Tromso - the city of great falls

23rd - 27th Jan 2008

moving is always difficult. we had to move out of the temp apt, which means we had to pack everything and clean up all the mess we made. didn't help that our flight was at like 7.15am and we had to be at the airport not less thatn 40 mins before to check-in. obviously we couldnt wake up (as usual) and so it was a gigantic rush to get everything in order. we were literally running to the metro station and then to the terminal and we just made it. thank God. touched down at oslo at about 8am cos it's not that far away, and realised that we had loads of time before the next flight to tromso at 1.50pm.

a clip of our first apartment

so i tried to experiment with things and tried the self check-in machine. i thought it was really cool and everything, until we pressed the wrong button for check-in luggages. you see, for these budget airlines, you've to pay for each piece of check-in luggage, so we decided to just check in 1, but of cos, since the machine asked for how many pieces of luggage we had, i decided to click on 2 instead, cos i counted the handcarry. and then, the machine had to breakdown after printing 1 boarding pass. it was a real mess. but we got everything sorted out, still with lots of time to spare. oh, we were to find out that the oslo airport had lots of free stuff which kinda became our lifelines over the next few days. we took some of those ziplocks thingy for the liquids, and they became our sandwich bags for lunch. ok, trivial.. and typical singaporean :

i was pretty excited about the weather because it was snowing quite lightly outside, and while we were waiting i was just observing how snow collected, and how it made a lot of pple do a lot of extra work clearing it for the planes to take off.
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by the time we arrived in tromso, it was about 4pm, and totally dark outside. we had some written directions on how to get to our accoms but on hindsight, was silly enough to not get a map to find out where exactly it was. we decided to take the public bus instead of the airport shuttle, cos it was twice the price. that is alr a notch up from the initial decision to walk the 3km to the airport, but the rather heavy bag on david's back and fresh memories of running to the cph airport with it made him change his mind.... anyhow, it was quite cold out of the airport and we managed to find the bus stop some 100m away down a hill, after realising how slippery the roads were because they was coated with ice. we got on the bus (24 NOK each- abt $6+) and asked for the stop to alight. and that was when we started really getting lost. the road names were all pretty obscure and almost impossible to find in the dark. we wandered around quite a bit, went into the wrong housing estate and tried to ring on the doorbells to ask for help to no avail, before meeting a nice couple who pointed us to the right street. we were geuninely scared then, not having the faintest idea where the B&B was. thankfully, when we finally got to the right place, the owner, Oystein, was really nice, albeit kinda queer. he made us walk around his house to meet him at the main entrance, said hi, and then instructed us to walk back the way we came, to enter by the kitchen. sheesh. the place looked really cosy and warm, but his instructions were really weird. in tromso/norway, pple are really environmentally conscious, they have differntbins for different things, much like the failed ones we used to have in Singapore. so there was a blue bin for clean paper, red bin for clean plastics, yellow for thicker paper and cardboard, and green for dirty plastic and paper, and one more, for organic wastes. (ok i made those colours up, i cant remember... but the video has a more explicit showing of those). but what made me really disgusted was that the organic waste goes INTO the fridge. like there's a small bin where you throw the organic waste into, and then you place that bin into the fridge.. like.... whaaaaaat?!?!?!

the street that we lived on. the next day it was all covered in snow, thank God it was still visible the night we were trying to find it.

the B&B was about 2km from the city, so we didnt make any effort to get down there that night, but it was also quite near a huge lake. at about 9pm + someone said that they had spotted aurora, so we quickly put on some warm clothes and headed out to the lake to watch. afterall, that's what we were there for. fell for the first time on the way because of the ice. sigh, but there was to be many more to come. anyhow, we managed to get onto the lake, which was frozen over, and trudged into really thick snow. and it was really really really cold out there, the wind factor is like... max. the tripod couldnt stay still and the camera fell face down into the snow a couple of times. good thing it's cushioned... i think! we did see the faint streaks of green in the sky, and took some pretty good pictures after a zillion seconds of exposure.... david's really proud of his pictures heh, makes buying the tripod at oslo airport worth it.... al 229NOK of it... (like... $30?)... i forgot my tripods sigh, i have so many at home! anyways, it got too cold for me after a while, my toes are threatening to drop off and it got quite unpleasant, so we went back to the B&B to thaw a bit and put on even thicker layers. good thing i brought the ski pants... and the super harcore hat daddy brought back from finland last time. heh. but aurora had disappeared, so we just stood around waiting and taking some pictures in the dark of the night...

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the 2nd day, we (tried to) wake up bright and early to head to the city centre and the tourist office to book some tours that would bring us to some reindeer sami camp to view the aurora borealis better. ate a lot for breakfast (homemade bread by Oystein), packed pita for lunch and started our trek to the city. it really was a trek k, like 2km of hilly roads. the scenary that greeted us as soon as we opened the front door totally overwhelmed me. it was only something i had seen in story books before, where everything was covered in white - house tops, cars, trees, roads - it was incredible. i stopped to take pictures a lot, which slowed us down a great deal considering that we were already walking so slowly so as not to slip. but even then, i did land on my bum quite a few times. and i concluded that my nike shox weren't made for conditions such as these. the locals didnt seem to have much problems, they walked at normal pace and didn't seem to really lose their footing, tho i did see a few people holding ski poles to aid them, and saw some other pple slip as well (tourists, presumably). the journey was indeed a precarious one. cars weren't spared as well. the speed limit all over tromso was like 30km/hr, and even then, we witnessed some cars skid and some having trouble getting up the slopes. thank God the car rentals were too expensive or we might have been victims of that.

my shoes, in comparison to all the thick boots of the other occupents of the house.

after what seemed like forever, we arrived at the tourist information office, only to find out that the weather forecast wasn't that good so we didn't book any tours for that night. so we decided to make the most of the day and go trekking in the beautiful countryside instead. i was none too keen on walking up any more hills and was quite for the idea of walking through an easy vallley, but david had other ideas and he insisted on doing mountain trekking instead... unwillingly, i got dragged along. we crossed the bridge to another island and set sights on a hill where there are usually cable car rides in the summer up to the summit.

view from base camp

the videos will tell the story of the trek. but generally, we were pretty much going into the unknown, the path was only vaguely marked, and any fresh snow would have covered it completely. it was already past noon and there were merely a couple of hours of daylight left. some parts were steep going up, but worse coming down, without any trees to break your fall. the snow was calf-deep and it was really tiring. but david pushed ahead despite my protests. the videos dont really do the situation and the terrain justice tho. we were super tired and even sweating under all that thick layers. anyhow, we didnt manage to get to the top of the 40o+m hill in the end, cos it was really getting too dark and we had to get back down.

so we went to the arctic cathedreal instead, the northernmost cathedreal in the world, and then headed back across the long bridge to tromso itself.

walked a bit along strogata, the main shopping street (the name strangely resembles the shopping street in cph as well, stroget) and then started our arduous 2km trek back (uphill, this time). it was dark, but not that late, and there were lots of pple and dogs taking their evening strolls, so after asking for directions a few times, we found our way back alright. had pan-fried salmon for dinner that night, yum. on top of the packets of instant noodles we brought, plus some fishballs we bought from the supermarket before we saw the salmon. stayed indoors all night and played mastermind haha, cos i'm good at that (or so i think!). chatted a bit the the other guests - there was sean who's my age and his dad Chris from England (so sweet he brought his dad on a trip as a present for quitting smoking), and this danish couple and their friend whose name we didnt get. really friendly and nice people :)

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it snowed really hard that night, and the next day, there was a fresh layer of snow on everything, and the ice was gone. less slippery, or maybe we've now mastered the art of walking, after yesterday's trek. once again, the weather didnt look too promising, with threats of snowfall clouding out clear skies and the aurora herself. so we didn't sign up for the reindeer thing again. i really wanted to go dog-sledding, but david thought it was too extravagent and he didn't like the ideas of dogs pulling sleighs around (heh i don't get it!) next time i'll go. humph. we tried to walk around to look for some museums but we gave up after a while because it was wayy too far and it was closing anyway. so we just walked into a shopping centre and had half-price gelatos while watching the world go by a bit. we were leaving when i heard someone ask me, in a really singaporean tone, 'want to join us for lunch?', i spun around and saw jiamin and debbie feasting on an entire loaf of bread which they brought all the way from denmark as well. haha. see the kind of lives we lead? haha. sad. anyway, they had just arrived so we chatted a bit and then agreed to meet again tonight at the opening ceremony of the northern lights festival. when we got out, it was getting dark, and snow was coming down real hard. it was quite beautiful, and i got quite excited, until i realised that we were looking like fools standing out there and purposely walking around in the snow when everyone was scrambling to get some shelter. haha.

strogata, and the falling snow.

the festival was quite boring, pretty much like chingay, except like 10 times shorter (not that i've really watched the chingay before actually). but basically they had a performance down the (really short) street, with kids and teenagers prancing around to some music.

oh ya, i forgot to mention. i have an issue with locks. especially those that secure the toilet doors. i can never seem to unlock them. right from our first apartment, it would take me a few tries just to free myself. and the situation repeated itself in tromso, i was stuck in some obscure toilet in the basement of burger king, and the girl waiting outside had quite a terrified look on her face when i finally managed to get out. and then over here, in the new apartment where i now am, opening the lock to the toilet is tricky business too. the key in the lock has to be only half in, or something like that. sheesh i think i'll have to figure. heh

but i digress.

we donated a torchlight and compass to jiams so that he can navigate himself out of the valley in the night when they go northern-lights watching, and we parted. for us, on our last walk back to the B&B. we took about 45 mins this time, cos we stopped a lot, just to trudge through thick, smooth, untampered snow. every patch that we saw unconquered, we would just march right in, and sometimes jump in, landing urselves knee-deep in snow. i bet everyone thought we were nuts. but the snow was really nice, soft and powdery, even fluffy. unlike the ice that it would soon turn into. and then... the snowball fight began, which made the walk home a lot shorter and less boring than it would have been.

there was something cooking in the kitchen when we got back. the danes were hard at work, preparing pasta, and we were dreaming of instant ramen. but alas! they couldn't finish their super a lot of liao pasta which they could not finish (and would otherwise have gone into the organic waste bin in the fridge), and they offered it to us, 'thinking of our student budget'. so we had a hearty meal and tried to pack our bags to get ready to leave. and then, we decided to go skiiing. cross-country skiiing. so we rented the stuff from Oystein, and invited sean to come with us. we were all newbies. except david who's an acclaimed alpine ski-faller. obviously, we fell a lot of times but we had quite a lot of fun skiiing down the banks of the lake. haha the pic makes it look quite loser-ish, i know, but ai yah, something like that la. then we went to a darker path to try a different slope, and then we started spotting the lights, at about 11 plus at night. we were utterly surprised because mentally, we were alr prepared to not see them anymore considering the weather a little earlier on. but amazingly, the sky cleared up pretty fast and there was a spendid display for us that night. of cos, the boys got really excited, they ripped off their skis and whipped out their tripods, while i was stuck with the cumbersome skis cos for some reason they were stuck to my shoe. but it got really cold once we stopped skiiing and after a while i just wanted to head back. but while we were taking off the skis outside the B&B, there was one last display. there was a green steak across the sky, brighter than ever before. and it was like a snake slithering across the sky, dancing, and then disappearing into the darkness. it was a prefect finale tho, and we were awestruck for that few minutes. aurora had treated us to such a magnificent spectacle that left us really happy and amazed at all of God's creation. we slept at like 3 or 4am that night, packing etc.

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the next morning was yet another rush to get to the airport. so much for taking a walk on the lake in the daytime. but we were really reluctant to leave the place, and i really miss the snowy white cover, a sense of purity and clam. it is this piece of serene, untainted nature that lingers in my memory even as we were greeted with the rush of people and the bustle of city life again, upon touching down in oslo, 2 hours plane ride from tromso.
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oslo was another adventure, our overnight @ the airport another story, and our arrival back in copenhagen another drama, which i will leave for another time, soon.

but for now....

love from

tromso

the Paris of the North

touch down: Scandinavia

ok, so i've been in copenhagen for 5 days now, and i'm only blogging now. been utterly lazy despite the fact that time passes rather slowly here and i don't exactly have anything to do. i'll do a quick update now.

16th jan (wed) night. changi airport t3. time to go. we checked in rather fearfully knowing full well that we've exceeded our baggage allowance (by a lot) and didn't harbour any intention of taking anything out, much less part with our precious food boxes which we intended to survive on for the next 5 months. Thank God, everything went through, all 170+kg of baggag for 4 of us. heh.

was rather surprised to have a rather large send-off crew, since it was so late at night. but i guess that the fact that it was at the spanking new t3 helped entice pple... heh. there was bren and lu, who came all the way by train... and had to run for the last train back. (i'm so sorry we didn't get to talk much...); aunty carrie, who so nicely drove us there and gave some pineapple tarts to brighten up my CNY; aunty alen, who specially came all the way down to give us a gift (which was really really sweet:); the rest of the family, who now have more space at home/less mess to clean up; david's mum, who's probably been to the airport more times than all the rest of us;

and not forgetting, the dear frisbee pple, who came all the way for...... popeye's. thanks seb for organising the post-PT supper in the far east, and everyone for tearing yourselves away from the busy-ness of the week to be there.. thanks a lot for coming down, i truly appreciate it :)

we literally ran to the gate and was the last on the place before the doors shut right behind us. an uneventful flight- my first on SQ, landing us at Copenhagen International Airport some 13+ hours later. We were greeted by super efficient customs (we literally walked through, no queueing at all!) and with no incidence of lost baggages which plagued the whole of december, we were greeted by our buddies right outside in the arrival hall. didn't manage to get a picture of katrine and her friend cecile, but i know i should cos she's seriously super-model material.

took a metro to our place and lugged all the luggage 4 storeys up, which seemed to comprise of endless flights of steps. the apt turned out to be really cosy but kinda small, not the type we would be able to survive in for the long term. but we've been here 4 nights now, and all's well.

met up with our new landlord at our new apt in the afternoon so that we could sign the contract and offload some cash in deposit. a spacious apt near the main road and not far from the city centre. we know that cos we tried walking after that, on our way to register ourselves as danish residents. despite the fact that almost everyone speaks english, we felt greatly handicapped becasue almost always, all the impt notices being pasted on walls are 100% in danish, which makes comprehension impossible. for example, we had located the right building, but did not manage to comprehend the sign that said 'entrance on the other side of the building', resulting in an additional 7 mins wandering out in the cold.

we met at jian feng's place for the 1st night, so that we could go grocery shopping and cook something, but we ended up at macs cos we were too hungry and the supermarket seemed too expensive. it was to be a fatal error, all we could afford were the puny burgers on the 'coinsaver' menu, which is equivalent to our $2 McChicken kinda thing, except smaller, cos McChicken itself was already 40 dkk (about S$12?). i had some 15 dkk burger. and we spent the rest of dinner plotting and scheming of ways to save money in the land of the unaffordable.

but our fortunes turned slightly the next day. jf, david and i decided to go take a stroll along what was supposedly Europe's longest shopping street-stroget. it's a pedestrian street so it's pretty cool. until now, i have no idea how long the street really is, because we never really completed it. we barely conquered half of it, because we were constantly being drawn into the stores with the large bold letters S-A-L-E. h&m was quite good, topshop was not bad, but it was at zara that we spent a good proportion of our time. the prices are comparable/cheaper than singapore's on a sale, and jf nearly bought the entire shop. the logic: why buy food when clothes are so much cheaper, and can last longer?

of cos other side distractions included a few museums, one of which is clearly shown in the pictures, but of course, we did not enter.

the next day was pretty much the same, david and i headed down south to field's, supposedly the largest shopping mall in scandinavia. obviously we didn't complete it as well, but we didn find a rather cheap hypermart! (i miss walmart and meijers. : junk food here is a luxury - largely explains the vast difference in size between an average dane and an average american)

randrom shot of our first brunch. relatively healthy, don't you think?

sunday we went to church. first international baptist church. it truly lived up to its name, because it was made up of so many nationalities. it was in english, the message was brought by an american missionary, and it was pretty sound. the only weird thing was that the entire service lasted all of 1 hour. and well, the songs/ singing isn't something we're most comfortable with. i took a choir book from them, cos they were gonna present a musical at easter, taken from the book '3:16, the numbers of hope' by max lucado. to be presented on march the 16th as well. heh. i was just curious to see how the songs were like. i must say that they're really organised tho, for a small church of about 100 people. many active fellowship groups in place as well. they actually invited us to one of the guys' place for dinner, and we went. the company was great, and they were really hospitable. one of them even gave david and i a lift after chruch to the little mermaid.

the icon of denmark is pathetic. pretty much like mona lisa in the louvre. we were honestly disappointed, and would have been even more so if we had walked all the way in search of it. it was a rather chilly afternoon as well, and it became nearly impossible to move your lips when you talked. if i go on like that one day i can own an achmed as well. so we soujourned all the way back to kongens nytov, where stroget begins, to look at the ice-skating rink set up there.

(clockwise from top): the LITTLE mermaid; some anglican church; carol on stroget; on the ice-skating rink

today, we didn't go out at all. i spent all afternoon doing my long-overdue research, and we watched stardust (which is a fairytale for kids that's a tad too scary). our steak which was intended for dinner turned bad, so we had to eat pasta for the 4th night in a row. but it was good, nonetheless. the chef himself would demand a compliment no less than that.

weather-wise, it hasn't been that cold, temperature's in the region of the single digits, no doubt, but still manageable. not that gloomy, despite the fact that the sun sets rather early, by which time we're back/heading back to cook dinner anyways. it's the wind that kills though, and each gust cracks my skin so bad. i need better moisturiser. argh.

wow i've typed a lot. see when i blog, i over-write. just like how when it rains, it storms - back home, that is. over here it just rains and rains. and rains. it's just never done.

tomorrow we're moving our things to the new place, (i'll post some pictures of the present place after i take some) and on wed morning, we're off to norway for some real snow action! :p