Our Travels with Rover

    Rover is now snugly tucked away in covered storage in Lillehammer, Norway. We found a plumber who sold us some (unnamed) liquid to use as antifreeze to winterize our plumbing. He assured us it was non-toxic and would do the job. So, having no real alternative, we pumped it in and trust it will work.  

    We keep close track of our spending, and knew after only a few days of travel that this was going to be an expensive trip. And so it proved to be.

    Still, we tried really hard not to be continually converting currency in our heads, and most of the time we succeeded. If we wanted, say, two cups of coffee, we were determined to simply pay the $10-$12 and not let it bother us.

    Or not too much.

Details:

    During our three months of travel, we spent $4900 on food (including wine). This was easily double what it would have cost at home: if we each had a simple sandwich and cup of coffee for lunch, the cost could easily be $25 to $30; an evening restaurant meal with a glass of wine was $80; a 3-liter box of cheap wine $50.

    Campground costs were $2530. This is $12/night more than we paid last year and more than $20/night higher than our first trip, in 2008.

    We were on the road 75 days: 64 nights in campgrounds and 10 in free sites (three in designated motorhome parking, seven in parking lots). The cheapest campground was $19.71 (with only electrical service); the most expensive $66.25 (a large family resort in Norway in high season). We averaged $40 a night, including electricity and shower costs. Nearly every site charged extra for electricity ($3-$7) and many did for showers as well (between $.75 and $1.50 for five minutes of hot water).

    The quality of the campgrounds and facilities was generally very good.  They all had toilet seats, toilet paper and outlets for hair dryers. Only twice did we have access to water at our site; only twice was there a picnic table; only once were we offered our own sewer connection (which we declined as an unnecessary expense). Not every campground could accommodate our waste system, but we had no problem finding places that could: Norway, for instance, has an extensive system of waste stations, all of them well signed, at gas stations and rest stops.

    We always felt safe and even left Rover alone for five days in Helsinki, Finland, while we took a ferry to St. Petersburg, Russia. And the prize for the best campground goes to that campground in Helsinki. Each of its large pitches had both paving and grass, as well as hedges for privacy. Public transportation was right across the street, and the campground’s facilities were good and clean. Rover was there for 9 nights at a cost of $28/night (the price was discounted because of the length of our stay).

    Gasoline cost $3999, an average of $9.30/gallon. The cheapest gas, if we figured it correctly, was in Russia: $4/gallon (but of course we did not have Rover with us to take advantage of it . . . or of the $6/gallon price in Estonia).

    We covered 3542 miles during the three months. Rover gets 10 mpg, partly because even on divided highways we drove no faster than 50 mph (the speed limit in Scandinavia for vehicles our size).

    We spent $71 on LP gas, which we use for cooking, running the refrigerator when we are not plugged in, and the furnace. We filled the tank at the beginning of the trip in Lillehammer and topped it off about a month later; when we put Rover in storage, we still had more than half a tank left. It was not a hot summer, so we actually ran the furnace occasionally for a few minutes, never used the air conditioner, and had blankets on our beds every night.

    One of our largest expense category was $2050 for miscellaneous transportation. This included all buses, taxis, and parking fees, but was primarily the short ferries in Norway and the longer ones from Helsinki to Estonia and from Stockholm to Turku, Finland (this last one was $980 round trip, with Rover, including a private bedroom). 

    We spent another $2050 on museums, churches, tours, boat rides, concerts, etc.

    Internet access came to $150. Sometimes the WiFi was free, at other times cheap . . . and occasionally it was ridiculously expensive. Also, its speed and reliability was often poor (but at least more and more campgrounds are realizing they need to make it available).  

    We spent a lot of money--$6000--before we even left home. These costs included airfare ($1900), the St Petersburg trip ($2070 for the hotel, transport, tours and overnight ferry), RV insurance ($1036) and the previously mentioned Stockholm/Finland ferry.

    Although our expenses were highest in June, which we spent entirely in Norway, one of this trip’s two really good deals was also in Norway: the $561 we paid for storage for Rover in Lillehammer until next April or May. But our greatest surprise--and one we greeted with much relief--was getting home and opening the hospital bills for Susan’s emergency room visits, ambulance ride, four days in isolation, and lab tests: $3061!  And that includes a CT scan! In the US, ten times that amount wouldn’t have surprised us. Even better, our insurance should cover most of it.

    At $1800/week, this was easily our most expensive trip to date. But while that number sounds very big to us, we remind ourselves that our “at home” expenses during these three months were minimal and, had we chosen to stay home in the US, we’d have been spending at least $1000/week anyway.

    Besides all that, having time with our granddaughter is priceless.

    The scenery in Norway was worth a lot, too: there wasn’t a day when we didn’t come over a mountain or out of a tunnel and say, “Wow.” Sometimes it really did take our breath away. The weather was mostly good--cool, never hot, some rain--and we magically managed to avoid being out in the worst of it. The effect of the 20+ hours of daylight is very strange, and we were happy to get further south and later in the year to return to a more normal daylight schedule.

    As always, we were grateful to the people we met who learned to speak English and, particularly this year, were impressed by how very fluent they usually were.

    Other pluses: the coffee in the cafes was excellent; we saw more of the Tour de France than we could have hoped for; and as a result of Susan’s hospitalization, we saw more of the Olympics than we’d expected (although it was in Finnish).

    Rover, our 24RB (Rear Bath) Born Free performed perfectly: she gave us no problems with any of the systems or engine, is freshly equipped with six Michelin tires ($2076 in Norway), and now has 69,793 miles on her odometer.

    18,307 of those miles have been racked up in Europe during 14 months of travel on five trips, but we haven’t yet seen everything we want to. Our tentative plan for next year is to start from Lillehammer a little earlier than June and immediately head south through Sweden into Denmark and Germany (in preparation, David will be taking a refresher German II class through Adult Education). We hope you will come along again.

                                                                      At Oslo's Opera House

    Winding our way west across southern Sweden, we have visited Nora, a small, mostly wooden one-story town, oozing charm, that has not yet burned to the ground. We also visited the castle in Örebro after finding a place to park Rover right alongside its moat in the center of the city. Later we drove just a little further into the town to Wadköping, another old handcraft village. Most of its buildings had been moved from elsewhere in the town to create the place. Unlike other similar places we’ve visited, nearly all of it was open, and it had a large used bookstore with an English section: always a popular find.

     We stayed in Örebro that evening, in a huge resort campground where the receptionist just gave us a 24-hour internet password (even though the sign in the Reception had said we’d be charged for it). The next day we drove south to Kumla, to the largest shopping center in central Sweden, and then on to a shoe factory museum. The parking lots around the shopping centers have always been large and easy to maneuver, but finding parking in the center of these little towns is always a challenge. The shoe factory had its own little place for four cars, and Rover hung out just a bit on to the sidewalk . . . well, about 4 feet.  

     We are finding the still open campgrounds to be the large family-oriented resorts that cater to families during the Swedish vacation period. It seems to have ended in mid-August; in fact, one of the places we stayed at actually had closed down half the camping spots already. We drove on to Lidköping, stayed one night in the rain, and then drove north to the lovely Läckö Slott (Castle) standing out on a point on Vänern lake (and we certainly hope the purists among our readers appreciate the trouble we’ve taken to get the diacritic markings right!) 

All of the detail inside the castle is original--and painted--no gold leaf here. Seeing it was worth driving the 30 miles on a country road. As we got nearer the castle, the path got more and more narrow. It was simply laid out over the terrain, up, down and around, not a tenth of a mile of it straight. But it was a good road just the same, well paved and not too bumpy, even through it offered no passing places.

    We believe we had written earlier that the roads deteriorated when we left Norway and drove into Sweden. We take that back. The Swedish roads have been unfailingly excellent: wide, good shoulders, and well marked. (Of course, they do not have the Norwegian terrain to deal with.) One interesting driving regulation in Sweden calls for slower drivers to pull over when possible to let faster traffic pass. Some of the highways have wide shoulders just for that purpose, marked by broken white lines. The highway we were on today had shoulders sometimes almost the width of another full lane.  We have had to detour on to country roads a few tmes and even those have been adequate and comfortable to drive Rover on.

    When we return to Lillehammer we will have to winterize Rover’s fresh water plumbing system before we consign her to Norway’s dark winter storage. We have been unable to find the nontoxic RV water system antifreeze that is so easily available at home: people here just give us a blank stare when we ask for it. Today we found a RV shop big enough to qualify as Sweden’s equivalent to our Camping World . . . but even they didn’t know what we were asking for. We talked at length to the RV dealer onsite, who told us that the German motorhomes he sells are insulated for winter and that they simply blow the lines out. (He also asked to see Rover and took several pictures.)  We have never done this (and aren’t sure we can find fittings that will work with our half-American, half-European water-and-compressed-air systems), so we’re still hoping we can find antifreeze or an alternative. Vodka, anyone?

    One of the first things we do in a new city is get acquainted with its layout and public transportation. This is particularly important if we have firm deadlines to meet for something, as we did in Helsinki, take-off point for our trip to St Petersburg, Russia. 

    And Helsinki presented some challenges. For one thing, it has more than one harbor, so we needed to determine at which one our ferry to St Petersburg was docked. (It was the west harbor, the same departure point for the day trip we hoped to take later to Tallinn, Estonia.) Also, we learned that the only bus route going from the central station to the harbor ran only about every 15-20 minutes, so timing became even more important. Still, after we’d learned all that, we could relax and explore the town for a couple of days before boarding the ferry: churches, museums, markets, shops and lots of walking, admiring architecture and people-watching (they’re not all blonde in Finland, but almost; and not all tattooed, but nearly so).

    We found it really easy to get around Helsinki. The subway was about a two-minute walk from our very nice campground on the outskirts of town, and a 20-minute ride brought us right to the train station in the center of the city, where there were connections to all the trams and buses.

                                          Helsinki Central Station, designed by Eliel Saarinen, 1919.

Once again we bought day passes so we could hop on and off public transportation as we wanted. They cost about $10 each, less than the cost of three rides.

    Helsinki is the World Design Capital for 2012, and while it is heavily advertised here, we didn’t see that the title made much difference to us tourists. True, we visited a design museum and a showroom of that wonderful simple Scandinavian design, and in the markets there were lots of knitted items, real fur and Baltic amber jewelry . . . but somehow we expected more. Finally, on our last day in the city, we stumbled across an old porcelain factory/design showroom that had shops full of such innovative kitchen ware that we want to throw out everything we own and start over. 

    One of Helsinki’s major challenges is the language: Finnish is impossible for us. For one thing, it tends to add words together. During her stay in the hospital, for instance, Susan learned that Finnish makes “Turkuuniversityhospitalcafeteria” a single word. We can read it if we recognize the four words involved, but put that into Finnish with its K’s and V’s and umlauted vowels and doubled letters of all kinds and it becomes unintelligible. (A few examples:

Because Sweden once controlled Finland, Swedish remains one of the country’s two official languages, so many signs are in both:

Once in a while, they also use English: it’s the default language for the Dutch, Germans, Italians, Asians, and French (who just hate it, you can tell) . . . which is really nice for us.  

    After we’d returned from St Petersburg, we decided to tempt the Seasick Gods once again and took a day trip to Tallinn, Estonia, to visit the old medieval walled city. It was a rough and windy two-hour crossing both ways. As the passengers got off the boat at either end, it was clear that many people take these trips just to stock up on liquor at the duty-free store on the ferry: they come with folding rolling carts and leave with them loaded with cases of vodka, whiskey and wines.

    We walked the cobbled streets of this city’s charming old town district, snapped lots of photos we won’t inflict on you (well, OK, but just one):

and visited a few churches and shops. Every other building is a restaurant; those that aren’t are souvenir shops. It is a popular day-trip destination: close to Helsinki, the old town small enough to see in a day, and, because Estonia is an EU nation, no passport control to slow anybody down (and of course there’s also the duty-free liquor).

    We close with a “small world” story: in St Petersburg, our little canal boat tour group (seven) had included a young couple. Two days later, the male half of the pair was right behind us in line to board the ferry to Helsinki. Then, the day after that, as we left Tallinn, we saw him again, leaning against a doorway, as we made our way through the city wall to the boat. He was as astonished as we were to meet a third time. Apparently it was easier for him--but surely more expensive--to travel to Helsinki and do the “three-days-without-visa” trip to St Petersburg to visit his girlfriend than it would have been to go directly from Tallinn to St Petersburg.

    After four days in an isolation ward, Susan was finally released from the Turku University Hostpital with a functioning digestive system and a box full of antibiotics. (We are not any lighter in the wallet, though; they will send a bill to our home address in the US.) We immediately drove the 100 miles  to Helsinki, got stopped  in an hour-long traffic back up,  and easily found the campground.

    This is quite a nice place with large sites separated by flowering hedges. We immediately did two loads of laundry ($6 to wash, $6 to dry = $24). This was the first time we had been able to fully plug in the electricals since the power problem on the ferry, and we were relieved to find everything working properly. 

    In our limited touring of the city today, we had one really lovely moment.  We had arrived at the Helsiniki (Lutheran) Cathedral just as a short English prayer service was ending. The fifty or so people there, some seated, others milling (quietly) about, still others standing still, received the blessing; and then the pastor invited us to sing together “Now Thank We All Our God.” We may have been the only ones who sang with her, and Susan was certainly the only one who knew all three verses (David almost did). That was the song we sang at our wedding some 45 years ago.

    Tomorrow we leave for four nights on a side trip, by ferry, to St. Petersburg, Russia. Rover and the computer will not be accompanying us, so we want our fans--among whom you, dear reader, are chief--to be aware that we will not be posting for a few days.

    We stopped on the outskirts of Stockholm for two nights in a crowded little campground (“crowded” means we tried to put down our awning to keep out the hot sun, but it hung over the narrow paved road by about 3 feet so we put it right back up again--no British “3 meters between caravans” in Sweden, thank you).

    We picked this spot because we wanted to visit the Drottningholm palace and the Royal Theatre, which were within walking distance of the campground. It proved to be almost an hour’s walk, but a nice one through the forest and around a lake. The palace is the actual residence of the current king and queen, but much of it is open to the public just the same. Its vast grounds were inspired by Versailles, so it was quite spectacular.

    But the real charm was the Royal Theatre. It is 250 years old and had been used regularly for about 100 years until the death of the king who had been its biggest patron. The theatre was then closed down, forgotten for years, and rediscovered only in 1920. 

    Nearly all of it is still in its original, unrestored condition, including painted scenery hundreds of years old. We were able to take a tour but were not allowed to take photographs. The most interesting fact is that scenery onstage can be completely shifted within seconds--and in full view of the audience--by a team of stagehands under the stage. (They accomplish this by turning a large wooden drum, around which ropes, connected to scenic trolleys, wrap and unwrap [got that? any questions? yes, this will be on the test.]) The whole thing was worth the walk . . . but we took the bus back to the campground anyway.

    After Drottningholm, we went to our reserved camping place in the city of Stockholm. Getting to it meant going across a narrow concrete bridge with the GPS (in red) telling us we were a truck and what did we think we were doing, using this bridge? But we could see 60 motorhomes already on the other side, so we went anyway. This campground proved to be another gravel parking lot with motorhomes just lined up in rows. The facilities were OK, except that we had no WiFi for four days. But the bus and subway connections to get to the city center only two miles from us were only a short walk away (when it comes to campground facilities, convenience counts for a lot more than luxury with us).

    According to a brochure we saw, Stockholm has 84 museums; it also has wonderful little--and big--shopping streets. It was a very busy place, and the good weather brought out people by the thousands. Once again we bought the Tourist Card for discounts and free admissions, and immediately set out to get our money’s worth. We visited three or four museums every day, took a boat tour and had guided tours of the National Theatre and the Opera House.

    But the winner was the Vasa Museum. The Vasa was a huge warship built in 1628 and fitted out with 100 or so cannons. On the day it was launched, amid much celebration, with His Majesty the King looking on proudly, the wind filled its sails . . . it listed to one side . . . water poured into the open cannon port holes . . . and it sank to the bottom of the harbor: all this within about 20 minutes.

    It stayed on the bottom for 333 years, until 1961, when it was found by divers and the project to raise it began. This work took two years, but now it is preserved and in a museum, along with all the artifacts that were brought up with it (including several skeletons). Everything but the food, fabrics and some of the wood  had survived: tools, household goods, weapons, even some leather shoes. The museum’s low lighting made for poor photographs, but it was an amazing sight.

    Susan has developed some stomach problems, but they haven’t really slowed us down much. Tomorrow the ferry to Finland will be a time to relax a little.