Sorry this one took a little while to come through… I have been in training all this week and never got a chance to tell you about the end of my trip!
So I stayed behind on Friday while everybody else took off for home. I woke up early to have breakfast with a coworker, and then came back to bed to catch up on some sleep. By noon I had gotten my sleepy butt out of bed and out the door to explore the town of Kristiansand.
The hotel was located right in the center of the action, so I just had to step out and start walking.
It was REALLY intimidating to walk around and go into stores where people are speaking a language you don’t understand. It was particularly embarrassing to stop at every clothes rack and pull out my cellphone to calculate the currency conversion. You have no idea how long it took me to finally figure out that I had to divide NOKs by 6 to get USDs. The next step was figuring out how to do div by 6 math in my head quickly! Turns out I couldn’t do it, so I just remembered that 100 NOK were 16 USD, so I just used 16 as my point of reference.
At first I couldn’t, for the life of me, find a store that had reasonable prices. Every store I went into had clothes I could have bought at Old Navy for a crazy $60 or more! I was very discouraged, until I found the wonders of VERA MODA. AWESOME clothes for AWESOME prices, even for USD conversion standards. See the store on the left of the picture above with the purple signs.
After my clothes shopping was done with, I refocused on finding souvenirs. Well, Kristiansand is not known for its touristic attractions, so I had to go into bookstores to find THE shelf that had the souvenirs. I did end up getting a few cool things, including an oversized pen that was SO much fun but I couldn’t think of anybody who would appreciate it as much as I did… so I got it for myself 🙂
Here’s a bit of Norway trivia for you: apparently there are folk stories that involve these freakin’ ugly dwarfs or elves or gnomes or something. They are the ugliest things you’ll ever see. How would you feel if someone brought you an ugly little gnome to put on your fridge from a wonderfully exotic place as Norway? They are just awful looking little dudes.
During my search for the perfect souvenirs, I walked around and found the center of town (see the church and fountain) and learned about the the historic Kristiansand fort (known as Fort Christiansholm – see picture). I also found out that some kind of volleyball championship was going on. I didn’t stick around to see it… but it was good to know it was going on.
Now, this is the craziest part of my lone stroll in Kristiansand. As I was taking some cool pictures (of myself), I saw a couple of Norwegians bathing in the freezing canal water and some tourists taking pictures of them. I thought they were funny and wanted to take their picture, but they were out of the water by the time I got my camera ready, so I went back to taking pix of myself.
As I was doing that, the 2 Norwegian dudes tried to bomb one of my pictures by jumping in a funny way behind me. The picture didn’t capture it, so I called them over and asked them to do that again. This time, we counted 1, 2 and 3! And this is what I got:
They were good sports. I showed them the picture afterward and they were very proud of themselves for such a funny outcome. I told them I would call this picture “Crazy Norwegians.” Now, that’s what I call a great travel story 🙂
On my walk back to the hotel I saw an exhibit of sand castles (or figures). They were AMAZING and very very large! Check these out:
I’ll close out the Norway trip with one last anecdote. I decided to have Mexican food for lunch. After all, Norwegian Mexican food HAD to be tried! So I found a little place called “Amigos” and ventured in. I had the chicken burrito. I was surprised that it came with a salad (you don’t see that very often). I was even more surprised when the check came. My burrito cost $37!!!!!!!!!!!!! And it wasn’t a fancy place, either!!!
I found out that taxes in Norway are CRAZY. That is the reason why they don’t tend to tip waiters or taxi drivers: they are already paying out the wazoo! Income tax is 50% and everything else gets also heavily taxed. It’s just crazy. No wonder I couldn’t find a store with reasonable prices. It almost makes me wonder if VERA MODA is making any money at all!
I’ll leave you with one last thing: a high fashion ad I saw through a store window. I just thought it was funny 🙂
ina