First of all: A big thanks to Hamaca Reiseblogg for nominating us. It brings joy to us that someone has been visiting out blog, even more when we have been noticed, especially when it comes from such a good blog as the Norwegian blog Hamaca Reiseblogg (Hamaca Travel Blog in English). Liebster Award is a recongnizion from bloggers to bloggers and a way of promoting other bloggers. Some different sets of rules float around the mighty interwebs, but the common denominator is that it’s common to answer questions from your nominator and to nominate new blogs. Here are the questions we received from Hamaca Reiseblogg’s article:

1. Which country were you most surprised by when arriving, either positive or negative?

Even though we had read a lot about Cuba before we boarded the airplane, the country took us by surprise; both in a positive and negative manner. When arriving at a new place we usually find something cheap to eat in the evening, like food from a grocery store or a kiosk. But in Cuba we could not locate anything like this. No McDonald’s, Subway, Spar, Walmart, nothing; nor were there any advertisement shops anywhere. Further on we found out that Cuba is as safe as any place can be. We could walk almost anywhere at any time without worrying about theft or other things. It is a very safe country with a very hospitable population. On the other side we discovered that an almost fully state driven country with no competition is not necessarily very efficient. We had to wait 2 hours for out luggage at the airport because there were “loads” of arrivals (3 airplanes at the same time, in Cuba’s largest airport), and exchanging money in the bank took an hour. Not exactly the kind of things you would like to to spend your time doing. However, the bottom line is that Cuba is an amazing place that will most likely surprise most people, regardless of how much you have read about the place in advance.

2. What is the coolest skill you have acquired while travelling?

This must be our ability to do things on the fly and dare to go somewhere without having everything planned for how to get back or further on. We still love planning and keeping things under control, but the wanderlust has allowed us to take a step further outside the comfort zone.

3. Where is the strangest place you have spent the night?

Yotel in New York was quite interesting, they have a luggage robot taking care of your things! Home stay in Cuba was also a unique and exciting experience. But deciding on which place to name as number one was no hard task at all. In Berlin we spent the night in coffins at  Propeller Island City Lodge. As if that was not enough the coffins were placed on top of a labyrinth where you could crawl around, because why not? The hotel was incredibly weird and they offer many different choices of rooms. One has cages to sleep in, another one has beds “hovering” mid-air thanks to clever placement of mirrors and a third room is completely upside down. The bed is in the ceiling, but luckily there are alternative beds under hatches in the floor (or is it the ceiling?) if you have not been able to defy gravity yet, All in all this is one crazy hotel that must be visited.

4. If you could learn a new language right now without any practice, which one would it be and why?

I (Jørn) am trying to learn some Spanish for our around the world trip in two months. It would certainly be easier if I could skip all the practice. Other languages we would like to learn is French and Arabic because it is spoken in so many countries. If you know one of these languages a whole new world of communication opens up in large parts of Africa and/or Asia.

5. Where were you when you felt that you were the furthest away from today’s modern society? 

Viñales in Cuba is by far the least modern society we have experienced. The village is located in one of Cuba’s many national parks, and it is therefore forbidden to have modern machinery here. Among the houses there are some roads with cars, but as soon as you step away from this there are no cars, no noise and you are being taken 200 years back in time. People ride horses to get around and oxen are used to plow the fields. Food is gathered by hand and our alarm clock was a hen.

6. What is your guilty pleasure when travelling?

Standing in line for security check at the airport, seeing someone in front of you looking like typical “travel amateurs” and having this confirmed when the metal detector goes off and their bag is set aside for further inspection. George Clooney sums this up quite well in Up in the Air:

7. What is the stupidest mistake you have made while travelling?

On our way to Cuba we forgot the mobile phone at the hotel, containing both offline maps and Spanish-English dictionary. We shouldn’t be addicted to the phone, but sometimes it is very convenient to have. In the evening we found out that there was no vacancy in any of the hotels and all the buss tickets were solt out. We could not see any taxies either, and we didn’t speak Spanish. What to do? In the end we met a nice older guy wondering if we were going to Santa Clara. That was more or less the exact opposite direction of where we were going, but in a few words of a mixture of Spanish and English we managed to tell that we would offer 50 pesos if he drove us to Havana and not to Santa Clara. At least that is what we hoped we agreed on, as we didn’t really speak the language and the mobile phone with the dictionary app was back in Havana. For the same reason we couldn’t check the map to verify our direction either. After half an hour the driver picked up a girl who spoke both English and Spanish. She translated for us and confirmed that we had agreed on the same thing, luckily. After two hours we were back in Havana and very glad that we managed to get 120 km in a 40 year old Lada in the evening in a country were we do not speak the language. Next time we will bring the phone …

8. Which country do you see yourself living in when you retire, and why?

The US is quite tempting. The idea came from a colleague that was about to retire and said that he is moving to New Mexico. The first thing we thought of was deserts and scenes from Breaking Bad. But it turns out that New Mexico has both mountains and four seasons, just like Norway. So what’s the point of moving to the US if it offers the same as Norway? If we get tired of the winter it’s just a short trip down to hotter areas, and the Caribbean is not far away. When we retire we are going to enjoy life on cruise ships, which as of this writing is surprisingly cheap in the Caribbean. Alternatively Norway is also a good way to retire, as long as we end up nearby an airport, of course …

9. Which object to you regret the most for not having purchased when you were travelling?

Putin-Stalin-Lenin-Matryoshka. This one probably needs an explanation … Matryoshka are the small Russian dolls where you can open one and find a slightly smaller doll inside. When we visited St. Petersburg we did of course see a plethora of people selling these dolls, but we also saw one that sold one painted as Putin. If you opened Putin you found Stalin inside, and Lenin inside that again. We do not look up to these people in any way, but a more Russian memory is hard to find.

10. Which place from your local area do you recommend others to visit? 

As we currently live in Stavanger we have some of the most popular tourist attractions in Norway nearby us. Both the Pulpit Rock and Kjerag have to be mentioned, we wrote about them here. Among places closer to home the Oil Museum in downtown Stavanger is surprisingly good. Of more natural sights Sola Beach is incredibly nice and a sight one would expect to find in warmer places, not along Norway’s west coast.

11. Out of all the places you have visited, if you could have travelled back to one place only, which one would it be?