Leifing Las Vegas: Over the fjords and through the tunnels...(part 1)

Sun on the Hardanger Fjord

Well, if you ask me, this bus is going way too fast, not just for comfort, but for my ability to take any decent photos! No self-respecting blogger writing from abroad would fail to mention a scary, winding, cliff-embedded road, hosting what must seem like an oversized bus, driven by what one hopes is a local resident who was born on one of the pull-outs. When this bus isn't teetering on the chiseled road, it is mercifully tunneling for the 100 meters of straightaway. Hm, I think to myself while looking down from my window directly into the raging river a couple hundred feet below, this must be the section that was under construction during THAT fiscal year, when they ran out of money for including shoulders. From my perspective, I cannot see any sign of the road that these tires are supposedly traveling upon. I think I'll just keep my eyes ahead and not think about it. Alas, imagine my sheer helplessness when by looking ahead, I see in the rearview mirror this:

Do you see what I see?

Yes, there's the bus driver, one hand on the wheel, the other on his phone. Brilliant. And when I check in on him later, he's on another call....and another. My only prayer now is that he is not arguing with his wife about how she MUST get to the store before the beer curtains are drawn, or that he's not receiving the call that he just won the Lotto. There is simply NO room for error here. I take a deep breath and convince myself that he must be as comfortable with this road and this machine as the pilot was with the plane I was on that barely was able to land in Reykjavik due to high winds and a snow storm that had just left more snow than the runway could handle.

My four day retreat up to Løynig, in the mountains above Odda, began on a warm and wet Wednesday, at Asane terminal (the first "a" in Asane has a circle above it, meaning it is pronounced as a Minnesotan might pronounce "saw", but it's the one letter my old Macbook doesn't accommodate....funny side note, I'm reading Steve Jobs' bio...and cannot believe that in his fastidiousness, he didn't think of THAT!), which is just down the road from where I'm staying. Rucksack, check. Under garments to ensure maximum comfort while lounging around in a cabin, check. Skiwear, check. Cameras, money, oh and don't forget the umbrella!, check. I need the umbrella for my walk up to the bus stop to get to Asane Terminal. Really. I have yet to convince even myself that I'm not made of salt. Or is it sugar?

Waiting at my little bus-stop, I feel like quite the picture: LL Bean flannel lined dungarees which are too big, really; a borrowed exterior frame pack complete with souvenir patches from her mountain exploits as a scout; additional small pack, and oh, the umbrella. Sharing the shelter with me is a model of a Norwegian young woman: blond hair tied back in a pony-tail (I won't tell her what I know is under a pony's tail, HA!), a simple yet lovely face, semi-fitted running tights, hi-quality running shoes, a perfectly tailored white active style rain jacket with requisite 20 adjustments in order for the wearer to arrive at the perfect fit..for standing (she'll re-adjust when she gets on the bus), and a stately non-compact wooden handled umbrella that she continues to tap on the ground as through that's going to make the already late bus arrive any sooner. I envied the simplicity of her style. Norwegians, for the most part, have a wonderful streamlined style of fashion which is amplified, I believe, by their longer legs (I could not find jeans any shorter than 34....anywhere!). Think: Ikea, and you have a sense of how Norwegians like to dress. It's too bad this same simplicity of style isn't carried through to other more important aspects of Norwegian life, I think to myself, as I head to the bank to pull money out of my account via the ATM, so I can then go to the teller to pay the bill I had to receive in the mail for my ON-LINE Norwegian language class (I will then need to scan the paid invoice and email it to the instructor so she will know I've paid. Really? Yes.). From what I've been told, there is a fair amount of patience and effort needed to obtain just about anything needed to function as a resident here, from getting a replacement sim-card for your cell phone (my cousin had to wait nearly a week for hers to come in the mail), to getting a bank account, etc. Imagine my surprise, however, at not seeing any fences along the roads, thereby allowing me free unfettered access to public lands that are indeed public and full, chock FULL, of hiking trails. Hm. Which do I prefer? Less hassle to get stuff, or absolutely no hassle to find a way into the woods? Is there a country which offers both while not also being in a war zone?

Following my business at the bank, I had only to pay a quick visit to the the Vinmonopolet (liquor store) to pick up a bottle of Gammel Dansk for my hosts. Visiting the Vinmonopolet has become an opportunity for me to have the same sensation I have felt when walking into a Needless Markup (Neiman Marcus) at the Fashion Show Mall on the Las Vegas Strip - "You expect me to pay HOW MUCH for this?!" A marginal bottle of an Australian Sauvignon Blanc that would cost 9$ in the U.S. is easily 30$ here. Don't even ask about red wine. Again, I'm ashamed at my constantly being shocked by stickers, because I KNOW it is all relative. I suppose many Norwegians just gawk at how cheap everything is in the U.S. and then they too, must realize that it's all relative....to wages.

After stashing the goods in to the rucksack (this is what I call a backpack of y'ore....exterior frame, no thought of comfort for the user, etc...), I head back to the bus terminal to add $$ to my Skyss kort as well as to wait for my ride. I should mention something here that I absolutely love about how Norwegian cities are laid out. Bergen, for instance, has a population of approximately 270,000 and has many "suburbs" and a small downtown area, in which everything of interest is within easy walking distance (I think a better measure than distance/meters would be to measure distance in terms of how saturated you would get on your way....ie: the Nygaard Skole from Olav Kyrres Gate is approximately 1mm. of rain saturated into my jeans...). However, in the outlying areas, there is usually a center, such as the one at Asane, near where I'm staying, which is kind of a one-stop-shopping area. There is always a bus terminal/hub from which all kinds of connections can be made (even mine to the mountains stops here!), and a whole host of shopping choices (upwards of 150 stores): department stores, post office, banks, bakeries, specialty shops, NAV (the government employment/unemployment center), restaurants, gas stations, travel agencies, .... and just up the road, the new Ikea store is due to open in a couple of months (replacing the existing one next door).

Photo by Mona Lygre. Here is one side of Asane's center.
To the left, but out of the photo, is another building
the same size as this one with as many stores.

Therefore, even in the suburbs, one CAN get by without a car if one must. Or at least, a family can very easily manage with one car with very little inconvenience. Coming from the American southwest, I find this inconceivable. Shopping centers are simply another way for developers to compete with one another instead of being planned in such a way as to be a total convenience for those who use them.

My bus arrives and I throw my rucksak underneath in the luggage compartment, make sure the bus is going to Seljestad Vekstasjon, pay the 309 kr. (appx. 55$) for my 4 hour journey and take a seat in the aisle next to a snoozing young woman, who does manage to wake up just before her stop. Getting around in Norway is one of those surprisingly easy things to do.

I decide right away that a fun thing to do might be to count how many tunnels there are on this trip. After the first hour, I decide it will be easier to just take the average: approximately 1 tunnel every 2 minutes. Why they call it "Swiss" cheese and not Norwegian cheese is a mystery to me. My neighbor disembarks, and I move into her window seat. As we climb out of the valley and the road narrows and becomes more winding and I now have a very intimate view of the raging spring runoff into the fjords just below me...

Raging waters....too scared to take photo looking straight
down

I let my imagination get the better of me. I see the evening newscast complete with an interview of my recently disembarked neighbor, saying something like, "Yes! I had just gotten off that bus! What a shame it slid off the road into that river! I am SO lucky to be alive! I'll never complain about the 8 years I must wait for my publicly funded reconstructive breast implant surgery again!" Snap out of it, Teresa. You paid to relinquish control, just like a kid pays for the roller-coaster ride that later sends her to the bushes puking her guts out, so try to slappe av (relax) and take in the sights.

After a couple more hours of harrowing braking (have I told you how much I love Volvo, lately?) in order to allow opposing traffic to pass, taking in the view of rare winter sunlight on the Hardanger Fjord (top photo), recongnizing the sight of a fish farm along the way,

Typical salmon farm

enjoying the straight and smooth 20 minute ferry ride (raining, alas, so no photos), and enjoying passing through the quaint downtain of Odda,

Photo by Gunleiv Hadland, Feb. 2004

a struggling old industrial town with an old decaying factory on the Unesco list of historic places which I think should be converted into a cool home-brew hard cider mecca (after all the mercury is removed from the area...), we begin the final short leg of the trip up out of the fjord to Seljestad, a community of cabins around a sprawling mountain terrain of endless ski-touring opportunities, both on groomed trails or not. OMG, that was ONE sentence!

The upper terrain around Seljestad-Røldal

Bjorn meets me at the bustop, and we drive to the parking spot (no-one parks at their cabins here, and garages? Fugheddaboudit!), walk over snow to the bridge on the other side of which lies our skis (no-one steals here!), ski the remaining couple hundred meters to the cabin, and proceed to take in the remaining glorious bits of sun.

Bits of sun, and dogs, awaiting our arrival

The past five hours or so, with all of the thoughts they have spawned (fish motif), have felt like an entire week to me, and I welcome the sight of the fur-coverd lounge chairs that seem to be straight from some twisted Corona ad. As the sun fades and we light a fire and enjoy the "blue hour", (we called it Alpenglo in Steamboat), I begin to feel the warmth sinking in, but not just from the fire or the furs,