Family reunion

Since Thursday (after Tim left on Monday) I have visit from my brother, Florian, and together we had quite a good time so far, which I want to share with you now. After showing him around by foot on Thursday and by car while going dinner driving on Friday, we ended up in Svelgen on Saturday. Svelgen is a little town an hour from Nordfjordeid, somewhere on the other side of the Nordfjord, where four volunteers from the seminar live. It was a quite spontaneous – but great – idea to visit them, which we haven’t done before.

Oleksandr already started his trip early in the morning because he decided to drive with the bike to Svelgen, while Barbara, Florian and me followed with the car later. After almost missing the ferry we forced our aged car through mountains, ice and snow (and a beautiful landscape) – while checking on Oleksandr on the way, who wanted to keep driving with the bike – before finally reaching Svelgen, where Mariam, one of the volunteers, took care of us.

Inside we first had a cup of tea and waited for Oleksandr, who joined us some time later, before Mariam showed us their project in Svelgen, which includes designing a skating hall, but also other places all around. The hall is supposed to be a youth club in near future, but first it needs a lot of improvement and the girls did a great job so far. We also painted and wrote some stuff on the walls, which was awesome. Barbara and me could have stayed for hours, just beautifying the walls with all kinds of things :D

But at some point we had to leave and went shopping, because we didn’t have enough food for all of us. You must now that we weren’t the only ones visiting; Laura – another volunteer from Svelgen – picked Mustafa, Pilar and her boyfriend Juan Carlos from the project in Dale up while we went to the skating hall. So on the whole we were twelve persons who needed to be fed, but we had quite ab big kitchen available (three times as big as ours at least – which is actually not difficult to reach considering the size of our kitchen), so we managed to make food for all ;)

After a little siesta the others wanted to see the skating hall too and Barbara and me continued designing the walls while they had a look around. Afterwards some of us went to a beautiful lake nearby and Juan Carlos even took a quick bath, but I decided that it was too cold with an outside temperature of zero degrees. But hats off to him!

Back at the volunteer’s house we watched a movie altogether while warming up again and finally left after long discussions about staying or not staying till the next day around half past nine to catch the last ferry. On the way it started snowing again and we drove through a literal winter wonderland. We even saw deer, not just a few, but about a hundred of them, grazing in the open countryside all around – it was amazing! They watched us carefully, but didn’t run away and continued grazing after some time, just a few meters away. It was one of these moments where I realize that I am in love with the nature of this country <3

On Sunday Florian, Oleksandr and me decided to drive to Selje after a large pancake meal. Selje is a little town at the west coast, and when we started our trip the weather was quite good (for Norwegian conditions), but then we had a foggy ride through the clouds and snow until we reached our destination. In Selje we walked a bit through the town, along the beach and the coast, but after some time the snowfall became very heavy and we drove back. But still we had a very nice trip; I especially liked the drive through the awesome landscape – although covered with snow. I can only advise you to come to Norway, you won’t regret it, promise :)

It doesn’t matter if it is just a road trip or a hike like the one Florian and me went on today.  It will always be a breathtaking experience one way or another.  Today, from a certain height on, we had to walk through the snow, which became deeper and deeper on our way to the top, but it was actually quite funny to sink in about half a meter here and there, even if it was exhausting. Nevertheless we had a beautiful view over the valley and discovered some new ways further down in another direction, which we took till a viewpoint above Nordfjordeid. On the whole it was a very successful day, in general a very successful time with my brother. We will see what we come up with tomorrow before he leaves in the evening. If the weather will be the way it is forecast I am sure we can think of something ;)

Ha det bra,

Alisa