Driving back to Rauland

Reasonably early on Friday morning (August 7), we piled into the van and headed west again. David and I promptly passed out in the passenger seats while his father drove. In Karlstad we stopped at Biltema, a hardware store with everything you could possibly need. Almost. We spent about an hour and half buying tools and equipment to help us make the apartment nice and keep David busy for hours.

We stopped for lunch at the Swedish equivalent of McDonalds, MAX hamburgare. This was at my request, having heard so much from visiting Swedes in Seattle about the superiority of MAX vs. any of the American hamburger chains. I would have to say that, while the hamburger itsself was better than one from a chain, and the free coffee was a nice touch, the fries left something to be desired (something like a lot of grease) and the hamburger was really anything special compared to a real burger from a quality establishment in the US.

We pressed further across the late summer landscape, stopping outside Oslo to stretch our legs and eat the remaining spanikopita. We switched drivers and I took the wheel. Things went reasonably smoothly. I choose the wrong road at the big traffic circle in Drammen, but that much a delay is hardly noticable.

The most exciting part of the journey came on the tiny road we drove on for the last 90 minutes. After a few cars passed me by, I took the signal to drive faster. That is 80km/hr roughly. Having not driven in a while and driving a much larger car, the twisting and turning on a narrow road at that speed was intense, to say the least. Not to mention the time we almost collided with another car on a one lane bridge. Thank goodness the van has good breaks!

We drove directly to our new apartment and started unpacking. Our landlady, Anne, came out and asked us if we wanted to join them for some fish soup on the patio. In the short time it took her to whip up the soup, we unpacked the van and stuffed the apartment full of things. After dinner we took a mini road trip to see the view from Vierli. Then it was coffee at my old apartment where Anders was sleeping and off to our first night in the new apartment.