Den Norge (8 of 8)

I opted to save my money and not get a room. While walking around, I was ecstatic to find that they had a laundry room that put soap and fabric softener in without having to pay for it. So, I found myself doing my laundry until 2:30am and ironing it because I couldn’t wait any longer to make it dry properly.

I crammed my freshly ironed clothes back into my pack and climbed up the 7th floor to sleep on the couch with the fake stars overhead. I put in ear plugs as the cleaning staff vacuumed around me. Then, at about 8am, I woke to find people sitting all around me on the other couches. I checked my face for drool and put my sleeping bag away. Very tired and cranky, I stumbled around the deck of the boat for a while trying to make myself enjoy the beautiful scenery.

Finally, I went back up to the now empty 7th floor and took a nap on one of the couches. A little while later, I awoke to an old man kicking me. I looked up at him and the two older women behind him, glared at them and closed my eyes again. I had been kicked. I was furious! There was no way that I was going to be able to sleep. I knew this. I also knew that he wanted me to get up because they wanted to sit down. However, he had been horribly rude in his way of waking me. So, I laid with my eyes closed and pretended to sleep.

I sat up for a moment to see where we were. The moment that I sat up, the old women began to swoop in like vultures to sit where my head had been. So, I laid back down immediately. As I knew they would, they finally said, “Get up!”

I said very clearly, “No! This is a HUGE ship! I am SURE that you can find a place to sit!” After that, I laid back down and pretended to sleep a while longer. I am a very nice person and I do respect my elders. However, I don’t respect anyone who kicks me as a wakeup call.

Finally, as the ship neared the dock, I stood up, gathered up my things and got ready to disembark. All the women grumbled in German about how stupid and rude I was, unaware that I knew German. As soon as I had gone down two flights of stairs, I realized that I had left my camera upstairs. So, I walked back over to the couch to the mean old women and said, “Bitte, ich glaube mein kamera ist hinter sie.” That is German for, “Excuse me, I think that my camera is behind you.”

All of them looked at me with wobbling smiles and slowly stood up. Sure enough, right under her bottom was my camera and right on the floor was her jaw as she realized that I had fully understood all the horrible things that she had said about me.

Oslo and Beyond
I arrived back in Oslo feeling refreshed from my short break in quiet nature. I went to the Viking museums and discovered that while the artifacts were great, the people who found them were not able to discover much more about them than I could have guessed.

The next day, I took the fast train to the airport and zipped back down to Munich where I was to meet my mother in two days.

Looking back on my Scandinavian journey, I realize that it was an adventure. I loved Norway and its amusing wonders. However, something had been lacking for me. I had a hard time figuring it out until I began comparing Norway to previous adventures. In scenery, it was comparable to parts of Alaska. However, it was missing a very important factor. Like most of Europe, there is a huge lack of wild animals. The largest animals I had seen were sheep sitting on the highway in the Lofoton Islands.

For me, I would say that there are two things that make traveling great. It is either the people and culture or the amazing outdoors. While I found people that I loved in Norway, I wouldn’t say that its culture was very different from Americans. In fact, sadly, they seemed to crave all that was bad about America. And, sadly, because Europe has been inhabited for so long, there really wasn’t much amazing and intimidating in nature. The fjords and glaciers are beautiful, but they are only there because they are rather hard to destroy in only a couple of thousand years.