Travel Guide to Bod, Norway

Photo: QwertyUSA

Wyndham Wallace shares his adore for a single of Norways lesser-known destinations.

YOU KNOW WHEN YOUVE finished something reticent but consider youve got divided with it, only to find out we havent?

Thats how we feel as we mount in front of a locksmiths in a middle of Bod, northern Norway. Ive got a single days holiday left, as well as Ive lost a pass to a deep-woods cabin a Norwegian crony lent me.

It can easily be replaced, but after half an hour this balmy Saturday afternoon prowling for someone who can provide a brand new one, Ive wound up in front of another sealed door. My only alternative solution is to expostulate dual hours to a cabins owners, a final review not so frustrating as it is embarrassing.

Taped to a bottom of a window, however, is a handwritten note. It seems to offer an puncture number. My call is answered within seconds as well as Im told to wait where we am. Less than a notation after a figure approaches from opposite a street.

Sorry, a man greets me as he reaches a shop. we was just carrying a pint. Now, what can we do for you?

Two mins later, after a smallest of fuss as well as with no hidden charges for this out-of-hours service, Im a unapproachable owners of a pass which will revive entrance to my cabin.

Bod is full of such elementary surprises.

Photo: KaJ22

An Introduction

The first time we visited a city perhaps best known as a end of a line, quite literally a final stop north upon Norways railway network we motionless a sooner we left a better.

I boarded a boat an hour or dual after to a nearby island of Trna as well as a song festival Id come for, still feeling chumped. It was like Id been aiming for Cannes as wel! l as end ed up in a secluded northern English seaside resort. Romanticized ideas of a Arctic competence have been powerful enough to move me to Bod, but they werent going to keep me there a impulse longer than necessary.

This is how many visitors to Bod behave, it seems. The city stays off a categorical traveller trail unless youre docking with a Hurtigruten ferry which follows a seashore from Kirkenes down to Bergen as well as guidebooks have a diseased case for exploring.

But, located halfway in between Trondheim as well as Troms, this settlement of reduction than 50,000 adults as well as a surrounding Bod kommune (municipality) has turn a single of my favourite Norwegian cities.

Photo: bittidjz

Looking Closer

Its a lesson Id never have schooled if it werent for a whale hunters daughter.

This was a nickname we (perhaps patronisingly) bestowed upon a woman we met at Trna, who invited me back a year later. This time we motionless to explore a city as well as a quasi-suburbs as well as countryside.

The heart of a place, we recognised, competence not be glamorous Bod took a single of Norways many brutal hammerings from a German Luftwaffe during a Second World War, with nearly all a buildings bombed as well as after transposed by less-than-attractive concrete blocks but just stairs from a categorical drag a roads have been lined with colourful clapboard houses, their gardens carefully tended behind white picket fences.

It isnt all idyllic, obviouslywhat place is? But a pride a citys inhabitants demonstrate in their hometown was apropos reduction as well as reduction mysterious, as well as a acquire extended to this curious foreigner kept getting warmer.

I was even courted by Norways Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, whilst we took a morning coffee. He was handing out roses campaigning for reelection and, speedy by a whale hu! nters da ughter, stopped to crouch beside me for a picture.

I came here generally to meet you, we joked, dismayed by a ease with which Id been postulated entrance to such a prominent politician.

Really? he asked cautiously.

Photo: Author

No, not really, we laughed as well as forked at my friend.

No minders stepped in to drive him away. Snubbed though hed been, he still smiled for a camera prior to leaving me with my rose. No disbelief he simply thought Id adopted a forthright conversational style of a Northern Norwegians.

While my intrigue sadly didnt final we shouldve passed a rose upon to a object of my affections rsther than than rushing to post my brand new design upon Facebook a mental recall of what Id seen upon this second trip lingered.

2010 noted my third trip to Trna as well as a brand new clarity of laxity with Bod. The following have been my suggestions for anyone looking to get to know a place like we have.

Continue upon to a next page for travel details as well as advice.