Norway Day 2: Northbound

Our second day in Norway begins at 4:30 am. Our plane leaves at 8, and we have to catch a train to the airport at 5:45. It takes half an hour to get there because it is 30 miles outside of the city (which is nothing, the OTHER airport, into which we flew yesterday, is about 50 miles outside of Oslo, in fact not in Oslo at all but in Sandefjord, look it up). So we drag ourselves out of bed after a horrible night’s sleep (who hides the heater on full blast under the curtains? Needless to say, we didn’t find it until it was nearly time to wake up, so we slept in a 100-degree room), and stumble downstairs. The guy at the front desk has been notified of our early departure and has been kind enough to provide us with sack breakfasts, which was fabulous because I absolutely HATE paying for breakfast and not getting it; it’s the foodie/grad student in me. As we’re checking out, a group of young college-age kids come in, smelling lightly of booze. They overhear that we are checking out, and, from what we could understand in our fluent Norwegian, they want our room. Well of course, the guy at the front desk gives them an indignant “Nein way” and send them off, to which the kids say the only thing they know in English, which is (as it is in many part of the world, unfortunately), “F*#k you.” Dutifully, the front deck guy, who has become dear to my heart already for breakfast purposes, calls the police. We have no further trouble wandering to the train station at 5 in the morning, and there is a surprising amount of people catching our train to the airport. And there are still people from the night before drinking at a bar close by. Still drinking at 5 am; that’s dedication.

So we catch our plane, and we’re off to the far north. This is Jonmikel’s first time above the Arctic Circle, and he’s giddy even this early in the morning. We watch our last sunrise, or the beginnings of it, as we fly north; the sun will never actually rise above the horizon for the whole time we’re in Tromso. If the Arctic is the Land of the Midnight Sun, it is surely also the Land of the Midday Midnight.

We touch down in Tromso too early to check into our Bed and Breakfast, so we drop off our bags and meander around town for a while. Tromso is actually on a small Island in the middle of a whole slew of coastal islands in northern Norway. The city itself stretches across 3 islands, but the downtown area is on Tromsoya, the smallest one. We walk down to the dock area and marvel at the mountains (no Rockies, but snow-covered and dramatic nonetheless; they may not have the height here in this part of Norway, but the mountains and cities here rise right out of the ocean for a very intense effect on the newcomer) and waterways, the lights reflecting off of the water (it is already–or should I say, still–dawn/dusk outside), the fishing boats harbored there. We then head toward the center of town, where we stumble upon the local winter farmer’s market. It’s full of fish and furs. I grab a glass of glogg (a spiced cider that tastes like mulled wine with more sugar and less alcohol), and we check out some of the crafts and wares. Woolen handicrafts seem to be an important part of the culture here, as not only is everybody wearing something woolen, but they also all seem to be buying something woolen. One or two tents have Saami crafts displayed, clothing and hats and shoes made from seal and reindeer skins and furs. They are soft and thick to touch, painful to the pocketbook, so we look and appreciate, but as much as I wanted those slippers, they stayed on the shelf. The rest of the shops were dedicated to seafoods of all kinds, fresh from the morning’s catch. Fish and shrimp were everywhere, and the area was saturated with the smell; not the malodorous rotten smell from day-old fish, but the salt and the cold and the water smell you can find only in fishing villages. When not selling, fishermen and their families gather around steaming cauldrons of glogg over open fires surrounded by comfy bales of hay for relaxing. It’s shoulder-to-shoulder around these pots, and for 15-20 Kroner (about $3) a cup, the glogg is the cheapest thing we will find during our stay here.

After cruising the market, Jonmikel decides we’ve been here long enough to find a beer. The world’s northernmost brewery (actually, it has been recently replaced by a micro-brewery in Russia, but we won’t talk about that) is the Mack Brewery, with its Olhallon Pub, so of course we head there. We find ourselves an English-speaking bartender (not difficult here at all) who explains to us what the beers are like and finds good ones for us both (I go with the chocolate stout, Jonnmikel with the dark pilsner) and we settle down to our drinks in a bar packed full of locals and tourists alike at noon. I am soon approached by an older gentlemen who smells like booze and cigarettes and fish, fantastic. He asks where I’m from, and guesses the UK, and then Germany, and the runs out of ideas as to where in God’s name could I be from (quoted). I tell him I’m American, and he nods knowingly, and says, “Try the Christmas beer; it is 11% alcohol,” before winking and ambling off to join his buddies, who also have the fisherman look to them: thick rubber boots, grizzled beards, and fuzzy hats. He later comes to join us again, this time asking where in the US we were from. He knew exactly where Montana was because apparently his mother was from Seattle. Who knew? He stumbled away again, satisfied with our responses. Most of the people in the bar are halfway drunk at 12:30 in the afternoon. I guess when it’s Saturday and its dark all day, the whole concept of "noon" doesn’t matter too much.

After our beers, we headed back to our B&B, a small place called Ami Hotel, which actually turned out to be quite wonderful. With free wireless internet, Jonmikel could do some of his work when Monday rolled around, plus, we got incredibly lucky and ended up with the top floor room that overlooked the entire city and the mountains in which it’s nestled. It also included a full breakfast, which for Norwegians means bread cheese, meat, muesli and other cereals, fruit, and soft-boiled eggs. We veg in the room for a while, and then head out to find sustenance, this time in the form of Chinese food, the cheapest real food we could find (at about $60). It was a nice little place, too, outside of town a bit but within walking distance. Looked out over the water. We then headed back, exhausted from the day that had started at 4:30 in the morning.