Moose on the Move!

Note:Hi All! There are a couple of changes in this entry. One is that the links to the photo's now take you to a specific set of our photos for the blog. Click on the photos to see a larger size, add comments etc. Once at the larger size, you can click on "All Sizes" above the photo to view the original size. The other thing is that we have added a couple of links to some small videos we took of us skiing and of New Years Eve in London. Enjoy!

Apparently "SKI" is actually a Norwegian word.


The planning for our Christams trip to Norway began a long time ago and it took a lot of effort to organise the flights, acommodation, transportation, gear hire, skipass and so on.

Luckily for us someone else did all the organising! Thanks a million, Sharon! In fact, Sharon organised the whole thing for eight of us; Sharon, Mark, Ben and Kelly (all friends from Uni in Perth who are living in London at the moment), Hara and Janine (workmates of Mark and Sharon) and Chris and I.

Thursday the 22nd December, Chris and I caught the train from Exeter to London and were met by Ben and Kelly. We stayed at their place that night though none of us slept. The plane was an early one leaving from Stansted at 6:30 on Friday morning. That meant we had to be at the airport at 4:30 and that meant catching a taxi at 3:00. Oh my goodness!

We flew into Oslo Torp (which is actually quite a way from Oslo) and from there caught two buses to get to Oslo Gardemoen. There we were met by the tour operator Norwegian Wood and embarked on the final leg of our journey - a 2 hour bus ride - to get to our hotel in Oyer. It is a tiny place about half an hour north of Lillehammer but the hotel was only about a 600m walk to the base of the moutain.

Despite his intense enthusiasim, the travel time meant that Chris was unable to get 'out on the slopes' on the day that we arrived. He'd have to wait until the following day. We all settled into our rooms and then met in the dining room at the set time for dinner.

Our acommodation was half board which meant that breakfast and dinner were included each day. The hotel was run by a husband and wife team and their faithful entourage of helpers. The manager/owner insited on shaking everyone's hand as they entered the dining room and welcoming us each individually. Then, before dinner was served, all the guests were officially introduced to each of the members of staff, including the manager's "beautiful wife". We noticed over the course of the week that he almost always refered to her as "my beautiful wife".

The next morning (Christmas Eve) we all got up early and went to the base of the mountain to get kitted out. Because Chris and I have done a little bit of skiing before we didn't worry about taking lessons this time but the others each had five lessons booked and they had to meet their classes.

Chris and I headed straight to the smallest green slope on the hill which was just a short button lift ride up the hill. Unfortunately neither of us had ridden a button lift before and didn't realise that we were meant to sit on it. Both of us were worn out from desperately holding on to it with our hands by the time we got to the top and I was thinking there was no way I'd be able to do a whole day of this, let alone a week! On our second run though we worked out (by watching the little kids) how to use it and it turns out to be quite a fun way to get up the hill. It is essentially a rubber disk on a pole that you slip between your legs, you don't sit down but just let it pull you up the hill.

It felt odd to be on skis again and we were both a bit surprised by how uncoordinated we were. We gave the 'baby run' a few goes and then went to the top of the mountain with one of the guys from the tour company. The view from the top was brilliant, I was only going to be up there once though. After a pretty good run down I lost my balance near the bottom and caught myself badly on my right knee. I skied for the rest of the day but by that evening my knee had swollen up quite badly - it looked a little like I had an extra three kneecaps under the skin - and it was quite stiff. Me and skiing, huh?!

In Norway the locals celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. We were given tradional Norwegian food for dinner and the owner told us that most home in Norway would be enjoying the same foods that evening. After dinner the beautiful wife read us a chapter from the bible in English and Norwegian. Then one of the waitresses read us the same chapter in Russian. Cool.

But the fun wasn't over. We were invited to follow the owner and staff into the other room for more tradition. Everyone was invited, kajoled or forced into holding hands and dancing around the Christmas Tree while singing Christmas carols. It was quite delightful but obviously not to everyone's taste. Once everyone was released from this activity (unusual for the English) I heard one woman from Birmingham say to her companion, "Now you know why English families keep their Christmas Tree in the corner of the room!" I'm sure I saw her smiling and laughing while she danced though!

Santa made a visit then, and he was the ugliest Santa any of us had ever seen. He had been borrowed from Paradox (the three piece band that had been playing during the dancing). He was wearing a super cheap Santa suit straight from the packet - you could still see the neat fold marks, and for some reason he was wearing a really scary looking mask. We swapped our own presents in the 'den' a little later and enjoyed the evening together with the rest of our group.

I took the next two days off to rest my knee and took the opportunity to take a few photos of the others on the slopes. They were getting a lot better and there was a lot less time spent on bottoms. Chris went up to the top of the mountain several times and tried a few different runs. Because we were so far north (on a par with Alaska) the sun only managed to get over the horizon for a few hours each day. The ski lifts opened at 9:30 each morning but the sun didn't look in on us until closer to eleven and left again at around three in the afternoon. It was very strange right in the middle of the day to have long shadows all across the snow. It also made telling which way was north a bit tricky.

The weather got colder and we had one day of minus 17 degrees celcius. It's a very odd sensation when your nose hairs freeze and crinkle every time you breath. Your breath collects on your eyelashes and freezes them together, your water bottle is almost solid when you get down from the slope and you have to bash it on the table to get a little drink. And it hurts. You don't notice when you're skiing because you're too busy concentrating but, when you ride the lift and just sit still, any exposed skin burns. Very strange. It's hard to imagine how people lived in this environment before all the modern comforts (like heating) that we have now.

It was amusing over the next few days to watch people coming and going from the dining room in the hotel. As the week progressed various people developed different limps and hobbles - members of our group were among them! Often in the evenings we would sit around talking or playing games and pass around the icepack from knee, to knee, to bottom. Luckily there was an abundance of ice and snow available for icing sore bits.

I was able to get back out on my skis a couple of days after Christmas and managed not to do myself any more damage. It was fabulous. We also took an afternoon off to catch the bus into Lillehammer. If you're interested in buying a reindeer skin for 500 Kroner (about 50 Pounds or 125 Australian dollars) we can tell you where to go. We settled for a key ring with an image of a Moose on it.

The last day and a half of our trip it snowed! Lots and lots of that lovely, big, clumpy, soft, slow-falling, white stuff. It was brilliant. Although a little distracting when it hits you in the face on your way down the hill! But, we loved it!! We made snow angels (some of us more delicately than others), had snowball fights, caught flakes in our mouths and generally behaved like delighted children. Snow really is magical. We've made a short video of our exploits in the snow and the link for it is here. It might take a few minutes for it to download to your computer.

Norway is not far from Denmark and there are a lot of similarities between the two languages. Most Norwegians and Danes can understand each other when each speaks his/her own language. I tried my best to do this and translate various things for the others in the group, unfortunately a lot of it came out sounding like I was just making things up! Also I had some problems with money. Three times I tried to give people behind the counter completely the wrong amount. Chris laughed and said that my bargaining skills are not very good - the woman in the bar didn't look espescially impressed when I tried to give her 109 Kroner instead of the required 190! Oops.


Our final day was the 30th December and after one final walk in the snow that morning we were all loaded back onto the bus to do, in reverse, the long trip we had made on the way there. At least in our favour this time was the decent departure time. We left the hotel at 2pm and had some great connections to get back to Oslo Torp. Here it fell apart a little. Because of the snow, our plane was late arriving, which meant that it was late leaving.

Ours was not the only disrupted flight arriving at Stansted that night, which meant that the baggage collection hall was full with passengers from about 17 flights, all waiting, waiting, waiting. Apparently not everyone was coping too well with the disruption, at one point a somewhat drunk man stumbled through passport control and began bellowing for Duncan and Dorian (whoever they are), he repeated it so many time that it turned into a song, "Duuuncaan! Doriiiaaan! Wheerree aaarre yooooou?". Even from the other side of the hall, where we moved to for a bit more space, we could hear him calling out, "Duuuncaaan! Doriiiaaan! I loooove yoooou!".

After the eventual arrival of our bags and the rigamoral of meeting up with the taxi driver we had organised before we left (the poor guy had been waiting for us for an hour and a half), we finally made it back to Ben and Kelly's place at about 3am. Blah. We could almost have travelled back to Australia in that time!

The last day of the year was a relaxed one. We slept in, enjoyed an amazing breakfast courtesy of Ben, caught the bus to Greenwich where we looked at the markets and had a coffee. That evening we caught up with Sharon and Mark again, and our friends Jess and Jeff and a friend of theirs, Beth. We had dinner in Soho and then fought our way down to the river's edge, via Trafalgar Square. There were so many people out - it was amazing. And a little overwhelming. Spirits were high though and people were generally well behaved and considerate. The fireworks were fabulous and Big Ben tolled through the first few minutes of it. Afterwards the crush was huge. They had closed the closest tube stations so we had to walk a bit further, to a station on the other side of the river. At one point, when the crowd got really thick, I just shuffled along behind Chris, head down, holding onto his hand. Still, people were being pretty good about the whole situation. Here is a link to a short movie of NYE 2005. Again, it might take a few minutes to download.

January 1st, we said good bye to Ben and Kelly and caught the train back to Exeter.
Chris is already planning our next skiing trip. He wants to go again in February!