Last weekend, some other students at the school and I made day trip to a nearby town, San Gimignano, which is also known as the Manhattan of Tuscany for its multitude of towers. The towers were built in the middle ages by wealthy merchants to show off their success, and became a competition in the city. There were at one point hundreds, I think, and today there are still around 70 or so. I’m not sure that I would have dubbed it so, but it is interesting anyways.

It’s about an hour away by bus. The trains don’t seem to be as prevalent a means of transportation here as they were, say, in Belgium. They exist, but since the station is outside of Siena, and they take longer, people recommend the bus instead. It’s a nice little medieval village, where we had a nice lunch, good gelato (they claim the world’s best… it was definitely good, but I think I’d have to retest vs some we had in Rome last year…), and viewed the duomo, which is covered with frescoes telling biblical stories.

Boo. I just typed up a long post describing the events of the last two weeks, and right at the end the computer crashed. Suffice it to say, I’m now in Siena, taking an Italian course at Saena Iulia, a small school here. It’s going slowly, but Siena is nice. More later.

“We have earthquakes, surfers, snowboarders, hollywood… It’s an exciting place to live!”

Now, I know one might have to stretch to make it living in L.A. sound good, but I think earthquakes as a selling point is a bit much.

My guidebook claims that over 600 people are admitted to hospitals annually in Paris for slipping on dog feces in the street. Astounding. Of course, I haven’t actually seen that much on the sidewalks here, but maybe I just haven’t been attentive enough (yes, I’ve checked my shoes…).

I ate dinner last night at a restaurant suggested by Casey (who’s out of town this weekend) called Relais de l’Entrecote. They have only one dish, steak & fries, which is posted on a menu by the door. Group after group of tourists would come up and peer at the menu, trying to understand, until the waitresses would explain to them that there was only one dish. Many of them would then walk away, which is understandable… in a group, how likely is it that you’ll get everyone to agree to ordering one thing? Leave it to the French to stick to their guns (har har), but the stubbornness seems to work for this place, as they were pretty packed as the evening wore on. The steak was good (in a tasty sauce), and they refilled the plate when it was empty (which I wasn’t expecting).

As you might have surmised, I’m now in Paris. Back in the land of the funky keyboard. Kristiansand, where I was over a week ago, was pretty small. They bill themselves as Norway’s number 1 beach resort, and even have a few palm trees that they bring out in the summer to put by the town beach. They have a cute little area of restaurants by the fish market (which is indoors, unlike the earlier fish markets I’ve seen), all of which were quite busy. The rest of the town seemed somewhat empty, and there wasn’t much to it.

I took a quick daytrip up the coast to an even smaller town, Grimstad, which has nice little white houses on a couple walking streets and a large guest harbor. I guess its a popular stop for yachts sailing around Norway. They had a nice little restaurant overlooking the harbor called Dr. Bergen, which of course I went to.

I took the ferry from Kristiansand to Hirtshals. It was thoroughly uninteresting, as it was such a large ferry that most of the seats couldn’t even see a window. The only outdoor section was the smokers area, which was _packed_, and had signs warning that the smokestacks often discharge soot and standing out there was at your own risk. Once in Hirtshals, which was shown in my guide as on the rail network, I found that one needed to take a ‘local’ train to Hjorring, which seemed similarly small, but was on the national train network. After what was altogether longer than it needed to be, I arrived in Arhus (Denmark).

Arhus is a nice little town, which is appearantly kept lively by the fact that it’s a college town. Unfortunately, the main attraction (at least in my guide) is an outdoor museum depicting life in an old Danish village, and it rained continuously and hard while I was in Arhus. Maybe next time.

I stopped in Amsterdam on the way between Arhus and Paris, as it’s about 18 hours of travel, and I draw the line at 12 hours of continuous travel for it to be comfortable. I’m glad I stopped, though, because coming from the uninspired architecture of most of Norway’s cities, Amsterdam is really pretty. I guess my previous impression was marred by having come almost directly from Bruges.

Anywho, I’m now in Paris, and will be here til Monday, when I meet up with my dad and family friends to spend the week at their place, which I’m looking forward to.

Stavanger is a fairly small town. The guidebook claims it’s the fourth largest in Norway, but even so, it feels pretty small. Also, not particularly picturesque inside the town. However, a short ferry ride, bus ride, and hike from town is this rock outcropping overlooking the fjord, called Preikestolen, or Pulpit Rock.

Of course, it’s not as empty as in this picture usually (I didn’t take this picture, it’s from Stavanger’s tourist bureau). Also, the hike, while some might call it short, didn’t feel all that short to me. It’s two hours each way, and the guidebook claims something like, “the beginning and early middle are challenging.” This is exactly the kind of avoidance of the whole truth that leads people to think, “hmm, yeah, that first rise looks tough, but the guidebook implied it gets easier.”

The path is what Travel Dynamics, the company that ran the Greece trip, might say has “uneven footing,” but they’d probably forget to include “on the edge of a cliff.” But the top, once you get there, is 640 meters above the fjord and offers either a great view or vertigo, depending.

The other main attraction here is the National Oil Museum. Really. It’s actually kind of interesting, and explains the geological history of oil, its makeup and differences, and the history and current technology for extracting it (particularly offshore of Norway). They even have a faux helicopter ride out to some platforms they’ve built over the water which attempt to show what it’s like to live on an oil platform. A strange life that, I’d think.

Stavanger is not particularly impressive when it comes to food, though they do have several tapas places, an italian place, and a greek place (but I refuse to pay 30 dollars for greek salad, so I’m not going to report on the international food). They have a food festival setting up to start tomorrow, but I’m off to Kristiansand tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully it will start in the morning.

Appearantly, according to a tour guide yesterday, the name of Bergen likely comes from the german influence in the city, and the german word for “mountains”, as the city is surrounded by 7 mountains (two of which have transport to the top, a funicular and a cable car, for a view of the city). The germans exerted a great deal of influence here, due to the fact that the Hanseatic League (a german trade association of cities) held an almost complete trade monopoly here for hundreds of years. Though they were in the city before it, their influence expanded greatly after the black plague, which killed 70% of the Norwegian population, after which the german trade organization bought up the unused property in the city center.

They have a couple of museums in the Bryggen area (where the traders worked) which demonstrate both the common meeting halls and the tenaments that the traders used for day-to-day work and for communal gatherings. The houses in the area, which have been rebuilt many times over the centuries due to fire, which spreads very well since they’re all wood and all very close together, are quite charming. Also, the alleys between them, which were “paved” with wooden flooring to make rolling barrels of cargo to the back rooms easier.

I took the 4 hour fjord tour from Bergen yesterday, which, while comfortable, was nowhere near as impressive as the boat from Flam to Gundhaven. The first 15 minutes pass by Bergen’s waterfront, and then it takes an hour and a half or so to get to the interesting areas where cliffs rise up from the water’s edge. After 30 minutes of sights, the boat starts heading back to Bergen. The boat did have a good commentary pointing out any interesting sites along the way, which, surprisingly, was only in English (not Norwegian).

I went to the acquarium today, where the highlight was the feeding of the penguins and seals. They had mostly Norwegian fish, and commentary on the fish that were not native to Norwegian waters but have been introduced more recently. Also a large section on farming of Salmon, which is an important industry here. The center of town also has a fish market, which operates every day until the late afternoon. They have a great fish & chips vendor, and it’s a good thing I’m leaving town tomorrow cause that can’t be healthy.

Tomorrow I’m booked on the 5 hour ferry to Stavanger, where more fjords and vistas await (as does a train line back towards the east of the country).

So, I’ve been posting info about books I read up here so that I can keep track of them, mostly, but over the last few weeks, when I’ve been reading the most (long train rides, etc), I fell out of the rhythm of it. Thus, instead of doing one post per, like I was, I’m going to lump them all together:

1. The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley: A long book, but it flows along nicely (unlike some other long books I could mention… *cough* Stevenson). It tells the story of King Arthur from his sister’s perspective. Several of the characters, Guinevere in particular, are protrayed in a different light than I’d expect from what little I knew of the tale. While not a favorite book, or particularly gripping, the story and folk-legendness of it lead to a fun read.
2. Ender’s Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, and Shadow Puppets, by Orson Scott Card: An excellent continuation of the Ender’s Game series. While I felt, as I had heard, that the Ender’s Game quartet got less compelling in the last couple books, the Shadow series starts fresh and is highly entertaining. Unfortunately, they don’t label their order very clearly on the covers, and what with the confusion of finding books in my bag, I read Shadow Puppets before Shadow of the Hegemon… I did indeed think it was strange that there were a bunch of events referred to that I didn’t remember, but I shrugged it off at first thinking it’s been a long time since I read the first four books. Either way, they were both fun reads.
3. The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific, by J. Maarten Troost: I read about this on gadling.com, I think, and it sounded like an interesting read. Unfortunately, I don’t particularly like the writer’s style. He keeps writing things in what seems like an attempt at humor that I just find tiring. However, I will state that his experience - he and his wife moved to a tiny coral atoll in the middle of the pacific called Tarawa in the “nation” of Kiribati - lends itself to interesting anecdotes. While I don’t particularly recommend this book for entertainment, I do think some of the descriptions of the place and events there are interesting.
4. The 3rd Degree, by James Patterson: A detective story that takes place in San Francisco and the bay area, following a female lieutenant (head of homicide) tracks down a group committing a series of terrorist actions to destabilize the state (from Berkeley…). I do like it when books are set in places that I know (which was one of the things that I liked about Dennis Lehane’s private eye series), but the flow of this book didn’t work terrifically for me. However, it was still an entertaining distraction.
5. Deception Point, by Dan Brown: An earlier novel by Dan Brown (before The Da Vinci Code), and another page turner. This one follows a discovery by NASA in the arctic circle leading to a conspiracy which results in chases, deaths, etc, etc. While some twists didn’t make a huge amount of sense, and some aspects seemed not quite right, if you read it like a summer action movie it’s quite fun.
6. The Rule of Four, by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason: Picked this one up at random in a train station. The cover says that if you liked Da Vinci Code, etc. Well, they’re right. It doesn’t use quite the same tricks that Da Vinci code uses to draw you on (like the little tiny chapters), but it really sucked me in to the point where I felt it was hard to put it down. It involves a little known book from the 15th century, and a group of 4 seniors at Princeton who get involved with decoding its secrets. I highly enjoyed it.

Well, I’m now in Bergen, and have already had some confusion with my name (”Like the city?”, “Yes, but with an a…”). The train across from Oslo to Myrdal, and then to Flam, was terrific. The scenary outside started off very green, with lots of lakes and nice little houses. After a while, snow started to appear. The highest point was something like 1220 meters, and then the train from Myrdal to Flam decended around 900 meters in an hour. During the descent, there were a number of waterfalls and steep cliffs, and the train stops at one of them so you can stand out on the platform (which is constantly sprayed from the waterfall) and take pictures. During the stop, music starts playing, and then women in red, one by one, appear near the waterfall and then disappear. I learned later that it was supposed to be a Norse goddess who lives in a waterfall and acts like a siren, but since the train didn’t describe it, it just seemed a bit odd.

Flam sits at the bottom of the railway, and at the end of a fjord. There is not much in Flam, except a couple hotels, 2 restaurants, docks, a small market, and souvineer shops. Flam makes up for it with the view, though. Mountains rise up from all sides, and waterfalls pour down them every 100 yards or so. Some of the waterfalls are small, some large, some quiet, some loud. I went on a guided kayaking trip for 4 hours on the fjord, and ended up being the only customer on the tour. It was great fun, and the guide was terrific, and there were dolphins swimming around the fjord with us.

They also do a 2 day trip to the next town, Gundhaven, which I didn’t register in advance for, so instead I took the ferry to Gundhaven on my way out. The scenary on the ferry, and on the bus up from Gundhaven to Voss, was similarly amazing. Now I’m off for a walking tour of Bryggen, the port area of Bergen, followed by a ferry tour. I’ll probably skip the Leprosy Museum in Bergen, which I walked by last night, but there’s plenty else to see.

So, I decided since I’m in Norway, I should try something resembling Norwegian food. This requires splurging, because, as I think I said earlier, sitting down for a salad is 20 bucks. But, what the heck. So, tonight I had Whale Carpaccio, with pine nuts, parmesan, and olive oil, followed by a reindeer fillet with asperagus, mushrooms, and brussel sprouts. Wow, was it expensive. And really, not that distinctive. The whale carpaccio really had no flavor. If eaten with either the pine nuts or parmesan, all you could taste is the pine nuts and parmesan. Even without it… The reindeer fillet was decent, but not all that different from beef. Had you put it down in front of me without telling me what it was, I really would have guessed beef. Now, knowing that it was reindeer, my mind occasionally thought there were differences, but I’m not really sure if there were, or if the amazing cost was driving my mind to try to imagine some slight variation in flavor.

Anyways, earlier today I went to check out the Akershus castle, which guards the port of Oslo. It was originally built in 1299 when the new Norwegian king wanted to remain in his home town of Oslo, rather than move to the then capital Bergen. They appearantly built the castle pretty quickly, because by 1308 it withstood a seige (for a few weeks) by the Swedes. The king lived most of the time in his wooden house in Oslo, 3km away from the new castle, because the castle was not very comfortable and hard to heat (an important consideration here in the winter…).

The castle was eventually struck by lightning and burned down (seems to be a common problem with castles ’round here), and was rebuilt in the early 17th century by Christian IV, the then king of Denmark (which ruled Norway for 400 years), and then the castle fell into disrepair until it was restored in the early 20th century. This bit of history is basically leading up to say that the castle is a bit of a mish-mash of times, since some parts are medieval, some renaissance, and some built in the 1900’s. Thus, wandering around the castle itself requires a good deal of imagination. However, they do hourly tours, in english, giving the history of the castle and showing what the different rooms were used for and such, and the tours were quite fun (and included in the admission price).

After the castle, I took the ferry out to Bygdøy peninsula, which is where the Viking Ship museum is. The Vikings appearantly would bury important people in a big mound along with a ship to take them on to whereever you went in the afterlife (and all sorts of other stuff, some of which they assume has been looted from these gravesites before they were excavated). Some of these mounds were made up of clay or various substances which preserved the wood quite well, so they now have 3 Viking ships, 2 of which are almost complete. The ships were quite cool, and it was surpising how much stuff was buried with the deceased (one of the sites, for a queen, had 3 sleds, a cart with 2 horses to pull it, cooking equipment, food and containers, and other stuff including a peacock. However, the museum didn’t really explain a lot about the ships. For instance, all the oar holes had a slit going off to the front of the ship, but it din’t explain what that might be for. Also, the museum’s stance is that the vikings didn’t know anything about navigation other than landmarks and that the sun at midday is south, but I know I’ve read differently elsewhere. It’s hard to imagine sailing from Norway to Greenland and Newfoundland with no way of telling direction or position than that.

Tomorrow I’m off on the “Norway in a Nutshell” ™ tour, or at least part of it. Every tourist office here and the train operator promotes this circle from Oslo to Bergen as the epitomy of Norwegian tourism. I will be doing a one-way, and then returning from Bergen along a different route, since I figure retracing is a waste. Thus, tomorrow I’m off to Flam, which is midway across and a perfect place to explore the Sognefjorden (Norway’s longest and deepest fjord). The rail trip from here to Myrdal, and from Myrdal to Flam, is supposed to be among the top 10 rail trips of the world. After staying in Flam for a couple nights, I take a boat along the fjord to Gudvangen, and then a bus to Voss and the train to Bergen on Thursday.

Denmark, where I was late last week, was the first stop on my trip out of the Euro zone. Not only did this mean that I had to find some cash when I got out of the train, but it meant learning a new conversion rate. Luckily, the conversion rate for Danish Kronors is similar (though not the same) as the rate for Norwegian Kronors. Unluckily, it is nowhere near as easy as the euro, and even if it were everything is more expensive anyway.

In both Copenhagen and here in Oslo, it seems to be almost impossibly to sit down in a restaurant and eat anything for less than $20 (a salad will usually cost 90-100 kronors, and any drink (tea, water, soda) will be 20-40 kronors, and it’s about 6-7 kronors to a dollar).

Once you put that aside, Copenhagen was a nice place. The guy who I shared a cabin with on the overnight train from Duisborg (changed there from Amsterdam), Aza, had said that he heard that Copenhagen was the highest concentration of blond girls in Europe. As soon as we stepped off the train and looked around, he turned to me and said, “He was right!” There are indeed a number of blonds in Denmark.

The first thing that you see when you step out of the central train station is Tivoli, an amusement park right in the center of town. How cool would that be if you lived in the city? The season pass, including rides, was around $60, and they have open air concerts every night in the summer. Appearantly Mariah Carey performed there last Monday… oh well. The night I was there was Klaus Hempler, or something like that, who did a song that sounded like it was called Grooviosity. Luckily, it’s included in the price of admission.

Copenhagen also gives tours of the royal greeting rooms in the Christiansborg palace, which is the fifth palace to occupy that site since the founding of Copenhagen. The first palace/fort was razed by the Swedes, I think. The second one was sinking under the weight of additions and so was taken down. The third one burned down. And the fourth one also burned down. Needless to say, they’re now somewhat conscious of the risk of fire, and so all the fireplaces in the current building are decorative rather than functional. The rooms were nicely decorated, and all in all it was a cool tour, though the ruins of the previous building underground were less than exciting.

I took a side trip out on Friday to Helsingør, which is where Shakespeare placed Hamlet’s castle (Elsinore). I had not realized that the story from Hamlet is based on earlier tales, written by someone named Soxo, I think, about a prince named Amled. Anyways, the castle that stands there, Kronborg, guards the entrance to the sound on which Copenhagen lies, and was built there to collect a tax on shipping that the Danish kings imposed from around the 14th century till the 19th century. As for it’s main function, protecting the sound, it appearantly failed in both of the instances that enemy fleets passed, only inflicting minor damages.

The castle as it stands now is relatively barren. The royal apartments, which you can tour, are fairly empty, with undecorated wooden floors and ceilings and a couple paintings on the walls. There is also a Great Hall, which was supposedly the largest hall in Europe when it was built. It is quite large, and I would imagine very difficult to heat in winter, except maybe if you have 1000 of your clostest friends over for a feast. The casemates, under the castle, are pretty fun to walk around in, though very dark. I guess they keep the lighting dim for atmosphere, but it seems a bit extreme. Anyways, next time I’m there I’ll have to remember to bring a torch…

While I was out in Helsingør, I had lunch at the Restaurant Ophelia, which is in the Hotel Hamlet, and serves a “traditional Danish lunch”. The lunch consisted of herring with capers & onion, meatballs with pickled cucumber, and fried fish (plaice?) with Danish tartar sauce (which seems almost like it has a little curry in it). Now I understand why Danes don’t go out for Danish food.