Copenhagen

After 210km/hr Autobahn adventure and an afternoon exploration of Bremen I made an impressive entrance to Denmark. My 15-carriage ICE train drove directly onto a ferry in North Germany and then 40 minutes later drove off again and into Denmark.

Copenhagen won me over right away. +50 points for the locals being incredibly friendly and outgoing. +500 because they're all tall, blonde and ride bicycles in tights. Bonus points for the people who opened up their first-story apartment window to hold an impromptu rock concert.

Although the weather was mostly awful, I did manage to explore several huge parks and a cemetary with the impressive ability to attract sun-bathers. Another highlight of the trip was spending the weekend with Tim who flew up from Dusseldorf. He almost didn't survive to fly back down again after I talked him into joining me on a 70km bike trip up the coast.

The rest of my time was mostly spent repeatedly opening the hostel door with a bunch of cool travellers, befriending locals as they drank wine from plastic cups outside a convenience store, singing along to a fantastic Irish Wes-Musician and having a more unsavoury discussion about cheese than you can possibly imagine.

I've started making a shortlist of places in Europe where I would enjoy living for a few months. Copenhagen enters near the top!

Wildeshausen

My first taste of Germany was a young kid at the airport who couldn't have been more than 12 wearing a T-Shirt that read, "SAVE WATER, DRINK BEER!". This turned out to be an appropriate message.

Wildeshausen is a town in Northern Germany of about 20,000 people. Once a year they host a week long Pfingsten Festival and I was invited by two of my German friends to join their family for the celebrations. The fun began on the night two with my introduction to 'Dixie' - basically Craps but with a lot more vodka. Sitting in a circle everyone takes turns rolling two dice and on a seven everyone has to yell "DIXIE." Whoever is slowest has to drink. There are plenty of other rules which also lead to drinking as proved by Day 2's scorecard:

Everyone was feeling understandably seedy by the morning of Day 4 when the main event began. Just before lunch more than 2000 guild members and one Australian assembled in the centre of town dressed in tailcoats with top hats and rifles. After dividing up into 400 man companies we marched out to the first 'feeding of the troops' for an hour of free beer. After another march through town we snuck home for a barbecue and then returned just in time to see the new king of the festival crowned. The new King then led all 2000 troops on a 2 miles march back through town while everyone else from Wildeshausen lined the streets to cheer us on.

Our final duty was to assemble together in huge hall for another hour of free beer. The atmosphere in a room with 2000 drunk German men, all singing, dancing and pounding their rifles into the table has to be experienced to be believed. Almost completely deafened, we rejoined the rest of the town in a giant tent where the party continued until well after sunrise.

Many thanks to everyone in Wildehausen for being incredibly friendly and showing me an amazing time. Special thanks to my marching crew "The Dixi Dicks":

Thorsten "Humerous Remark Not Appropriate In This Family Blog "

Nico "Actually I'm from Denmark"

Lars "I need to pee"

and our support crew, "The Dixi Chicks" without whom we would never have survived.

Yvonne "Anybody"

Nicola "Mum Noises"

M M M My Girona & I HATE Airports (Part 74)

The route I took from Toulouse to Bremen was a little counter-intuitive. I headed by train and a couple of buses in the completely the opposite direction until I reached a whole different countryand then flew straight to Bremen from an airport in Northern Spain.

I expected Girona to be just an airport however it turned out to be the unexpected gem of my trip so far. I spent the afternoon wandering the picturesque old-town - narrow winding cobblestone streets, a partly intact roman wall and a magnificent Cathedral. Best of all, the city was almost completely void of foreign tourists.

In the evening I headed out to a lively plaza with a friendly Slovakian hostel-goer, and spent the evening sipping beer and eating a banquet of tapas. The perfect one-day spanish experience.

My experience at Girona Airport was a lot less enjoyable. Budget Airlines have made travelling across Europe quicker but vastly more frustrating. In Europe RyanAir are the worst of the worst. They force you arrive at the airport the earliest, have the most uncomfortable seats with the least leg-room, the lowest baggage allowance and although their flights seem cheap, after you include taxes and all the other unavoidable, booking, baggage and credit card fees, you end up paying about three times the advertised price.

And while most airlines are at least somewhat flexible with their baggage limits RyanAir have staff waiting at every gate to weigh and size test every bag during boarding. I tried to walk on carrying a small book and my iphone and they actually made me put them back into my bag just to make sure they didn't weigh 3 kgs. My advice - don't fly RyanAir.

Too Loose?

A short flight from Orly airport got me to Toulouse, a city in Southern France with about half a million people. Toulouse is world famous for its Aerospace industry and also for being the current hometown of The International Swing Dancing Sensation: 'Alana'.

After the first of several great meals, I met Alana's French boy Vincent and several of his friends who all happened to be employees of Meteo France. After the terrible weather in Paris, befriending a group of Meteorologists turned out to be a fantastic idea. After several hours 'consulting maps' they drove us from rainy Toulouse to the sunny Mediterranean Coast for a weekend of rock climbing, hiking and camping.

On the way back home we pulled over right in front of a public toilet and I almost made the amateur mistake of going inside to use the urinal. The real Frenchmen walked straight past the 'toilet' and instead used a tree with a great view of the highway. Other acceptable places to take a slash include, any grassed area, roadsigns and the side of buildings.

After a rest day in Toulouse, we borrowed Vince's car and headed to the Pyrenees for a couple of days of snow-hiking. Although it was still too early in the year to reach some of the higher summits, the weather was amazing so there were plenty of sensational views at lower altitudes.

I rounded out my time in Toulouse with a night at the Circus. No Fit State are a non-profit troupe based in Wales and comprised of performers from all over the world. Although the acrobats are incredibly talented, the main draw card is the uniquely interactive atmosphere. Throughout the show the crowd is ushered around and even under the acrobats as they perform which makes it feel like everyone has front row seats. Highly recommended!

I'll finish with a few tips and tricks that helped me survive in France.

Don't be fooled by Zebra Crossing and Pedestrian Traffic Lights. It is a common misconception that they are designed to help Pedestrians cross the road safely. In France the opposite is true - they are actually designed to indicate areas of high pedestrian density. This allows motorists to be more efficient in their attempts to run people over. When in France, stay safe and Jay-walk.

If you want to look convincingly French (and have an empty bladder) try walking around with a baguette under your arm. If you don't have a baguette, you can substitute a large roll of pink toilet paper (as all French toilet paper is pink). The first time I tried this technique, it only took a couple of minutes before I was identified as a knowledgeable local and asked for directions. This allowed me to complete the perfect French impersonation by completely ignoring them.

Stereotypes aside, I really enjoyed my time in France. The food was outstanding - I probably ate about 3kg of cheese - and although the language barrier was more apparent than in some other Northern European countries, I was able to chat with enough English speaking locals to least get some feel for the culture. Thanks again to Alana and Vincent for putting up with me for a whole week!

L'aventure Recommence

The weather in Paris was awful. Continuous drizzle and strong winds made me wish I'd packed more than just t-shirts. I'm ashamed to admit that I abandoned a walking tour part way through to avoid freezing to death - In the future I'll stick to mountaineering in shorts. Although some locals have assured me that the weather is unseasonal, my stewardess just announced, "the weather upon our arrival will be quite nice - 10 degrees with rain" so I'm not so sure.

Having already visited Paris a couple of times, I mostly skipped the tourist attractions although I did spend a day admiring Louis XIV's palace at Versailles. Seeing it in the late 1700s would’ve been enough to turn me into a revolutionary. The rest of my time was mostly spent I wandering the streets with all all 13 of my t-shirts layered under my windstopper.

Although so many things about Paris are beautifully charming, it was hard to stop thinking just how much better it would be without the 13 gazillion map wielding tourists. If I could eliminate just one group ‘loud Americans that use $2000 DSLRs to take flash photos of the Eiffel Tower’ would be first against the wall. I wish I could have visited Paris 40 years ago when Parisians still formed the majority.

There have been a few amusing incidents so far including:

Stumbling into my hostel at 9am after 30 hours in transit to find a bunch of under-age Americans priming themselves with breakfast-beers.

Being asked to take a photo of a young gay couple as they french kissed in a secluded corner of the Versailles Gardens.

Heading out for a few drinks with a mixed group of fellow hostel residents. We returned a few hours later, minus the female members of our group who had all been picked up and taken home by Frenchmen.

Il est bon d'être le roi.

World Mind Sport Games 2008

The first International Mindsport Games was held recently in Beijing and featured "athletes" from over 150 countries. We even got an Olympics-style opening ceremony!
The fantastic venue was in the heart of the Olympic village, just a couple hundred meters from the spectacular Birdsnest Olympic Stadium. On a clear day you could even see it!
On a polluted day, not so much...
The Australian U28 team was comprised of John Hornibrook partnered with Orlando Wu, Nick Rodwell with Arian Lasocki and William Jenner-Oshea with Myself. We were competing against a strong field of 75 teams, the largest ever in a youth bridge event.

Our team performed consistently throughout the event winning 12 of our 17 matches. Going into the final day of the Swiss, we were well placed in 11th, just a handful of VPs away from the top 8. A disappointing finish saw us slip back to 18th - still a solid performance considering that half of our team were on international debut.

The teams portion in Beijing was played entirely behind screens which diagonally separate the table isolating North and East from South and West. Bids are placed on a board which is slid back and forth under the screen. Once the bidding is complete a flap is opened providing visibility of dummy and the other players' cards, but not their faces.

Here are some of my favourite hands from the event:

Hand 1
======

Dealer E - NS VUL

	North ♠ K Q T 2 ♥ Q T 9 6 ♦ 9 7 ♣ Q 9 2
West ♠ A J 7 6 ♥ A J 7 2 ♦ J 6 5 2 ♣ 6		East ♠ 8 3 ♥ K 8 4 ♦ A T 4 ♣ A J 8 5 3
	South ♠ 9 5 4 ♥ 5 3 ♦ K Q 8 3 ♣ K T 7 4

Sitting South, on the same side of the screen as West, John heard the auction begin:

Orlando	East	John	West
	1♣	P	1♥
P	2♥	P	2♠
P	2NT	P	3NT

At which point John passed the board under the screen. With the opponents announcing only invitational values, and knowing that all the suits were breaking badly, he decided to make a speculative double when the board came back to him. To his surprise, when the board reappeared Orlando had beaten him to it!

.	.	.	.
X	AP

Accurate defense restricted the opponents to their 4 Aces and the Heart King for +800.

At our table, Will started with a Mini No-Trump (10-12 HCP) which kept us out of trouble:

North	Will	South	Mike
	1NT	P	2♣
P	2♦	P	P
X	AP

I elected to use stayman and then passed Will's 2♦ response. North reopened with a takeout double and South converted to penalties - a wise choice as 3♣ doubled would have been expensive. Anticipating the bad breaks, Will played carefully, ruffing clubs in dummy to bring home 8 tricks for +180 and a large bundle of imps.

Hand 2
======

Every hand with Will is an adventure - especially when the vulnerability is favourable. This is well demonstrated on the following hand against Uruguay:

Dealer W - NS VUL

	North ♠ A 9 3 ♥ A 4 ♦ A K 7 ♣ A K Q 4 3
Mike ♠ K T 8 ♥ J 3 2 ♦ Q J T 9 8 ♣ 5 2		Will ♠ J 7 5 ♥ 9 6 5 ♦ 6 ♣ J T 9 8 7 6
	South ♠ Q 6 4 2 ♥ K Q T 8 7 ♦ 5 4 3 2 ♣ -

North	Will	South	Mike
			P
2♣	4♣(!)	4♥	P
4NT	P	5♦	P
6♥	AP

I passed as dealer (we play an intermediate 2♦ and 3♦ would have been stretching it just a little too far) and slid the board under the screen. It reappeared shortly containing a strong 2♣ from North and 4♣(!) from Will alerted as 'very destructive'. My screen-mate went into the tank for what seemed like an eternity. At one point he picked up a double card and stared at it intently before finally settling on 4♥. Exactly .2 of a second later I launched the board back under the screen throwing a pass card over the top after it. The opponents auction rolled on and they ended up in 6♥

When North tabled his 24-count strong 2 - IN CLUBS - I couldn't help but giggle. 6♥ is cold off on the layout and although we didn't gain any IMPs on this particular board, the opponents were clearly rattled and we picked up about 25 IMPs over the next 5 hands to win the match.

Hand 3
======

Will and I play our own home-made bidding system (called Minsk) which emphasises good 4 card majors over a longer minor. This can sometimes have unexpected benefits as demonstrated on the this deal where we extracted our largest penalty of the event at the 1 level.

Dealer W - NIL VUL

	North ♠ 8 5 4 ♥ T 8 5 ♦ K J 5 2 ♣ 7 6 2
Will ♠ 7 6 ♥ A Q J 2 ♦ T ♣ K J 9 5 4 3		Mike ♠ A Q T 3 2 ♥ 9 6 ♦ 9 6 4 3 ♣ A T
	South ♠ K J 9 ♥ K 7 4 3 ♦ A Q 8 7 ♣ Q 8

After Will's systemic, canape 1♥ opening, I responded 1♠ and South came in with a fairly ugly 1NT overcall, passed back around to me. Although we do open light, I liked my 2 aces and decided to chance a double which was passed out.

North	Mike	South	Will
			1♥(*)
P	1♠	1NT	P
P	X	AP

Playing attitude leads, Will started with the ♣3 to my Ace. I dutifully returned a club and was pleasantly surprised when the suit ran immediately! On 6 rounds of clubs the declarer pitched a heart so after a spade to my ace and a heart back through the king, Will could run his hearts too! Winning the first 11 tricks was worth +1100.

The moral of the story is that two aces are easily enough to double 1NT - a good partner will always provide the other 9 tricks.

Hand 4
======

William found a strong deceptive play as declarer in this deal from the Matchpoint Pairs Semi Final:

Dealer N - NS VUL

	Mike ♠ 5 4 ♥ Q 8 7 6 ♦ 9 8 4 ♣ A 9 7 4
West ♠ K 9 6 3 2 ♥ 5 3 ♦ Q J 5 2 ♣ K 6		East ♠ Q 8 7 ♥ T 9 4 2 ♦ A K 6 ♣ J T 5
	South ♠ A J T ♥ A K J ♦ T 7 3 ♣ Q 8 3 2

Mike	East	Will	West
P	P	1NT	AP

Lead S3.

After a simple auction West led the ♠3 to East's ♠Q and Will's ♠A. Not content with only 7 tricks, Will started with the ♥K and ♥J, carefully concealing the ♥A, before trying a club to dummy's 9 and East's 10. East returned a spade to the Jack and King. West, 'knowing' that his partner held the Heart Ace, placed Declarer with diamond values and failed to find the diamond shift. Will won the spade continuation, unblocked the hearts and was rewarded when the clubs came home too for +150 and almost all of the matchpoints.

Hand 5
======

Towards the end of the Pairs Qualifying you are playing against a strong Chinese pair and pick up this monster:

Dealer E - ALL VUL

You (South) ♠ A K Q T 5 ♥ A Q J 9 7 6 5 3 ♦ - ♣ -

Your RHO is dealer and opens 1♦. What do you bid?

I settled for a simple 1♥ overcall, confident that it wouldn't get passed out and hoping to be able to raise partners 1♠ response to 7♠ - the ULTIMATE in support.

When partner responded 1NT, I casually backed in with 7♥ and my opponents almost fell off their chairs. East, holding both missing aces was wise not to double.

Will	East	Mike	West
	1♦	1♥(!)	P
1NT	P	7♥(!!!)	AP

Will tabled the ♥K and refused to give me any other cards but that was enough for 13 tricks and 75% of the matchpoints. There were no less than 6 pairs playing 7♥xx!

Hand 6
======

Perhaps my favourite hand from the whole tournament is this simple part-score from the pairs:

Dealer N - ALL VUL

	North ♠ J T 6 3 ♥ K J 5 3 ♦ J 9 ♣ 7 5 4
Will ♠ A 8 5 2 ♥ 9 8 7 2 ♦ K T 8 2 ♣ Q		Mike ♠ K Q 4 ♥ 6 ♦ Q 5 4 ♣ A T 9 6 3 2
	South ♠ 9 7 ♥ A Q T 4 ♦ A 7 6 3 ♣ K J 8

North	Mike	South	Will
P	2♣	2♥(!)	X
3♥	AP

I opened in second seat with a precision style 2♣ and South stretched with a 2♥ overcall. Will chose a negative double and North raised hearts which completed the auction.

Will led the ♣Q to my ♣A and declarer's ♣8. The defence seemed obvious at this point - I returned the ♣T, my highest, as suit preference for Spades. On this Declarer did well to play the ♣K, a card he was known to hold. Will ruffed, thought for a second and returned..... A DIAMOND!? It wasn't until after the hand that I worked out what had gone wrong.

From Will's point of view the club layout is most likely:

Dummy ♣ 7 5 4
	Mike ♣ A J T 6 3 2
Declarer ♣ K 9 8

Where it's necessary for me to return an honour. By returning the ♣T, the lower of equals, I am actually demanding a diamond return!

The solution? At trick 2 I needed to think a little deeper about declarers clubs and return the ♣9. Ironically, only by playing my second highest club I can unambiguously communicate to partner that I want a spade returned. A very cute hand.

Acknowledgments
=============

I'd like to take this opportunity to thanks some of the people who made Beijing 2008 such an enjoyable experience:

- The Mind Sport Games organisers for running a superb event and also for covering our accommodation and airfares.

- The ABF for their generous support - uniforms, airline taxes, food etc etc.

- David Stern and the other organisers and presenters at the Youth Training Week in Sydney.

- Christy, Bec and Suz for their hard work as support staff, recorders and seamstresses.

- Cathy and Adam - Sensational captaining made being an "Athlete" in Beijing very easy.

- John, Orlando, Nick and Arian for being fantastic team mates throughout.

- And finally Will Jenner-Oshea, the best partner ever, who was even smart enough to steal a gold medal from England's U21 team!

Stockholm

Near the beginning of our trip Chris introduced me to a point system he had adopted for rating foreign cities and countries. For example, as Chris disembarked from his train in Warsaw he almost tripped over a battered and bleeding man lying on the platform (-50 Poland). However all was forgiven later in the day when he discovered that a pint of beer in a pub cost less than a dollar (+100 Poland). We used this system extensively throughout Scandinavia. Stockholm consists of 14 beautiful islands, linked together by a network of bridges. Although public transport is pricey, the inner city has an excellent computerised bike hire system (+50 Stockholm). For less than A$5 per day you can pick up a bike anywhere in the city and drop it off anywhere else, as many times as you like, 24 hours a day. Having a bike is important as it offered a means of escape from the packs of tall, blond Swedish women that roam the streets, in search of unsuspecting foreigners (+500 Stockholm). We spent our first night in Stockholm with Maria and Anders, a Swedish couple I'd met in Quebec. They invited us to their apartment for a delicious dinner and we spent the evening chatting about Swedish politics, Haighs chocolate and travelling to the middle east. Their friendliness and generosity was typical of all the Swedes I met. I headed out the next day to find a camera store that could remove an annoying spot of dust removed from my camera (-10 DSLRs). A shop assistant went to the trouble of downloading and printing me a map for me (+20 Stockholm). Unfortunately, the directions on the map were completely wrong and had me walking in circles for about 20 minutes (-50) but when I did eventually arrive, they fixed my camera for free (+100). I had a great experience in a supermarket, while questing for Chocolate milk. The refrigerated section was filled with many weirdly shaped and bizarrely named products so I deciding to seek help. I asked a fellow shopper, "Excuse me, what is the Swedish word for chocolate milk" and he immediately stopped what he was doing and came over to join my quest. After a couple of minutes of fruitless searching I resigned myself to another evening drinking beer, thanked him for his help and headed to buy some. About 5 minutes later I was waiting in the checkout line with a slab of Fosters on each shoulder when the same helpful shopper jogged up to meet me with a carton of chocolate milk that was hidden in a different part of the store (+200). Another night Chris and I checked out some of the pubs on Sodermalm island. Later in the evening Chris decided it was time to gamble and headed back to the Casino to try his luck at the 25/50 NL Hold Them. Poker games certainly sound more impressive when they're quoted in SEK. I was chatting to some friendly local students and decided to stay at the pub. Eventually the Swedes and I headed to another pub and once the pubs started closing they invited me back to a fairly crazy but fun house party. Scandinavians certainly know how to drink. Apparently so does Chris, and I later found out he was denied entry to the Casino for 'being too drunk' (+1000, it's great to see some casinos still have standards). So on the patented CV/Wes point scale Stockholm scores extremely well. Friendly people, great restaurants, picturesque scenery and varied nightlife make it just about my favourite city in Europe.

The End of a Road Trip

After crossing the border back into Sweden the rest of our drive to Stockholm was disappointingly free of rock concerts, car crashes and bar lock-ins. Driving in Sweden was a relaxing change mostly because their roads are at least twice as wide as those in Norway. It's as if huge sections of Norwegian highway were transplanted across the border. The average 1 lane road had huge but unmarked shoulders wide enough to fit at least 3 more cars. Another peculiarity of the Scandinavian road system is the precision of their road signs, all of which are accurate to 0.1 of a kilometer. Reindeer crossing, next 0.4km - 3.6km stated one sign. Any reindeer caught crossing outside of this zone are no doubt captured and shipped directly to the north pole, where they're given stupid names and forced to drag around a fat man in a sleigh.

After 13 days and about 2700km on the road, we rolled in Stockholm and dropped our little Aygo back at the Hertz dealership. Although it wasn't the strongest performer uphill and took several minutes to get from 0 to 60, this did result in impressive fuel economy, despite the fact that Chris rarely took it above second gear. Driving a car which gets almost 20 kilometers to the litre is quite handy when each litre costs A$2.50.

Trondheim - My Life Behind Bar

Discounting the insane drivers and ridiculous prices, Trondheim was a fairly normal, prettier than average, university town. We stayed in a huge and modern university student center, full of bars, concert stages and restaurants. Despite being perhaps 5 stories high, the building didn't have floors in a traditional sense. Instead the rooms existed on more than 50 different "semi-levels" all linked together by a maze of corridors and stairs. During summer some of the larger rooms are converted into hostel style accommodation. Although our 40 person dorm was neither clean nor quiet and only had 1 working shower, the location was ideal. School term didn't start for a couple of weeks but many students had already begun their pre-orientation week orientation, (the technical term for "drinking at the student centre") so there were plenty of locals to befriend. On my most memorable night I headed out with Kristian, a Norwegian of distinguished musical taste, for a tour of the city's best pubs. A few pints later, the pubs started to close so we enjoyed a final beer at the world's worst 80's retro club and parted ways. I made it back to the student center at about 3am and rang the doorbell a few hundred times in an effort to rouse the "24 hour reception". After about 15 minutes i resorted to loud banging and yelling before finally deciding to find an alternative entrance. Just around the corner was a small open window about 6 feet above ground and, reasoning that the local law enforcement officers must have their hands full reversing after traffic offenders, I hoisted myself up and slid through sideways, flopping onto a couch about 9 feet below. The room I'd fallen into was one of the many private bars located throughout the center and although everyone had left, the evidence of a pretty solid party remained. Wandering out the door and into the maze of corridors I was dismayed to find that the only door which wasn't deadlocked led to a toilet. Dismay turned to a strange sense of contentment as it occurred to me that there are plenty of worse places to be trapped than inside a bar. After sampling a few of the more exotic spirits, snacking on some leftovers and checking my email on the bar's computer, I found a comfortable couch and fell asleep. When I awoke at about 10am and negotiated my release with people working in the offices next door, I got the distinct impression that spending the night inside a Norwegian bar isn't particularly uncommon.

The Road To Trondheim

After an early start and a 3 hour ferry ride, we continued South along the coastal road. After a week in Norway, even sheer cliffs rising several hundred meters straight out of the ocean become a little mundane. Passing past and then under a huge glacier in another 8km tunnel kept me interested. As we approached our destination - a tiny middle-of-nowhere campsite at 11pm - it became apparent that something wasn't quite right. Completely by accident, we'd stumbled upon the main event of a week long Northern Norwegian rock festival which was being held IN our campsite. Tickets were available, but only at Norwegian prices so we wandered up to watch from just outside the gates. Within 5 minutes a local invited us into a caravan for some beers. Details from the rest of the night are sketchy but I'm pretty sure Beer, Jaegermeister and Moonshine were all heavily involved. Chris had wisely chosen to leave the party early, so when I stumbled back to the car at 8am he was ready to take up the driving duties. Although he assures me we were only close to crashing a couple of times, I spent the whole trip passed out with a jumper wrapped around my head, so I'm unable to corroborate his story. I was feeling well enough by 4pm to take a driving shift and we swapped back about an hour out of Trondheim. Although Chris was an enthusiastic and competent high speed driver (literally pumping his fist the first time we entered a 110 zone), he did start to exude an aura of tension whenever complicated maneuvers were required (such as slowing down) or when other cars made any sudden movements (for example turning). It didn't help that the drivers in Trondheim were completely insane. On no less than 3 occasions we saw drivers reverse rapidly along a main street into heavy traffic. One of them was driving a public bus. Surrounded by maniacs and without any idea of our location, Chris reverted back to his primal instinct - driving fast. He sped through a pedestrian crossing almost running over a cyclist, plowed through a roundabout and took a sharp left turn directly into the setting sun. Being blinded by the sun didn't diminish his need for speed, although it did prevent him from noticing the red traffic light until the last second. He brought the car to a halt a couple of meters over the line and I had just enough time to turn to him and comment on his excellent driving before one of the crazy Norwegians locked up his brakes and slammed into the back of us at about 30km/h. It was only Aunli's 3rd accident of the year, which is probably quite good by Norwegian standards. Nevertheless, if any Trondheim crash repairers are reading, from their private jet or Monaco summer house, I'm prepared to pass on his address and phone number for a small percentage of future repairs. Although his car was quite a mess, only the back panels of our car were damaged and it was fortunately still drivable. The only physical injury I sustained was minor whiplash which sorted itself out in a few days. "I feel a bit lightheaded" commented Chris. "Maybe you should drive?"

Norway - Lofoten Islands

We rolled off the ferry and onto the Lofoten Islands late in the evening, with no accommodation booked. A few phone calls later Chris had arranged a room in the house of an elderly Norwegian couple about a hundred kilometers south. The old guy waited out the front for us to arrive, charged us practically nothing for the room (A$50) and the next morning spread the best breakfast I've ever had. A ten foot table layered with enough food to feed a small army. From obscure smoked fish and something that looked like caviar to garden fresh berries and home made jam to ham, cheese and eggs cooked as we liked. Stumbling upon a randomly great experience like that vindicates my disorganisation.

A couple of hours drive and another short ferry crossing got us to the small coastal town of Stamsund and we spent the next 4 nights there at a hostel right beside the water. Rowboats were available free of charge, but strong currents and a general lack of coordination ensured that Chris and I never made it very far. Chris returned to the hostel and undertook a different kind of 'boat race', while I convinced a Dutchman to join me on a hike up a nearby mountain in time for sunset (ie. midnight). Although the path was well marked, it was steep, exposed and at one point only a foot wide as it bridged near vertical 200m drops on both sides. It was approximately this point that my Dutch friend decided to turn back. Soon after reaching the summit I was joined by one of Norway's top sport hunters who had literally run up the mountain as a training exercise. He congratulated me on a good climb and casually mentioned that a German woman had slipped off the mountain to her death a couple of years ago. Stories like that have a higher shock value when it's midnight and you're 600m up a rugged mountain. I made a small note to that effect in the summit's guestbook, said a few final prayers and headed carefully back down to the hostel. Our hostel was run by an eccentric Norwegian and like most it was full of interesting people. A group of German dentists provided some classic one liners, none of which are suitable for this pg rated blog. I was rules-lawyered at cards by French girls and had to resort to cheating in order to win. We even met some friendly Italians! The weather turned sour for the next couple of days, with thick cloud and constant rain making the whole place pretty gloomy. Although magnificent in summer, I don't envy people who have to live here all year round. Cyril, A french engineering student, got a lift with us to a campsite on a northern beach. It didn't take an engineer to work out that it wouldn't be so much 'camping' as 'parachuting' and he wisely chose to return with us to the shelter of the hostel. We awoke to better weather, which inspired Chris to actually leave the hostel for a non internet/beer related activity. Climbing the southern island's highest peak took us about 4 hours and we even found a rogaine checkpoint at the top. Although the weather was overcast and slightly hazy, the views were still pretty good. Rain washed out our final full day although we did check out Henningsvaer a quaint fishing village built around a series of canals. The next morning we awoke early, crammed our luggage and a Swiss hitchhiker into the Aygo and drove another hundred magnificent kilometers along the Lofoten coast to catch the mainland ferry.