(Part 1) Copenhagen to Tallinn, Estonia via Sweden, Norway & Finland.

Photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40472893@N04/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31405705@N08/

(Part 1) Copenhagen to Tallinn, Estonia via Sweden, Norway & Finland.


04 Aug Up and out this morning and on the road for 9am. Dad wanted to see the hippy commune ‘Christiana’ which was on our way. We had a walk around and although there were a few people around I think most of them were in bed. We continued on and drove across the Oresund Bridge to Malmo in Sweden. When we arrived at the toll gate on the Swedish side, Dad started talking a mixture of English and French in an Italian accent to a Swede. As he chatted away to the teller the queue was getting longer behind us as Dad was in the throws of describing where we came from and where we were going. Of course dad didn’t mind a bit. We went into Malmo for a look around and it was nothing special except Dad got charged €2.50 to use the toilet in the train station. I told the lady taking the money that it was a rip off and a bad reflection on her city as it was 10 kroners (€1) to use the toilet if you had Swedish money or €2.50 if paying with euro. We spent an hour looking around and by then we were back on the road on our way to Gothenburg.

We pulled off the motorway into a roadside service station along the way and standing by the van eating our hotdogs a man in an English reg. Volvo pulled up alongside. He was Swedish and told us he thought there was a dead man in the van a few cars up and would we mind accompanying him to check it out. Dad went with him and they opened the van and there was nothing in it. This lad told us it had been there a week and nobody moved it. I asked him was he involved with the management and he said no, they are idiots and don’t care he added. At that point I thought he was a gobshite and he went back to the van and started searching through it. He came back to us again and started preaching about the evils of women and at that point we made our excuses and left.

We finally arrived in Gothenburg, looked around its main st and square. We went on to the docks and visited a huge sailing ship converted into a hotel and then to a ship museum where a warship and a submarine were the highlights. We climbed down into the submarine and had a look around. It was so cramped; it’s not a career I would have liked. We left Gothenburg about 6.30pm and headed in the direction of Stockholm. We stopped at a service station en-route for the night.

05 Aug Up and out at 8.30am, had showers in the service station, Dad made porridge for us both (which was a bit watery so Dad had mine too) and we were on the road to Stockholm by 10am (but not before Dad tried to fix the McDonalds lawnmower). Asides from a stop for coffee we were driving non stop to Stockholm. We got there about 1am and had trouble finding the campsite we had selected. We stopped and asked a lady if she spoke English and she grunted ’no’ and turned her back on us. We then asked a taxi driver and he told us to follow him. We drove around after him for about 10 mins until he finally apologised and said he couldn’t find it. Fair play to him for trying anyway and would not take any money for his trouble. We reckoned it was gone, had bowed out to progress and we set course for option 2.

Stockholm is a lovely old city with lots of narrow cobbled streets but driving around it and adding the modern additions of tram lines, bicycle lanes and all kinds of unfamiliar junctions we had traffic blowing at us for going when we should be stopping. Stopping when we should be going but anyway finally got to the second campsite and discovered they were full. Done with driving we parked in the car park beside it and headed into town, 10km/40 mins away by ferry-bus. It was a lovely day, about 28C and was a great day to see Stockholm. The beauty of the place beggars belief. We went into city hall when all the pomp and ceremony of the Nobel peace prize goes on each year and was like a scene from Venice. We arrived in town about 3pm so after a few hours looking around decided to return the following day and got the train back to the van. Parked outside the campsite we went in to the campsite restaurant and had dinner. That evening (still in the car-park) we put on the movie ‘Who’s Harry Crumb’ but the battery died mid way as we had been running the fridge all day keeping dads porridge milk cool.

06 Aug Up and out at 7am and after Dads swim and porridge we were on the train into town at 9.30. We first went back to the City hall to do the tour as we were particularly interested in seeing where the Nobel peace prize was granted. We were bored to tears on the tour only to find out toward the end that the prizes were handed out at a conference centre somewhere else in town. As Dad says; ‘we were done’. After that we went for a walk along the shore looking at the fabulous boats and buildings. Prices were astronomical along the shore so we popped into a 7-11 convenience store and bought coffees and sandwiches and sat on the shore amongst the expensive eateries eating them. After lunch we went to the ‘Vasa’ museum. The Vasa was a battleship built by the king of Sweden in 1650. It had so many guns and adorned with carvings etc it was so overweight and unbalanced that it sunk in the harbour 1 km from its launch site. It was raised about 30 years ago and took 7 years to restore. Its an ugly ship but fascinatingly big and a real symbol of Swedish arrogance in Scandinavia at the time. By this time we had seen at lot of Stockholm and got the train back to the van. We headed off after Dads swim and another meal at the campsite restaurant. Dad had a beer with his dinner which added to all our walking that day allowed him sleep most of the way. By 9.30 we stopped off at a roadside rest area and after the remainder of the video, went to sleep.

07 Aug Up at 7.45am and Dad for the first time plugged into the vans power supply to shave. He walked around in his pyjamas amongst the truckers with no bother. It probably would have bothered me at one time but I didn’t care. We made up breakfast and off we went. We drove on for a couple of hours and pulled into a shopping centre for groceries and diesel before crossing into notoriously expensive Norway. Norway is not as wealthy as Sweden and much more mountainous. Before long we were in Oslo, went to our campsite and it was a dump. The Turkish owner had about as much charm as the potholes in his campsite so we parked across the road in the car park which serviced the beach along the Oslo fjord and local bike/walking trails. We had a look around, Dad went for a swim and we then drove into Oslo for the afternoon. Oslo was a surprise. I expected a glamorous city with blondes walking around but what we saw was a scene one would expect from Istanbul. It was full of immigrants and in the central square drug dealing was openly being carried out. It was not a well planned city in the centre and things were all over the place. We took a tram to a park called the Vigelandsparken Sculpture Park which was filled with naked statues in all manners of embrace. After that we were back on the tram and on the way to see the opera house. That was an amazing building and the roof was sloped from top to toe so that you could walk up and admire the views of the harbour. We drove back to that same beach car park and camped there for the night.

08 Aug This morning we went down to the fjord for a swim and rinse under the tap afterwards. We both decided our time would be better spend elsewhere than Oslo so we hit the road that morning bound for Bergen on the west coast. We were no more than 30 mins on the road when I spotted an IKEA. Dad had never been to one so I suggested that we have a look around, he readily agreed. We had a walk around and he was very impressed and all that was followed by a hearty lunch in their subsidised restaurant where we had a meal of sausage balls and potatoes. Dad found it hilarious when the guy serving the food described them as ‘balls from the pig’. We continued on again stopping for coffee and groceries but the best stop on the way to Bergen was the Gorge (don’t know the name) that was a mile deep with a roaring waterfall. The scenery changed dramatically as we left Oslo and entered the countryside. It was initially very forested and gradually as we climbed into the mountains it became very cold and barren with snow still visible. Along the roads where mountains are everywhere the Norwegians have tunnelled. As dad said ‘There must be six million tunnels!’ some of them 15 kilometres long and driving at 120 kmph through them was exhilarating. As Norway became more rural, the bridges across the fjords became ferries and we were boarding ferries every 50 kms at €10-€15 a go. We reached Bergen about 9pm and the campsite was full so we did our car park routine once again.

09 Aug We had about 10 hours sleep last night and were up and out at 8am followed by a swim in the nearby fjord. We headed into Bergen centre, stopping off for breakfast along the way, about 10am. Bergen is a beautiful low rise city of about 500,000 people. It rains there about 275 days a year so we counted ourselves lucky that we had one of the 90 good days. After a good look around we were on the road again heading north to the main fjord region. We hopped from Ferry to Fjord to tunnel and all over again driving at a snails pace with all the tourist traffic slowing down and looking at everything but the road, even dad complained of the slow driving! It was a Sunday in Norway and nothing was open. We must have driven through 3 villages and 2 towns looking for fresh bread for our lunch but no luck. We eventually found a place but don’t rely on buying anything Norway on a Sunday.

10 Aug Up and out at 8am and onto a ferry again. More tunnels, fjords, uphills and downhills. The roads were so twisty, one particular bend was so sharp that my 25 litre water container broke free from its position and smashed one of the containers next to it. No serious imposition and we continued on. We visited two towns; Allsund and Trondheim where dad paid €21 for a mediocre dinner in a café which I flat refused to eat at that price. I went across the road to a petrol station and had a €5 hotdog. We decided not to travel any further north as we had seen much of what Norway had to offer, going was very slow and expensive and time was running short. We headed East to the Swedish border and my when we arrived in Sweden the pace took off. We drove about 500 kms today and once over the border we found a lovely rest area with swimming, café, toilets etc. Norway is stunning but rob a bank before going there and don’t spend too much time in the capital.

Aug 11 Up and out at 8am and dad had a swim. We had a coffee and pastry breakfast in the café as a thank you to the owner for providing such a lovely facility free of charge. We were on the road 90 mins later and drove westward to the Baltic Sea. At a town on the coast called Ornskoldsvik we turned north and headed to the Finnish border along the coast. We drove 630 kms today and finally made the border about 8.40pm. We drove on a bit to a roadside rest area for the night