Alesund. Part 0. Prehistory of dream.
WARNING. this is not travel guide. it's boring story of _silly_ dream. get over it - you might learn nothing from it if you'r not someone I know.
prehistory
When I was 11-13 y old it looked like I'd never travel somewhere far. It looked unreachable for school boy from Belarus' labor family.
Anyway most popular places on Earth weren't looking so magnetic on Google Earth, which was just launched as separate app around 2005.
Thanx for parents who decided instead of me to send me to an english-learning first grade and who fulfilled brothers dream about PC which were very rare in our town. Especially with internet.
As unusual teenager, listening 'strange rude mad' Linkin Park instead of dumb russian pop, the first site I've visited in the Internet was linkinpark.com
There were lots of same teenagers from all over the world and I started discovering unknown destination with people I met there. We used typical "asl?"(age sex land) as very basic question to learn about each other.
That's how I met Hanne - a girl from Alesund in something around year 2003. As usual - I started googling what place is it.
when dream has born
There were very few pictures of Alesund in the internet. I never new about wikipedia back then. And Google earth 12 years ago could only show a dot on blurry map of western Norway. Maybe that's what made this place more mysterious and desired.
I had to forget about it. I couldn't imagine in which magic consequences I'll be able to go there, assuming I’ve never been anywhere except granny's county.
here comes the Denmark
How the hell could be Denmark related?
In year 2009 I was in another annual summer camp I starteg joining in 2004 thanks to Vaskirka, Lizun, Haciok and all our old good crew.
Suddenly Maj and Laura - two great Danish girls joined us. Discussing how is it possible to travel cheap around the Europe we came to my old unreachable dream. They were the first who told me about Couchsurfing and low-fares. And it was the first hope to see it one day.
When I came home from this camp, I immediately registered at couchsurfing aaand. Thats all.
developing of online search
Autumn to autumn I was checking what's new in the internet about searching routes to Alesund.
First promising route was to go Grodno-Bialystok-Gdansk-(ferry)-Sweden-(buses search please?)-Oslo-Alesund.
Still no luck with last pace. But Max Luhouski was ready to join me in this ride and at least i knew there's always someone to join me.
look - it's possible!
When I married Anya, and we started planing of our first vacations together, we discovered more about low-cost flights, thanks to Max and Katrinn. Year 2012. We were so naive thinking we could go through several destinations like Poland-Norway-Berlin. But while planing trip for the first time we couldn't find affordable fares to Norway.
Here we need to thank Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite. Someone took photo of her in Wizzair flight.
Wizzair was one damn low-cost flying DIRECTLY to Alesund. And we missed it while searching for low-cost flights. Aaaand we've already bought all tickets for our vacations.
Here we go. I was sure it's possible! We had just to plan it in our year budget.
we bought tickets
year 2014. Another autumn. Anya randomly discovered something about Tromso and offered to go to Norway someday like Vilnius-Alesund-Tromso-Oslo-Vilnius. Why not February. Calculations of flights via local airlines showed that we'd better go for few days to Alesund and enjoy it's surrounding.
Connection with Hanne was lost between chat in ~2005 and facebook in ~2012. But hey. We're gonna meet soon. After some 12 years.
Go to eyeslost.livejournal.com to find next part with pictures and stuff.
prehistory
When I was 11-13 y old it looked like I'd never travel somewhere far. It looked unreachable for school boy from Belarus' labor family.
Anyway most popular places on Earth weren't looking so magnetic on Google Earth, which was just launched as separate app around 2005.
Thanx for parents who decided instead of me to send me to an english-learning first grade and who fulfilled brothers dream about PC which were very rare in our town. Especially with internet.
As unusual teenager, listening 'strange rude mad' Linkin Park instead of dumb russian pop, the first site I've visited in the Internet was linkinpark.com
There were lots of same teenagers from all over the world and I started discovering unknown destination with people I met there. We used typical "asl?"(age sex land) as very basic question to learn about each other.
That's how I met Hanne - a girl from Alesund in something around year 2003. As usual - I started googling what place is it.
when dream has born
There were very few pictures of Alesund in the internet. I never new about wikipedia back then. And Google earth 12 years ago could only show a dot on blurry map of western Norway. Maybe that's what made this place more mysterious and desired.
I had to forget about it. I couldn't imagine in which magic consequences I'll be able to go there, assuming I’ve never been anywhere except granny's county.
here comes the Denmark
How the hell could be Denmark related?
In year 2009 I was in another annual summer camp I starteg joining in 2004 thanks to Vaskirka, Lizun, Haciok and all our old good crew.
Suddenly Maj and Laura - two great Danish girls joined us. Discussing how is it possible to travel cheap around the Europe we came to my old unreachable dream. They were the first who told me about Couchsurfing and low-fares. And it was the first hope to see it one day.
When I came home from this camp, I immediately registered at couchsurfing aaand. Thats all.
developing of online search
Autumn to autumn I was checking what's new in the internet about searching routes to Alesund.
First promising route was to go Grodno-Bialystok-Gdansk-(ferry)-Sweden-(buses search please?)-Oslo-Alesund.
Still no luck with last pace. But Max Luhouski was ready to join me in this ride and at least i knew there's always someone to join me.
look - it's possible!
When I married Anya, and we started planing of our first vacations together, we discovered more about low-cost flights, thanks to Max and Katrinn. Year 2012. We were so naive thinking we could go through several destinations like Poland-Norway-Berlin. But while planing trip for the first time we couldn't find affordable fares to Norway.
Here we need to thank Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite. Someone took photo of her in Wizzair flight.
Wizzair was one damn low-cost flying DIRECTLY to Alesund. And we missed it while searching for low-cost flights. Aaaand we've already bought all tickets for our vacations.
Here we go. I was sure it's possible! We had just to plan it in our year budget.
we bought tickets
year 2014. Another autumn. Anya randomly discovered something about Tromso and offered to go to Norway someday like Vilnius-Alesund-Tromso-Oslo-Vilnius. Why not February. Calculations of flights via local airlines showed that we'd better go for few days to Alesund and enjoy it's surrounding.
Connection with Hanne was lost between chat in ~2005 and facebook in ~2012. But hey. We're gonna meet soon. After some 12 years.
Go to eyeslost.livejournal.com to find next part with pictures and stuff.