Planning

Me and Petr planned to go on a hitchike adventure through Norway. The plan was to not plan anything. Ofcourse nothing is so little so we kind off had an idea but where very flexible. We heard the troll wall between Bergen en Trondheim was supposed be really good so we decided to head that way. We checked the weather forecast the day before and decided the weather was best in Oslo, so we would go to Oslo, and then direction Trondheim to trollwall. After seeing the Trollwall the plan was to hike over Trollstigen as it was still closed for cars, and then head to Bergen, Stavanger and back to Kristiansand. The plan was made half before and half on the way. We would take a tent, a stove and some extra clothes wich is really important when you’re hitchiking! Other then that we didn’t really plan to much. And we left on our journey towards adventure around 12 oclock.

Execution

After a weird australien guy and the people that sounded like the richest people from Norway with a big Range Rover and 3 houses (and the 2 most ugly little dogs I have ever seen)  we reached Oslo around dinner time. The rich people gave us a guided tour with the car through the city and dropped us off on the highway to Lillehammer. We had some daylight left so decided to continue for a bit. Some easter european guy brought us to Hamar and that’s where we decided to pitch our tent and continue the next morning.

In the morning we chilled for a bit in the sun with some breakfast waiting for the tent to dry out. Then we got picked up by two female students going to Lillehammer. After some small rides in for example an old falling appart Russ Buss. We got stuck just after Lillehammer. We did some kiwi shopping and had a 400 kr free fancy lunch. After hours of waiting in a hole of a town where some people came driving by 8 times in a row for whatever reason and a few small rides here and there we finally met a german couple going all the way to Andalsnes our destination for the day! They weren’t really interested in the surroundings so we kind off skipped Troll Wall, but we saw it from the car and it wasn’t that exciting after all. In Andalsnes we scored a kiwishopping free dinner with sushi and other fancy stuff for around 500 kr. We ate it in the last bits of sun before they dissapeared behind the mountain. After dinner we pitched our tent right at the fjord between the mountains and made a fire.

Next morning we decided to leave early for Trollstigen. We aksed at the gas station if we could walk there, and he said no problem just around the corner. Happened to be 17 km, On the way we ran into a woman walking her dog and asked her to confirm, she said no follow me home I will take you there! She dropped off her dog, picked us up and drove us all the way to where the road was closed. We started walking, and the walking path was really icy and slippery but we managed to reach the top. The view was amazing and we had a lunchbreak close to the top for at least an hour I think. On the top they where clearing the snow so we where walking between two 4 meter snowwalls for a few hours and then a roadwork car told us to hop in the back of the pickup truck and drove us for a few km. Then suddenly there was no road anymore, “it’s just 20 km to the next town”, so we started walking over the snow, luckily the snow was frozen so we didn’t sink in too much. After 5 km and aprox. One hour, we reached a sign wich said 25 km to the next town. I started to worrie a bit but we didn’t have another option anyways so we just continued. After a few more hours we ran into a human lifeform on skies. He told us we could go with him and that his car wasn’t to far away but he wanted to finish his skii tour first. So we passed his car and continued walking for a few more hours until in started raining and the guy picked us up. He drove us through the rain, showed us the touristic hotspots on the way to Valldal and then invited us to sleep in his old youth hostel that wasn’t in use anymore and was being fixed to rent out as appartments. We where totally broken, and happy to have a kitchen, a shower (the guy said we really needed one), and most important a warm bed.

We left early again next morning because we wanted to reach Bergen wich was still quite far ( 400 km and 7,5 hours driving according google maps). After waiting and walking quite long a guy in a hurry picked us up because he had to go the ferry, our ferry! On the ferry we found an old guy who was driving quite far our direction, on the way the old guy gave us some history lessons about his hometown, recent avalanche area’s and childhood memories. He also drove us through Hellesylt where I camped before on the way to Lofoten. A mother and a daughter who didn’t realy talked much drove us to the next ferry and there we found a really interesting personality with a really small car, but he was willing to drive us for a few hours on the way to Bergen. After his lifestory and some political discussions he dropped us off in a town where there was no way out. It took us at least 3 hours to get a short ride and after that still a long time to the next ride. A dutch teacher drove us to the next ferry whilst teaching us Norwegian and there in the line for the ferry we found a young couple going all the way to Bergen. After some awkward conversations about music prefferences and so forth we reached our destiny. We walked around Bergen for a while, hiked up Floyen wich was even more tiring then the Trollstigen and slept in a lunch/picknick shelter up top because we where to lazy to get the tent out. We ate some lefse cinnamon rolls from kiwishopping (why spent money?) and went to bed.

In the morning we took the cabletrain down to the center and walked out of Bergen crossing highways and what not. Took us a while for the first ride, and then waiting for a next right after half an hour a 70 year old proffesor had seen us half an hour ago and was heading to church and said to himself if they are still there on the way back I will drive them all the way to the ferry. And so he did. He had some interesting histoy as he was history proffesor and we had some nice talks. On the ferry we found another church driven couple taken us close to the next ferry where we found a young guy moving with all his belongings all the way to Stavanger. He was bored and had nothing to do so he showed us the big 3 swords just south of Stavanger( Sward I Fjell?). After he dropped us off in the center. We weren’t really impressed so we decided to head out again, after a long time a polish worker and his daughter picked us up and drove us towards my girlfriends parents house where we decided to surprise her for her birthday. As there are 6 Eikelands in the area we obviously went to the wrong place, anyways at one point I called my girlfriend with a panicking voice if she could help us out since we where stranded, ( at that point she thought I was close to Bergen or so) and if she could pick us up 20 minutes from her house. After a lovely dinner and a movie it was good to sleep in a bed again.

In the morning we had a pretty nice omelet and my girlfriend dropped us off at the highway. Our next destination was Kristiansand. We spent a lot of time with a weird guy, but he was nice talking to, he even asked our phonenumbers just in case he was visiting kristiansand and wanted someone to hangout with. I felt to scared to say no so I just gave it. When I was still getting my backpack from the car Petr already found a Lithuanian truck driver going to “Kristiansand”. He didn’t speak any English so after getting wrong answers on my questions I asked if he could speak any other languages. He told me he spoke German, so I tried with my best school German and apperantly my German was better than his English, because it worked! Of course I’ve been practicing German alot this semester wit all the Germans in our Course. He dropped us off 15 km before kristiansand, after a while of annoiyance we just took the bus and said we where traveling for a week and had no money.

Group dynamics

Our teamwork couldn’t have been better. We didn’t get into any fights and we both didn’t really care if we went right or left so we did whatever we felt like. We had a lot of fun together and I would say we where deffinatly high up in the Performing phase.