Circumspencing the Globe

I’ll start with some pics.

     This is a shot from the bus ride from one Lofoten Island to another (from Svolvær to Å). 

These next two were taken the next day (9/16) in Å.      

                      

This one is from the harbor in a place called Møskenes on the Lofoten Islands.

         And the last one is of Marius, Stephan and me on the ferry from Møskenes to Bødo on mainland Norway.        As I mentioned last time, once we arrived at Bødo, we took an overnight train to Trondheim.  The inclement weather in Trondheim kept us running for cover all day–in a library, a restaurant, a church, a cinema and finally a cafe.  That night, we took another overnight train, this time to Oslo. 

That ride did not make for a restful night.  An old man two rows behind me talked late into the night to a young man sitting next to him.  Spending the night in a reclining seat in a train is not particularly conducive to sleep anyway.  There’s the sound of whooshing every time someone opens the car doors.  Then there’s the constant shaking, roughly equivalent to a 7.2 temblor.  There’s people coughing.  But, eventually, you manage to doze off.  Unless, I discovered last night, someone is talking.  Mind you, everyone else in the train had long since put to use their eye masks, ear plugs and blankets and was making a good faith attempt to nod off.  Not the old guy and his young companion.  I cranked my neck around and gave the senior a couple dirty looks but to no avail.  But I couldn’t bring myself to removing all of my sleep paraphenalia, getting up and confronting him directly.  I took the less proactive approach of leaning back in my reclining seat and stewing.  On and on he went.  I imagined myself standing up, giving an impassioned speech to the other passengers and stirring them to begin pelting the geezer with ear plugs.  The jabbering continued.  I considered stuffing a pair of socks in his mouth.  How could one human being possibly have so much to say about any subject?  I fantasized beating him with a stick.  That, of course was pure fantasy.  I didn’t have a stick.  If I did, I would beat him and then slap the young man for egging him on.  Or maybe I’d just smother them both with raincoats.

Eventually, morning came (Day 14).  Marius, Stephan and I spent the morning walking around Oslo.  At one point I went off by myself and looked around the National Art Museum, where my eyes feasted on original works by Picasso, Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Renoir and the Norwegians Munch, Dahl and others.  (There were no Shags.)

I’m writing from the hostel in Oslo.  Marius and Stephan are staying here, too.  It’s been great traveling with them, having their company, laughing with them.  None of us has showered for over 48 hours.  In fact, I haven’t taken my wool cap off in all that time.  To comb my hair, I’ll need a rake.  Also, I’m in the same clothes.  It occurs to me, maybe the old man in the train was simply listing for the young man all of the malodorous things that came to his mind as he got a whiff of me.  As I write this blog, I’ll bet the lady in the train seat to my right is sitting at a computer somewhere writing in her blog something like, “Didn’t sleep a wink on the train from Tronheim.  Don’t know what was worse–the incessant chatter of the old man in the back or the acute body odor of the American to my left.” 

But hey, this is Europe.

Tags: Å, Bødo, Norway, Oslo, trains, Travel, Trondheim

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 9:16 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.