Well, I haven't blogged in a while because JM and I have been on the road. We're about halfway through our trip and I've taken about 150 photos, some of them look really nice, but I can tell that once I have them on the computer there will need to be some serious editing done. Also, since rather stupidly I left my download cable at home, I won't be posting any photos for a while either.

We started by catching the ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki last week, getting in to the city early in the morning. We had two successful tram changes and a bit of a walk to get where we were staying, but found the place eventually. It was pretty good for being rated 1 star but it was a little confusing to have a room with kitchenette, sans any kind of cooking utensils... There were lots of death metal looking types around, which didn't really phase me too much, I just figured that it was some kind of cultural/Eurovision (ie. Lordi, 2006) throwback, but then I noticed lots of them were wearing shirts that said Tuska (underneath their floor-length leather overcoats that is), and I realised they were all there for the festival.

Helsinki felt more Russian than Stockholm which really surprised me because I thought that the Scandinavian influence would be more obvious. The people also looked more Slavic, like..a bit uglier, except for the really blonde Scandinavian looking ones, who looked extremely Scandinavian..ahem, anyway, I'm sure you get what I mean..
When we were wandering along the Esplanade we came across what I think was the Marimekko flagship store, which was tres exciting, and we bought some fabric from the sets of classic prints that date from about the mid-1950s. So nice!

A 4.30am start came the next morning as we caught the plane to Oslo, which was followed by a wait in the airport for the connecting flight. We'd been planning to go into Oslo, but it was going to cost 60 AUD for both of us and it was catting and dogging rain, so, we stayed in the airport. For 6 hours.
Originally I was thinking that we could meet up with Robert at the airport, since he works at the FedEx office at Gardermoen, but he's actually in Denmark this week at Roskilde getting rained on and drunk, so it wasn't to be.

Bergen was amazing, and the person whose apartment we stayed at was really great. We went on a big day trip of Hardangerfjord and spent the day with a nice Japanese woman we met in the train station who's also doing a bit of travelling around Europe.

But, I'm getting bored of writing about the trip for now, and I'm sure that you're bored of reading about it, so I'll continue next time I'm online. We're leaving for Denmark tomorrow night, catching the ferry from Oslo to Fredrikshavn and then the train to Copenhagen. I think going out of Oslo on the ferry through Oslofjorden will be nice, but quite different to the fjords of Western Norway.

So until then, let me tide you over by assuring you that I have a hilarious story about two Norwegian sailors we sat across from on the train, as well as photos of a very shaggy set of eyebrows. All will come in the near future.