Day 3 features us exploring inland, into the Finnmarksvidda. So let’s see about the etymology of this word: “Finn” is Finn, to reflect the locals; “Mark” is Mark, as in the Experience; and “Svidda” is the land of snow, ice, and a whole everloving metric ton of reindeer and not much else – except for that one guy with his airplane. No, I didn’t get a photo of the airplane [...]
Norway, day two on the ground. We pick up from Day 1 near Nordkjosbotn, and dash south in the middle of the night on highway E-6, to where it hits E-10. E-10 west, across the Tjeldsund bridge, all the way to the village of Å, and then back along the same road, because northern Norway is – like Alaska – very sparsely connected. E-10 all the way east to… well, [...]
Picking up in Tromsø, we proceed to learning to drive stick shift in ten minutes on the road to Hansnes, and then march onwards to Nordkjosbotn and a spectacular northern lights display. you may note that Hansnes and Nordkjosbotn are in opposite directions. I drove to Hansnes, turned around, went back to Tromsø, verified that I was all right at stick shift by driving around downtown some, and then headed [...]
the first batch of Norway photos. Not quite on the ground yet: these are all from my insane amount of flying, from San Diego, to Chicago, to Oslo, and finally to Tromsø. Northern lights! We’re not in Norway yet, and there they are. Mission accomplished, a whopping eight or so hours into the expedition – before the first official night, even. Don’t mind the Brownian star tracks: I managed to [...]
While I go on a road trip of somewhat large size, here is your chance to see some photos from grim, frostbitten Norway. I took this week-long trip in March, 2008, and will be posting the photos in about seven installments in the upcoming few weeks. This is just a teaser … three photos from that week. The northern lights over the town of Nordkjosbotn, from the second day of [...]
American cities may be attempting to be more European, what with pedestrianization and density being buzzwords in urban planning communities, but Europe is emulating the US in one way: ring roads. While some roads like London’s M25 or Paris’ Peripherique are famous – many former Warsaw Pact countries are racing to update their infrastructure to adapt to their new status in the European Union, and it seems that the first [...]
The craze now in various European capitals seems to be the Beltway - Vienna's S2, Budapest's M0, Belgrade, Skopje, Warsaw, etc. I came across this image of part of Stockholm's new Södra Länken (the Southern Link) - the southern part of the beltway there. It's a huge picture and makes for a great desktop wallpaper (click it), and it also shows something lacking on this side of the pond: any semblance of [...]