mmmmm pizza

pizza in stockholm! with ip connectivity too...

dude

this funny man who sleeps rather a lot has been in my 4bed dorm for a few days... in the middle of the night he`s been making strange noises (I assumed they, sounding mechanical, were coming from some device he had in his bed, but it turns out they are coming from his mouth??).

so about half hour ago, he gets up in his sleep, walks over to my bunk (thankfully, I was on the top not bottom), and basically looking into my face in his sleep, takes a piss all over the bottom bunk.

I attempt to rouse him by talking and clucking, but when he vaguely comes to, he mumbles "hi" and goes back to sleep.

I have been transferred to a new room for my final night; I hope the poor sucker in the bottom bunk turns the light on before walking too far into the room or getting into his bed.

some fscker stole my tuna

went to make myself freshly baked minibaguette with cheese and tuna, but discovered that some fscker had stolen my tin of tuna. grr. sausages instead then.

as I was eating my dinner, an german lady came in and started to chat to me about food, how nice my meal (sans tuna) looked, how expensive food was here, where was the nearest shop. She came out with the question "do you have two eggs you could sell me?" Just so happened that the only food I had left was 2 eggs, which I was going to give to her for free, but she insisted on paying, which resulted in me digging out receipt from my wallet and trying to compute 16/6x2 in our heads (took a while, ended up with about 5) in order for her to know to pay me 5NOK.

oslo still

still oslo. walked for 5h around the edge of the oslofjord. now skin is pink and dry. i had a beer for very much money which tasted quite lovely, after not drinking for several days. tonight I will do the first laundry load of my trip.

scenery

On Sunday, I climbed up to Ulrikken(sp?) which is apparently the highest point near Bergen. Was rewarded with some wonderful panoramic views of fjords, forests and snowy mountains in the distance.

Monday, got the train (7.5h) from Bergen back to Oslo... this really is a beautiful train ride. It went from sealevel Bergen up to snowy plains at 1440m, above the tree line so that for miles around all you could see were snowy plains scattered with black rocks, then descended back through green forest, then farmland, and eventually back down to cityscape. Well worth a day on a train, and good to relax my legs for once.

Once I`d got back to Oslo, I decided to wander round and find a supermarket to make myself a proper dinner. Setting out at the end of rush hour, I just followed the route of incoming cars in reverse to draw me to a main road, then walked down it until I found a branch of the Kiwi grocery store chain. I was intending to make tuna\pasta melt, but this place didn`t seem to sell pasta... instead, I settled on sausages, cheese and bread to make something hotdog-like; but when it came to pay, it turned out their card machine did not like either my english or american cards. oops. The girlie at the checkout sent me off down the road to the nearest bank to come back with real paper money (the ATM gives out 500NOK notes, which seems quite a large denomination, but then stuff is quite expensive here).

Kitchen at hostel quite a lively place - a family of 6 or so had set out a huge meal for themselves, and various other people were lined up to use the cooking area. One man was too impatient to stay in the kitchen to wait for the oven to bake his pizza, and kept missing his turn because he had wandered off... silly him.

Today, another rabies injection (I am told there is a famine of rabies vaccines in stockholm, and that I have been booked for the last one that the reiseklinikken will be able to do for a while). After that, will try to get a train ticket to Stockholm for later this week.

strange languages

the internet kiosks hat i have used recently have detected that I am in france, japan, germany... everywhere except norway

now back to Oslo

where I will hopefully be injected with Rabies and Polio.

still in Bergen

Last day in Bergen today, then tomorrow taking train all day back to Oslo (some say the most beautiful train journey in the world... I hope it isn't cloudy).

I've been walking around the town all day for two days and my legs are tired. Today I'm going to walk up to the highest point nearby (or at least part way until I give up) to try to get a better view.

Many many pics, hopefully I will find somewhere to upload in the next few weeks (Olle?)

Oslo

So, before Bergen was Oslo, but just for a short period (will go back in a few days for a longer look)...

Arrived at airport without really any idea how to get to the hostel, so purchased a ticket for train to 'OSLO S', assuming that would be somewhere useful... I intended to purchase a regular ticket but accidentally got express train (like heathrow express) ticket so got there fast. Once there, spent an hour or so trying to work out wtf to go from there - the hostel had provided lists of bus, tram numbers but not where to get them. Eventually gave in and bought a map, worked out where the tram lines were and got to the hostel. Hostel is situated at the top of a grassy slope - tram stops at bottom of hill and one walks up the slope carrying all worldly goods in tow in otder to get there. Had difficulty getting off the tram - didn't realise there was a button to open door until it was pointed out to me by some man babbling at me in foreign.

In the evening wandered down to a district (can't remember name) with lots of bars near a river (can't remember name of that either, could look on map but too lazy). Found a fake english pub called Two Dogs (sign is two bull dogs). One Guinness = NOK62. After that, hot dog with cheese for supper from a 7-11.

Next morning, up early, free breakfast (alpen and coffee) at hostel, back down on tram to station to dump bag in locker there, then started to roam the city... got some postcards, one of naked writing bodies made of concrete... over coffee I discovered that these were part of a big statue park to the east... focus of the afternoon was to find that and take lots of naked statue pictures. From there, followed a stream down to the oslofjord and walked along the waterfront back to the city centre... got a beer, wrote notes, sorted photos, then crisps and juice for dinner and headed over to the station to read and wait for train.

bergen

in bergen, but only 40 seconds left on kiosk so will post this and run off to look round the town.

go go gadget star alliance gold flyer card

Mother drove me to the airport (rather than dumping me on railair bus at Woking as originally planned). Priority checkin, and now i'm in the SAS Europe Lounge at heathrow, with free breakfast (some kind of savoury tomato roll x2 + coffee) and free web access (no putty and no java ssh though... hopefully gmail will work though). now lounge round for a couple of hours and perhaps sample some of the ethanol based supplies.

My baggage is my usual black daysack (carry on plane) and a 65 litre rucksack (checked luggage) that I used to use for scout camp years ago. 10 sets of {underpants, tshirt, socks} plus a jumper, leather jacket, heavy navy coat, lightweight rain jacket, two pairs of trousers, 3 new moleskines (one plain, two ruled), one partially used moleskine (crossruled, started 2005-01-10 in Westwood), camera, phone, assorted chargers and wires, CF (1x512M + 2x256M + 1x128M + 3x32M + 2x16M + 1x4M =(?) 1284), sleeping bag (also used to use for scout camp), plasters, many-featured swiss army knife, hat, chicago white sox bandana, leather thinsulate gloves (acquired 1998 in San Francisco), teach yourself russian book (stolen from my brother), JG Ballard book, stockholm book from Mats, lonely plannet guide to russia, un bic avec 4 coleurs(the four colours are black, blue, red and green; plastic moulding is white and blue with black stripe).

Not entirely sure how to get to hostel in Oslo (although I at least have a booking there for tonight) - something to do with a bus and maybe a tram...

Ciao! webcam

Found a webcam pointing at Ciao! in Greenwich Village in New York where I spent most of last Christmas/New Year... (this is what it looked like from my point of view)

pants

thanks to Christine for new underpants leaving present!

final uk jabs

hep b, hep a, typhoid injected today... still need to get rabies (and polio it now seems) in Norway, plus some edible malaria...

approximate schedule until june

April 20th Norway
April 30th Sweden
May 12th Russia
June 9th Japan

london bye bye beers

beers somewhere sohoish on Friday eve 15th April 2005...

Edinburgh

At the end of last week, went up to Edinburgh. Timing was cunningly chosen to overlap with UK Globus Week at NeSC so that a few people I know from LA and Chicago were there, as well as a few people I knew from EPCC. Walked round Edinburgh in the day times, then drank with them in the evening. Managed to sort out some of the wierd 3d topology of the city centre in my head -- realised that for the past 5 years, I'd mistakenly merged South Bridge and Geo. IV bridge in my brain, which made it difficult for me to visualise where everything in between was to be found. On the last morning, got my friend Lisa up quite early to walk round Holyrood Park. She'd expressed distaste at the idea of being rushed to the airport so I left excessive amount of time and made her wake up for 0700. Black Medicine Coffee Company was still there (my favourite edinburgh coffee shop) so that gave me somewhere to sit each morning after getting up and before going to pester the Globus Week participants at lunchtime. One night ate at Howies near Princes Street, traditional for NeSC events (then chips in pita with too much chilli sauce); another at Mussel Inn on Rose Street for seafood; also some vegetarian restaurant (name escapes me) where I had vegetable haggis. Walking through the princes street gardens one day there, I saw some kids playing on the roof of what looked like an old signal box over the tracks outside the main railway station - I stood and watched for a while (the sick bastard in me hoping that one would fall onto the tracks or become ensnared in the high voltage overhead lines). Lots and lots of pictures, both of the city and of the train journey on the east coast mainline.

ticket purchased

RTW ticket purchased!

also passport delivered to Chinese consulate for another visa with funny squiggles on it

more rabies

Two more needles full of vaccine. also passport came back from Russian embassy with visa in it. now need to get Chinese one (allegedly less bureaucratic but I have to go in person). STA Travel has not confirmed my ticket yet - meanies.

Martian Fighting Machine

Woking has a nice Martian fighting machine .

wrong box

man in a van turned up with a big crate o'crap to put in garage. unfortunately it was someone else's crap, not the crap I sent from LA in feb :-(