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GOSSIPS


  • Jiri demonstrates overallsOne can buy special washable overalls for drinking. Students buy them and go in them to the parties. It is easy and handy. They take a shower with a overalls after sobering.

  • There are stopping places with toilets even in the remotest roads in the north. One can find toilet paper there which is brought by a special car every day. I waited for toilet paper in our Prague department's toilet two days after our arrival.

  • You have to have your own bed sheet in the Norse hostels. Otherwise you have to buy it or rent it. The cost was six euros per one. It is simply forbidden to sleep just in a sleeping bag.

  • If you rent a car, check a state of an exhaust pipe. Ours came off already in Stockholm.

  • We visited the proper Finnish sauna. Jakub suddenly exclaimed: "Look at that idiot, he has a cap!" He had it. Later, we caught it. There is enormous heat on higher benches and your ears burn. The cap is against heat. An enlightenment: To the Finnish sauna just with winter caps.

  • All cars in Norse countries have electrical sockets. All parking places are equipped with posts with electrical sockets as well. People connect their cars to those posts at winter nights in order to avoid a freezing of motors. So that they can easily start up in the morning.

  • We can pay with euros even in the Delvita supermarket in the Czech Republic but it is impossible in Sweden (a member of EU).

  • Finns have strange relationship with alcohol. One can buy beer even in one liter bottles. Other alcohol can be bought only in special shops and only before 9 p.m. After that time it can be bought nowhere at all. A bottled beer bought in the pub is obligatorily opened and it can't be taken away. A pub, we had visited in Tampere with Jiri, was interesting because guests sang at the microphone while play-back was playing. The waitress did it too. A strange country.

  • There is no cow or deer on sign "Attention, animals" like in our country, but there are reindeers and elks. I see a cow very rarely on our roads (if some then a biped one), whereas we met reindeers very often on the Norse regions.

  • Tromso is called "Paris of the North". I really don't know. I was in Paris too, but this town has nothing common with it. It is a nice small town, nothing more. The most interesting is perhaps a large radar used for watching auroras. But we got to know about it after our arrival to Oulu.

  • One can see patrolmen in Scandinavia very rarely but if, then it is expensive. They stopped us in Norway. We drove 104 km/h instead of allowed 80 km/h. The policeman said: "Take your driving license and credit card." The current driver had no driver's license and so he used a certificate of registration of other car. The policeman was surprised that he didn't see such a driver's license before but he accepted it. He filled in a paying-in slip for 2500 Norway crowns. Surely, we will pay it as soon as possible.

  • There are "salmon highways" at all waterfalls and dams in the Norse countries. They help fish to achieve springs of rivers where they spawn. They are concrete plates in a cascade in a stream channel. They have holes alternately on the left and right side. Water creates small basins which are not an obstacle for fish.

    Salmon Highway Jakub si připravuje speciální Colu
  • People drink on ferries. Heavily. However, only on dedicated places. Out of these places, you have to camouflage your flame like Jakub on the picture above.