was formed.  It went like this: A man traveling solo from Southwest Norway struck up a conversation with his tent neighbor, a solo cyclist from Italy (whose English was shaky at best).  The Italian invited a Swiss woman, also traveling solo, to join them over dinner and wine. A pair of single Norwegian women, traveling with their respective kids (and an awesome dog!) introduced themselves into the mix and the party was relocated to the space outside their tent, which happened to be next door to my own.  I was invited to join the fray sometime around midnight, and sure enough, the wine did not stop flowing until 5am.

 It's incidents like this that make solo travel such a fascinating experience.  Much as I have been known to enjoy the pleasure of my own company, and expert as I have become in conversing with myself (sometimes out loud) over the past month and a half, even the most socially inept among us can't survive without a bit of human interaction every now and again.  When you're in a foreign country on your own and you are more than a little bit socially challenged, this forces you to step outside your comfort zone on a pretty regular basis.  Last night in Bergen I went out to a bar all by myself.  In Los Angeles, I was known to need to down a shot or two of whisky at home just to get myself out to a bar, even if I was meeting a friend there.  I've injected myself into conversations here that I probably would have avoided had I overheard them at home.  I've even been the one to strike up a conversation with other solo travelers along the way, and for all of it I've been met with nothing but friendly enthusiasm and genuine interest.  It's a nice reminder that, on the whole, people aren't really as complicated or difficult as I can sometimes imagine them to be.


At the campground in Mosjøen, a random bunch of travelers from four different countries came together for a night to drink, laugh, trade stories, and enjoy the fantastic summer weather.  That's it. We were living in the moment, completely unencumbered by judgement or expectation or, in my case, anxiety, because it didn't matter.  In 24 hours time we would be once more scattered into the wind, on our own.  Except that we weren't exactly, as none of us (save the Italian cyclist, who was the most inebriated of all of us, ironically) had the wherewithal to actually leave the next day after all that wine!  Fortunately, I had another day to kill before I had to be at my couch surf in Trondheim.  What's more, the Norwegian gentleman who founded our little coalition happened to be driving through Trondheim on his way home, and was generous enough to offer me a ride.  Once again, the Norwegians are killing it in the hospitality department.


As we left Mosjøen, the rain came back (Norway giveth, and Norway taketh away).  One by one, the coalition disbanded and after five hours in the car, which flew by thanks to some great conversation (and some lessons in Norwegian pronunciation: if you're reading this, I have finally figured out how to properly say "Bodø"!) the last two remaining members said our goodbyes in Trondheim. The moment was over, and it was time to move on to the next one...to be continued...

How to Party Like a Viking

This past week has provided me with, among other things, a crash course in how to party like a Norwegian.... if this blog entry is a little less than stellar, you'll have to forgive me... it may take me another week to fully recover!

In Bodo I met up with a local Couchsurfing host who, while she couldn't host me because she already had surfers that weekend, invited me to spend the afternoon with her and her surfers, cooked us a delicious dinner and then took us out for the ultimate Saturday night on the town. The price of alcohol is so high here (even by Norwegian standards) that Norwegians tend to be pretty reserved with their drinking on weekdays, only really letting loose on Friday and Saturday nights...but when the Vikings go out to play, they play hard.  Going out Norwegian-style is a three part process:

1. The Pre-Game: With  dinner there was beer.  After dinner, there was more beer. We hung out at the house and drank beer and listened to music for so long that I had all but forgotten about the "going out" part.  Around midnight I was reminded, and it was time to hit the road.

2. The Club: We walked about 20 minutes into the center of town and hit up the local rock music bar, which, unlike the night before when I had attempted to go out on my own and found it nearly deserted (I showed up at 10pm thinking I had done well in not getting there too early), was just beginning to fill up. Beer, beer, and more beer flowed freely until last call at 3am, when we were ushered out into the street in the harsh light of day (the whole midnight sun thing is still weird at moments like this). 

3. The After Party: We hadn't been on the sidewalk more than five minutes when the offer came in from an American Ex-Pat and his Norwegian buddy, to join them at their hotel room for more drinks and conversation.  I had been told by this point that this was a pretty standard part of a Saturday night out in Norway, and so I scuttled my American skepticism and went with.  At 7am exhaustion got the better of me and I finally had to call it quits and head back to my hostel room, where I had 4 hours to sleep, pack, and check out!

I did say that I wanted a taste of Norwegian nightlife and I definitely got it. I feel like I ought to have earned some sort of merit badge or something.  But the party didn't stop there... After a few days back on the road, traveling down the scenic Kystriksveien by bus, (and 18 very long kilometers by foot) lots of camping, and a very unsuccessful Puffin hunt, I got a chance to check one more thing off the Scandinavia bucket list. I stumbled upon a music festival! But not just ANY music festival... this was Traenafestivalen, a music festival featuring predominantly Norwegian bands and set on a small island 33 miles off the coast:

 

 

 



Once again the beer was flowing and the party didn't stop for three days straight (even though two and a half of those three days were cold and rainy).  I'm not quite sure how it is I'm still standing, but somehow I've managed to make it back to the mainland to the beautiful town of Sandnessjoen, in the shadow of the Syv Soestre Mountains where I've rewarded myself with a hotel room for all of my endurance over the past week.  It's Sunday afternoon, I've got a shower, a comfortable bed, and its 68 degrees and sunny outside (Hallelujah!) This will do just fine for a bit of instant rehab!
 

Into the Wild...and Back Out Again

When Norwegians say that Lofoten is the most beautiful place in the country, I don't think they're wrong one little bit.  Granted, its basically the only place I've actually SEEN so far in Norway, but I can't imagine anything more beautiful than what I've experienced over the past 11 days.  When they say that the roads there are relatively flat, however, they're lying!

This is not flat

 



Neither is this

 

Come on!

When they say that those roads aren't heavily trafficked, they're forgetting about the hoards of German RV enthusiasts barreling down them as though they were still on the autobahn.  And when they claim that the islands are "cycle friendly"…well, maybe that's true by Norwegian standards, but certainly not by my own! And then there was the wind. I had nearly forgotten, after a week or so of relatively calm days here in Norway, about the gale force winds that constantly threatened to blow me into oncoming traffic throughout Finland.  Four days in to my slog across Lofoten, Norway brought them roaring back with a vengeance! I was met with a headwind so strong that I had to pedal even on the down-hills just to maintain a pathetic 9km an hour average pace! By the time the rain kicked in, I had officially lost the will to cycle.  RIP CycleTour Scandinavia. I wish I could say I'll miss you, but honestly if I never see another bicycle again in my lifetime it'll be too soon.  For those of you playing at home, if you had "2 weeks into Norway" in the "How Long Will it Take Her to Ditch the Bike" pool, congratulations, you've won!

And so with the death of CycleTour comes the birth of  F@%&Cycling Tour Scandinavia!

 

 

F@%&Cycling Tour

Scandinavia 

 

 

Yes, I'm making a logo. I'm that excited about this.  Upon arriving in Leknes (one of the more built-up towns in Lofoten, though oddly possessing only one hotel.) I hit up the local Intersport to buy a proper backpacking bag.  No more dragging my stuff around in four separate bags, Hallelujah!  I also looked for a cycle shop to see if anyone might be interested in buying a slightly used American touring bike. No dice there. Also no luck in scoring a room at the one and only hotel in town after rolling in soggy, cold, and exhausted at 9pm.  Fortunately, one of the hotel staff members was able to hook me up with a Rorbuer (fisherman's cottages that are renovated and rented out all across the islands by private owners) that her mother owned in the nearby village of Stamsund, and she volunteered to personally drive me there, and back again to Leknes in the morning to get my bike.  Norwegian hospitality at its finest!

Forward my mail. I'm never coming back!

 

From Leknes it was on to Reine (by bus) after a quick hop up to the Viking Museum about 15km up the road (the lure of Vikings was enough motivation to eek out a final 30km out and back on the bike).  It was the first museum I've actually visited on this trip and it did not disappoint. It featured a main exhibit hall with an interactive audio tour that looked like something out of Star Trek, a 20 minute movie about a Viking father and daughter, and acres of ground to wander through including a fully restored Chieftan's house, ancient burial mounds, a replica Viking ship that you can actually set sail in (weather permitting, which it wasn't that day), and two of the biggest pigs I've ever seen in my life:

That's a lot of bacon!

In Reine I was also out of luck in selling the bike, and so we slogged onward to Moskenes, where I made friends with some of the locals (and a vacationer in from Oslo) at the campground pub as well as the bartender, who introduced me to all sorts of new Norwegian music to add to my collection.  Current favorite: Violet Road. Check them out!

 

At this point I'd been in Lofoten for close to two weeks, and while communing with nature was certainly agreeing with me (as were all the free camping sites I was scoring), I knew I had to move on eventually. There's a lot more Norway left to explore, and the weather, which topped out at about 50 degrees on a good day, was starting to get to me just a little bit. It IS supposed to be summer, after all!  So I made a plan to sail back to the mainland to the city of Bodo, but first, I had one more expedition to make....

 

From Reine I hopped a boat to the tiny village of Vindstad. With my new pack and about 50lbs of gear strapped to my back, I walked a couple kilometers down a dirt road until I found a path that led straight up a mountain....

 

 

...where it promptly ceased to be a path, giving way instead to a series of "trails" meandering their way down the other very steep and rocky side of the mountain.

 

Why on Earth would someone go through all of this with 50lbs of kit strapped to their back, you ask? Here's why:

 

Bunes Beach.  The coolest "secret" beach I've ever been to and another major winner of a campsite with an epic view of the midnight sun.

 

Totally worth it!





And with that I said goodbye to Lofoten, making an extremely well-timed exit, on easily the rainiest day I've seen since I've been in Europe.  A four-hour boat ride across some mildly rocky seas landed me in the city of Bodo where I've taken up residence in the local hostel (which is surprisingly economical), and found the Norwegian version of Craigslist, where I've listed my bike for sale. Less than an hour later, I had my first responses. This should be easy! 

 

Its a strange feeling, being in a city again after living in the wilderness for so long, but it's Friday night and I've got clean clothes, clean hair, and a mind to go out on the town and experience some Norwegian nightlife!