“​We’re going to turn up in full length trousers, coats and scarfs and they’re going to be sunning in bikinis..."

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​Copenhagen-Oslo

 

      

I was feeling a little rough from my night out with Christine and her friends, but not nearly as rough as I would have if I had drank the equivalent in Shanghai, which begs the questions what in the world are we drinking in Shanghai?! But I had a great time and it was fun to cycle about the city during the course of the evening, something I tried to get others to do in Shanghai but was always dismissed.  There’s also something very surreal about it staying light until 11 pm, I’ve been in this bar for 5 hours surely it should be dark by now?!

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Anyways, after another filling breakfast provided by Christine we set off to go North towards Oslo, where we would  meet up with a few Rally veterans who are heading to the North Cape, including Kit one of the guys we convoyed with for a  bit of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan last year. After another epic bridge and another large fee for crossing said bridge we entered  Sweden.  The area across the straight from Copenhagen, a beautiful city, was rough looking, come on Sweden try harder to impress us!

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The sun was shining but it was freezing, seriously it was cold, nonetheless the Swedes were in full summer beach gear, including one old lady in a particularly fetching bikini catching some rays on a lounger in a car park, really Sweden?  Another thing we’re finding particularly weird/stereotypical in this part of the world is the radio stations.  All the radio stations from the moment we crossed in Holland all seem to share the same playlist, and it’s a really bad selection of music, mostly 80s pop and Michael Jackson, in 4 days we heard that “it must have been love but it’s over now” song 4 times, that’s just inappropriate.

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We decided to stop and have lunch in a beach town just off the highway, lovely and picturesque, full of Swedes in too little clothing and us in not enough, had some sandwiches and realized i we weren’t going to have time to properly stop in Gothenburg on our way to Oslo if we wanted to make it at a decent time as Kit was cooking us dinner, oh well another city we miss, it’s not the first.

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When we arrived in Oslo, lucky yet again to be staying with friends flat in an expensive Scandinavian we were introduced to our two other travel companions, Charlie and Dave.  Both did The Rally last year as well and Dave actually came down to Shanghai with the Yak boys afterwards so Jonathan had met him before.  Kit cooked us a delicious dinner and we chatted about adventures past before the sun finally went down around midnight and we went to bed.