Slow journeys never start auspiciously when you hear the heart-sinking words
‘Rail Replacement Service’. Now I’m always happy to take my time and enjoy the journey but taking no fewer than eight different connections just to get from Brixton to Harwich was testing even my, ahem, Saint like patience!
Nevertheless after this scenic tour of rural Essex by train and bus I got on the MS Dana Sirena for the overnight chug up through the North Sea to Esbjerg on the east coast of Denmark. Dubbing itself a
‘cruise-ferry’ the Dana Sirena boasted a live music nightclub bar with leather booth seats, the perhaps mercifully unfulfilled threat of live muzak, and a curious Perspex box in the corner – the smoking
‘cabin’. Since the fume ban this now means tobacco-wizened truckers sit in their own hazy bunker in the bar like some sort of odd zoo exhibit.
‘Species: Danishus Truckerensis, Common Name: Hairy-arse Lorry Driver. Observe these magnificently moustachoied beasts as they recreate their natural cab habitat in our specially contained chamber’.
The female Danish staff on the ferry all seemed to share either the same Solarium membership or brand of foundation make-up. Judging by appearances I suspected this might be called
‘Sunset Orange’, their glowing complexions adding some much needed colour to an otherwise dull, grey, foggy crossing.
The weather was claustrophobically misty on arrival in Esbjerg, lending the town, sorry city (Denmark’s fifth largest as all the local tourist literature kept reminding me – but after Copenhagen I think there's quite a steep drop-off), a slightly creepy, Stephen King novel type air. I wasn’t stopping though and took a series of trains towards Hirtshals and the ferry to Norway.
We trundled through a brown, agricultural landscape which became increasingly snowy the further north we went. Ominous looking pig and chicken sheds lurked amongst the fields housing Danish intensive pork and poultry concentration camps (i.e. farms) and huge sculptural Vestas wind turbines loomed out of the damp, murky miasma. By the time we reached Hirtshals the snow was thick and powdery on the ground as I trudged to the port terminal for the fast ferry to Kristiansand.
The weather was kind and the crossing as smooth as the North Sea had been as we sped across the mouth of the Baltic, arriving in a harbour full of
‘pancake’ ice and under a flurry of fresh snowfall around midnight. As one of the very few foot passengers aboard I was left to wander the pretty, pristine white streets of town alone in search of my hotel, and after 36 hours of slow travel fun I was certainly ready to get my head down. On the bed I was amused to see a flyer from the hotel asking
‘Do you need a kick in the rear?’ After my long journey this wasn’t quite what I had in mind, but thankfully it went on to explain that
‘we are not overly keen on actually kicking our guest’ (Phew!). They simply wanted to make a few suggestions for getting out and about locally rather than offering some niche S&M arse-kicking room service.
I spent the next couple of days hanging out with the gang from
Dale+Bang the agency that had invited me over to participate in a series of
workshops on sustainability communication (in Norwegian...you can read about these on the Futerra blog
here). They looked after me splendidly, putting me up in a gorgeous hotel room with incredible views over the frozen waters of the bay in Arendal, where houses huddled and hunched along the shoreline under a dense blanket of heavy snow. I ate heartily on elk, a splendid curry (all the way to Norway for a taste of Mother India!) and the strange, traditional brown goat's cheese that is almost toffee-like...
Norway is one of those shamelessly bilingual nations where even apologizing and asking
‘Do you speak English?’ is seen as being mildly insulting (as Eddie Izzard once noted in Amsterdam this is like enquiring in a patronizing fashion whether they can count to three such is their grasp of our estuarine lingo). Norwegian itself is rather magical and musical.
‘An English friend of mine says it’s like listening to the language of the little, forest people’ noted Karen one of my hosts mischievously.
We worked hard and played hard, grafting away all day and venturing out into the icy streets at night for dinner and drinks. Maybe it’s something to do with the long, dark winter evenings (it almost certainly is) but I was reminded of living in Orkney where on any given night of the week the pub was invariably full of raucous, drunken men. In Kristiansand it seemed they were all keen to practice their English swearing, using
‘Fuck you!’ as a form of affectionate, inebriated greeting (at least that was my charitable interpretation – maybe they meant it!). One shaven-headed drunk in particular took a shine to us…well, he kept swearing as us with a grin on his face anyway. At around 2am as I wove my way home with a beery grin on my chops I passed him again in the street so smiled and waved to which he mechanically gave me the finger and carried on walking. I laughed to myself all the way back to the hotel.
On my last night we convened at the Dale+Bang office to tackle the two highly-prized bottles of Highland Park whisky I’d brought as a gift (Norwegian booze is ball-achingly expensive and spirits only sold through Government shops). Five of us managed to polish off both – myself, Arne, Svein and Kristian from Dale+Bang plus Ivan an old friend of theirs and potential client who was opening a factory in eastern Germany to make solar glass. As the whisky flowed and the chat lurched back and forth from English to Norwegian (which I almost believed I understood at one point) Ivan became increasingly animated reciting Monty Python sketches in boisterous fashion. His favourite clearly the sex education lesson from
‘The Meaning of Life’.
‘I am now mounting my wife!’ he kept exclaiming loudly and repeatedly with eye-popping, red-faced enthusiasm.
Ah, Norway. Happy times and I was sad to set off on the long slow, journey home.
It probably wouldn't be a surprise to anyone that I tend to prefer tootling along in a train to twanging myself around by plane. The laidback pleasure of a good trans-continental trundle is infinitely preferable to a sweaty-palmed bunny-hop courtesy of Michael O'Leary. Yet it's a constant source of severe irritation, like itching powder on your gusset, that the pricing difference between planes and trains is so cock-eyed.
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