(The years doesn't necessary represent special periods in my travel history, it just seemed convenient to split the paragraphs there.)
My first holidays with my parents were probably just to visit my grandparents or so. Not much fun travelling with a small child, and after all they had just built a house and probably had to spend money on that. However, I think my first trip abroad was in 1978, withmy grandparents. I think we went to Storlien in Sweden, just an hour from their cottage where I probably spent a weekend.
When my youngest brother was just a few months old we went to Sweden. This was in 1981 and I remember a VERY small cottage with two adults, no space and three children, of which at least two were screaming... We went to Sweden, to Östersund and Frösön. There might also have been travels before that, I remember something involving a small caravan (belonging to my grandparents), but that may have been earlier or later.
Between 1982 and 1984 or 1985, I think, we went to Denmark annually. Mostly with tent, staying in 2-3 camping sites along the eastern and later also western coast for 2 or 3 weeks. We usually went by car to Gothenburg or Oslo, and then took the ferry to Fredrikshavn in Denmark.
The Denmark-trip was "repeated" in 1992, the very last vacation made with all of my familiy together. The children (well, I) were simply too old to enjoy this anymore, but I remember enjoying the trip anyway. We stayed in youth hostels, making the trip a bit more comfortable than before (in tents).
Between 1985 and 1991 I travelled very little, since my family built a cottage in the mountains and most of our money and time were spent there. Nice summers, even though I didn't always enjoy them then... We usually went to Sweden for a few days every summer, mostly to buy cheap electronics (walkie-talkies...), firecrackers, Wasa knäckebröd (the round, thin, dry bread), limpor (Swedish white bread), meat (falukorv) and alcohol. After 1992 I was lucky enough to get summer jobs, so I hardly had any vacations at all. Lack of time and money (payment didn't fill up my account until September(!)).
In 1991 I went to Hastings in England for a language camp with my friend Linda. We spent three weeks there, and had a great time, growing quite a bit (mostly mentally). We went by bus and spent 2 days in Paris first. The trip also included trips to London, Dover, Canterbury, Eastbourne and other nice places. And my English really improved :-) (I was able to convince my English teacher that the correct phrase actually IS "don't jump the queue" and not something different.)
In 1994 I was lucky enough to go to a seminar in Strasbourg in France. It was arranged by the International Federation of Liberal and Radical Youth and heavily sponsored by The European Council. The seminar was very interesting, about racism and xenophobia, covering i.e. the later exploding conflict in Rwanda (a country I had hardly heard about at that time..). I met lots of nice people there, from many countries in Europe, Honduras, Columbia, Phillipines etc. The REALLY nice thing about this seminar, however, was that it was just during the days of the Olypic Games at Lillehammer in Norway! As a sports hater it was really great to escape from this :) All I watched was some skating stuff, dubbed into French. Plus an interview with a Japanese ski jumper, done by a Norwegian reported, translated into Japanese by a girl I knew from Norway - with the Norwegian dubbed into French, while we could listen to the Japanese interpretion before we got a Japanese reply and THEN a French dubbing of the Norwegian interpretion. Puh!
(When I was on my way to Strasbourg, France suddenly got a lot of snow. All airports were closed and I was delayed to Strasbourg. I got the chance to visit my friend Alex in France, which was great. I got to Strasbourg the next morning, with lots of snow. The participants at the seminar found the snow very amusing, however, especially those from Columbia, Phillipines and thereabout...)
Later in 1994 I went to Hungary, to Balatonboglar (or something), for another seminar of International Federation of Liberal and Radical Youth, also this one on xenophobia. The trip was great, with lots of bizarre and afterwards maybe scary events.
In 1995 I went to Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Latvia with my civics class at high school. We spent about a week on this journey and visited the parliaments in all four countries (in some of them I had to be the Nice Student(tm), since I was the only one sober enough to ask intelligent questions). We visited a school in Tallinn (.ee), and I met my friend Piret there. We have kept in touch since then and met both in Trondheim and in Estonia.
Between 1995 and 1999 I didn't travel much, mostly due to work and lack of money. The exception was lots of trips to Oslo, both for pleasure and business (political activities), but after a while it doesn't feel like travelling anymore. I also visited Bardufoss in Northern Norway several times.
I however spent all my money on a train ticket and went to Linköping in 1996, to attend Nordic University Computer Club Conference (NUCCC) there. Nice trip, I met my ex-boyfriend Steinar there and we were together until autumn 2001.
We went to Ireland for Easter 1999 and visited Dublin, Galway and Belfast.
During summer 1999 I visited Ecuador, Chile, France, Belgium and Germany.. Here you'll find information about this trip, both about countries and places, my preparations, literature, reports and pictures.
In April 2000 I and some other people from the computer clubs at Uni went to Ă…bo in Finland for NUCCC. We travelled via Oslo, Stockholm and then to Ă…bo, then via Stockholm straight back to Trondheim.
NUCCC 2001 was held in Oslo and that wasn't THAT much of a travel :-)
Summer 2001 I went to Estonia and Germany to visit my friends Piret and Paula. In Estonia I spent most of the time in or around Tallinn, with daytrips to Haapsalu and Helsinki (.fi). In Helsinki we did some sightseeing and I had dinner with Sara and Lotta that I knew from NordiChix. In Germany I mostly relaxed, had lots of coffee, read several books, drank beer, spent a lot of time with Paula and her Chilean friends (they were there to study German) and I spent a couple of days in Karlsruhe, where I also met a Norwegian friend.
Summer 2002 I had four weeks of vacations togeth with Anders. We spent three of them at his cottage in Arendal, and the last one (actually in the middle) in Denmark. We went by ferry from Kristiansand to Hirtshals, and drove to Skagen to find a room for the night. After a lot of searching we finally got one - Skagen is cramped in summer! - and our vacation could start. After Skagen we visited several other places in Denmark - Ă…lborg, Ă…rhus, Randers... before we finally ended up in Copenhagen, where we spent three nights. We drove back through Sweden and the Oslo fjord tunnel.
In February 2003 we went to Ă–stersund for a weekend. We usually go to Sweden several times a year, but this time we stayed for a weekend - usually the trips are only one-day trips.
During summer 2003 we spent a week in Belgium. It was kind of a honeymoon, since we got married a month before, but our main goal was to taste as many beers as possible there. We reached 66, plus about 12 other that we brought home and will taste later. In addition to Belgium we also spent three weeks in the cottage, with day trips in the area. Relaxing!
In 2004 we decided to stay in the cottage during summer to save money, since the situation for me workwise and economically was a bit weak (I was a student).
In 2005 we spent summer in the cottage, but took a week's vacation in September to go to Scotland. I spent a weekend in Belgium in February and a week in Finland in June as part of my M.Sc study. In 2006 we went to Denmark by bike.
During winter 2007 I spent a weekend in England at Bodyflight Bedford, which was great fun and I learned a lot. Later in 2007 I travelled a bit with work, to Amsterdam, Netherlands, and to Paris, France for conferences. Anders came with me to Amsterdam, so it was also a short holiday. Later, in November, we spent a few days in Prague, Czeck Rep.
2008 seems to be a year of grande CO2 emmissions, apparently we need to investigate how to pay for this... In January we went to Belgium to drink beer (a great trip - and this time we made it to about 20 a day, the same as in Czeck and Netherlands last year. An improvement from Belgium 2003, with less than 10 a day :-)), and in March we went to Japan for almost three weeks. Anders was accompanying the third year computer science students as a "professor", and I was his wife :-) We travelled around and saw Tokyo and Kyoto as well as Osaka and Hiroshima. In October I will go to Dubai for a conference. We certainly need to buy a forest...