Today I travelled from Vrå in Denmark towards Frederikshavn, where a supportive company had paid a boat ticket to me, going to Oslo in Norway. A nice experience to be on a big boat and sleep in my own cabin.
This morning I had my twice a week phone conversation with the Dutch radio station 3FM at 5.45 am. Therefore I had to be at Mark and Rikke’s home to pick up the call coming in at their home.
The deejay asked me if I wasn’t too much of a web nerd as I use everybody’s computer to write my report, every day. It was difficult to explain him about the urge to make social contact with my hosts and answer their questions. They want to hear about my stories too.
I think I could never enter a strange house and dive behind the Internet immediately. That’s what I am afraid of, that people would remind me as “that guy that used our computer all night”. But it all comes with the responsibility to keep this project going.
At 9.30 everybody at the house was awake. And after a shower it was Mark who made us all sausages with bread for breakfast.
The whole club planned to go out to the beach today, as the weather expectations seemed to be good for today.
Rikke dropped me off at the nearest roundabout near the motorway. When I had no luck in hitchhiking at that point, I first walked a few miles with my backpack down the road until I reached the motorway. I discovered this was the very beginning of the motorway going north, and it was deserted.
The weather was good and I hope the family I just left would enjoy their time at the beach as big clouds were gathering in the sky.
After waiting for an hour I managed to get a ride to the next junction in a truck. There, the road to the east coast would start, taking me all the way to Frederikshavn, where my boat would leave at 6.30pm.
A Danish guy and his father picked me up and brought me all the 35 kilometres to the terminal of the Stena Line boat to Oslo, Norway. I was very lucky with that ride!
I never expected to visit Norway during my Denmark tour, but in Aalborg I got this message that Quizpeople.com was enthusiastic to support me with a free boat ticket to Scandinavia, otherwise it would take a long time for me to get there on any other occasion.
At the check-in desk I announced that I had arranged and the ticket was all ready for me, on the name of Mr. Letmestayforaday.
But as the boat would leave at 6.30pm, I had a complete afternoon free to look around in Frederikshavn.
I walked through the touristy shopping streets of Frederikshavn (a very clean city!) and ended up in the public library where I could use the Internet for free for one hour and I read some latest editions of English newspapers.
Then I saw the Danish newspaper Informatión and saw that a reporter spent one whole column about this project. I remembered that she had interviewed me when I stayed with Mette and Mikael in Fredericia.
Around 5 o’clock I headed back to the departure terminal of the boat.
On 6.30 I boarded the ship and found my personal cabin. Quizpeople even paid for a cabin for four persons, while I was the only person!
It was a small cabin without any windows to see outside, because the row of cabins I was in was in the middle of the ship on the 5th floor. It had a shower and a mirror, all I need.
The boat itself was BIG! I spent a few hours walking around to see everything.
It had totally 8 floors, 3 floors were with sleeping cabins only, than there was also a casino, a grand pub with live music, a disco, three various restaurants (from cheap to very expensive), a playground for children, a comfy captain’s lounge with a piano player and a little movie theatre.
The boat trip cost Quizpeople around 900 Danish Krones (US$ 130), but for that amount of money you are taken from Frederikshavn to Oslo in 14 hours.
However, everything on the boat cost money – and a lot. Probably I am just too much thinking in my own no-budget way (going Dutch) and on the other hand thinking about people who need money much more than I do.
I wrote another day report for this website in my cabin and took a short nap. At 9 o’clock I was already walking on the decks again, looking at the endless North Sea at the horizon.
I decided to bring a visit to the movie theatre this night, as Bridget Jones’ Diary was playing at midnight. Until that time I walked around a lot, from the first floor to the seventh and from the front to the back. I was very interested in life on a ship and I loved to look at people and their extraordinary behaviour when they are on a luxurious ship like this.
In the grand pub called Tiffany’s, a band was playing gold old songs from the 60’s, causing elderly people standing in a traffic jam on their way to the dance floor.
Around midnight I joined a group of 15 youths in the movie theater and really enjoyed Bridget Jones’ Diary. I had not seen that movie yet, but it’s quite a nice fluffy story about this thirty-something lady who want to settle down and searches for the right man. When she thinks the has found him in her boss at her office, her mother introduces him with a ugly looking young man at a Christmas party. Of course, her boss (Hugh Grant) has other ideas about woman while the ugly man confesses to her that he likes her like the way she is. Oh, I just didn’t not tell you too much, did I?
Around 1.30 at night, I wasn’t even tired yet, I walked to the deck where the disco was situated. There I saw the biggest fear of a disc jockey: an empty place. While I talked with the deejay, he told me how this was the first day of the new winter season, but he could not explain the emptiness of this place. He had never seen something like this before, he said.
I went to the upper deck after the deejay treated me with vodka coke, something for a good sleep. It was amazing to see the darkness of the sea and see the trail of the boat in the water. The sky was dark blue, mixed with shady orange colors in between.
Goodnight land of water!
