Flekkerøy

Hi!

I just spent the last couple days on the isle of Flekkerøy, off the Norwegian coast, just by the city of Kristiansand. This island is where Tove, a girl I met on Impact Summer about 5 years ago, lives.

Read on for more about my first:
- German wartime ruins
- exploration of ex-military land
- swimming at 58 degrees north of the equator
- tube-riding a boat's wake
- catching a fish

SUNDAY 10 JULY

I caught the bus from Oslo at 8:15, and arrived in Kristiansand at 13:30... quite a long trip. I slept quite a bit of the way. Also, I have never seen so many road signs like this. But I didn't see any elk.

Tove met me at Kristiansand with a car and we drove out of the city, and through the 2.3km tunnel under the sea to "her island". Her dad Thomas was watching the Tour de France when we arrived, and we sat down to a light lunch.

From the back deck on the 2nd floor, there was a great view out to sea, across the little rocks and islets in the bay. Tove pointed at surrounding houses and said "uncle, dad's cousin, another cousin, another cousin, relative, uncle... that person isn't related..." This island is even smaller than Colonsay! I also met Tove's blind grandmother, who lives with them. She was very welcoming, and we had a good short conversation (she did most of the talking) through Tove as translator.

After lunch Tove took me on a walk through some of the bush behind their house. Hidden away in the woods are some wartime remains. Ruined walls of a hospital (now with trees inside), a tunnel dug through a hillside, rusting circular remains of German gun-placements facing Denmark... some interesting things hiding along the coast. We just had to be wary of stinging nettles and ticks. Just like Daisy Hill Forest really... except for the nettles.

When we got back to the house Tove's mum Oddbjørg had arrived home from work. They were having a barbecue for tea, so Tove made her dad hand over the tongs to the Aussie :) The pork chops and "stir-fry" veges tasted great.

That evening Tove and I rode our bikes across the island to where a group of her friends were having a traditional summer "hang-out" night... lots of outdoor sports and games while the sun was up. Volleyball, badminton, and throwing a football around started off, then we got into a game of Kubb, from Gotland in Sweden. You throw rounded pieces of wood at squarish bits of wood, and take turns in teams trying to knock them over. A lot of fun. I met quite a few people in quite a short space of time... so forgot all names, sorry.

I did have a good laugh with one of the guys. I told him I was going to Finland at some point, so he brought up Monty Python. "Do you know the Finland song?" he asked me, and we started singing. :D Then we got onto the fake Swedish subtitles at the beginning of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Mønti Pythøn ik den Hølie Grålen)... and finally the Parrot Sketch. "The Norwegian Blue, beautiful plumage!... He's probably pining for the fjords."

Just in case you're interested, here's the lyrics to the Finland Song.

Finland, Finland, Finland.
The country where I want to be,
Pony trekking or camping,
Or just watching TV.
Finland, Finland, Finland,
It's the country for me.

You're so near to Russia,
So far from Japan.
Quite a long way from Cairo,
Lots of miles from Vietnam.

Finland, Finland, Finland.
The country where I want to be,
Eating breakfast or dinner,
Or snack lunch in the hall.
Finland, Finland, Finland,
Finland has it all.

You're so sadly neglected,
And often ignored,
A poor second to Belgium,
When going abroad.

Finland, Finland, Finland.
The country where I quite want to be,
Your mountains so lofty,
Your treetops so tall.
Finland, Finland, Finland,
Finland has it all.

Finland, Finland, Finland.
The country where I quite want to be,
Your mountains so lofty,
Your treetops so tall.
Finland, Finland, Finland,
Finland has it all.

Finland has it all...

:D

The games ended at around 10:30, shortly after the sun reached the horizon. For supper, I ate an apple and Tove ate cereal. So I proceeded to try to read the two or three sentences in Norwegian on the side of the cereal box. Painfully slowly, with a little help from context and a lot of help from Tove, I worked out that when you wake up in the morning, your body has gone without food for a long time, and a good breakfast is essential to start the day, etc.

MONDAY 11 JULY

Slept in just a bit, and got downstairs to breakfast at around 10am. Tove had already been for a morning swim. She had a shopping list from her mum, so we picked up her friend, and drove into Kristiansand. The girls went off to do some clothes shopping, while I: changed some more euros into kroner, painted a postcard by the harbour, and then read all the English travel books on Norway (well, the sections about Tromsø, anyway) in the Kristiansand library. I met up with the girls again, and we went for icecream down by the harbour. We saw someone with an icecream cone in his boat, spoon-feeding icecream to the swans gathering in the water nearby. Bizarre.

After the icecream, we went to do the shopping, at an interesting supermarket-kind of place. I say kind-of, because they had just about everything from carpets to chairs to groceries... in Australia, a bit like having Woolworths and Big W and Target and Bunnings under one roof. So Tove got the groceries, and I bought a tent, to make my stay in Tromsø much cheaper.

After a light late lunch, I walked with Tove and her dad down to the bay to their boat. It was about 6pm by now. We pumped up an inflatable tube with a leaky foot-pump (one person pumping, the other covering the crack with their thumb), and then took it out for a few spins in the bay. This was my first time of wake-tubing, if that's the name of it, and it was awesome. The 2nd time was faster, and my knees/toes stung whenever they touched the water's surface as I bounced around.

I had two goes, Tove had two goes, and her cousin Kenneth joined in on one lap as well. Then we returned the tube to the dock, and headed out to sea with the fishing gear, looking for "makrell". After a lot of not finding any fish, and almost catching one (it got off the hook with an impressive twist-and-jump at the last minute), we took a break from fishing to race eastward to where the ferry from Denmark was sailing in to Kristiansand. We got there a little late behind it, but the waves from its wake were big enough for Tove's dad to have some fun bouncing up and down across them in our outboard-motor-driven craft.

Then back to the fishing. Finally I hooked one mackerel, and pulled it in. Then the boat headed back to the dock, and we walked back to the house, reaching it around 10.30pm. Tove's dad filleted the fish (mackerel don't have scales, luckily) and then fried it up after dipping it in a mix of flour and mixed spices... DELICIOUS.

TUESDAY 12 JULY

Woke up around 9:30, I think, and had some breakfast (bread, cheese, and home-grown strawberries). Then Tove and I went on a bike ride across to the other side of the island, to visit the ex-military area. There were signs at the rusting boomgate warning against entry and photography, dating back to August 1914. Saw a few camouflaged bunkers built into the hillside, and the remains of where a big gun used to look out to sea. Then we went down to a tiny sheltered bay nearby and had a swim. The water was about 20 degrees celcius, and we stayed well clear of the 2 jellyfish.

After drying and changing, we rode back to the house where I finished packing, and we made lunches. Mine to take on the bus, Tove to take to work. We walked downhill to the local bus stop, and hopped on. Tove's grandmother had given her money for the bus that morning, as a way to bless me. That was really nice.

We caught the bus to Kristiansand, and while I waited with my bags for the Oslo bus to arrive, Tove went off and bought me the HUGEST soft-serve icecream I have ever seen. Norwegians know how to make icecream, that's for sure. :)

The bus left at 2pm, and I got in to Oslo at a quarter past 7. I'll be off to my hostel as soon as I finish posting this. Good night, everyone! Or should that be god natt!

(Added note, 12 July... I didn't quite finish this last night, but I did find the hostel!)