Saturday, 24 April 2010 09:14 Last Updated on Wednesday, 19 May 2010 10:21 Written by Claudine du Plessis

Weather predictions have now started controlling our lives. To avoid getting caught in snowstorms and strong winds, we have to keep planning and replanning our route according to the forecasts. Earlier on, we decided to only spend only the minimum amount of time in Oslo (which is just another capital city) and spend most of our time in the beautiful Norweigan fjords. Unfortunately we had to change our plans.The road up north still looked too cold to our South African standards, so we decided to spend some time in Oslo, just waiting the weather out. We organized two different couchsurfing hosts, a guy called Anders for the first three nights and a woman called Gabbi for the next three.

From Gothenburg to Oslo was an easy ride and we arrived at our first host's place at 1 o'clock. Anders is an easygoing guy and together with his other German couchsurfers that were stuck in Oslo because of the volcanic ash from Iceland. We had a nice relaxing time at his place. I made us some pancakes (it was the right weather) and we watched a whole lot of movies. Anders draws really good pictures and the whole apartment is full of his sketches. He is not working or studying at the moment, just spending time at home doing, well, not too much except for hosting a lot of couchsurfers.

We received some news that made us reconsider our route all over again. Potential couchsurfers that we contacted in the western fjords came back to us and all of them advised us not to come because of the weather. They even send us photos with a lot of snow and ice in them. We had to face the facts - the fjords was not going to happen. We are too pushed for time, with the clock ticking on Billy's schengen visa and the best time to visit the fjords are in the summer mmer anyway. It was disappointing, because we had really been looking forward to the fjords, but we decided that we will just have to come back to Norway some other time and concentrate on reaching Nordkapp in time and in one piece now.

Another thing that made us worry was that Yuki's steering was still feeling loose and wobbly, worse than it had on our way to Gothenburg. There was definately something wrong there, but we had too much other stuff on our mind to really give this problem the attention it needed...

Our next hostess was Gabbi, a Maltese woman living in Norway. She had a busy schedule, but left her key at the local 7-11 and told us to make ourselves at home. She was also hosting another French couple, who were also stuck in Oslo because of the ash. They were quite anxious, because they had 6 children and jobs waiting for them at home. Gabby and her boyfriend had just returned from a trip to South Africa, which she really enjoyed and talked about a lot. I made everyone dinner and Gabby shared her bottle of South African wine with us.

The most impressive sight we saw in Oslo was the Fram Museum. It is built next to the harbour and contains the old Polar explorer ship, the Fram. The Fram sailed to the north pole (or very close), where it was stuck in the ice for three years, before it could sail back. We spent about 3 hours inside just reading all the interesting facts about the polar explorers, Nansen and Roald Ammundsen and the race to the north and south poles. The Fram also sailed to Antartica with Roald Ammundsen, who only told his crew where they were headed when they were already three days on the open sea. He became the first explorer to reach the very south of Antartica.

Gabbi invited us for dinner at her boyfriend, Ulle's place, Solli Brugge. Ulle is an artist and owner of art galleries. Solli Brugge was one of the biggest sawmills in Norway and Ulle's parents had restored it to resemble the way it would have looked all these years ago. It is beautiful and out in the countryside and all the galleries are built inside what used to be sheds or mills.



After reconsidering our route and spending a lot of time studying the weather predictions, we decided that the best decision would be to go to north east to Lillehammer and continue north through Norway from there.

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