The big road trip

Well the first thing I learned about doing a 24 hour road trip is that there's no way you can do live tweeting on the way.

Most obviously, you're driving - a lot. You can't fire off snappy messages. Even if you could you're so tired that they'd just say, "Now in Germany" or something equally pointless. Tiredness is cetainly a problem when you're driving for 24 hours. It's really important that you wait until you're the passenger before you let yourself fall asleep. Also logging onto the internet whilst abroad would have cost me what little I have saved up for arriving in Norway.

So I sent a few tweets and then decided to do a round-up summary blog about it instead. That's what this is.

I had grand plans for taking a picture of a manhole cover in each country. Everybody likes manhole covers, look there's even a blog about them here. However, we only found one interesting one in Oslo with a custom hole cut out of the middle of it for a lampost. Here's the link.

I also wanted to try some elaborate and local roadside dish in each place but we just kept eating ice creams. I did get one thing called a "kipstick" from the Netherlands, it was compressed chicken wrapped in cornflakes. It was nice (ish). Here's a picture of that too.

We managed it though, we drove there, all the way there, non stop in 23 hours. We slept about 2 hours each and the had our pedal to the metal on motorways for the rest of the time.

It was easier on the way back with a lighter van and less stress to deal with (we knew the route by then) but driving through the night on the way there meant no pesky traffic or trucks to deal with.

I've seen all the motorways of Europe from Autobahns to E-Roads and my analysis is: That they're all much the same but with different speed limits. Germany fastest, Norway slowest. Wow - that's the kind of exciting analysis I know you were all hoping for.

Have I learned anything about Europe along they way? No. Not really, only that Europe does feel homogenous, but not with the UK. My British family's insistince on this is a continuous source of annoyance to my European wife but there is a real divide. There's even an article about it in The Economist here. and everything I read in The Economist is always true.

After 2 days solid driving on motorways it starts to feel like the most boring simulator programme on a computer game. Imagine it: Sim-motorway, just hold the wheel steady for 23 hours and then turn around and watch all the same scenery again.

The total cost was about £750 which is £250 cheaper than the cheapest quote I could get for shipping. It was an adventure, an achievement of sorts, and I'm glad I did it. You can do it too using this informative Google map: MAP

Special thanks to my dad: Driver, navigator, co-pilot, reducer of stress, drier of tears. He of the credit card, the only-slightly-out sense of direction, the non-snorer was a constant travelling compaion. In fact, if you do this drive yourself, look him up.

I fly out to Oslo again on Thursday this week.

Then I need a job.