Firstly,
to bask in my clever title i should explain - Å
is pronounced 'aw”. I think “awestruck” is more or less the
best world to describe how you feel in Lofoten and Å is a
museum-piece example of a typical 1900's Lofoten fishing village –
LITERALLY. The youth hostel is located within the Museum town of Å.
My room was above the bakery (a real, working oldschool bakery),
complete with the torturously good smells that come with it. Mmmm i
can still taste the delicious cinnamon buns...
It
was weird staying in a town that wasn't really a town – all it had
was a few residential homes, a corner store-style grocery shop and
the rest was all either museum or accommodation (or a combination of
both). Most of the other people i met were tourists or guys who had
come to Lofoten for a week of pure fishing – you could head out in
the evenings and watch the guys bring in their catch (that was like
Lofoten's version of must-see tv). The receptionist of the hostel
was telling us that the locals have to travel for an hour and a half
if they want to see a movie or do some shopping, and even then the
movies are months behind. Must be a really isolated life.
On
the first evening there i couldn't see anything much else to do but
enjoy the scenery so i headed out to take some snapshots and bumped
into another camera-wielding hosteller – Dave. Dave had driven all
the way to Lofoten from Jersey (UK). That is one hell of a long
drive! He had no other choice though as he is a dialysis patient and
had to carry his heavy machine with him. Was good to meet someone to
“see the sights” with.
The
next day me and Dave went and “did” the only tourist sight A has to offer
– the museum. Despite living in the damn place we still had to
fork out 50nkk for the fluoro yellow stickers to “get into”
the museum. After walking through a grand total of only 6 buildings
with any kind of exhibitions in them, all of which you could easily
just stroll in to (no-one checking tickets), we deemed ourselves to
have been royally ripped off (being a Sunday there weren't even any
guided tours) and went off to another town to do some fjord cruising
instead.
The
ferry cruise round the Reinesfjord (fjord a couple of towns down from
A) exposed me and Dave to yet more absolutely spectacular scenery.
The ferry services a couple of “towns” on the fjord all of which
are picturesquely quaint. One “village” only had one building in
total. A couple of hikers got off there with the intention of
walking to A. They said it so nonchalantly but the only way i could
see of doing that was scaling a very imposing sheer cliff face of a
mountain! What some people will do for fun!?!
The
area would be absolutely amazing to hike through though. It's on my
to-do list.
That
evening – after meeting up with Chistiana and Tanya again (they had
been in another part of Lofoten for a night) – we had a home-cooked
meal of fresh fish (bought from a bunch of German guys who were at
the end of their week long fishing trip), vege, potato mash and udon
noodles with bok chuy (Dave's contribution). The hostel made the
mistake of leaving all the keys to the unoccupied rooms in the doors
so we were using a total of 3 kitchenettes to cook the meal – hee
hee.
