Norway: Tromsø and the Lofoten

I know I haven't posted about Copenhagen yet, but I have so many pictures from that weekend that I've been procrastinating going through and organizing them into a coherent blog post. So, until I do that, you'll have to be satisfied with a post about my weekend in northern Norway with my roommate and three other Germans. For the weekend, we rented a cabin at the Lofoten and a car to get us there.

After a five hour drive to Oslo and a two hour flight to Tromso, we got in our Hertz rent-a-car and began our trek to the Lofoten, an archipelago located in northwest Norway. This should give you an idea of where we were at:

Since the trip from Tromso was a seven hour marathon drive - and because one of the Germans, Jonathan, had "keine blase" and needed to take bathroom breaks every hour and a half - we made quite a few stops along the way. This was, more or less, what most of the way looked like:

And of course we had to stop and pick up ~~a couple of cases of local beer~~ some basic survival supplies for the cabin:

After what I would say is Way Too Much Time In The Car With Four Germans, we were able to find, in the pitch dark of 5:00 pm in northern Norway, the cabin we rented. Here is the cabin:

And the view from the deck:

After getting up bright and early to greet the day and take advantage of what limited sunlight we would have, we set out for Reine for some hiking and to explore the end of the Lofoten. Some highlights from our stops along the way:

A friend we made while snapping pictures

I was told I had to strike a pose

The Germans, (L-R: Jonathan, David, Matthias, and Simon) with Simon showing us how it's done

David and Simon taking in some Norwegian surfers

We were eventually able to pry David away from watching the surfers and made it to Reine, a town near the end of the Lofoten where there is a two to three hour hiking trail that offers a view of the town. Here's a shot of the town from below and one from the top:

After the hike, we headed back to the cabin for a nice quiet night of studying and schoolwork and absolutely no drinking whatsoever. We were hoping to be able to catch a view of the northern lights while in the north, but the weather did not cooperate as it was cloudy each night. The rest of the stay at the Lofoten was uneventful and after another round of Way Too Much Time In The Car With Four Germans, we arrived back in Tromso to explore the city for a day before heading back to Oslo and then Kristiansand. Here's the main square in Tromso - somebody put their mittens on the end of the statue's spear:

We pretty much just killed the eight or so hours before our flight back to Oslo. I wanted to check out one of the record stores but was bummed to discover that it was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, though my wallet was happy. We hit up the Polar Museum before heading to a pizza buffet where we all ate a regrettable amount of pizza in an effort to get our money's worth: