Here's a long one. Sure it reads more like a blow by blow account rather than an article but you must know by now I'm a stickler for detail and this one is wreaking of it.
When I first met my friend V. in New York City it was summer and we went swimming at Brighton Beach. We got along well and agreed to meet again on his side of the world, Norway. Little did I know that when we finally did meet again in mid-November, it would be in the small snow-covered, frozen laked, winter wonderland of Lillehammer, home of the 1994 winter Olympic Games.
Imagine my surprise when he suggested that we spend the next two weeks hitch-hiking across the whole country to his home town of Stavanger on the West coast. Though I could think of better parts of the world and at more opportune times of the year to stand by the side of the road for hours waiting for a ride, I agreed and so our adventures began.
Let me preface this with the fact that my arrival in Norway was not the smoothest. Apparently, the people in Airport security/customs didn't like the looks of me (perhaps I should've shaven) and decided that I was an optimal candidate for a search. Fortunately, it was to be just my bad. Quickly, I was ushered into a small room with an open door in full view of all passersby and had to empty the entire contents of my backpack for inspection.
Upon further reflection, they also might have not liked me telling them that I had no real ticket out of the country and was going to stay for about two weeks to a month.... Oops. However, being that I was in Norway and not Vietnam, the lady was very nice and spoke great English. She smiled the whole time and after she had determined that I was not carrying any drugs in my underwear, I was sent on my way.
After a quick train ride, I'd arrived in Lillehammer and was met by my friend V. The college he goes to is very small but I was well taken care of. In my personal battle against Norway's high prices, I got to eat in the cafeteria for free and sleep in his room. Of course the food is nothing compared to the amazing stomach adventure I had in France, but perhaps that was actually better for my health.
After weeks of living on cheese, bread and general loafing around, Norway provided a good change of pace. On day one, I woke up to have breakfast of cheese, oatmeal and Norwegian bread. Later we climbed down some snowy hills and crossed a bridge over the biggest lake in all of Norway. In the evening,we went cross-country skiing on borrowed skiis for the first time.
After a bit of that, we went to the Sauna that the school has. During the Sauna, Norwegians like to run out and lay in the snow before running back into the Sauna. The lake was beautiful in the evening as I lost feeling in my feet. Afterward, we drank hot chocolate before heading off to 2nd dinner.
Yes.... 2nd dinner. Apparently, the traditional Norwegian way of eating is Breakfast in the morning, Lunch around 11, Dinner at 2:30 and something that roughly translates to 2nd dinner at 7:30 which consists of similar food from Breakfast plus Salad. Not everyone in Norway eats like this, but this is the tradition and this school does it. Strange!
The day we left on our trip, we'd managed to make and steal about 20 sandwiches from the cafeteria. They were basic bread and cheese or Nutella things we finagled in an effort to have them last us for the next few days. Did I mention just how expensive everything is in Norway? These were promptly jammed into our packs along with some fruit and off we were.
We actually got our first ride just as we were stepping out of the building when we saw a delivery man and asked for a lift just out of town. He asked us to help him move so boxes and off we went.
Now, typically, hitchhiking is seen as a guy just standing off the side of the road, sticking up his thumb and hoping some kind soul stops. We did a bit of this as well, but for the most part, our plan was to get people at the gas stations and sweet talk our way into a ride. On the road, you are just a face that's easy to speed by, but when confronted with a smile on the way to the toilet, it's a bit harder to say no ;) Of course, it helped that V. spoke Norwegian and I was quite good at looking sad and cold.
However, yours truly was no leach. In fact, the way our system evolved naturally, V. would get us into the car and I would then proceed to chat them up inside, thereby upping the mileage (kilometerage) we attained with each ride ;) A good system, if you ask me. There was no issue with language barrier as most people were quite surprised and delighted to switch over to English once they realized I didn't understand.
At the first gas station we were lucky enough to meet a nice lady who gave us a ride all the way down to Oslo. This,after we did a little traditional standing on the roadside thumbing to no avail.
The greatest thing about hitchhiking are the sheer polar moods you experience between waiting for the ride, which you feel will never come and that moment when someone stops and says they are going your way. At this moment you feel like you OWN this mutha and are free to be rushed off to any port of call... something of the such.
Down in Oslo we Couchsurfed (the hitchhiking of couches)for a few days before beginning our trek out to the West coast. The distance, on a straight drive was roughly an 8 hour journey. When hitchhiking you plan for roughly twice that.
After an hour or so at a gas station we convinced a guy to take us some ways. He told us to get in quickly, before his wife got back from the bathroom. As she sat down, I recognized her icy face from when she turned us down on her way in. Despite this, we didn't get kicked out and they turned out to be a sweet couple who had been to the states and even married in an old Norwegian Sailors Church in New Orleans.
They dropped us some hours out of Oslo and just like that we were in the thick of things. Being far into the country, but even farther from our destination, we knew there was no turning back.
The next guy we caught turned out to be an American from Vermont who was living in a small town on the way. Though he wasn't going to far, he offered us the ride (which we extended thanks to some find gab :))and even apologized that he couldn't take us further.
Unfortunately, the next gas station we were at was just a local commuter place and worst of all, it was now dark. *Note, in Norway at that time of the year, it gets dark at 4pm. With the temperatures dropping below freezing and no sign of a ride after two hours, we were starting to get worried. Even the sad little sign we made with markers and cardboard didn't seem to be getting us anywhere.
Then oddly enough, V. found a bus driver who told us that he would take us on his bus which he was taking over from another driver. The catch was it wouldn't be for another hour and we were not quite convinced how or even why we would be able to hitch a ride on a bus that plenty of people had paid good money to be on.
As the hour started to approach, desperation started kicking. We went and found the driver. He turned out to be a nice guy from Serbia who'd been in living in Norway for 10 years and surprise surprise, he'd done some hitchhiking himself back in the day.
At this point I should mention that just about everyone we got a ride from, had hitchhiked at one point or another in their life. It's one of those things that gives you weird hope in humanity as people kindly return the kindness they were shown. End Karma rant.
The bus came and he let us on, telling the other drive we'd already paid the fair. We were both relieved and still shocked that we actually managed to hitch a ride on a bus. So much so, that when we arrived in Kristiansand,the city where the bus was going, still some 5 hours away from our destination, we actually tried to hitchhike on a train. They weren't as nice...
A quick ride from a nice little lady and we were outside of town yet again. This time V. went and got us piece of cardboard that must have been from a giant television. They piece was roughly 6 ft. by 3 ft. and he spent what must have been the next 20 minutes writing "Stavanger" on it with a marker. This would surely get us noticed, but would it get us a ride?
No...though one lady did stop and politely suggested that we go a few kilometers down the road to a place where cars could pull over. Two hours had passed and there were barely any cars on the road. Despite our wide smiles, giant sign and ever extended thumbs, no one stopped.
Then, as so often happens in this game, one guy pulled in to get gas. We pounced. He was local but we'd convinced him to get us to the next gas station where supposedly most of the trucks stopped.
This station proved to be loaded with truckers.... who were coming in to sleep for the night. Disappointed we had our dinner of leftover pasta and ketchup from a bad we put together back in Oslo the evening before. When suddenly, providence stepped in and brought a motor home into the stand. As it turned out, the old man was heading our way.
V. sat up front and I sat at the table inside. If at first I wasn't suspicious that an old man was driving and RV down a dark highway by himself late at night, I was a bit on my guard when he kept offering for me to have a nap in the bed in the back or put on some of the extra sweaters he had laying around because I looked so cold. I had my apprehensions but I was not about to wait a few more hours in the cold, besides V. would have been the first line of attack, that's why we were traveling together right?
The man was harmless and turned out to be the old high school teacher of V.'s mother. They spoke mostly in Norwegian which I took at my queue to pass out. When he dropped us off some two hours from our destination, he offered us a stay at his house for the night, being that it was already very late. We graciously refused, partly out of fear and partly our of stubbornness to arrive at our destination that night.
As we stepped down, we found out what our fear and fatheadedness had bought us. We were in a tiny gas station in the middle of nowhere. The temperature was -7 C, the gas station was closing in an hour and not a car in sight. Check mate. It was going to be one of those nights.
Most cars just sped by and the ones stopping were just going home locally. The clock was ticking and the dread was setting in. We grabbed a black coffee just before the stern faced station attendants sealed the store and we were left truly on our own.
To kill time and to beat the encroaching freeze, we started to play soccer with the rocks and build a fort... with the gas station. The pumps and tissue dispensers proved to be useful barriers when unfurled. We even made some new labels for the pumps and practiced our dance moves for the security cameras.
Two hours later we were contemplating breaking into the restaurant 100m away and thinking about how we would explain ourselves in the morning when all of a sudden, just like out of a movie we saw a set of headlights. Instinctively running to the road we flagged him down and miraculously he stopped. As luck would have it, he was going to Stavanger and offered us the ride!
I was not kidding when I said that fate brings you your salvation in the 11th hour, or 2am as was the case this time. I was awakened some hours later in yet another snow covered town and ushered to a warm couch where I promptly died for the night.
We spent the next day just recovering from our previous days adventures and eating far more Nutella and brown cheese than I ever had in my life. Yes, brown cheese. Yes, that's the real name. Yes, They love it here.
Soon it was time to hitch our way to Bergen, a major city some 6 hours North. This one was to be trickier as the road crossed several Fjords and therefore required us to be aboard a few ferries along the way.
Fortunately, we got a ride to the first Ferry and the ride was quite picturesque. Unfortunately, we weren't able to secure a ride aboard to off walking we were. The jagged roads provided no space for cars to pull over so we had to walk some kilometers to a bus stand. There, an oilman in a BMW picked us up and drove us to the next station, proving that good people can drive the same cars assholes do ;)
Of course, as usual in our story, this station proved to be no luck to us. After two hours we decided to trek on down the road. So there we were, still hours away from a our destination of Bergen. To add insult to injury, as Murphy likes to do with his Law in these instances, it started to rain as the temperature was dropping. V. stood a little forward after we'd switched places and I started looking around for possible places to use the bathroom.
Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I spot someone running back from a car that had stopped some 100m down the road on our right. The man looked a bit older and I figured it was just another Samaritan coming over to lecture us on how we are standing in the wrong place and how dangerous it is to do what we are doing here.
As my first instinct, I alert V. and tell him to go deal with the guy in Norwegian. They exchange a few words and suddenly V. tells me to grab the bags because we had a ride! Excited, I ask how far this time? He tells me that the guy will take us all the way to Bergen, which includes a ferry ride!
Approaching the car, which turned out to be a supercharged Audi station wagon, I noticed this man was not the driver and that there was another person in another. Upon further observation, I'd also noticed that the car had stopped in a one lane road and was holding up 10 cars behind it, just for us. The first hint of the character we were about to meet.
As usual, the conversation started in Norwegian and quickly switched to English as soon as it was ascertained that I was an American. The usual quick chit chat led to some serious topics.
First, let me illustrate the characters sitting up front. The guy who had actually come to flag us down was a painter in his late 50's, with a mustache and a hippy pony tail of gray hair wearing torn jeans.
Now the pilot, was the living incarnation of the future deceased Keith Richards. The man, in his late 50's, was skinny, with Shaggy hair, tanned skin, torn denims and a leather jacket. He drove like a maniac in his super charged Audi and blasted the Rolling Stones on the stereo system.
If his looks screamed his story was louder. As we put together from bits and pieces, at the age of 14, he'd ran away from home and made it to South America, where he lived in a slum and got addicted to drugs. After which, he somehow made his way to Africa where he got arrested for possession and served his first time in jail.
Sometime later he returned to Norway and started getting involved with the mafias and became a heavier drug user. Eventually, he was caught and incarcerated for some 15 years. In prison, he'd found Jesus and pledged his life to him. Upon release he started working for organizations that went around to schools and taught kids about the horror of drugs.
Forever in love with Africa, he founded a charitable organization in Kenya, where he put people to work in exchange for food because in his words, "G-d only feeds those who work." The organization has been running for several years and he was actually on his way to Kenya the next day. The man sitting next to him was also a former drug addict and now his assistant.
Aside from the harrowing story, the man was a fervent Jesus freak who believed that Jews were truly the chosen people, Islam was evil and that foreigners were destroying Norway. All of these details were delivered to us completely out of order and in the most evocative exclamations and rants which often included him lifting both of this hands off of the wheel (and us praying for life) to demonstrate an intense point.
This character had some other quirks like, driving 190 km/h to pass every car in the long tunnel we took under a fjord, paying for our dinners aboard the ferry even though we insisted that we could afford it and even coordinating on the phone with the girl who we were meeting in Bergen. Just like that, some 5 hours later, he had zoomed out of our lives just as quickly as he'd zoomed in, never having even exchanged names.
In the world of hitch-hiking, you put your fate, your sanity and your life out into the world, out into the unknown. Just when you have been out there for hours and are feeling disheartened about mankind's generosity as the chill creeps at your toes, providence sends you one of those. A story and a ride. As if I needed anymore of it, the experience restored once more my faith in people being complete maniacs behind the wheel .... oh and of course kindness to strangers.
Names have been changed to protect the innocent. More photos @ dimakay.fotki.com though the good ones are still being held hostage by V.
