Norwegian Wood

At about eight in the evening I arrived at Tom’s place. I was totally exhausted, as I was on my way for about 38 hours by then. Tom had prepared a delicious meal consisting of peas, fusilli pasta and salmon. Together with two beers this made me very sleepy. After a short phone call with Elena I finally went to bed and was fast asleep like a stone!

Being 9 hours on a ferry is the most boring thing you can imagine. There were gazillions of teenage kids that were on some kind of school trip or something, running around and being loud, so sleeping on a bank was not an option. The other problem was that there was no bank anyway!

Being on the boat, I was quite surprised to see that the northsea was frozen over most of the way. The ice formed very nice patterns. But see for yourself:

After a short chat with Lexi, some sandwiches and sleeping for two hours I went on the road again at midnight, this time accompanied by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Bad Religion.

For crossing the border to Denmark, I decided to listen to Volbeat, the volume cranked to the max! The rest of the journey was mixed regarding both music and weather. There was a lot of snow accompanied by the tunes of Placebo, WIZO, Rise Against, Tenacious D, and some podcasts by Deutschlandradio Kultur about alcohol prohibition and reindeer farming in Norway!

Whilst driving, I recognized a strangely familiar smell in the air, similar to the one an angle grinder (Flex in German) makes. I did not find the cause for it until I recognized the sparks created by the blade of the winter road maintenance car on the street in front of me!

I reached Fredrikshavn in Denmark at 6:07 in the morning, way before anyone else (including the ferry) made it here. The ferry arrived at 7:15 and is a pretty big boat if I’m to be its only passenger 😉

Wow! At 8:49 I actually drove onto the ferry. Meanwhile the temperature in my car had dropped to -0.8°C and I was freezing like hell. I am really not looking forward to the ferry ride as I am really tired now.

Almost as planned, I left home yesterday at 6:44 in the morning. The streets were quite snowy, but still OK to drive on. Music-wise I started with 10.000 Hz legend by Air. After that I turned to Paradise Lost and Black Sabbath for the journey to Würzburg, where I met up with Bona, Dani, and Markus for a late breakfast and some badly needed coffee. I continued my journey with some Ska by Liberator and phone calls with people I did not find the time to say good bye to. As a nice surprise Silvi answered the phone after almost 7 month of silence!

In defiance of the prophecies of doom by my family (hello Wolfgang!) I made it to Hamburg by 5 o’clock in the afternoon.

It’s less than 12 hours until I am on my way north, but it still seems fairly unreal to me.

I hope to keep you informed here about my journey to Norway, where I will be doing a half-year PostDoc at the Dept. of Mathematical Sciences and Technology of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Stay tuned!