Its autumn time in Norway, which means cabin trips, a trip to the beautiful city Bergen and off course - moose hunting. Thanks to my dad the crazy hunter, Simon got to go to the forests of Østfold, in Rakkestad. A few days earlier my dad shot the biggest moose the hunting team had seen for its entire hunting history of 30 years. Not only did it have an enormous head and horns, but also the biggest moose EYE i have ever seen. The king of the forest is watching us, mohaha...
Thank you and good bye, forest - hello dinner table!
Gotta do what you gotta do..
And that was the last trip the moose had through the forest...
Last weekend it was time to hit the forest again, for a real Norwegian cabin trip. The Norwegian Tourist Organization has 450 cabins all over Norway you can rent. We went and got ourselves a membership and now have one single key for all 450 cabins. Great!! We got in the car late friday night and drove an hour outside of Oslo. I got out the little flash light i normally put on my bike and started our walk into the dark forest towards "Hovinkoia".
We walked past a small little black lake in the foggy forest. I said it was good only one of us had seen the movie "Villmark", where young people on a cabin trips find dead bodies in a lake.
It reminded me of the time we were driving up the coast of Australia. Simon told me about a movie about three friends who were killed by a lunatic exactly on that same trip along Western Australia. Only this time it was I who had seen that scary movie. I had to erase it from my mind. And I had to forget all those scary things Norwegians believe exist in the forest. Trolls, Nøkken (a troll that lives in the lakes and drags you down into the deep, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neck_(water_spirit)) and those other weird creatures you just dont want to meet in the middle of nowhere.
After some time walking back and fourth we finally found all the right blue marks on the trees with my flashlight. It led us to Hovinkoia:
There was no electricity so we had to light up the oven and get all "koselig". The cabin was from 1870, and had two little rooms. The view was a silver lake, shining in the moonlight.
The next day we went on a trip around the area, and paddled around the whole lake in a canoe that belonged to the cabin. On the way back, I saw someone getting closer to the cabin...
There where two people, with plastic bags. We paddled harder, trying to see who they were. On the quiet lake, I could hear them say "There is someone in the cabin!". We paddled even harder and got back to the cabin. Inside, there were two guys, making food and hot chocolate on the oven. "Ehm, are you staying here tonight?" i asked looking at one of the guys who was chewing on a big sandwich. "Yeah, that´s the plan", he replied.
The tourist office told us no one ever went to that cabin. But they also said people didnt have to sign up to use it. In the middle of no where, the only thing we could do was to get cozy together.
The romantic weekend had another little twist. We figured the two buddies werent just fishing friends, but a couple.
We all went out in the wilderness to get away for a weekend, and ended up with each other. Luckily they were nice guys, both teachers. They gave us a little recap of Norwegian history, about the making of our national day and how we got our king.
Handy for the aussie to know, though i don´t think he expected to meet two gay teachers in the middle of nowhere for a history lesson :)
After a cozy weekend we left Hovinkoia, with a lesson learned - do not expect to be alone if you go on a cabin with the tourist organization :) And thanks to our new teacher friend with a new camera, we got ourselves a picture from the memorable weekend:
Now some photos from Bergen, where we went a few weeks ago:
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