"He's ugly in the head"

Hello again! I had quite an interesting cabin experience, so I wanted to share some photos and the priceless journey to live like a 18th century peasant in the middle of nowhere (maybe you can tell my take on camping already?) A friend has been asking me to take a trip to the cabins with him for weeks, and so I figured I should finally go (even though I hiked my butt off in Tromsø and stayed in a cabin up there). I left all the planning to him- and so of course we hit some detours (uh oh my type A, OCD personality is showing now). Anyway, it turned out to be a great experience, but we did hit a couple roadblocks. After going back and forth in the city center to find the bus that took us to the middle of nowhere, we found the stop (right outside of my apartment) and luckily it came just in time. We took it to the very last stop, where we had to catch another bus, the "skolbus." Yeah - it's what it sounds like, a school bus.

We asked several people how to get to the city we needed to go to, and whether it was really a school bus that would take us. No one knew. They suggested we should walk - which later we found out is 8 miles up hill. Yeah right. So we meandered around until we found the school - with tons of children running around. Usually it would be sort of odd for two guys to be aimlessly walking around a school, but the Norwegians didn't seem to care. We asked an older lady how we could get to the town we wanted to go, and she said well only the school bus goes, and those only take kids. We muttered, "Oh great"; then she said-- but if you beg.....

So, we begged. But it didn't seem like a problem after all. This was such a funny experience. All of the children were staring at us and whispering- because, you know how exciting it is when someone new who doesn't even know Norwegian is on your 30 minute bus ride home. To my surprise, most of the kids (aged 7-12) spoke pretty good English. We told them we were from the USA and Russia, and one kid yelled: "USA is coolest!" One other kid was clearly the bully and another kid described him as an "idiot" and "ugly in the head." The kids truly were cute and fun.

Once we got to the city the bus driver said he leaves every hour, so to come back tomorrow morning. Our cabin was another 45 minutes from this bus stop - so we walked deep into the woods. The views were wonderful - as you can see- and we had a great time. We woke up about 7:45 and cleaned up, but by the time we got to the bus, it was no longer running (we guess). We stood around for 45 minutes and decided we should probably hitch hike. I've never ridden in a strangers car, especially not someone who just speaks Norwegian, but this old couple was nice enough to give us a ride down the mountain. Not bad considering it was about a 4 hour walk and it was below 40 degrees.

Overall, it was a beautiful experience and totally worth it!