In June 2008 I did a roundtrip through Southern-Scandinavia with my pal Matt. Before I start the diary, I want to give some statistics:

In total, we drove 5,778.7 km by car. 1,431.9 km of it on one day (the last one). We spent 73 hours and 8 minutes with driving. The trip costed about € 2,900 in total (for two persons, we spend two nights on camping places and a weekend at a friends house). about € 1,100 out of it just for the car (fuel, ferrys, toll).

Day one (Tue, 10th of June 2008)

We started around two o’clock in Linz, heading towards Kiel, Northern Germany. So the first night was crossing Germany almost exactly from South to North. The first 1.000 km were pretty boring and we took hardly any pictures. Because we had to finish a big projects in work the nights before, we were a little bit wacky and had some real bad jokes running (Matt has them on tape, we haven’t seen them yet, but that’s just as far as I remember). On the way we also got a text-message that our friends Silke and Martin became parents that night.

We arrived in Kiel after 13 hours (we took some breaks) - 2 hours till we could go on the ferry. So we decided to have some coffee in town. Kiel was already a first impression about how the next 2 weeks should be: windy. We had coffee in a typical canopied beach chair. We also bought two travel guides for Southern Sweden and Southern Norway (pretty early - you see, we were prepared).

The ferry fascinated me … it was huge! I’ve seen ships like these in Miami, but I’ve never been on one. There was a cinema, a night club and a casino on board. The bunk was more comfortable than I thought. For dinner we had first contact with Scandinavian food: Kötbullar, Jansons temptation and lots of seafood. After dinner we spend the evening with watching football and going to bed early … it was a long day.

Pics from day 1

Day two (Wed, 11th of June 2008)

We arrived in Gothenburg at 9 AM. After finding the hotel (which was - also with GPS - not easy because of some huge roundabouts) we went to the Universeum. This is a very cool museum (especially if you are with kids - I guess, they wont get bored). The first part starts on the fifth (or sixth?) floor with a mountain where a runlet starts. Then, as you go down through the floors you see different habitats of water: the mountain lake, the river, the sea (with sharks) … it ends in the rainforest with monkeys running around freely. Second part is interactive: warm-cameras showing the warm parts of the body of people passing, you can tryout how it feels to work with tools in space, mage huge soap bubbles and so on …

Right next to the Universeum is Liseberg, the biggest entertainment-park in Northern Europe. We spent the rest of the day riding roller-coasters, walking through a house of mirrors and so on.

In the evening we walked along Kungsportsavenyn, the main road of Gothenburg and had dinner in the Hard Rock Cafe - where we saw another football-match of the Europe-Cup.

Pics from day 2

Day three (Thu, 12th of June 2008)

Right after breakfast we left Gothenburg towards Oslo. On the way we stopped in Tanum, where you can see petroglyphs from the Nordic Bronze Age - it was discovered in 1972 and has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO (it shouldn’t be the last World Heritage Site we saw on the trip).

Because of some construction zones on the highway we arrived a littlebit later as planned in Oslo. So we skipped the Munch Museum (which was already closed) and took a mini-cruise through the Oslo-Fjord. The little houses on the islands in the fjord are fantastic, it was a chilled tourist attraction everybody should do when visiting Oslo.

Later we wanted to go to the cinema (Oslo Koloseum has the biggest THX-cinema in the world), but the movie has already begun when we decided to actually see it. So I thought the day in Oslo is a mess … but it wasn’t.

We decided to look for a park with lots of sculptures we heard about (Vigeland Park in the Frogner park). When we came out of the cinema we heard a band playing live. The music sounded familiar and when the second song “Times Like These” started, we figured The Foo Fighters were playing live in Oslo. By coincidence the concert (part of the Norwegian Wood Festival) was actually IN the park we were looking for. So we were walking through the park with those impressive sculptures and The Foo Fighters were playing for us live on stage.

Later we watched the Austria vs. Poland Football-match in a Public Viewing area - Luckily Austria got a penalty shot in 92 minute and so it ended 1:1.

Pics from day 3

Day four (Fri, 13th of June 2008)

Right after breakfeast we left Oslo heading Bergen. Since it was supposed to be a 8 hour drive, I expected a boring day. I couldn’t be more wrong. It turned out day four was about to be one of my highlights.

After we arrived at the Fjell (or Fell), we stopped every twenty minutes to take pictures of the beautiful landscape. It was so different to what I’ve seen before, after every curve there was another lake, more of these georgeous houses or another view of this astonishing mountain-panorama. I took tons of pictures.

In the guide we read about the Voringsfoss, a waterfall close to the road so we stopped there and again - the beauty of nature took our breath away. It is quite hard to explain, and the pics don’t match even close what whe experienced. Now I know why Slartibartfas got an award for Norway.

We arrived in Bergen in the evening. Jens (who I know from my US-internship) cooked for us: rendeer - another new experience! We had several beer and talked into the night.

Pics from day 4

Day five (Sat, 14th of June 2008)

We began the day with a rich breakfeast and a walk to Bergen “downtown”. First we went up the Fløyen with the funicular Fløyenbanen. Jens knows quite a lot about the city and we had a very good view from above.

Afterwards we went to the world-famous fishmarket where we tried several seafood and ate the best shrimps I’ve had so far (I’ve had pretty good ones in Savannah) and I tasted Minky Whale - also good.

We walked around Bergen the whole day and ended i a sports-pub watching another football-match.

Pics from day 5

To be continued …