Spent our first night in Sweden in a layby and realised much later that our clocks were 2 hours out of whack. There seemed to be a lot of activity for 3:30 am!!
Met up with Guy and Cheryl at the camp at Gothenburg. The next day they went east to the Gota Canal and we went on to Oslo. So is Oslo flat? "Yeah is okay" says lady at the Info Centre. So we rode our bikes the 9 km into town - it was downhill all the way. Downhill, like 5% + downhill. Visited the Viking Ship Museum and then the Fram Museum. Both excellent. The Fram ship is complete and on display inside the centre with access to some parts of the interior of the ship. Meanwhile Deborah rode into the city centre and saw the Parliament etc and lots of coffee shops. The ride down took 30 mins and the ride home 90 mins. Even the flat bits on the way home were uphill and getting lost and adding a few km to the trip didn't help.
A truck drove in next to us - and we finally met John and Ann - who we had heard so much about over the last 18 months. Had a long talk at the end of the day and satisfied our curiosity about each other's trucks. They have been travelling for some many weeks now in other parts of Southern Europe. They had already done some of Norway and will be returning with their friends later to do more northern parts.
Also curiously as we were about to leave the Oslo camp, a couple approached us and told us that their son lived at Capalaba in Brisbane and they would be visiting him in September-small world.
From what we can figure out Norwegians are all slim because - they ride, run, walk, ski everywhere and the food is very expensive so they probably can't afford to eat!
Observations from Oslo: first the above comment re exercise applies to all ages, the children walk to school and looked like one adult took 5 or 6 kids so we wondered if there wasn't a roster of some sort, small school kids out on excursion all wear hi-vis safety vests, for a country with such a large bank account the suburban streets of Oslo were pretty average in terms of surface maintenance, we've never seen so many Mercs and other expensive cars in caravan parks.
