getting to the airport and flying home to austria. nothing else to report... here is the link to all the pictures we took. it was a great trip - thanks for those wonderful days, zombiequeen.

we enjoyed the good beds on the ferry (though the room was a bit loud since we were on the second deck, and below us was the machine room). yet we got up very early because on the information sheet it said breakfast is at 07:00. but once more the timezone tricked us. but - lucky us - the buffet opened at 07:30, and we had a delicious and ample breakfast. then we left the ferry, that did not sink, though there was so much celine dion, and drove to the camping ground we already had booked a place on our first day of our trip. afterwards we drove to town by metro again. this time helsinki was full of people, so just as one would expect it from a capital city. we had a look at the temppeliaukio church, that has been carved from solid rock. afterwards we were shopping since it's summer sale in almost all shops. but we only bought two things. a moomin puppet for zombiequeen in a moomin shop, and a kuroneko plush kitty from an awesome japan manga shop for me. afterwards we drove to the camping ground again and did all the boring stuff that has to be done at the end of a journey. cleaning the inside of the camper, packing our things and preparing the camper for return. this includes refilling the gas cartridge, and the tank. afterwards we were preparing a dinner from the rest of our food, and took a walk.

we got up at about 09:00 today and had breakfast with hanna, her mother, and the children. then we packed our stuff, prepared the camper, and left our "camping ground". at slussen there's a big ferry harbour for the viking line ferries. one of them, namely "mariella" was our ferry. so we checked in after our last few hours in stockholm city. the ferry itself is pretty big. there are (at least) eight floors, a huge park deck for truckers, campers, cars, and motorcycles. to find the deck your vehicle has been parked they used animals, beside a letter. i guess this is that children and analphabetics can find it too. what a coincidence, our animal is a moose! additionally there's a duty free shop. zombiequeen tried some wine and cheese they offer here (of course without being anything afterwards). we are steering along some coast for at least four hours now, and we're still not on the open sea, instead the course is along the archipelago islands. we wonder when we will finally end up on the open sea. for passengers' delight they play some songs on deck. and they played celine dion's "my heart will go on" twice! yes, they dare to play the titanic soundtrack here on the ferry. we really feel better now. well, maybe we don't get the scandinavian humour. if you read this blog entry, we survived (though with surely having a severe celine dion trauma). our cabin is small, but ok. there's even a shower and a toilet included. it's now 21:02 and we have passed the last lighthouse, and are now on the open sea.

second try for the zoo in skansen with hanna and ana-clara. we left the second little child (actually she's a baby) at home at her father and her grandmother. this time it all worked out well and we arrived skansen on a sunny and warm day. as this day was the first without rain but sunshine in stockholm, loads of people were in the city and in skansen too. skansen is a big park, consisting of an amusement park, an open-air museum, and a zoo (and probably much more we've missed). the zoo itself is pretty big with loads of scandinavian animals, like wolverines, lynxes, brown bears, moose (including two baby-moose, and all of them were alive!), seals, peacocks, and many many more. after visiting the zoo we went through the open-air museum. it's similar to maihaugen in lillehammer. so there were a lot of old houses, but this time from sweden. within the open-air museum there was a little amusement park for children too, so we went there. ana-clara had loads of fun there going with merry-go-rounds (one with a horse she could ride, and another one with an airplane she could fly). we had an ice-cream in the meantime. after that hanna and ana-clara drove to town shopping while we paid a visit to the vasa museum. the museum is about the vasa, a ship that was built in 1628 and sank on her maiden voyage in the harbour of stockholm. the ship was lifted in the 50s and was then brought to the museum. the vasa is an impressive big ship and one can walk along the ship on four floors. besides the ship there are always additional exhibitions about building the vasa, people working and dying on the vasa, etc. we both really enjoyed this museum. after that we drove to hanna's house again where we finally met my godfather. we had some barbecue in the garden. he enjoyed austrian wine we brought him, and had a lot of fun. this was a really wonderful and great day.

in the morning we left with hanna, ana-clara, and alice for the zoo in skansen, stockholm. but as soon as we got to the bus station, ana-clara suddenly refused to go there and was crying. so zombiequeen and me went to town alone. but since the weather was not that good for a visit to the zoo, and we said to hanna, that we will retry tomorrow again to go there, we went to the "moderna", a museum about modern art. on the flyer it says something about artwork by picasso, matisse, dali, and other famous artists. but the part of the exhibition about modern art was somehow beyond the comprehension of our sense of art. so we quickly tried to get to the part in the museum where they were showing all those artists named above. but for most of the artists, there was only one painting/picture shown. pretty disappointing, this was definitely not worth the 80SEK (about 8EUR) per person. so we tried the east-asia museum, that is located on the same island, amongst many other museums. the east-asia exhibition was very interesting, and our frustration about the first museum soon disappeared. one main part of the east-asia exhibition is about a photographer that went to a very famous chinese garden and took loads of pictures there. in the 90s another artist tried to find exactly the same places these pictures were taken, trying to preserve the same angle and point of view. thus one could see the changes done to the garden, the landscape, and the vegetation at this location. funny experiment. afterwards we took another walk through the center of stockholm. but since it started to rain (once more), we decided to go home. as the both of us were very tired (i think we are pretty exhausted now after two and a half week of travelling), we relaxed at the house of hanna.

after breakfast we drove to stockholm center. we are currently in aelta, which is about 20mins away from stockholm city by bus. when we have arrived we wanted to go to the "moderna museet", a museum for modern art. our guide says they have some pieces of warhole, picasso, matisse, and others. but unfortunately museums seem to be all closed on monday, so we will do that the day after tomorrow, as we planned a trip to the stockholm zoo with hanna and her two children for tomorrow. instead of going to the museum, we were walking through the center of stockholm, had a look at the "gamla stan" (old town), and were shopping in some shopping centers. we hope the weather will be better than today, because it was really bad weather today. it was raining for most of the time, and there was no sun. this is ok for museums and shopping, but not for zoos or sightseeing.

as planned we have been to the norwegian museum of science and technology. the museum was rather small compared to the technical museum in vienna or munich, yet it was fun and there was loads of stuff to try out. so we pushed loads of buttons, and pull many levers. after the fun stuff came the boring stuff - we drove about 500km eastwards to stockholm. the journey was very exhausting, and lasted about eight hours (we had some coffee breaks). 40km before stockholm there was an accident, so we got stuck in a traffic jam. at about 20:00 we arrived at stockholm, at my godfather's daughters house, where we parked our camper in the garden. the last time i saw hanna, was when she was 12 years old. this was back in 1990, when i had my trip to stockholm. today she has two children, but she still looks just as she did at that time (ok, she more or less looks the same). we will meet my godfather in a few days, since he's busy right now and is currently far away from where we are.

after having spent the night at the most expensive and largest camping site up to now, we bought two oslo passes, that act as a 24 hours ticket for the public transport system, entrance card to approximately 30 museums, free parking ticket within the entire city, discount pass on sight-seeing tours, restaurants, and souvenir-shops. so this actually cheap little piece of paper came in very handy to us, and so we dedicated this day once more to visiting museums. the first one was the munch museum ("the scream"), which contains a broad selection of his works, which were testamentary gifts to the city of oslo by edvard munch. at the entrance we felt like being on an airport, due to all the security checks one had to undergo to enter the museum. no liquids, metal detectors and the like, and x-raying the bags. the exhibition itself was pretty interesting, and there were loads of other people (most likely tourists). afterwards we drove to the oslo reptile park, which was a small collection of living snakes, geckos, lizards, spiders, turtles, and other reptiles. the museum itself was on the fourth floor in an office complex. at first we did not find the entry, as we expected something more like a ... museum-entry. the animals were interesting, but the museum itself actually would have been a bit too expensive in our opinion (65NOK, 6.5EUR), but luckily the entrance was included in our oslo pass. the next and last museum for this day was the vigeland museum. gustav vigeland was a famous sculptor, and the museum showed loads of his works, including sketches and miniature models he used for the original ones later. this "making of" was especially impressive, as most of his sculptures were. his sculpture are spread over the whole town of oslo. we can definitely recommend this museum. unfortunately the natural history museum already had closed, and since we were tired anyway from walking around all day, we decided to go home, go to bed early and make the most of our oslo pass, since it's valid until 12:00 the next day. we planned to go to the norwegian museum of science and technology, and maybe we'll visit the natural history museum too. we'll see.

at about 14:30 we arrived in the olympia town of 1994, lillehammer. lillehammer itself is a rather small town, and the legacy of the olympic games 13 years ago is still everywhere. and of course there's the olympia park with all the nordic sports things like ski jumps, ice-arena, etc. but we preferred the maihaugen open-air museum instead. this museum was founded by a dentist that started to collect various things, like houses, and put them in his garden. soon he lacked space for more houses, so the things were transferred to maihaugen. today there are 150 old houses on 40 hectare. it is divided into several parts, ranging from old rural farm houses, a stav church, a vicarage, and small fishing shacks in one part, to modern buildings in the other part. the most shocking things was an original house from the 1980s. at the entrance door a museum guide, dressed and styled in 80s look, was welcoming us and guided us through the basement of the house. it was as a time-journey, since so many items were familiar to me. i was so impressed, i forgot to take pictures. another part was dedicated to lillehammer from about 1930. original houses like a pharmacy, the post-office, a hairdresser, a bakery, and much more were shown. we left the museum at 17:00, because they were closing it. after spending hours in this really awesome museum we drove on to oslo, about 200km away from lillehammer. just one word about distances here in scandinavia (especially in norway), just in case you wonder why it takes us so long to get from one point to another: the maximum speed is 80, there are no highways. only occasionally the limit is 90km/h, more often the limit is at 60km/h or 70km/h. this results in an estimated duration of e.g. 7.5 hours for 500km, and tomtom does a generous calculation. especially the roads along the fjords are very steep and curvy, so with the camper we rarely drove the maximum speed. but the good thing about the speed limits are, that all kind of vehicles driving, from campers to trucks, are (in theory) able to go at that speed. additionally scandinavian people really drive disciplined (except for some bad manners of mercedes drivers, that seem to be independent to country and nationality). i think the limits make sense, especially in winter, and during summer one can at least enjoy the environment scrolling by - just as we do.

on our way further down norway we encountered the "namsen laksakvarium" (which means: "namsen salmon aquarium"). since zombiequeen did not feel too well this day and it was slightly raining i went there alone. this exhibition was mainly about salmon. how to breed them, how to catch them, how to eat them. additionally it showed an artificial salmon-ladder up the river namsen, right next to the water power plant, and the waterfall right afterwards. unfortunately no salmon was hopping up the ladder, but there was a room with a glass window, where one could see them rest at the end of the ladder, preparing for the next hop. at the restaurant there was an open WLAN, so we put some blog entries online. after that we drove on to trondheim. we finally arrived there at about 16:00. parking fees are tremendously high in scandinavia. one hour cost about 13NOK (1.30EUR). but trondheim was worth it. it's a wonderful, lovely, but small town. everything can be reached by foot within a reasonable time. so we left trondheim after a four hour walk, heading on southwards. three hours later we passed by vang, where we entered a viking burial site, with about 800 grave mourns. the first finds age back to the iron age, and the graveyard has been used by many generations. half an hour later we drove on and were searching for a parking place where we could spend the night. we found one next to a river.