Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
1. To the North
In winter Hammerfest is a thirty-hour ride by bus from Oslo, though why anyone would want to go there
in winter is a question worth considering. It is on the edge of the world, the northernmost town in Europe, as
far from London as London is from Tunis, a place of dark and brutal winters, where the sun sinks into the
Arctic Ocean in November and does not rise again for ten weeks.
I wanted to see the Northern Lights. Also, I had long harboured a half-formed urge to experience what
life was like in such a remote and forbidding place. Sitting at home in England with a glass of whisky and a
book of maps, this had seemed a capital idea. But now as I picked my way through the grey, late-
December slush of Oslo I was beginning to have my doubts.
Things had not started well. I had overslept at the hotel, missing breakfast, and had to leap into my
clothes. I couldn't find a cab and had to drag my ludicrously overweighted bag eight blocks through slush to
the central bus station. I had had huge difficulty persuading the staff at the Kreditkassen Bank on Karl
Johans Gate to cash sufficient traveller's cheques to pay the extortionate 1,200-kroner bus fare - they
simply could not be made to grasp that the William McGuire Bryson on my passport and the Bill Bryson on
my traveller's cheques were both me - and now here I was arriving at the station two minutes before
departure, breathless and steaming from the endless uphill exertion that is my life, and the girl at the ticket
counter was telling me that she had no record of my reservation.
'This isn't happening,' I said. 'I'm still at home in England enjoying Christmas. Pass me a drop more
port, will you, darling?' Actually, I said, 'There must be some mistake. Please look again.'
The girl studied the passenger manifest. 'No, Mr Bryson, your name is not here.'
But
I
could see it, even upside-down. 'There it is, second from the bottom.'
'No,' the girl decided, 'that says Bernt Bjornson. That's a Norwegian name.'
'It doesn't say Bernt Bjornson. It says Bill Bryson. Look at the loop of the
y
, the two
ls.
Miss, please.' But
she wouldn't have it. 'If I miss this bus when does the next one go?'
'Next week at the same time.'
Oh, splendid.
'Miss, believe me, it says Bill Bryson.'
'No, it doesn't.'
'Miss, look, I've come from England. I'm carrying some medicine that could save a child's life.' She
didn't buy this. 'I want to see the manager.'
'He's in Stavanger.'
'Listen, I made a reservation by telephone. If I don't get on this bus I'm going to write a letter to your
manager that will cast a shadow over your career prospects for the rest of this century.' This clearly did not
alarm her. Then it occurred to me. 'If this Bernt Bjornson doesn't show up, can I have his seat?'
'Sure.'
Why don't I think of these things in the first place and save myself the anguish? 'Thank you', I said, and
lugged my bag outside.
The bus was a large double-decker, like an American Greyhound, but only the front half of the upstairs
had seats and windows. The rest was solid aluminium, covered with a worryingly psychedelic painting of an
intergalactic landscape, like the cover of a pulp science-fiction novel, with the words
EXPRESS
2000
emblazoned across the tail of a comet. For one giddy moment I thought the windowless back end might
contain a kind of dormitory and that at bedtime we would be escorted back there by a stewardess who
would invite us to choose a couchette. I was prepared to pay any amount of money for this option. But I was
mistaken. The back end, and all the space below us, was for freight. Express 2000 was really just a long-
distance lorry with passengers.
We left at exactly noon. I quickly realized that everything about the bus was designed for discomfort. I
was sitting beside the heater, so that while chill draughts teased my upper extremities, my left leg grew so
hot that I could hear the hairs on it crackle. The seats were designed by a dwarf seeking revenge on full-
sized people; there was no other explanation. The young man in front of me put his seat so far back that his
