Norway

I just came back from a short (too short) trip to Norway (and a couple of days in Stockholm on the way there), so here are a few travel notes.

Norway

Norway was the highlight of my trip to Europe, and one of the most spectacular places I have seen in my travels. What surprised me in Norway was that while I knew quite a bit about its attractions in terms of cold facts (i.e. I knew I'd see mountains, fjords, waterfalls, glaciers etc.), I had no idea about the scale of its landscapes and the abundance of beauty of this land. After a few days on the road I started getting a feeling (it stayed with me till the end of the trip) 'why on Earth do they need so much of it!'. I know it's a ridiculous sentiment to have, but that's how it felt. I also didn't spend anywhere near enough time there, so I must come back sometime soon.

I was in Norway during the summer solstice. I was staying south of the Arctic Circle so the sun did set, but the sunset was around 11-11:30pm and took forever (the sun was rising again around 3:30am). It is great to travel without having to worry about what happens if you are stuck half-way up some mountain in the dark. Mind you, god help you if you can only sleep in a dark room - you'd be suffering there.

A little side note on the Norwegians. The Norwegians are about as close to a perfect human race as any people I've seen. I have never seen people who so uniformly give off an aura of perfect, glowing, radiant health and fitness. They are not really beautiful - they are just healthy to the core. I haven't seen anyone with bad skin, bad teeth, bad posture etc. After a while I started to suspect that they are actually not people but androids and are not equipped with the features such as pimples, sweat, and body odor. It was a bit disheartening to watch them run by you at the top of a 500 metre climb, retaining the same plastic-perfect appearance of a freshly unpacked doll they had when they started. I felt that all Norwegians should wear a museum-like note: 'Please don't touch. This exhibit contains the perfect human genome'.


Sweden

A few pictures taken in Stockholm. I liked Stockholm; in my opinion, Stockholm is the most scenic of the three Scandinavian capitals (Oslo, Stockholm, and Helsinki) and most deserving a visit.