Focus on Sweden

As you may have noticed, sometimes I shift the focus away from Sweden, trying not to go too far. It happened again in the middle of April, this time remaining in Scandinavia, in Norway, more specifically in Stavanger and Rogaland region, where I went to visit a friend for a couple of days.

Stavanger is not a quiet little town, as I was expecting. Coming late at night from the airport, I left behind the noise of the helicopters taking off to the oil platforms and I found the town noisy, with clubs swarming with people all around the centre. Every ten meters on the narrow streets with old wooden houses, groups of youngsters were smoking outside pubs, at around 3am, a time when probably most of the Stockholm inhabitans were sleeping.

Next day, the only sunny one I got, I drove to see the famous sand beaches, which stretch for a few km, in between the North Sea and Sola airport. It’s a popular place for windsurfing, due to the generous supplies of wind.

While waiting for another helicopter to take off toward the oil platforms, I was watching a kitesurfer teaching another one how to handle the kite. Then the more experienced one went away on the sea until almost out of sight, leaving the novice crawling in the water near the shore, in a constant struggle to communicate with the kite.

I also paid a visit to the Petroleum Museum. At first, I was reluctant of seeing pipes and boring tubes filled with various types of oil and rocks, but I have to admit I found it rewarding, both information and entertainment wise. Besides, it’s interesting to see how Norway got so expensive that one can rent a car for more than double the price of the plane ticket there.

Enlightened by a 3D movie that shows some basic and at the same time, new to me, methods for extracting oil, we drove to an island called Rennesøy, north of Stavanger.

To get there, we passed though 2 tunnels under the water, one with the length of 4.5km and the other one going for 6km underneath another island. The journey led us to an island with landscapes formed of hills of green grass, much alike the ones in Braveheart, which seems to be completely covered by private farms, each with its own scent of manure. Water, islands, hills, rocks as far as the eye can see.

Please visit the set of images from Norway on Flickr.