Curious Things I'm Learning About Norway - Day #5

Curious Things I'm Learning About Norway

Naturally, when you go places you'll be learning interesting things about the country, and Norway is full of fascinating and surprising cultural, natural, infrastructural and even culinary curiosities.

Love for American Cars in Norway

As we drive through the country we see loads of electric cars, loads of Teslas indeed. It's not a big surprise considering how Norway produces electricity and even exports it. But one more surprising and interesting thing I kept noticing too is that there are loads of American cars on the roads too. Apparently, there is some tax relief on the import of American cars and there's a massive hobbyist movement in the country. As we drove through the country we even stumbled upon an American cars show and festival.

Surrounded by Water

Another thing we cannot fail to notice is that over 99% of the time, we are driving alongside a river or a lake, there is so much water everywhere you look. You're constantly going over bridges.

Animal Crossings

I admire the many animal crossings they've built over motorways to safeguard the deer, moose and other wild animals that may end up as road kill otherwise.

Weird Bus Stops

The bus stops are weird as fuck. You just see tiny signs on the side of the road, but no timetables, no boards, not even bus numbers, in many places there's not even a pocket to the side of the way to stand there as you wait… Picture of the bus stops attached.

Public Toilets

Also, many of the toilets in public places are paid - £1. However, they are super clean and nice - always stocked up with toilet paper and soap. The pic of a bathroom is from a petrol station 🤯

Can beauty be exhausting?

Waking up at pretty places is not tiring at all. But moving through so much beauty in such tiny time frames can feel overwhelming.

Back in 2020 when walking the Camino I felt I needed a break from the constantly changing landscape - and I feel the same now. Stillness - I'm still learning and need to remind myself of the necessity to create time for it. Philosophy of life well lived aside, we have been on a ferry a couple of times today, and we keep going through looong tunnels - 6km and longer. Norwegians love their tunnels. Apparently, the longest tunnel in the world is here - 24km long. It's between Bergen and Oslo. Not sure if we'll go through it, but it's treated as an attraction.

Strange Pizzas

When we stopped at Balestrand briefly we saw this little church and couldn't resist buying some weird pizza bun. To be honest, it doesn't beat real pizza at all but it was still interesting to try.

P.S. We took the road through the mountains through Voss as it was recommended and it was again…stunning!

In the evening we got closer to Bergen and we'll explore it tomorrow. 🤗