TRAVEL DIARY
Our trip to Norway (13th - 19th April 2013)
We are Roula, Maria, Panagiotis and Vasilis, the greek group who travelled to Norway with
our teachers Maria Birba, Magda Argyropoulou, Sofia Malesi and Aimilia Nikolakopoulou.
On Sunday morning we flew from Copenhagen to Bergen, Norway. Then we travelled by bus
to reach our final destination, Stemnenstaden camp in Aksdal, Haugesund. Throughout the
journey it was raining heavily but the beauty of fjords made up for the bad weather. When
we arrived at the camp, we were impressed by the beauty of nature in the whole area. We
settled ourselves at the really cosy rooms of the small camp houses and we met the teachers
and the students from Romania. This tiring day ended very deliciously eating pizza at the
summer house of one of the Norwegian teachers.
At breakfast time in the dining room we met the groups of Italy and Croatia. Then a group of
Norwegian students arrived. We introduced ourselves by playing a game and afterwards
with the guidance of the gym teacher of the school we got engaged in various sports
activities. It was a good chance to get warm (the temperature was about 5 degrees) and also
get to know each other. Then we went for a walk to explore the area. It was an amazing,
refreshing walk through a forest ending up to a fjord. In the evening, at the festivities hall, all
the groups presented some of their legends through narration and dramatization, traditional
dances and songs.
We headed for Espevaer, an island northwest of Haugesund. A really picturesque island
with a very interesting story to tell. The story of the ufo-ring. A ring which is said to have
been caused after a tremendously bright flying object landed at that spot on a full moon
night in 1975. Since then grass has never grown inside the ring. Thank God we had no rain
during our hiking to the ufo-ring because rain would have spoilt the fascination of that
unique walk.
After a short visit to the lobster park- a place like fishermen’s museum where we were told
that up to a few decades ago thousands of lobsters were being caught, rain finally made its
appearance. Then we had the local speciality, a salmon soup at the ground floor of a
mansion. Upstairs we could see the rooms of the mansion with traditional furniture and
decoration.
After an early breakfast we had to pack our things and tidy our rooms because that was our
last day at the camp and we were to spend two days with our host families. Then we took
the bus to Bukkoy. There we visited St Olav’s medieval stone church with a big stone
monument next to the church wall. It is called the “Virgin’s Needle” and its distance from
the church wall is only 9.2 cm. The legend says that if the stone ever touches the wall,
Doomsday will come.
Then we made our way to Avaldnes where the Vikingsite is. There was an interesting
reproduction of a typical village of Vikings in a diverse landscape of tall trees, thick
vegetation and a beautiful fiord. The Vikings museum was our next stop. There we had a
very interesting experience. We played a game called “Maktspillet”, a kind of people’s
parliament. We were placed in different groups pretending to be members of different
Vikings families and after we were presented authentic stories from the Middle Ages, we
had to act as judges and make very important decisions.
Back at the camp we met the host families and we were driven to the private homes. It’s an
amazing experience to meet and communicate with people this way!
It was the day we visited Skioldskule. A really spacious school with a lot of facilities. There
we visited different classes and we interacted with Norwegian students and students of
other groups playing vocabulary games in English. We were also presented a dramatization
of a famous fairy tale in Norway called “the Cinderella boy”.
After we had meat soup as lunch at the school dining room, a school assembly took place in
a huge hall. Students and teachers of different grades were waiting for us there, eager to
meet and listen to us about our impressions and thoughts. We had a great time listening to
Norwegian students singing and playing music. School finished at about two and then we
were taken to the host families to have dinner and relax. In the evening we met the other
students at a local youth club, Hippo, where we danced and ate homemade pizza!
The final countdown began. We said goodbye to those kind and hospitable people who
hosted us and then we met our teachers at their hotel in Haugesund. We walked to the bus
station where we took the bus to the airport. We flew to Bergen where we had the chance
to see various sights, visit the Natural History museum and buy souvenirs. Late in the
evening we left Norway from Bergen airport.
Our destination from Bergen was Copenhagen but due to a severe technical problem of the
plane we took another flight to Amsterdam, a city full of life and bikes!
No doubt, it was an eventful and extraordinary trip and a lot of memories will remain lively
in our minds and hearts. One of these was our stay at the camp with the other groups, which
was a great opportunity to communicate with people of a different cultural background but
with so many similarities as well. Those evenings after dinner were full of laughter, music,
singing, dancing and a lot of talking to get to know one another better.