No matter what is the weather there outside, the tradition of Søndagstur is alive in Norway and today we were introduced to it by our Norwegian colleagues.

Mmm... Sunday trip... Don't worry you will get it in a while.

Jegersberg map. "Den Omvendte Båt" is not on it...

The area that we were to explore today was Jegersberg (trans.: “hunters rock”) – a doorstep that stands between civilization of Kristiansand and Norwegian nature. This area Jegersberg offers its visitors quite a big variety of route options to choose from, it is a good balance between man made and natural formed paths, that allows people to choose if they want to reach desired place fast by following a wide and well looked after path or set themselves a challenge and choose some smaller rocky and slippy trails.

That hat...

In the beginning we gathered near the entrance to “Spicheren” (a sport club in the campus of university of Agder) there we distributed some fire wood between ourselves in order to keep it dry and share the weight. I wasn’t aware of how many of Norwegian students took a role as guides or organizers today but I remember a dominating figure of a man with a retro hat, unfortunately I did not memorized his name. He led the way and briefed us about our hike.

First we made our way through this cloudy day to the green field not far from university, there as we gathered ourselves again our veileader (Way Leader) briefly described where we are going, introduced us to Sunday trip tradition – no mater what is the weather Norwegian families spends this day of the week hiking with children, appreciating fresh air and nature. As we noticed nowadays this tradition is very closely associated with a chocolate bar called “kvikk lunsj” and an orange for lunch during the hike – an effective measure used by Norwegians to motivate their children not to give up and continue hiking.

Along with the introduction we had a nice warm up by pulling a rope – playing a game called Tug of War during which I was accidentally kicked in my private nuts by a fellow teammate, but luckily no harm was done and I could continue the hike.

Rainy clouds made this a beautiful panorama a bit gloomy.

After about half an hour we found ourselves in a beautiful hill top where we had our lunch, unsurprisingly Norwegians took out their oranges and chocolate bars…

It took as a while to reach our destination which was Den omvendte båt (“An Upside Down Bout”)  – an area located above Otra river – about three-four kilometers North from Kristiansand. There we fought with the wind and rain which was blowing with rage in this open area. We appreciated this area for ten minutes or so, our leader put a book with our names in it in a box (I did not get a chance to write mine in it because the weather would have destroyed the paper) and then we headed back to lower area of Jegersberg where we could find a shelter and light fire, Den Omvendte Oåt as we just discovered was not an appropriate place to start a camp fire. About one hour later we settled near Øvre Jegerbergsvann a lake in Jegers where we found (well, not “we” but our way leaders) a wind shelter near a stone wall and where our leaders started two fires. We were reminded of a concept of traceless travel so we didn’t cut our sticks for hotdogs in one place, we had to spread ourselves further in the area so we wouldn’t leave obvious signs on nature of our visit. We stayed here for quite a long time til we got a bit cold, we put out fire by spilling water on and in a huge cloud of steam we headed home.

Our main motivation to hike in this was to explore this new area, get to know our Norwegian colleagues as we hiked along and looking forward to get warm near the fire.

Learning outcomes and motor skills: During this day I got more used to this uneven rocky terrain, learned where to place my feet so I wouldn’t slip or twist something. Also tried out Norwegian stick bread, not to mention tried out “kvik lunsj” but as a foreigner I didn’t realize what is so special about this candy…

We didn’t need much equipment this day, only proper clothing according to the weather, an orange, a pack of “kvikk lunsj”, hotdogs, something to drink and a knife. At our meeting point Norwegian students asked everyone to carry a bit of firewood, so each of us put a log or two in our bag-packs and kept it dry until the end of the trip when we made fire.

I would say it was a great hike, the weather was not so pleasant to be outside, as some intelligent  people in Lithuania would say, but it was totally fine with me and found it even more interesting and challenging this way – how not get wet and cold or how to watch out for slippy roots covering our paths.