With a freshly polished skull, Brian arrived in
Stockholm where Johan Hansen, his girlfriend Marianne
and I picked him up. Johan and Marianne gave us both
a first class sightseeing of Stockholm by boat,
car and foot. Midsummer is a huge festivity in Sweden
and we happened to be there that weekend.

Stockholm is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe.
If you have a chance to see it by boat
you are in for a treat.

Viking ship at dock, Brian enjoying himself
on Johan's boat and Stockholm by night...

Some steep streets in Stockholm..

We stayed at Marianne's apartment.
Very centrally located.


After visiting with Johan and Marianne we took the
train from Stockholm to Trollhattan where my
brother lives. He was kind enough to lend us his
red Porsche 928 for the next part
of our adventure.

We drove into Oslo that night, met up with Bjørn
and set course for Stavanger the next day.

It's about an all day drive and Bjørn was going to
meet us at the Stavanger airport that afternoon.

Kongsberg is on the way to Stavanger and as we
got closer it came to me that it might be fun to stop by
and see the Royal silver mines from the 1600s.

I called my friend Christian Berg who used to be a
guide there. He showed up on the spot and gave us
a private tour of the mines.

The mines have the only functioning waterpressured 'elevator' in the world. There are only two of them
and Kongsberg has the only one working.
It goes 300m down into the shaft.

The roads over the mountains from
Oslo to Stavanger were sometimes
extremely narrow.

You'll see the hood of the Porsche and
we had about a foot of clearance
on each side of the car..

And curious obstacles along the way...

Supposedly we had plenty of time to make it over
the mountain to be there for Bjørn's flight arrival...
but we left late, made the unplanned stop in
Kongsberg and after driving for 8 hours over the
mountain we cruised in miraculously at the airport 5
minutes after Bjørn arrived.

On our second day there, no hotel rooms were vacant
because of the World Sand Volleyball Championships.
We ended up sleeping in the park (below)
and got woken up by a lawn mover..

The sole purpose of going to Stavanger was to do the two hour hike up to Prekestolen (right). It's a 2,000 foot cliff going straight into the fjord. The fjords are part of the ocean going deep into the Norwegian mountainside. The cool thing about this cliff is that there are no guard rails and you can walk all the way to the edge.

Tres amigos at the top of Prekestolen (below).

The fjord below Prekestolen (down right).

After two days in Stavanger we started our
drive south towards Kristiansand and
slowly making our way back up to Oslo.

Making it down to Kragerø was one of the
highlights of the trip for me, mainly because it's so
beautiful there. (left)

Then we got to meet up with my brother Roger
(next to Brian) and his friends who were all staying
at Lars' (left) cabin in Nevlunghavn. (below)

I used to go sailing all the time in my teens and
since opportunity presented itself, I borrowed a
windsurfing board and enjoyed myself.

To prove that we were somewhat productive
on this trip... we actually washed the cars -
my brother's silver 996, his red 928 and
Lars' Ferrari Testarossa.

Brian and I stayed at Rica Vicotira downtown
and for some reason this faucet freaked him out
enough for him to take a picture of it.I'm just putting
it in here to remind him of the traumatic expereince...

"Trikkeskinner" is an old and beloved part
of the scenery in Oslo. (below, left)

End of the trip and back on the farm...

We spent the last night at my family's cabin
at Hersjøen, about 50km north of Oslo.

This entrance was built by my dad in the1970s.
Note the moss roof.

Note '07... I'm rebuilding the moss roof this year.