Telemark

Friday Sam left town with the entire company for a “Strategy Weekend”. They went to Vradal, a town in the Telemark region of Norway. Not wanting to miss out, Katherine and I rented a car Saturday to drive there to join him.

It was quite an adventure even renting the car. There are very few rental locations not at the airport which is an hour out of town in the opposite direction from where I was going. I finally found a place that was actually open on Saturday that actually had available cars. So we rented a small car. Then I had the dilemma of how to get Me, Katherine, our stuff and the carseat to the rental place. I sent most of our stuff with Sam yesterday but still had our toiletries, diapers, a change of clothes and Katherine’s food and toys. So, I put Katherine in her backpack and put the car seat in the jogging stroller. All of our stuff went in the basket underneath and in the carseat. I am sure we looked quite funny going down the street. We had to walk 10 minutes to the metro, go one stop and then walk 10 minutes to the car rental place. I was quite tired by the time I got there. One perk was we had a 5 class upgrade because they did not have any small cars on stock. So, we had a nice station wagon but the jogging stroller fit nicely in the back.

The overloaded stroller.

One thing I do not like about renting a car in Europe is that they are always a stick shift. I am so glad that I drove a Honda Prelude for a few years that was a stick because it has been a helpful skill. I do not, however, enjoy it, especially on this drive which had a lot of hills and hairpin turns. I felt like I was riding the clutch the entire time and was quite tired by the time we arrived.

We had an uneventful drive. I really enjoyed the scenery. We went through a lot of quaint towns where there were a lot of farms. I noticed that there are 4 colors of houses in Norway – dark red, forest green, mustard yellow and dark white. They are all wooden and some have a lot of wooden carvings on them. The mountains were pretty. There were also a lot of lakes as we drove. I had to keep Katherine entertained. I would point out the water, horses, cows and sheep. She would point and make the appropriate animal sounds.

Katherine enjoyed facing forward

There were some interesting road signs along the way.

Cow Crossing
Moose Crossing
Deer Crossing I assume this means bumps in the road but I thought it was funny.

Norwegians love the outdoors. I noticed that anywhere there was a road wide enough, they had a path beside the road. There were tons of people walking and biking and in the winter they cross country ski too.

The Norwegian countryside does not have much in the way of radio stations. If I was lucky to find one with English songs, there would be a random mix including the BeeGee’s, U2, Queen and Beyonce. That was mixed with a lot of talking. We mainly drove in silence. I brought my iPod and the radio attachment but the battery died.