Stanko

A pic from the Tomasz Stanko gig (blur on the left is Stanko). Ringing up late meant I got the worst seats in the house (I was warned). Apparently he just played at the Wangaratta Jazz Festival, to great reviews. This was a a great gig - he had a really good sound, and his trio accompanying him were amazingly tight and solid. Combined with the Norbotten Big Band, I was very impressed. And it only cost 20 bucks! One of the few bargains I've had here.

The most useless boom gate in the world?

Is this a 1m long boom gate (the black and yellow striped pole)? What does it do? Prevent people from walking along the sidewalk?

First real snowfall

Last week the temperature dropped to -13o, and we had the first real snowfall, about 5cm. It was snowing while I rode to work, which was great. Sorry about the blue pics - will do more photoshopping next time.

Where'd my bike go?

After a couple of days around -10o, it was interesting to feel how much warmer -2o felt. Unfortunately the last couple of days have been a balmy +5o, so the snow is gone now. And this non-lasting snowfall will happen a fair bit until around December, which is bad because once the snow partially melts, it refreezes as ice which is bloody slippery. I tried riding to work on an icy day, taking it very easy after the various warnings, and slipped and fell once, and could feel a loss of traction qutie a few times. I saw quite a few people fall while walking (and took a spill myself). It's a dangerous time. And then once it has fully melted, the next day everything is just sodden and wet. No wonder this is considered to be the worst time of the year.

Frosty early-morning reception

First Snowfall

The first snowfall of the season was yesterday morning. There wasn't much, it was slushy, and melted by lunchtime, but still, it finally came.

Plopp!

Warning: Any consumption at all has a laxative effect.

There isn't as much Svenglish (or Svengelska if you prefer) in Sweden as there is Engrish in Japan. But there is some. Other popular ones include Bad Salt, Krapp blankets (not an Ikea product) and there's a Bums Taxi out there somewhere.

There's also a couple of great placenames: Gastrikland (Come and try our unique local cuisine! And don't forget to visit our modern hospital facilities!). There's also an Angermanland. And I'm not brave enough to publish any of the versions of a joke about a female equivalent.

Nordkapp 2

This is Part 2 of the Nordkapp trip photos. For those of you not used to blogs, the newst post is on top, which means that the order of posts goes backwards. So Part 1 is below below this one, and the very start of the blog is at the very bottom. If you don't want to scroll down and spoil the trick ending to get to the start, go back up to the top of the web page, and click on the Nordkapp 1 link on the RHS, under Previous. For the other posts if you click on each heading in order from bottom to top, you will read things in the order they were posted.

Also note that you can double-click on an image to enlarge it


So in my first installment I left you at Alta, which we left and continued north, where even the birch fear to tread. The stark Mars-like scenery is eerie but beautiful in a strange way. It is palpably inhospitable, but people do live out here. Occasionally we would pass a 'town', and you would see a house in the middle (or perhaps a bit to the left of) nowhere, and then a kilometer away another one. Why? What do people do out here?














Snow! My first in Europe and close enough to touch! We got out of the car and ran up the hill to get to it, and the intial excitement was quickly deflated when the first white patch we reached turned out to be just a white plastic bag. But only a few meters away - Snow!

What else was there to do with it?

There’s more snow, but a bit too much of a hike.

Eventually you get to the coast, and there are small fjordy bits.

Everything I’d heard about Norway included the use of the word “expensive”, and it was true. Generally everything had similar numbers to Swedish prices but the Norwegian Krona is valued 20% dearer. Accommodation was particularly bad as the hostels weren’t open and we were staying in hotels where the rooms cost ~$160 AUD a night. The hostels in Finland were less than half. It was one of those places where you have to stop converting or you cry every time you open your wallet. Actually, on a previous trip to Norway Tim left early to go to Estonia to let his bank balance recover. The high prices are due to the wealth generated by Norway’s massive oil reserves. The Swedes really shouldn’t have granted them independence!

So here I am, at the Nordkapp, the Top of the World! Well, the northernmost point in Europe. That you can get to by car. If you have the cash. There is a 7km tunnel blasted out of the mountain, probably by dynamite, to cross to the island that it is on. We had to pay the troll who lived in a heated box at the boom gate (living under bridges is so 17th century) almost $50 each way. And when we got to the actual North Cape, for the first time we were glad that a tourist information center was closed for the off-season: we avoided paying another $50 each to enter the area.



Behind me is nothing but the Barents Sea. Another 1000kms or so northward and you hit the arctic ice shelf. And yes, I'm holding a black and yellow footy. Who wouldn't want to play a bit of kick to kick at the top of the world? Trouble was the wind was so strong and gusty it was impossible to mark. And really, when can any of you remember me playing footy – it’s not a skill that I have highly developed.

North - the Barents Sea

East. As far as a playing surface goes it’s probably not much worse than Telstra Dome.

South. The tourist center, with possible NATO early warning radar station on top. Lonely Planet reviews of the tourist center are not glowing, but I probably woulnd’t have minded paying that $50 so much if I could have got a hot cup of coffee there. And no, the white on the ground isn’t snow, but quartz.

West

More west

The drop down to the ocean is roughly 300m. These fjords apprently pale into insignificance compared to those on the west coast of Norway, which is something I've always wanted to see. Looking out NW is a small promontory 9km away, called Knivskejelodden. It is cut off in the image above, but you can see it in the image below. This is the real northernmost point in Europe, but is harder to get to as you have to hike there, which we weren't ready for so late in the afternoon with rain about to fall.

Knivskejelodden

The town of Honningsvåg is the main town on the island, about 25km south of Nordkapp. It supports the small fishing villages dotted around the cape. Tourist ferries and buses stop here, and we saw 3 busloads of Germans being unloaded. The pricey hotel must provide for them quite well, as we didn’t see any of them walking around the town. Not that they would have had any reason to; we were there on a Sat night and exactly one restaurant/bar was open in the whole town. The whole main street was just closed.




OK, so my first meal in Finland was the local delicacy called pizza (and the only word in Finnish I could recognise) but when in Norway… I had to try the local whale dish. It was fried with onions in a stroganoff-ish sauce, and had quite a strong gamey flavour which took a bit of getting used to. The main problem was that it wasn’t prepared very well with some bits overcooked and dry. Not a delicacy I’ll be dreaming of after leaving Norway. It actually tasted much stronger than any of the reindeer that I’ve eaten, which I expected to be much more gamey. Reindeer fillets, reindeer salami, smoked reindeer on pizza – it really is a staple of the diet up there. Moose is also on the menu in Sweden, and is quite good; leaner than beef and tasty. Hunting is quite popular up here, so you often know exactly how the meat came to your table. It's also probably about as humane a way of getting meat as possible. The hunt is quite regulated, so hunters know exactly where to hit (skill is still up to individual), and what size gun and ammo to use.

The strangest meal that we had was from a roadside petrol station, the only shop open in Kautokeino. Tim ordered a hamburger, I ordered pepper steak, but what came out though was far from steak. It was basically mincemeat, but squashed together a bit more forcefully than just a hamburger, to try and give it the consistency and shape of steak. And I’m pretty sure it was reindeer meat.
We found a cheap (for Norway) room in a little village 12km from Honningsvåg called Kamøyvær, where the owner had to open up the place for just us, get the hot water going and the heating on etc. We were there early because after the dinner and one game of pool on a table without all the balls, we weren't having a whale of a time anymore. Had we known the one other bar in town opens from 10pm and apparently gets "happening"… we still probably wouldn’t have hung around. So we spent an hour out drinking a few beers that we bought on the jetty, out of the rain. Only two lights seemed to be on in the whole town while we waited until the owner came back from Honningsvåg to let us in. One of the lights though was in the lodge, and had we actually gone up to check we would have realised that it was our room, opened for us just in case we arrived early. D'oh.

Kamøyvær

We ‘negotiated’ the price down by $60 by waiving breakfast, and accepting “just tea and coffee for the morning”. When I went down to pick up the kettle I discovered we also got tea, coffee, toast, ham, salami (not reindeer), jam, marmalade, cheese, milk, and OJ. Not a bad deal after all. I did wonder what we would have got for $60 (she would come and cooks waffles and eggs and bacon). She was also Sami, and when I asked her to say something in Sami replied “I’m tired and want to go home”. So I took the hint and didn't ask what she was planning to wear if we paid her to cook for us...

Our Alta tourist info person scored well with the brochure for accommodation in Nordkapp, but scored an own goal with the recommendation of popping into interesting little towns like Repvåg along the way. Not really worth it during the off-season. All we wanted was to find a tea house and have a break and hot cup of tea, but despite some towns having signs of life and signs that said “tea, coffee and donuts”, we almost never found one open, especially on the way up. At Repvåg there was not a sign of life in the whole town. It is the kind of atmosphere you get in horror films when the whole town has been wiped out.

So did they all end up here?

Traditional Sami teepees, now often tarps rather than reindeer hide, still commonly used.

Lunch spot, and more footy. Had to hunker down in lee of the bankment to eat crackers, cheese and salami or else get blown away.

More hobbit houses. I don't know if it would work back home - the benefits of extra insulation would be outweighed by the amount of water needed to keep it green. And too many accidents involving lawnmowers, gravity, previously attached limbs.


Back into Finland, land of a thousand lakes. And the occasional river.







This goat scared the hell out of us. Many more souvenir shops were open in Finland on the other route we took back from Nordkapp, almost all of which had a stuffed animal or two on the porch, so it was a surprise when two very fake looking goats actually started moving towards us with slow, deliberate, steps and steely glints in their eyes…

Trying to get a better shot of reindeer

On our last night we stayed at the Hotel Inari, just like a bush pub, it was the central point of the town. It was also one of the few places where we actually got to talking to other people in the area, and often the older ones like the woman behind the bar, didn’t speak any English. It made us feel we were in a foreign country again! A drunk Norwegian demanded conversation, so I flexed my limited Swedish muscles (the languages are very close), and Tim also used a bit of Spanish on him, to some success. After that we ended up drinking with a much more pleasant group of locals. They weren't too interested in speaking Swedish as it is the language of the former oppressors and the one they are forced to learn in school. They invited us to a traditional Finnish sauna – modern style, at the home of Peter the Seekers fan, along with Sovi and Alo (?). I must admit Tim and I were a bit hesitant to go first with the full undressing just in case the whole “oh yeah, we all just go in naked” thing was a trick to play on the foreigners. And thankfully there were girls also present, or an invitation by Peter would have been somewhat less appealing. Actually he spent a fair bit of time with Sovi... anyhow, yes, we all did just hop in fully starkers. And it was strangely unerotic. So of course I had to ask about sauna etiquette, and basically, it was all about being polite. Hitting on someone in a sauna is not on, because it is uncomfortable for people around you. And guys, well, hard-ons happen (though apparently not too frequently), and it is only as embarrassing as you make it. Good to know.

The sauna (photo not supplied)

Ccome on, you really didn’t think I’d take a camera in there?

What was surprising though was how good it felt afterwards. I could not believe I would be standing outdoors in the cold wearing nothing but a towel and feeling fantastic. It was really amazing – and I was cold when were walking to Peter's house with my beanie and gloves on. I am really looking forward to having a sauna in the middle of winter, when afterwards you go out and literally swim through the snow. There are saunas at uni, and possibly a public one nearby in my suburb, but I have to ask about it. Not as common as in Finland though.

Just a bit of a sidetrack, the language in Finland has the reputation of being one of the hardest to learn. They say it is similar grammatically to Hungarian and I did look up a website explaining the grammar and can see the similarity, and why it is even harder than Hungarian. They both have cases, which is just a way saying that words in English such as ‘my’, ‘on’, ‘to’, ‘over’, ‘for’ etc. are actually word-endings that are stuck on to the words they refer to. But vowels have to match, and there are lots of exceptions, and in Finnish as opposed to Hungarian, adjectives also get cases to match the nouns, so it is more involved. I noticed one word that may be superficially similar in both languages – vesi and visz, for water.

What was strange though was that it was really the first time I was in a country and had absolutely no grasp of the language. When I was in Europe in 2000, my high-school French, and the similarity of many words in Spanish and German to English meant that with a phrasebook communication wasn’t a huge problem. In Hungary I was able to just get by. In Japan I was there after studying the language for 3 years, and this helped in China with reading and writing some characters when I didn’t know the words. But Finland was the first place where none of the words anywhere made any sense, and we had no phrasebook. There was just no similarity to anything, and when spoken sounds a bit like Greek.

For the cunning linguists out there, check out: "Who's afraid of Finnish?"
http://virtual.finland.fi/netcomm/news/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=25831

A lake near Inari

We arrived back at Rovaniemi airport with just under an hour before Tim's flight, so no time to visit Santa. Instead I went to the local government run liquor stores unfortunately called Alko to stock up on alcohol. Due to the tax scale being different to that in Sweden strong spirits are cheaper in Finland, and I was able to pick up some Chartreuse and Zubrowka at reasonable prices.

Then, I had a couple of hours drive to visit Marta-Lena in Övertorneå which was only a small detour on my way back to Luleå. It was eerie being alone again, driving on small, deserted, back roads, where I saw only 3 cars in almost 2 hours, and almost no trees due to the timber industry being active in these parts (which together with steel are the two main industries up here). It was also getting dark, and new sections of road had no lines marked. And the soundtrack to this trip didn’t help – all I could listen to was Finnish radio, because although Tim sold me his FM transmitter, the Finns were broadcasting right at the same frequency and the signals are very strong. So it was ominous organ music for a couple of hours. Either that of some Finnish radio play. Apparently they are phobic about not being able to communicate and make their transmitters extra powerful after communication problems cost them dearly during the war. The broadcast extended well across the Swedish border. Maybe that focus on communication is why Nokia phones are so good

Marta-Lena was the researcher who was out at Monash and suggested I go for the job here at Luleå. She is currently on maternity leave, and I am inhabiting her office at the Uni. I had dinner with her and the family, and was served a great meal of Swedish standards – the moose meatballs mentioned earlier with meat provided from a hunter friend, and potatoes with lingonberry sauce, icecream with cloudberry sauce. Many questions that Tim and I asked each other were answered, such as Why are the Finns crazy? “They just are”. And what do you do if there is a moose on the road? “Swerve and aim for the buttocks”, and so on.

And another couple of hours later, after concentrating amazingly hard to scan the sides of the road for any glint of antler or moose buttocks, I arrived back home. And here endeth the Nordkapp trip.

Nordkapp 1

My first trip out of Luleå was up through Lappland (the northern end of Finland) and Finnmark (the northern end of Norway) to Nordkapp, the most northern end in Europe. Why? Because it is there, and there isn’t so far from here. Also, my mate Tim had a stopover in Helsinki on his way back from a conference, so he extended it and got himself to Rovaniemi. With all places of interest a long drive away, we decided to go to the place of interest straight upwards.







I hired a VW Polo, requested studded winter tyres in case we got snow, and drove a couple of hours through Swedish forest to get to Rovaniemi and meet Tim. From Rovaniemi the route we took was up along the west side of Finland through Kautokeino to Alta and on to Nordkapp. Coming back we came more inland, through Karasjok to Inari, and back to Rovaniemi via the market at Sodankylä. Each day was a long day of driving, with not much to stop and do along the way. Fortunately Tim accidentally brought his little Belkin FM transmitter along in his bag, so we could play music from my MP3 through the car stereo. I tried to buy one the day I left but at the 3^rd electrical store I visited was finally told that not only did they not have any, but they were actually banned from sale in Sweden due to some law against transmitting on FM without a licence. If anyone has ever used one of these things you’d realise how ridiculous this is – the things are so pissweak they can barely transmit further than 1m, so I can’t see how they could interfere with anything. So it was good to be fanging it through Finnish forests with the phat funky sounds of Betty Davis blasting through the speakers, and the audiobook of Jon Stewart’s America: Democracy Inaction providing a few laughs. Much better than the Finnish talk shows and radio plays.

A typical Swedish forest:

Rovaniemi is the home of Santa Claus, and the big tourist spot is described as a “very kitsch Santa centre”. There is also the post office where all the mail from around the world addressed to Santa goes, as well as a Santa Technology Park, specialising in sleigh and related transport technologies and beard growth dynamics. We didn’t check Santa out though, as we needed to get an early start on the 1000km drive. But knowing our luck, and the fact that September was after the summer holiday season, Santa was resting and it probably wasn’t even open. We did stay at the Hostel Rudolf though, and eat breakfast at the Hotel Santa Claus.

A typical Finnish forest:

And a typical forest in Norway:

OK, so I might exaggerate a little, but for the first few hundred kms the scenery hardly changed. In some areas the trees were shorter, in other spots the pine disappeared, but overall it was largely the same. When you get far north though, the fir drops out leaving just shorter and shorter birch trees, until they are just gnarly shrubs barely hanging onto existence in an almost barren wasteland. They are extremely hardy, possibly even something I could grow without killing. They are found almost all the way to the north. But the scenery was beautiful, the lakes in Finland, the land of a thousand lakes. Here’s one of them:

Tim looking for a spot to answer the call of nature

Why did the reindeer cross the road?

Dunno, I never got to ask them. Although they aren’t afraid of steel killing machines hurtling towards them at 110km/hr on the roads, as soon as a car stops and a slow moving and squishy human approaches, they scatter. Fortunately screeching brakes were not involved any of the times we had to stop for deer. Reindeer herding is still practiced by the Sami, the traditional nomads in the area, and many signs warned that we were entering “areas of reindeer husbandry”. Black cloths hung by the side of the road also indicated where Sami had crossings for their deer.

Compare the reindeer to the moose below, and you can start to see why cars sold in Europe must pass a 'moose test' rather than a 'deer' test, which the first Mercedes A-class hatchback didn’t pass. This tests how easily the car rolls over when swerving to avoid a moose. It is not as critical to swerve and avoid reindeer, which being small get pushed under the car if you hit them. The moose is a lot bigger and has long legs, so if you do hit one you hit its knees and the massive body comes crashing straight into the windscreen. It’s especially bad if you hit the horny front end, so I’ve been advised to swerve in the direction of the buttocks. Moose are a big problem in winter, when they come to the roadside to lick the salt off the road put there to melt the ice.

Tim exerting Crocodile Dundee-esque mind control on the moose.

Tim failing to exert mind control on the moose.

Furry on the inside, too.

A real Norwegian road, minus fir trees.

Norway basically has all the mountains in Scandinavia, and eventually we came to them. The mist was due to the numerous small waterfalls cascading down the mountainsides. Sorry, didn’t have good pics of them.

A lake near Alta. Lots of camp sites were around, and in summer it would probably be a great area to paddle around.

Norwegians have a Hobbit-like fascination for planting grass on houses. These grass mounds and the red cabins are a hotel, where we would have liked to stay, but like most hotels, souvenir shops, museums, general tourist attractions, restaurants, and even whole towns, it was closed for the off-season. The summer tourist season is short but intense. I don’t know what people do in the other towns that don’t have ski fields for the winter tourists. In Alta we were told the town economy is based on service industries – “everyone cuts each other’s hairs”.

Alta’s 4000 year old rock art, uncovered in 1978 when building works for local houses disturbed the covering of dirt and moss on these rocks. The houses are still literally next to the rocks, which is now a UNESCO heritage site. The pictures tell stories of reindeer husbandry, fishing in hide covered boats, feasts, the playing musical instruments, and the hunting of (and by) bears. The paint was added by archaeologists for emphasis.

Reindeer doing their husbandry without Sami help.

Looking across the fjord, to the snow-capped mountains in the west.