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Reports

During my travels, I received free accommodation for a night in exchange for writing a daily travel diary. This diary documented how I reached my next destination, the hosts who welcomed me, the food I was offered, and other experiences along the way. Below, you will find the archives of these extensive reports. Please note that English is not my native language, and most entries were written quickly, often around midnight. Enjoy!
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Friday, 24 August 2001
--> Oslo (N) 4th day

As I got to bed last night around 3.30 in the morning, it was the twice a week telephone call with Dutch Radio 3FM, which woke me up again at 5.45.

“And how does it feel to be on CNN?” Giel, the deejay, asked.
“It was a very tremendous experience I must say. I knew that Wired.com was going to publish a follow-up about my travels anytime soon, but I had never expected that that article would lead to a live interview with CNN Headline News in Atlanta, Georgia, USA”

After a few minutes, I hung up and fell asleep again.

This morning my host Bjørnar Thomassen and I woke up at 7.30 as Bjørnar had to be at his work before nine.

After breakfast he dropped me off in the center of Oslo (with is funny little Smart car), at the office of Dagbladet, one of the biggest newspapers in Norway. Here I had an appointment with Eugene Laran, a reporter from the paper and a good friend of Bjørnar.

When I met him we first went for a walk through the center, as he had to make some pictures of me at the church were the Norwegian crown prince Haakan weds Mette-Marie, a casual girl from the south of the country, tomorrow.

It will be a big thing, as there has not been a royal wedding since 1968. The stages were set for the televisioncrews and satellite trucks from almost every European television channel are polluting the streets.

I have walked through Oslo before, but this time almost every person I saw had a camera with him and would probably from some press agency.

The country will be going crazy with this wedding. The complete city, from the Grand Hotel on to the Royal Castle is being redecorated with news flowering plants, even the streetpoles got a quick new lick of paint. A lot of celebrities will be here tomorrow, from all over the world, including the Dutch crown prince Alexander and his Argentinean fiancé Maxima.

I had to pose at the church, in front of the castle, at the palace, near fountains and Eugene was clicking away with his digital camera.

After this shooting he interviewed me at the newspaper office. A few hours later the story was already online, including the pictures. It depends on what new news they will have about the wedding on if they will publish the article on Saturday or on coming Monday.

On Monday at noon local time, I will be answering questions by readers (in English) just below that same article at the newspaper office. Remember this, you can join in too. It’s sort of a chat, but just not in streaming media.

Eugene than arranged me a taxi which would take me to Bjørnars office in the west part of town, where he works at a small software development company.

I arrived here just after everybody at the office had their informal lunch, all together on one table. And I was just in time to make myself a view sandwiches.

Just like yesterday, Bjørnar had arranged me a computer with Internet so I could update my website and write reports all afternoon long.

And here it is where I become this computer hooked webfreak. I just start to feel guilty more and more as I am behind in my previous reports at this moment. And it is very exhausting to write it all, because I don’t want to write to you, as this is just a country on this planet. I am in Norway and not many people know much about this country or this part of the world, so why should I not share it with you with some more interesting details.

With the bad luck of having not so much time on the Internet since last Monday, I just had to spent time behind this computer again and update the latest reports. I will be in Norway long enough to see a lot.

Around 5 o’clock the office was deserted, next to Bjørnar and me. Which is very usual for Friday. Bjørnar closed off and we headed back home where the first thing we did was take a nap.

With my shortage of sleep of last night and the half day behind the computer, throwing things out of my mind on the keyboard, I was pretty tired. Just like Bjørnar, who said he had slept bad too and had worked all day at the office.

Around 9pm I woke up as I slept on a mattress on the livingroom floor and I heard my host preparing pizza. With a – for me – non-interesting soccergame on television (Liverpool (UK) vs. Bayern Munchen (Germany)), we drunk beer and ate the pizza.

When we enjoyed the night I delivered him the Letmestayforaday-gift from my previous host Kristina Whöni and her American friend David.

As Kristina is specialised in naildesigns, so Bjørnar got three towel hangers for on the wall. But they were in a shape of curved fingers, so Kristina created nails on it and designed them with glitter and little diamonds. Next to this Bjørnar got a big bottle of Lithuanian beer, which has been forwarded to parties a lot of times. Just because the people who got it as a gift kept on passing it to somebody else as a present, it has never been opened. So now it's Bjørnar's duty to pass it on again to somebody else.

Together with Bjørnar's neighbour we took the bus into town, where we spent a long time in Bohemen, the sports pub of Oslo. With a lot of people speaking Norwegian, I had enough time to look around and see how the complete pub is decorated in flags and banners of famous European soccer clubs.

Here I also met Eugene, the Dabladet reporter, again and he had taken his Swedish colleague Niklas with him. Niklas had heard about my project from Eugene and maybe he can help me out in getting more than the current 4 invitations in neighboring Sweden.

Niklas’ namecard stated that he was a kriminalreporter, which made me curious. He was now in town to cover on the Royal Wedding, but in Sweden he is known as a reporter that unravels the truth of neo-nazis, publishing everything about them including their picture. He already got over 20 death threats at his newspaper office…

From the Bohemen sports bar we walked to Ophelia, a small two floors pub where the pop music was blasting through the speakers. I met friends of Eugene and Bjørnar, whose names I already forgot because they were really difficult Norwegian and I just don’t have that tongue.

The pub closed at 3 o’clock, the time when Bjørnar and I decided to go home. We said goodbye to the people I just had met and took a taxi home.

Yep, I am sleepy, but now its 5 am and I just had to publish todays report right now.

Good night Oslo, I have to see a wedding tomorrow!

Ramon.


In the media today:

* Dagbladet.no (Norwegian): "Reise-Ramon på nett"

* Yahoo News Japan (Japanese)

* Hotwired Japan (Japanese)

* Los Trotamundos: "No hay habitaciones" in magazine log (Spanish).


Where am I at this moment?
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