Miss Adventure Part II

The next morning I woke up and had a very nice and very early breakfast at the hotel. From there I made my way towards the train station for the 8am train to Geilo. I called Linda from the train and explained my situation and told her I was going to be a little late but make it there eventually. I was greeted at the train station by Thore and driven to the Ski School on the other side of the valley. I spent the rest of the day being shown around the town, taken out to lunch, having dinner bought for me and generally treated very well. They offered to sort out my visa, a place to live, free gym access, very good pay (and an advance if I need it) and they even offered, if I take the job, to pay for the extra expenses I incurred getting there. They made it very hard to say no. So I didn't. I guess that hard work back in Canada actually paid off. I took a train back to Oslo and then an overnight bus back to Stockholm. Alex’s car is still in Drammen.

As ashamed as I am to admit it… it turns out I had fueled the car with ethanol instead of gasoline. In my defense it isn’t clearly labeled as ethanol here and when I pulled up to a pump that gave me a choice between diesel and E85 I thought “well I know it doesn’t take diesel!” I was actually pretty lucky the damage wasn’t much worse. It could have eaten away at the whole engine and basically screwed the car completely whereas I escaped with replacing the fuel pump, draining and tank and flushing the engine which I expect will ultimately leave me out of pocket something like AU$2000 instead of AU$20,000

That is a pretty rough blow to the financial situation all the same but ultimately, I look at it like this: I have a sweet job in Norway starting in a little over a month. I have handed in my resignation at the Hard Rock Cafe, booked a flight to London in 3 weeks to get my board bag (and to catch up with Ben of course) and right now I am on my way back to Oslo to get the car.

Miss Adventure is a cruel woman. Things have a way of working out in the end though.

Miss Adventure

Miss Adventure is a tough gal. She seems very appealing at first: promises to take you out, show you a good time and maybe even give you what you want at the end of the night. But no: she is a gold digging evil harpy who takes all your money and leaves you stranded. Last night I went on a date with Miss Adventure.

I set out on my tour of interviews across Scandinavia with promises of gorgeous countryside, paid hotels and generally warm welcomes all around. Alex was kind enough to lend me his late-model, series 5 BMW with iPod adapter -the most important factor of course- I took the whole weekend off work and left school a little early on Friday afternoon (after getting my monthly test result back with a comfortable 84.99% - yay me!). Thus I set out towards Oslo. I made one or two wrong turns (note: heading AWAY from the biggest city in the area is a little more difficult than heading towards it- on one occasion I was involuntarily heading back towards Stockholm) but generally I was making pretty good time. A few quick, yet very expensive, petrol/food stops later just after sunset I was heading across the Norwegian border to be welcomed but some sort of strange language that looks like a phonetic version of Swedish involving lots of ##0##'s.

In an effort to avoid traffic and confusing streets I was doing my best to avoid actually going through the city of Oslo on my way to Geilo, but with a very general map of Norway and severe darkness having set in, I was forced to head towards the next biggest city in the vicinity: Drammen. Now I haven't mentioned that shortly after crossing the border the car started giving me a little trouble. Nothing major: almost as though a few of the cylinders weren't firing when going up a bit of a hill. I pressed on but kept it in mind.

Just outside Drammen I hit a bit more of a hill, not talking a mountain or anything, just a bit of an incline. And she just died, couldn’t go on any further. With a few cars backed up behind me; I wasn’t the most popular guy on these narrow roads. She only just made it to the top of the hill and started to roll down the other side.

Shit.

By some miracle I managed to roll into a gas station at the bottom of the hill. I had been driving through complete darkness for a little while now and all I could see was darkness and a few lights off in the distance. This thing was like an oasis in the desert. With a combination of poor English (Norway’s English requirements aren’t quite as high as Sweden’s) and poor Norsk-Swedish I managed to get some help from the guy to call a nearby garage… that was closed. After lots of worrying and waiting I got towed to the garage, diagnosed as “I don’t know” and dropped off at a hotel in the city about 20 minutes away - A hotel that I soon discovered had no vacant rooms. On the plus side I had plenty of time to think (read: freak out) as I wandered the streets of a random Norwegian city, very poorly dressed in -1ºC. Awesome huh? On the way in I had somehow noticed another hotel and somehow managed to find my way back there. Another oasis in the darkness: a very nice hotel with a soft bed and a very lavish breakfast the next morning. This place was very nice and tasteful, a shame I wasn’t there under better circumstances really. As I drifted off to sleep I thought of the very empty and very company-paid hotel room waiting for me in Geilo, did I mention how expensive Norway is?

In between my random wanderings the night before I had slipped into the train station and committed to memory the next train to Geilo and set my alarm to continue my courtship of Ms. Adventure. As I sit here on the train reading through my acres of parentheses, watching the millions of pine trees shoot by; overlooking a vast network of fields, forests, lakes and rivers… I wonder how part II is going to unfold.

Pappa Thorpe's Visit to Stockholm

Dad came in on Friday night and we went out for a bit of a walk and dinner at an Italian restaurant on Kungstradgarden. Pretty nice. The next day we went for a pretty long walk after a nice Swedish breakfast at the hotel and ended up at the Vasa Museum at Djurgarden.

The Vasa was a massive ship that the Swedes built hundreds of years ago: truly an amazing sight: elaborately decorated, fully loaded with cannons and sails - designed to impress. This ship was the culmination of all the world's knowledge of shipbuilding put into one vessel. The expectations where high and all of Stockholm rolled out to see her off. The cannons were one of the most impressive aspects- 72 cannons in all on board. They wanted to show this off and set sail with the cannon ports open...

Just a few minutes after launching a gust of wind caught the sails, the ship leaned a little and the sheets were cast off to allow the ship to right itself as the gust past. Shortly afterwards another gust caught the ship and she leaned even further to port. The lower cannon ports drank up the ocean and she sank straight to the bottom of the ocean like a rock - 120 meters from shore.

Years later, sometime during the 60's the ship was recovered by the King and put up as a monument of Swedish construction... and embarrassment.

This museum is pretty impressive and definitely worth a visit if you are ever in Sweden.

We also checked out Skansen: Sweden's biggest outdoor museum, but I got the feeling it totally sucks outside of summer and is generally targeted at kids anyway.

That night we met up with some friends from work to watch the rugby and drink a few beers. A few beers turned into a barrage of cocktails and champagne and two generations of Thorpe's showing their dance moves one after the other. The next day Quintin remarked that "James has the craziest father in the world". I think it was intended as a compliment.