Oslo

We traveled overnight from Bodø to Trondheim, where we connected to the 7 hour day train to Oslo. The night part of the journey was spectacular - We covered the same route as our journey up north, but this time we had the midnight sun to make the scenery extra dramatic. It was a bit annoying in the end cuz I knew I needed to have some sleep, but I just wanted to stare out of the window all night. We got some kip and then found the Trondheim-Oslo section of the journey pretty dull - it was overcast/raining and the train took an hour longer due to flooding...

When we got to Oslo (finally) we jumped on the local train to Asker to meet my friend who was letting us stay. I won't say anything about that on here, but it was wonderful - I'll never forget your hospitality Von & family :). Anyway, mushy-ness aside. The next day we had an awesome tour of Oslo. We went to the Olympic ski-slope, and had a gander at the museum where I received a ribbing about Amundsen vs Scott :P.

We then went to the awesome Vigelandsparken Sculpture Park, followed by the the opera house where we stood on the roof overlooking parts of the harbour, and then chilled around central Oslo for the afternoon.

On Saturday, we went to a local lake for some swimming in fresh water. It was bloody freezing, but very fun. 

mental

Bodø

It took us ten hours to travel to Bodø and we passed the arctic circle with about 3 hours to go - they announced it which I thought was pretty cool plus there's a little marker on the ground. The scenery was the most amazing yet - forests, snow capped mountains, waterfalls - all with sparse towns in between. Loved it.

Arctic marker

When we arrived the weather was surprising -  23 degrees in the Arctic circle. We got settled and then went for a walk at 10pm to watch the midnight sun. While the sun set in Trondheim it didn't get fully dark, but here the sun never actually set - it rested just above the horizon and then rose again. It was always daytime.

11pm...

1:45am 

We only briefly walked around the town the next two days as we were not as lucky with the weather, although we did manage to climb to a viewpoint over Bodø.

Trondheim

We took the overnight train from Gothenburg to Storlien, leaving Gothenburg at 18:40 and arriving on the Swedish border at about 8:30. We waited around for about 40 minutes, chatting to an American couple before boarding the 90 minute local train to Trondheim. We saw some pretty awesome scenery, even if it was overcast and threatening rain. Our host picked us up from the station and we stayed in for the majority of the day as neither of us slept and I was feeling really travel sick from the really rough journey.

On Saturday we walked around the town centre, passing the Nidaros Cathedral, the old town bridge and going to the harbour. We kept getting rained on so we headed home early for dinner.

On Sunday, we took a walk to the fort to look out over the town, and then walked around the fjord that Trondheim is built on.

Gothenburg

Dan:

Gothenburg

During our trip we decided to rejig part of it a little bit. Initially we planned to leave Stockholm near 11 in the evening via a night train, but we decided we didn't want to risk loitering around the city with our bags on if our host needed us to leave early, so we decided to take a morning train to Gothenburg so we could have a look around for a few hours, then get on the same night train much earlier.

We dumped our bags at the left luggage then headed out. We grabbed a map from a small tourist info centre and planned out a walk that would take up the time we had. After initially getting a bit lost when looking at the rather industrial harbour, we finally found the main strip and had a nice stroll around the city. We had a look around the older area and grabbed a Mcdonalds before heading back to the station.

Impressions? We were quite glad that we hadn't stayed in Gothenburg for a few days as we had previously considered before the trip. There were only a few areas that looked nice and the rest of it was a bit meh. You also had the same pricing situation as Stockholm, only without the grand appearance in every direction. The streets are also filled with people asking for money, often coming up to when you're trying to have a sit and persistently asking regardless of me saying that I don't have any change (which was true). It seems EU laws allow people to come from poorer countries such as Romania and there is no law against them begging, and with the Swedish economy being so strong the currency is much better than their home currency so you can see why they are doing it. The problem is you never know who is in genuine need of help, who is making a living out of it and who is possibly being exploited by some sort of crime organisation.

Stockholm

Dan:

We traveled from Copenhagen to Stockholm via high speed train. We were surprised at the Swedish customs people who got on board who then asked people where they were from, where they were going and what bags they owned - it was a step up from the Hungarian customs personnel who simply whizzed past while asking "anything to declare?" Annoyingly we were sat apart for the duration of the journey - somehow we had both ended up with a window seat rather than being next to each other as requested. Luckily a similarly bemused couple sat next to both of us who were happy to swap.

We arrived in Stockholm and were immediately hit by the higher prices. After a lot of confusion and help from a bloke who worked in the metro, we both bought a card that granted us 6 journeys each for about £17. It was a bit of a shock after paying much less in places like Paris and Lisbon. We traveled to our accommodation and spent the rest of the night what to do in the following few days.

On our first full day we got up relatively early (after some confusion with our host regarding breakfast time) then headed to the old part of Stockholm. We quickly realised that our preconceived ideas of the weather were way out; it was clear blue skies and almost unbearable heat. We walked to an area south east of the old town which was quite high up and gave us some great views of the city. We then ambled around the harbour and had a gigantic walk around the city's rivers. We finished up back at the old town and had a good look round before finally throwing in the towel and heading back to our accommodation.

Our second day was spent doing more of the same but on the other side of Stockholm, looking at a small island near the old town. We also had a look at the Ericsson Globe which is a large spherical arena that also represents the sun in a very large scale model of our solar system that is scattered all around the city. The weather was playing tricks on us as one minute the sky was a constant grey with no sun in sight, then in the space of about 10 minutes it all cleared up and was once again ridiculously warm. Later in the day we were held hostage by public toilets...the city is filled with coin operated public toilets that you need 5 Sec to use, only the one we used decided it didn't like our change and refused to open. I dislike paying for public toilets, especially when you are denied a piss after paying for it. We had no other change and there seems to be no such thing as a free toilet (except for small men-only urinals sparsely spread out) so we had to head back. Luckily it was late in the day anyway and we were pretty tired and had looked at everything we wanted to see.

Stockholm is a very impressive city. Much like Vienna, everywhere you look is grand and you can tell that the country's economy is doing well. The downside is that everything is so expensive so things like eating out or doing excursions are almost off limits.

Copenhagen

Dan:

We left Berlin and made our way to Copenhagen, which to our surprise included a short ferry journey! We assumed a long bridge would be involved to get to Denmark and were largely surprised when we were asked to get off the train and board a ferry that the train had already parked inside.

We arrived in Copenhagen, dumped our stuff at our accommodation (which was located down a rather 'exciting' street) then went for a walk to the famous Nyhavn canal. We got caught out by a rain shower but luckily took shelter in someone's doorway then made our way back for some much needed rest.

The following day we had an amble around the town to take it all in then went on a guided boat trip that was recommended by our host. It was only about £4 each and lasted an hour, plus there were barely any other people on it which was a bonus as most of the tour boats seemed to be packed. We continued to amble around the town then headed back late once we were knackered for the day.

On our final full day we climbed up the Church of Our Saviour. The church has a large spire at the top which is surrounded by a spiral staircase. You can walk right to the top which I did, not a great idea when you're not too good with heights! As you climb nearer the top the steps get smaller, the railing gets lower, the wind gets stronger and my pants get browner! I gave up after feeling queasy then we took a stroll to Cristiania, which used to be a military area that was deserted and then occupied by squatters. The squatters had set up their own houses and turned the area in to a so called 'free city' which was a very interesting idea, but you couldn't help feel uneasy walking through it with the many people sat selling weed in the 'Green Light district'. We spent the rest of the day loosely following a self guided tour that was marked on a map we collected from tourist info. The weather started to turn again but luckily it didn't develop into anything more than light rain. We once again headed back after tiring ourselves out.

It was always nice to return to our apartment as our host had two friendly cats who liked to get on your knee and pop in for some fuss in the mornings. Our host was lovely and we had a chat about what to do in Copenhagen as well as having a good moan about public transport.

Copenhagen is a very good looking place and not too big which makes it easy to navigate if you ignore the common barrages of cyclists (or psycholists as I liked to call them!)

Berlin

Berlin 17-21st June

Berlin was very, very cool.

When we arrived, we decided to go straight to Checkpoint Charlie after dumping our bags. We spent a while there reading the exhibition wall about the area. We then went for a massive walk, stopping at Topography of Terror, then another section of the wall near Tiergarten, the Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag building and the Holocaust memorial.

On Tuesday the weather was really hot, so we headed for the Berlin Wall memorial and then did little else other than eat ice cream because of the heat.

Obama's visit meant that a lot of stuff was cordoned off on Wednesday so we didn't really want to stay in Berlin. The weather was ridiculously hot (33 degrees) so we decided to head for Stranbadd Wannsee, which is a lake outside the city centre with imported sand from the Baltic to make it into a beach. The only problem was that everyone else in Berlin seemed to have the same idea and we were queuing for a good 30 minutes, glaring at the queue jumpers... Anyway, it was really good even if a bit faffy as we couldn't find changing rooms or a free locker for ages.

On Thursday we couldn't do much because of the heat so we went to the station to get our InterRail reservations sorted for the later part of our trip and then went to the Victory Column. One of the problems we had was that places don't seem to accept card, and we always run out of cash. In the end we only had enough change for Dan to go up the tower - I sat on the steps and read instead. We stopped by Curry 36 for a currywurst in the late afternoon and then headed back for cold showers.