Aussies on Tour in Norway & Germany: An Overview
Martin and Pam Williams Summer of 2017
Introduction
The detailed, day-by-day account of their journey, the places where they stayed, co-ordinates which also link to a photograph of each stay (they don't use campsites), and distances between stays, is also on this website.
In 2016 Martin and Pam travelled over 10,600 km (6,650 miles) around France in their new motorhome, a Marquis Majestic 125. In 2017 they returned to Norway - a place they decided in 2012 was their new favourite country. The following account covers almost 8 weeks in Norway, their outwards journey across Germany, as well as Scotland later in the holiday. In 4-months away from their Western Australian home they covered almost 13,500 km (8,450 miles). Most of the trip went to plan, but more of that later!!
Links to full descriptions of five of their previous motorhome journeys in Europe (2011 - 2014 and 2016) can be found on this website in Fellow Travellers. Link here to some pictures of their trip and where they stopped overnight.
Martin writes:
Getting to Norway
from the UK
Gone are the days when there was a
ferry from Aberdeen to Bergen. Of course there are UK east coast crossings to
places like the Hook of Holland but they are expensive and it's quite a long
crossing not good when the North Sea is misbehaving and heaving. It might not
be the only thing that's heaving!!
As we wanted to cross Germany at about
the level of Cologne to Dresden along the E4, we drove from our base in Derby
down to Dover and crossed to Calais on the P&O line. That's the same crossing that we used in
2012.
Motorhome Mumblings
There are many advantages to travelling
around in a motorhome especially in Norway. With their constitutional 'Freedom to Roam' there are virtually unlimited safe places to stop, many in
remote arreas with stunning views. Many are near water and you soon get used to
the sound of water, sometimes lapping, sometimes rushing and many times
falling; you are never far from fjords, lakes, rivers, rapids or waterfalls in
Norway; after all it does have five of the world's twenty highest waterfalls.
Finding a flat spot to park for the
night can be a challenge though and in the summer months so can sleeping. As
one drives north the midnight sun poses a problem in terms of getting to sleep,
or even pursuading your brain what time of day it is; is it time to eat we
missed several evening meals, is it really time to sleep?? Our motto was 'make
the best use of the light' it certainly saved on leisure battery use.
Another advantage for us was that our
van is under 6 m in length so on the many ferries we were charged the same as a
car, any longer and the price doubled! Lucky for once that we didn't have bikes on the back!!
So a shorter van and free accommodation
certainly helps to keep costs down in what really is an expensive country.
Cities, Towns or
Villages?
We find that generally motorhomes and
larger conurbations do not mix very well. We normally aim for smaller places and prefer villages to towns and
towns to cities. Many aires (motorhome stops) are outside town and lots of motorhomers cycle in to the centres.
This year we wanted to visit several
larger places across Germany and the list included Cologne, Dresden and
Berlin. We added Eisenach and Erfurt to
link them all together as we traversed the country. Along the way these were two of the many
places celebrating Martin Luther and the 500th anniversary of the
Reformation.
The major centres had surprising
differences and not just in architectural style.
Cologne was unbelievably crowded without any visible police or army
presence we loved the cathedral, the understated St Martin's Church and the
old market area, the sculpture park and the constant barges and tourist boats
up and down the Rhine.
However, we never did find a free
public toilet in the city.
By comparison Brussels, which we
added on the way to Germany, seemed quite empty but it had regular and very
visible army patrols but no obvious police presence. We loved the gardens, the Atomium, Le Grand
Place, the spoken French, the cyclists, the buskers and the Mannekin Pis, which
had been dressed in Chinese costume!! The city had lots of free public toilets.
Photo: Guarding the
'Chinese' Mannequin Pis Statue
Eisenach and Erfurt were pleasant towns both with a Luther
focus; the latter town sported a huge fun run when we were there. It also has a
multitude of towers, the Petersburg Citadel and the big square with the
glorious twin churches of St Severin and St Marys.
When we arrived in Dresden it
looked spectacular in the sunshine and it seemed even less crowded than
Brussels. No army patrols but there was a big police presence; apparently there
was an important political meeting and they'd drafted in police on foot, in
cars, in vans and on horseback. Low-key
but there constantly. We stayed in
Dresden for about 4½ days and we loved it. Some of the modern architecture was
brilliant but the restoration and reconstruction work since the war was
fantastic the castle, opera house, Zwinger, the Frauenkirche and the squares -
a terrific blend of old and new architectures. All the toilets cost 50 Euro
cents even in the shopping centres. We did eventually find a free toilet in the
concert hall.
After side trips to Pirna and Eberswalde
we drove up to Berlin. In the 3
days we were there I don't think we saw anyone in a uniform no police and no
army patrols. Big crowds only at a few
key places, such as the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie and the Reichstag.
It was clean, felt safe and seemed a very livable city which we mostly walked
around with a few trips on the S-Bahn trains. Lots of bikes in evidence, oh and
Trabbies too the Trabant was an East German car with over 3 million being
produced over 30 years.
Photo: 'Berlin loves
you' - Trabbies and bikes
The city is full of fabulous buildings
and monuments our favourites included the above three places and The Wall
Memorial, Museum Island and Gendarmenmarkt with its Concert Hall, French
Cathedral and our favourite, the Dom this church had been fabulously reworked
and rebadged it staged a Bundestag Exhibition of Parliamentary History when
we were there. And it had free toilets.
The Jewish Memorial was unbelievably
moving but our trip to the Charlottenburg Palace was a bit of a waste of
time.
One intriguing thing was the overground
blue pipes that crop up throughout the city apparently they carry ground
water, usually from building sites to storm water drains. Did I say blue? Some
of them were pink!!
Photo: Berlin
Brandenburg Gate
Our German tour ended in Rostock and
Lubeck before we headed up Denmark to Hirtshals and the ferry across to
Kristiansand in Norway.
Norway
Brochures describe a trip to Norway as
a feeling.
We were in Norway and experienced that
feeling for almost 2 months; that is us and about 5Ό million Norwegians and
seemingly tens of thousands of motorhomers up north every 3rd or 4th
vehicle was a motorhome! Many of them local a huge increase since we were
there in 2012 when they were mostly German vans.
It's a big country very long and
thin. We drove over 6,350 km along Norwegian roads arriving and leaving by
ferry from Kristiansand in the south. The furthest north we got was Andenes to the north of the Lofoten
Islands, a drive of about 1,850 km. Until Narvik a lot of the driving was along
the E6 highway. Many people ask us if we got to North Cape. We decided against
going there - it was another 750 km, mostly along the E6, taking at least 11
hrs more driving with quite a few tolls along the way.
The E6 is described in the Lonely
Planet as the Lemming Route suggesting that it is boring. To us it was far from
boring although it is quite busy especially at the southern end.
Norway's roads are amazing and the engineers are constantly pushing the
envelope - they will happily drill through mountains - like the 24.5 km long
tunnel between Aurland and Laerdal; in the summer we prefer to take the Snow
Road over the top; it is closed for most of the year. If the sea is in the
way they add a bridge or a ferry and in many cases they drive sub-sea tunnels
such as at Kristiansund where there is a sub-sea tunnel in and out of town; both
are over 5 km long; very steep descents and steep climbs out! It's a scary
feeling diving into a tunnel when you can see the raging sea alongside! The
country has over 30 sub-sea tunnels. Currently the longest is 9 km long,
although they are driving a 14 km one, with a 25 km long tunnel on the drawing
board!! In addition, the roads are constantly being upgraded in major and very
impressive projects; they just remove large chunks of the mountain.
Photo: Norwegian road
upgrade - E6
National Tourist
Roads
In 2012 we travelled over eight of the
eighteen roads that were originally designated as National Tourist Roads in
2004. In 2017 we repeated some of the
routes including the Trollstigen (106 km), Lofoten (230 km) and Aurlandsfjellet (the 47 km Snow Road). We also added Andoya (58 km) to the north of the Lofoten Islands, The Atlantic Road (36 km) between Kristiansund and Bud, about 200 km of The Helgeland Route of 433 km down the coast and the Gaularfjellet (114 km). They
include some of the most amazing scenery and fabulous lookouts and were some of
the highlights of our visit. Very
highly recommended
So the Roads are
getting busier, right?
We have had long driving holidays in
Europe for many years and one thing that did strike us this year was the big
increase in the number of trucks on the roads, particularly on the German Autobahns. The inside lane always seemed to be a continuous stream of trucks,
almost a vast parking lot at times. It got worse as we moved east with a huge
number of vehicles streaming over the Polish border. 'Logistics' seemed to be
the key word, appearing on every second truck. It seemed that for each load
going from A to B, there was another going from B to A; probably a fundamental universal law there somewhere, action and reaction 21st Century
style. A perverse law of logistics! It didn't feel very logical to us!
Photo: Truck car park
inside lane on the E7 Hamburg
Truck traffic is predicted to grow so
it won't get any easier. They all pay a
toll, so that's obviously little deterrent. The UK
motorways seemed to have caught the same disease, although the Norwegian and
Danish motorways were much emptier. Not sure about French autoroutes we keep
off those as they cost money. The Autobahn
toll for foreign cars will be introduced in 2019 so I'm not sure what we are
going to do then!! One thing that they
should do is sort out the many roads that are closed or that take you off on an
'Umleitung', a deviation it was a bit of a joke at times, although not really
a funny one!
So how did our trip of 13,500 km go,
was it safe? Without incident? Well not
quite .. a couple of days before the end of our two months in Norway on one of
the National Tourist Roads the Rv13 we damaged the back of the van. Well, I backed into someone to avoid a bus
hammering down a narrow section of the road near Lofthus to the north of
Odda. No-one hurt and the van was still
drivable but it did take the edge off the bien κtre somewhat. We headed back to the UK to have the damage
repaired.
The Common What?
The 'Common Market' was created in 1957
and later it morphed into the EEC The European Economic Community - so you
would think that there would be quite a lot of commonality after some 60 years.
Far from it in our experience. Obviously countries want to retain some cultural
identity but when it comes to electrical standards or engineering standards
there seems to be a huge resistance to converging on a single standard.
Take the roads for example. OK the UK will never change to driving on the
right, even if the Swedes did it in the 50's it's a bit late for that. When you
drive from Holland, Germany, Belgium and into France they all have different
colours for road signs, road markings, road conventions and road architecture,
No chance that road rules such as 'priority from the right' are the same across
the continent. Even the traffic light sequence is not consistent. They do agree on the 'STOP' sign; perhaps
that is one good thing! Let's hope they
get it right for self-driving cars!!
The UK still uses miles to measure
distance but fuel is measured in litres. They still have an each-way bet on
milk however which is sold in a pack that looks like 2 litres but is actually
2.272 litres, which is 4 pints!! The
pint bottle of milk is still yes - a pint of milk.
The classic example is LPG. Why is there not one single fitting? In the
UK and in France there are so many different proprietary gas bottles. Different
fittings, different threads etc. This is a big issue for motorhomers you
either carry extra gas bottles with you, or you limit your trip to a time that
matches your gas use for cooking, heating and refrigeration, or you get them
filled which has not been easy until recently. Now at least we have refillable
LPG tanks so you can use autogas bowsers anywhere. But we
still have different autogas connections across the continent .. how come? Autogas is autogas isn't it?!! Apparently not,
so we still have to carry three adaptors.
There is obviously profit in not being
'common'.
When it comes to the basics of life in
a motorhome, filling with water, emptying the grey water and the toilet, it can
be equally crazy. France has loads of
places, Holland virtually none. In Germany it was tough to find such places but
in Denmark every stop on their motorways had fresh water, grey water and black
water dumping frequently an extra facility for caravans too. They also had
designated places for motorhomes to stay overnight on their service areas. Norway has more water than you can poke a
stick at but it was still a bit of a challenge to find places to empty the
toilet as we don't use camp sites.
And then of course there are the common
financial standards with bank cards etc read on .. ..
Too Tech or not
too Tech?
In Australia there is a lot of talk
about the cashless society and mobile cashless payments. There's been a big
move away from ATM use with 75% of retail purchases in Australia using the
PayPass / PayWavecontactless systems.
Norway has always been very advanced in
this area. Five years ago when we paid on any of the many and remote ferries we
just paid with a bank card in a hand-held reader we put our pin number in and
away we go. This year we wanted to buy
broccoli from a street vendor in Laerdal we proffered a large bank note which
the guy could not change. He pulled out
a mobile bank card reader and for 12 Kroner about $1.90, just over one
pound we put our pin number in. In
Germany and in France we could pay in supermarkets by bank card and enter our
pin number but in many places in the UK we had to sign with bank card use no
swipe, no wave and pay and no pin number option. Talk about retro!!
Communication 101
I suppose it's a sign of the times but
everywhere we went there would be someone on a mobile phone. The words 'obsession', 'addiction' and
'fanaticism' spring to mind. It's a holiday, right, so why not take a holiday
from your phone? Facebook, Twitter, Messages, Instagrams, WhatsApp and 'Uncle'
Google! Doesn't anyone worry about where all their information is going? Don't they worry about big brother using
their data?
Photo: A sign of the
times - Communication 101
I have to admit that we did use free wifi for email and WhatsApp to keep in touch with family and friends and
one thing that has improved since we were last in Norway is wifi availability
in the 5 years since we were last in
Norway there are many more places that offer free wifi. So this year we did not need to rely on
McDonalds!! We tended to use the Co-op for wifi, they had shops everywhere and
had excellent high-speed lines. We became 'Co-op guests'. Many of the other
networks seemed much less secure.
In Germany a few cities had areas with
free wifi, shopping centres typically, and Tourist Offices were OK. McDonalds
insisted on sending a code to your phone but it had to be a German phone
number; not much use to us!
E-Cigarettes and
Vaping !!!
Compared with Perth there seemed to be
so many more smokers in evidence and in German cties we even saw cigarette
machines in the street. No plain packaging there (but you have to insert a German ID card which includes date of birth). The other contrast was the
incidence of e-cigarettes and vaping. Whole shops dedicated to them! Totally
banned in Western Australia (where we live) for use and for sale when they
involve nicotine.
Yes Motorhomes are
getting Bigger!
When we are looking for an overnight
stop we generally use the excellent French Camping Car Infos. We are always
surprised that many motorhomers complain on that website that the berths in the
aires are too short. We said earlier
that there are so many more local vans than we saw 5 years ago, and most of
them looked about 7½ metres long. They
just don't seem to sell smaller ones in Norway.
Norway in a
Nutshell !
Yes, Norway did live up to our
expectations, the locals are very friendly and it really is a superb
country. In hindsight, two months there
was probably a bit too long. We had exhausted
the superlatives by the end and we were a bit saturated. The landscapes are
spectacular and so open even when there are houses and farms there don't seem
to be obtrusive fences and barriers, certainly nothing as obscene as the
'asbestos' fences back home in Oz!
One thing that was intriguing was the
way in which fuel prices seemed to vary, a little bit by area, but mostly by
time of day. Of course fuel in Norway
was dearer than any other country that we visited and we kept an eye out for
the cheaper places. Fuel seemed to be
cheaper in the morning and then would shoot up in price. At first we thought we were imagining it but
in Fauske on 10th July we watched it. Diesel was 12.02 Kr/l one
minute and then 14.90 kr/l the next. It was all about timing!!
We did love the precision on the road
signs. Most countries will have a sign saying bends, or sheep, or whatever for
the next 3 km. In Norway the text under
the sign said 0.2 3.2 km so the distance was the same but it doesn't begin
for 200 m!!
There seemed to be lots of charging
points for electric cars, using up all that hydro-power. On so many calm days, there were fabulous reflections in the fiords.
We didn't see much out-of-the-ordinary
wild life: one moose, three dolphin, a sea otter and possibly one sea
eagle. Disappointing really when we
spent so long in wild places.
One thing that did spoil the scenery
was the wrapped hay bales. In most
countries these are 'plain wrapped', as in Scotland, but this year in Norway
they were wrapped in polythene, presumably to keep the hay dry. Some were white, some were black, many were
pink. Yes, I know the reason that they
are pink but they really spoiled the landscape. Really unsubtle.
So,
What did we Learn?
We learned not to trust our SatNav,
again!! We should know by now because we
have used it for 7 years. So many times it took us on 'interesting' routes but
we did see some stylish parts of some cities as a result. The instructions that
we got were challenging at times and some of the junctions were crazy.
Link here to some pictures of our trip and where we stopped overnight.
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