New Year, New Start?
On Timeline: 28 Dec 2007 - 01 Jan 2008
Current location is at Storlien with Felix, in a hostel with just the 2 of us (how great is that??? Haha) The sky outside is super clear, with little clouds, which would be good if we were here during a period of great aurora activity! Nonetheless, to be able to see the Big Dipper and Orion so clearly on the northern hemisphere night sky, it was amazing. Even the cold cannot stop me from going out to take a nice long look at the night sky! I even saw one shooting star!!
Well so much for the first day at Storlien, which is a little town/village near the border of Sweden-Norway (well just 2km from the border!). The main attraction here in the winter is the ski slopes, all 18 (or more) of them! Did not do skiing today as I did not want to spend money on a half-day pass, and I feel bad 'psycho-ing' Felix not to ski today.
Anyway we were in Storlien previously on the 28th of Dec, on the way to Trondheim. It was more of a stopover here at that time. We took the night train out of Narvik and crossed the border to Trondheim, Norway. Kiruna was great, and Trondheim was more of a city (well it was supposed to be a city), but it seemed like a town to me! There were pretty little stuff to do and what we could do was just to walk around the area.
Old Bridge in Trondheim
Trondheim? Or Venice?
The famous bike lift in Trondheim!
Flag of Shiyao
The cannons protecting Trondheim
The day ended pretty early for the both of us, and we had pretty little to do after the sun had set. So we basically rotted the late afternoon (sun had set by 3pm) and evening away in one of the shopping centres in Trondheim, bought a loaf of Simpsons bread for the night, and went back to the train station to watch movies whilst waiting for the night train to whisk us off to Lillehammer!
Ooohhh....delectable!
Not paid to do advertisement, BUT....
Well I must say that the NSB night train is pretty good. Even though we were on a seating-class night train, we got a set of sleeping stuff for the journey, which included ear plugs, night shades and even a blanket! Definitely well-thought of. And when we stopped at Lillehammer at the unearthly (yet again!) hour of 3.30am, it was snowing! Gosh....snow snow snow, it was certainly wonderful! Managed to catch some shuteye whilst waiting for the entrance to the reception of our youth hostel to open. The great thing was that the youth hostel was situated above the train station, so we did not need to move around much in the cold. And the best start for the day was that we got ourselves a free buffet breakfast!! Gosh!
Well, if you paid like 40 Euros a night for the hostel, it had better be good...and it definitely was. Something like a hotel room, but at highly priced hostel rates.
Lillehammer resort
Sleeping in the snow!
Norway was part of Sweden!
Morning in Lillehammer
Winter fun!
Ski Jump
Snow dunes
Down I go!
Well, Lillehammer is famous for its hosting of the '94 Winter Olympics, as well as its ski slopes, Maihaugen and the Olympic museum. And of course, the ski-jump slope. Managed to go through the main attractions, but it was a pity that we could not go to the bobsledge one as it was too far away and there was no transportation serving the place!
After Lillehammer, we hopped down south, back to Sweden, to Göteborg, for the eve of New Year and New Year's Day itself! This period of time was in fact memorable, in many ways....first Felix realised his Scanrail pass was lost and he had to get a ticket from Oslo to Göteborg, which was expensive. Secondly, we walked for quite a while in the night to the Göteborg hostel, with just a sketch of the roads. Thirdly, I got way too drunk on New Year's Eve. Yea...drunk. -_-"
I think I did blabber on some stuff, but well...it was bad enough to have a New Year celebration cut short with me lying on the bed instead of out there celebrating with fireworks and lotsa singing and dancing. Sighs. In fact, I have not made ANY resolutions yet...
However, Göteborg did have fireworks for New Year, but it was not at the usual 12 midnight. Instead, it was held at 1700hrs, and I wondered why (as did the rest of the locals). Coincidentally, when the fireworks were released, Singapore was also in the timezone welcoming 2008, and bidding farewell to 2007! In a way, I felt happy, but...no surprises for me. Well, I did enjoy the wonderful fireworks in a foreign land anyway.
Göteborg at sunset
Tried to 自拍 with the fireworks
Fireworks pictures:
Anyway, hope u guys had a great start to 2008! New start, new beginnings? No time to muse on such things for now...have to sleep for skiing tomorrow!!!
Current Mood:
New Year!
