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...
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...
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