Day 4 - Gudwangen to Voss, Hiking

Today's breakfast was the thickest, most tenderly-cured slab of lox I have ever seen. Everything here is exhorbinantly priced, but the salmon is very good and almost even cheap.

I have complained a lot about the prices here. (And will continue to do so, loudly and often.) Agricultural price supports make food overly dear, but also mean that the valleys are filled with goats instead of strip malls. Other goods are inflated by a value added tax and import duties. Still, high government spending gives me smooth roads, clean drinking water, a strong welfare state with low crime rates, and good enough education that most people here speak better English than your typical 7-11 clerk. Yes, admission prices are high at Themepark Norsk, but it wouldn't be the same at a lower price. Or so I repeatedly tell myself.

One of my life's goals has always been to kayak a fjord. Sadly, the outfitters in gudwangen won't rent boats unless you have a minimum group size of 2. Overprotective wankers. Maybe the folks on the next fjord will be more relaxed.

After yesterday's downhill coast, today was the day to pay the piper. And boy is she one expensive tart. Climbing out of the naerofjord is a straightforward thing if you are a car and can use the tunnel. Otherwise, you climb 700m of switchbacked hell. Fortunately, the views on the way up were outstanding.

Also, the first climb was almost all of my altitude gain for the day. Once again, I was treated to a mostly downhill day. Not many photos of this ride. Though stunning, I wasn't stopping my 40kph cruise for the sake of posterity.

norway
Originally uploaded by wolftone.

Warnings to the contrary, the drivers were polite and careful. I have a theory that everyone thinks that the drivers in their area are crazy, regardless of where the fall on a global scale. (Same as how everyone thinks that apartment rentals in their area are overpriced.)

60 fine km later, I found myself in Voss with a few hours to kill. What better way to celebrate a long bike with a stiff hike up a mountain? OK, it was a dumb idea, but I didn't realize it at the time. Voss has that special summertime desperation that most ski towns have, with lots of signs encouraging visitors to ride the ski lift up the mountain. The lift stops halfway up, enabling a thigh-punishing hike to the true summit. As a ski hill, it was scarred with cables, wire, and denuded trails. Still, the voss lake and the surrounding mountain ranges were visible from the top, giving a good overview of the area.

With my new discovery of cheap salmon, I picked up groceries and cooked myself a fine meal (my first for under nkr50) in the hostel kitchen. It even included blessedly uncooked vegetables! Sadly, I couldn't find garlic, lemon juice, white wine, or olive oil so I had to fry the poor fish in butter. I'm not used to cooking in butter and unfortunately set off the smoke alarms and caused a rather laxidasical evactuation. If nothing else, it was a good conversation-starter with the austrian folks I had dinner with.

As usual, German helps while travelling. This time, I'm lucky enough to have it help with the local language itslef. There are enough similarities between the two that I can understand about as much as I can with Dutch. Still, the german helps most given that 2/3 of the folks I have met so far are coming from german-speaking countries. I'm guessing that other rich countries like france and italy are sufficiently nice that a lot of their citizens vacation domestically, while Germans get the heck out of the fatherland in search of more interesting places. (Same reason it seems like every college on the east coast is populated mostly by expatriate New Jerseyites.)

It's still over two hours until sundown. I need to find someone who plays cribbage.