BREAKING NEWS: Carl Obliterates Hoeg Hollow Sauna Record!

BREAKING NEWS from Jarvenpaa Finland! Last night while taking a sauna Carl and Ari achieved the temperature of 80 Celsius, which convertes to 176 degrees Fahrenheit! While this was an average Sauna temperature for Ari, it blew away anything Carl had ever experienced in the Hoeg Hallow Sauna. Best temperatures reported from Hoeg Hollow average from 140-150 degrees Fahrenheit, suggesting that Carl topped the record by at least 25 degrees!

Amyways It turns out that Saunas are extreamly popular in Finland, so much so that every single house in Finland has one in it! If a house did not have a sauna no Fin would want that house, because a house without a Sauna is hardly a house at all! Ari's family was very impressed that we had a Sauna at our Cabin (even if it is not quite up to their lofty temperature standards).

Transversing Scandanavia

So the next 24 hours will include the final segment of my trip that has essentially crossded scandanavia from the western coast of Norway to Helsinki Finland!

Yesterday I took a train back from Bergen to Oslo, but not being in the mood to soley travel I worked some sight seeing into my trip. I stopped and got off the train at Myrad and took a train that decends almost 900 meters in 20 km into the beautiful town of Flam, Norway. It was an amazing ride and I loved every second of it. After Flam I made my way back into Oslo were I found some dinner and then bought some food for the next part of my journy, a night train to Stockholm Sweden! Unfortunatly all the beds on the train were already taken so I had to spend the night in a normal train chair (which is nothing special). Still I managed 7 hours of sleep during the 10.5 hour ride. Normally a train from Oslo to Stockholm is much faster but ours was not direct, in fact we went all the way down to Malmo (which is within spitting distance of Copenhagen, Denmark) and then back up to Stockholm. Obviously night trains are not the most efficient way to travel, but still it accomplished its purpose for me.

Today Ienjoyed a completely free day of Exploring Stockholm. It was perfectly sunny, and the city was abuzz with activity. At 7:00 pm tonight I board a massive boat to go to Turku Finland. From there I take a 2 hour train to Helsinki and then a quick one to my friends house (Ari). After all this traveling I will finally settle down for 3-4 days to explore Finland from Ari's house, and maybe even do Laundry for the first time.....I could go longer though ;)

Norway

Sorry for going several days without a new post, I am afraid that even when hostels claim they have free wireless or internet access it is not always the case!

I did make it to Oslo on my second try just fine. In fact I ran into two other people on the train who were from UNI (university near wartburg). My first day in Oslo I checked out the city center, waterfront, and the Royal Palace. My Hostel in Oslo was way out of the city center and while being servicable it was not the greatest hostel ever (too many old people!). The second day in Oslo it rained basically all day, which made sighseeing sort of difficult. Still I went out and checked out the Castle near the waterfront and its various Museums. I really liked the Resistance Museum (WWII). The last major attraction I went to in Oslo was the Viking ship museum, before conceeding to the weather.

On monday morning I got on a train and traveled to Bergen! While Oslo was nice, I probably would never go back, because Bergen is beautiful and has so much more to do (active stuff!). Monday night I hiked up a mountain to get the overlook of the city and watch the sunset over the harbor. Later I went out for a beer with an English and Swiss students who were also staying at my hostel in Bergen. Food and drinks in Norway are really expensive! Today I went out on a four hour boat tour of the fojords and they were beatiful! I love Western Norway and will be sad to leave it in a few days, but there is so many more places to go and people to see!

I wish I could post some of my pictures, but without a real computer (this is a network setup), I can not download my pics from my camera, hopefully I will be able to soon!

Where exactly am I?!?

So today was my first day I planned to travel via trian. I set my alarm early so I could get up plenty early to catch my 8:23 train to Oslo. Sounds like a good plan right (I sure thought so).

Well things went downhill from the start, first I slept through my alarm and woke up to find that my train would be leaving in about 40 mins. I quickly threw my stuff into my bag, got dressed, grabed some food to go from the hostels breakfast cafe and sped over to the station in Copenhagen. Well I made it in time, but it turns out that the timetable I have is no longer 100% acurate (not really a huge surprise to me) and that there was no train leaving at 8:23 for Oslo. instead the ticket officer gave me an itinerary to get to Oslo only slightly later than what I had planned on. The catch was it was not direct and I would change trains three times. Well I figure as a 21 year old adult I should be able to deal with this, so I decide to give it a try.

My first train went great and I made it to my first change with lots of time to spare. So I found the gate for my next train sat down and waited. unfotunately this is where it all went wrong. Due to the fact that a train was partially blocking my gate it turns out my train was further down, indeed I saw my train, I just did not realize it was mine. I am quite sure that the station made an announcement but it was a smaller Swedish town so it was only in Swedish which does me no good. As soon as the train left (without me), and my gate showed a new destination I instantly realized my mistake.

So armed with a map of Sweden and a Eurail pass I started to create my own route to Oslo! Lucky Eurail does not have me creating their itineraries, because I turned out to be very inefficient.

To make a long story short (very long story actually), after ending up in many different Swedish Train stations I finally had to face reality in Karlstad Sweden (which is actually a very nice town), I was not destined to make it to Oslo today. So turned on my nokia and looked up the map of Karlstad Sweden and began going from hotel to hotel in order to find the cheapest place to stay (no hostels here).

So here I am in a best western in sweden enjoying my very own room and complimentry email! (Only for about $90, not bad considering my predicament). Tomorrow will be take II as I again try and reach Oslo, there is a train leaving here at 11:30 tnat goes straight to Oslo, and I plan to be on it!

It's a biker world...

It's a bikers world, at least in Copenhagen Denmark it is. I arrived to find bikes everywhere! Indeed my travel book even recommended that travelers should rent a bike in order to better xplore the city. Being a big biker, I was not going to anger the biking gods by not indulging in this biking center! So I rented a bike from my hostel (which is even nicer than my hostel in Iceland) and set off to explore the city.

It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky with the temprature around 80. Copenhagen is full of beatiful green and colorful gardens, so I explored many of them, the britanicle garden created by the univfersity was particularly beatiful. After exploring the gardens I biked on and saw many of the famous buildings and squares in Copenhagen. Then I headed for the coast to check out Copenhagen's most famous site, the statue of the little mermaid!
I spent a good portion of the afternoon sprawled out in a park and reading a book, it seemed like the thing to do (the park was full of people doing the same as me).

In the evening I chatted with my two french roomates and then I went to the mainstreet to find some food stands and watch some of the street performers. Finally I called it an early night (no sleep 2 of the last 3 nights), so I could get up and catch a morning train to Oslo!

(This post tells what I did on the 3rd of July, I just could not post it until now)