The Curse of Stavanger

The Curse of Stavanger

I know we have long since departed the Norwegian city of Stavanger, but I also compiled a blog entry for the significant stopover town and never posted it, due mainly to laziness.

If you have forgotten, or not read the entire blog, Stavanger was a beautiful, small harbour city on the west coast of Norway where Wally and I met Jon Cope, a long time friend of Wally's, who joined us for a while in Scandinavia. Up until Stavanger we had felt rain on our skin every day (even though it was summer) since we left our origin town of Braemar in Scotland – over 1 month earlier. It seemed like our luck was changing for the better when we rolled into Stavanger, at least with the weather.

We arrived a day before Jon in order to get jobs done and minimise the time we needed to stay in the city. We serviced our bikes and stocked up on a few different things that are unavailable in small towns, and when we met Jon at the airport he was under the impression that the bike should have also arrived, or would do, within a day or so. That belief was quickly crushed during a phone conversation to the shipping company who couldn't tell us where the bike was, or when it would be arriving in Norway.

This seemed to be a turning point for us. The bike did not arrive for 2 weeks, and within that time there seemed to be a lot of extra things going wrong than previously. Don't get me wrong, we enjoyed glorious weather with long daylight hours, but as far as possessions go (and we only have a limited amount that can travel with us on the bikes), it was quite a disastrous period in our journey.

The first event occurred on a beautiful day while the boys were off climbing a huge slab of rock above one of the fjords. I decided I would go and sit on a nice patch of grass next to the beautiful lake by the camping ground. I took my diary, my book, my music, the computer... yes, the computer, and that's where it all went wrong. I was just settling down on the grass, arranging my bag as a nice back rest when I heard a slight click, barely a crack. I thought it was just one of the buckles on my bag, or a couple of pens bashing each other, so I lay merrily in the non-burning sun and watched the ducks float past and people jogging, thinking I was the luckiest person in the world.

After not using the computer at all while I lay on the grass I was totally deflated when I opened the screen of our little netbook back at camp to see a crack stretching across a large part of the screen. I closed it and re-opened it hoping that it had been my imagination. Then I was convinced that I must be dreaming because I couldn't possibly have broken the screen, I've never broken anything like this before in my whole life, I had too many sisters watching me to be able to properly destroy anything. As I booted up the computer I felt horrible as the images flashed up with a nice black streak through them. The up-side was that you could still use the computer, and even though you couldn't see everything, you could scroll up or down to see what the crack obscured. As I talked to my sister on the internet I felt like screaming and crying at the same time. I was so mad at myself and even after observing the broken screen while I typed away, I still thought that maybe it was a dream and I would wake up soon. Unfortunately, that didn't happen.

When the boys returned Wally was very nice, as I knew he would be, and that made me feel a little better. It did not make me feel better, though, in the following days when they would say 'I can't see the command, there seems to be a crack in the screen'.

I won't bother you with stories about all the mishaps, but there were many other minor things that occurred also. I will list a few of them. To begin with, when Jon went to find his book so he could read before bed, he realised he had left it on the plane. Then when he went to have a shower he realised he had also left his towel somewhere along the way. That was no problem because we had a spare towel that he could use. And use it he did, until he realised he was without it once we'd left Stavanger. He blamed the gypsies for bundling it up with their washing (for more information, read Wally's 'Stranded but sunshine' entry). I'm pretty sure we broke some of our cutlery, and we lost a friends saucepan. My tent managed to get a hole torn in it, the same night that it poured with rain and the tarp managed to trap the water under the tent rather than diverting it away. The last major incident that occurred, the day after the tent breakage, but the day before leaving Stavanger, was when my new watch broke! If you saw it you would say 'that's ok, it's just the strap', but no, my strap is special and isn't stocked in the stores. It needs ordering. Before we stopped riding I tried numerous types of superglue from numerous types of shops, without success (mainly because I couldn't find that stuff we have in Australia that has such strong fumes you can hardly watch whatever it is you're gluing, resulting in your fingers being INSTANTLY stuck together while you're panic stricken trying to figure out the safest way to separate them without ripping your skin off).

So out of all of our possessions that are worth anything, the only things (and most important things) that survived the curse of Stavanger, were the bikes. We rode away from Stavanger, happy to have been able to spend an extended time in such a beautiful city, and also happy that we left before our bikes crumpled into a heap.

We travelled for just under 2 more months after leaving Stavanger, and once we decided to live in northern Germany for the winter, we also decided to send our computer to the German repair facility for our particular brand. We thought this was a wise idea, Germans are so efficient and ... well, that was good enough for us. It soon became apparent that Germans are not so efficient, at least not the German branch of this global company. With an initial quote of just 1 to 2 weeks including postage both ways, we received our computer (with new crack-free screen) almost 2 months after sending it away.

So it seems the curse of Stavanger lingers with the items that suffer there. Still to this day (January 28, 2010) I am not wearing my beautiful 'new' watch. I think it has now been broken for more than half the time I have owned it. After deciding to stop riding during the winter, you would think I had time to order a new strap, months ago. But by the time we had a stable address, we basically worked every day of the week for the few months before Christmas. Now that I am unemployed AND stationary, more than 6 months later, I am very happy to say that a new band has been ordered, and, if the curse is willing to permit it, I should be wearing my 'new' watch again this week.