Letters from Norway

I happened across an old word document that contains many of the emails that I wrote from my travels in Europe at the tender age of 17.  I wrote the emails to a large group of high school friends.  Much of the content is embarrassing to read even in a dark, empty room, as it is the cringe-worthy ramblings of a precocious and surprisingly cocky, but totally overwhelmed, teenager.  This story, however, gave me a chuckle.  I was traveling with my dear friend Marius, from Bergen, who had been an exchange student to my high school the previous winter.  We had been doing a series of one and two night camping trips in the Lofoten Islands, a place justifiably legendary for its beauty.  

Please bear in mind that this was written shortly after my 18th birthday.  

Me and Marius are on our last night in the Lofotens, camping above the beach outside the town of Kableveg. As we finish setting up the tent we notice two people coming up from the beach, a guy and the first cute girl we`ve seen all week. So we get to talking to them, and I invite them to stay around for a campfire. They don't have time, but the guy says that there is a bar in town that we should check out. We mention that we are both a month too young, but he says that that shouldnt be a problem. We part ways with these two nice people, in all probability, forever. (Kableveg being the metropolis that it is, we see them on the street the next day.)
So we head down to the rocky beach and I build a fire, American Style, with leftover stove gas. We build the fire on a large boulder, taking advantage of the shape of the rock, building the fire in the low spot on the surface of the rock. This way I can simply poor the gas over the wood and the make a trail of gasoline for lighting purposes. WHOOSH and we have the fastest fire we`ve had in 3 weeks. So we sit on the rocks and smoke cigarillos, eat sausage and Melkesjokolade, and drink some fattening, bad tasting, and rather embarassing alcoholic beverage that I imported from Holland, all the while listening to the waves crash against the rocks, watching the boats go by in the distance, and stare at the Northern Lights, the first we've seen all week.
But like all perfect things, we get bored and decide to check out this pub. So we mosey on down there, order a couple of beers, and sit down at a table. The bartender gave us a funny look when we ordered the beers, but we think nothing of it, we`re now busy sitting at a table, smoking Cafe Cremes, and feeling cool. Real cool.
So we finish the beers, and I stand up and say, as much for my benefit as for Marius',
"hey, you want another beer?" and Marius gives a typically non-chalant, "yep."
So I walk up to the bar and decide to mix it up a little, order the same for Marius, but a different one for me. But this new type of beer that I order costs like twice as much, and beer in Norway is already expensive, so I switch gears and the same two beers as before, one that we both agreed was quite smooth. So I take the beers back to the table, pass one to Marius, and we return to being cool, real cool.
I decide, what the hell, I might as well read the label of this beer, its in English, and see what I can learn about it. So I read the label, and stop. Backup, read again. And again.
"Marius," I say, with a certain amount of dread in my voice.
"Yeah?" Marius says in his cool cowboy way, without even looking up. 

"This is non-alcoholic beer." 

Marius` head snaps up and he looks at me with that silent look of alarm that, if you know Marius, you can picture. But then he relaxes and says, "well, you wasted 60 kroners, no big deal."
"No, Marius, this is the same beer."
He denies it, tastes the beer, and says that he can taste the difference between this and real beer. So can I. Now.
So we debate it for a while, but we come to the undeniable conclusion that this is definitely the same beer as before, the implications of which are that we drank a whole non-alcoholic beer each without even noticing. We were destroyed. Crushed. Our manhoods had the white flag up and were in full retreat. We sat for a while, and smoked one, maybe two more Cafe Cremes each, and pondered the implications of our loss. I asked Marius if he wanted another beer.
"Nah," he said, "too expensive."
We weren't really in the anymore mood anyway. Wondering how we could pick up the pieces, we spy two girls our age sitting at a table nearby, so we decided to say hi.
We sat with them for a while, but it became clear that we had nothing in common with these girls. The low-point of the conversation came when a girl at another table sent a silent message to the cell phone of a girl at our table, asking who we were. They obviously knew one another. These girls really weren't even good looking, and so we excused ourselves back to the campfire. This conversation wasn't a defeat, but it was no victory. We scored half a point by calling it off before they did. Ironically, we saw these girls the next day as well -- in a different town.
We walked back to the campfire in silence, still reeling from our defeat and the hands of the non-alcoholic beer. We pondered the possibilities of ever being able to forgive ourselves. But we have an ace in the hole, more gas. We get back to the fire, throw wood on the smoldering coals, and dump on copious quantities of gas. But even a manly activity like throwing gas on a fire isn't salve on our wounds, this is the sort of injury only time can heal. In fact, throwing gas on the fire causes a brief spat between us, mostly because I melted all the stickers off of Marius` water bottle.
As the hours pass and the Cafe Cremes turn to ash, we gradually forget our defeat. We polish off the disgusting alcohol, what we have dubbed the yellow goo, and begin to regain some semblance of dignity. That night, after Marius climbed in the tent, I lounged outside, breathing the air, writing in my journal, and pondering my existence. It was one of those wonderful moments that can only happen when you are alone, but has happened to me quite a lot on this trip since I am alone a lot. The payoffs of traveling alone. I made the first step to recovery at about midnight that night, and with each passing day I make more progress. I hardly even think about it anymore.

Some selected photos from Norway.  These pictures were all taken using something called film.