The Trip Ends. There and back again.

27 August

Dad’s 65^th birthday. Wish I wasn’t in such a remote place, so to wish him a happy birthday. Wish I could’ve arranged some sort of present. It was an ordeal to send him an email from a PSP the other day, but I think it succeeded. Hope he understands.

Verdammt! My Pilot Hi-tecpoint V5 pen just died, meaning I gotta use this shitty pen for a while. [in Berlin: You ask, why the feck did he include that? The pen is magic, case closed.]

28 August

Just got more work that might be on a contract, which means good money over and above what we all thought we’d be going home with.

Plus, I’ve got a computer now - all hassles / hurdles sorted out. Norwegians didn’t need it anymore.

Today we had the leftovers of a wonderful seafood dinner for lunch, then again at dinner, and hopefully again at breakfast.

I was just thinking about how happy I am.

Anyway, it’s 1am. Must sleep.

We burnt our work clothes at the end.






30 August

One more day of work! Can’t believe the month has come to an end. I’ll be going back with €2700 (say profit of €2300) and a free computer. Not bad at all I’d say!

I’m sure tomorrow will be an easy day, a relaxed pace no doubt until we have to pack and get going.

My body is so freakin’ tired and most parts of me are just burnt out. My back has finally started to ache (but not much), my hands are a disaster (can’t even close them into a fist for the first 30 minutes of the day) and my legs take a while to really feel warmed up. I think it was a good month physically—challenging but not crazy. I think I lost a kilo or two, and a bit of the ‘Scottish investment’. I’m the most tanned I’ve ever been.

I think that with all the physical work, it’s keeping me happy too. Never too much time to overanalyze and this type of stuff. I’m happy with everything seen, and everything done this month, as well as everyone met. Per Jørgen Haugan is one strange and funny mothertrucker. I’ll never forget his sigh and in his Norwegian accent: “foaking canaydiahns...”

(San) Fernando is a great guy also. He’s taken great care of us at Krokholmen—feeding us, telling us stories, generally having time to chat and laugh.

Hege, the girl who looks so wrong she’s right. Sometimes she looks very shaggable, but she’s 34 with a 19yr old daughter however. She is also the only female I have seen in weeks.

Per Gørseth is obviously a great guy, though didn’t have enough time to truly get to know him. Perhaps in future years...

Stein’s wife, the half high-caste hindu, half norwegian—we all think that we’d be lucky to have a wife that looks so naturally beautiful when she’s that age. Dignified too.

Døgfin (our concrete foudation boss, and in no way is that close to how to spell his name) was unique. Always saying Yes. “Yesss! Yesss!” and looking like Barry Gibb. Really.

The World War II German artillery bunker. So cool!!

The boat rides to and from work.

The scenery. Mountains, clouds, sunsets.

Magic. Poof!

Bedtime.

1 September

On the road! Turns out the Krokholmen owners were ok with paying us for a full day (yesterday) but only having to work 3 hours. We therefore left at 1.30pm and got a head start on our journey. As a result we made it past the arctic circle tourist attraction and back to the campsite by the waterfall. The stream feeding the waterfall had dried up, so no waterfall, and the riverbank below had receded dramatically. It was a cold night; I woke up a few times because of it. Funny enough, if I was having an interesting dream, I’d wake up warm. (Psyc students in the sleep lab, chew on that). I had a dream where I was playing on the Japanese national football (soccer) team, against South Korea, but all within a facade of Winning Eleven Soccer for the Playstation2. Weird.

I find myself doing 2 things most often now:

i) hoping the car will make it to Sweden and onward

ii) daydreaming about what I will buy when I return to Berlin.

I wish I spoke German already because even the simplest things like price researching requires help.

[In Berlin: In fact, after the cold night and poor sleep, we all decided to just drive straight to the ferry, non-stop, switching drivers as they got tired. We made it to the ferry a day earlier, and boarded that ferry instead, no problems. Also, I had some retribution for complaining about chicken liver pate all month, likening it to an exotic form of dogshit, as when we were waiting for the ferry, there was a homeless man rummaging through the garbages. We went up to him offering a lot of our leftover pate portions (sealed, fresh), to only have him refuse it saying there's no way he'd eat that. Ha! I received no further flak about my aversion to it.]

2 September

Sitting in line to board the ferry in Ystad, Sweden. Going back to Poland, then on to Berlin. We officially divided the money of our trip, and I stand to make a profit of €2300. Very pleased about that for 3.5 weeks’ work. 25 days in a row, 12 hours a day however, but how else would I have spent my August? Slowly pissing my money away in Berliner Kneipen? Norway was brilliant for so many reasons:

i) Wonderful, beautiful scenery! Was a treat just driving through it and camping, etc.

ii) The amazing Krokholmen experience

iii) Making cash, and having the month’s living expenditure be only €300

iv) I’m much thinner. Significant beer gut reduction and hopefully a kickstart to my metabolism.

v) Got a sweet tan

vi) Grew a beard. A big fuckoff red viking one.

vii) Learned alot about myself in ‘conflict’ situations, especially observing Tomek (I see a lot of similarities between us), and now understand when people have called me overly defensive in the past, and why I came to be that way. How people were only 20% as aggressive as I thought they were being. I’d love to sit down with him and explain him some of this stuff, but of course he’d be defensive so to not listen I’d bet. Sorry to everyone who ever tried to tell me anything, with intentions only to help me learn more about myself. (Though still, for all those who tried to map their agendas onto my life, and to those who really tried to get me to conform to completely and utterly arbitrary social standards, my response is still an adamant 'go fuck yourself or kindly think more deeply before speaking'.) [In Berlin: Surely not the readers of this blog!]

viii) Getting to drive a boat to/from work.

ix) Getting to drive an ATV

x) Learning how to make the famous dish ‘White Baccalau’ (People drive for an hour to eat White Baccalau at Krokholmen.)

xi) The feeling of asexuality due to isolation from females. (With exception to Rolf's son's 17yr old girlfriend, who would parade around on the sundeck where we were working beside in her bra and panties, knowing she was killing us.... she wants to be a nurse, go figure.)

xii) The Polish dudes. We had a lot of great great moments together and I hope we stay in touch. We talked a lot of quality bullshit, and now 3 Polish guys have started to say “Don’t forget to brush your dink.” (The fellowship is growing lads, you know who you are.)