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.