This all makes it an interesting tourism destination, espeically as Røros is pretty beautiful in winter. The snow, winter decoration and lightning in town give it in that period of the year a unique charm.
For us selling Røros, it is important to know the destination and what it has to offer tourism-wise. Thus Destination Røros had invited us (that is Jana, Michelle, Stéphanie and me) to a little visit beginning of June - and we had a great time!!!
Friday, 8th of June:
We had our flight at 18:15 from Oslo Gardermoen airport to Røros - and I have never been running that fast and much to catch a flight!!!
It was the period of the "vekterstrike", that is when all over Norway kind of everyone employed in the "guard" business was on strike, which of course included also the security guards at the passenger controls at the airports. On top of that it was high season for tourism in Norway implying an even higher passenger traffic at Oslo airport. Not only on the website of Oslo airport, but also in the news it was highly recommended to travellers to be really a lot of time in advance at airports, i.e. not only the advised two hours earlier, because queues for the controls were enooooormous at all Norwegian airports. Dozens of people missed flights all over Norway etc. It was just crazy!
Several times I had told my colleagues that under these conditions we'd have to leave the office earlier than planned if we don't want to miss our flight to Røros. Instead of leaving at 16:30 (the train takes about 25 minutes to the airport) I suggested to leave at 15:00, but they didn't want to listen to me and declared me as "too German" and "exaggerated"... For them 16:00 would have been totally sufficient.
Due to the work load that day and some really last minute "emergencies" we weren't able at all to leave at the planned time. We left the office only at 16:30!!! When we arrived at Oslo airport at 17:00 the departure hall was totally overcrowded as the queues for the security controls were winding it's way through the entire departure hall! They were kind of 10 times longer than usually! For our flight there was no online checkin or self-checkin machine at the airport. So we had to go to the counter to check in and the girl was just laughing when we said our flight would be leaving in 1:20 hours. She thought that was a joke and asked if we hadn't seen the queues and heard about the strike. Nevertheless she emitted our boarding passes and handed them over to us with a smile and an ironic "good luck!".
Once in the queue we were actually moving relatively quickly. We were astonished! However, despite the enormous speed they were processing all those travellers at the controls, we had some thousands passengers before us. Jana and I had already split on two different queues so if one of us would have been quicker that person would have run to the already closing gate to "hold it open" for the other three of us. It was only at 17:57 when I reached the security controls. Once passed I didn't even have time to put the items I had to take off (belt, watch, scarf) back on - I just started runnning like mad. The screen already displayed "gate closing" - and of course our gate was the last last last last last one at the farest end of the long airport! Thus quite some distance to sprint with all the (hand)luggage. However: we eventually made it at very last second, totally sweat and out of breath, though!!!!
Anyways...
Our trip to Røros could start!
Arrival at 18:50 at Røros airport - which is as big as a shoebox!
A pre-ordered taxi brought us to our hotel: Røros Hotel.
The below picture from my room just to show the (sun)light at midnight!
Satruday, 9th of June:
At 9 a.m. we departed to Alaskan Husky Tours where we meet Kjetil, the manager.
He and his team showed us around their camp (including their 4 weeks old puppies) and how to prepare the dogs before going together on a 2,5 hours husky tour on four wheel carts - the summer version of dogsleding in the snow.
Here the 6-months olds!
Kjetil
Stéphanie and Jana busy with harnessing the dogs.
Ready for "take-off"!
12:30 - Departure back to Røros.
13:00 - Site inspection and lunch at Bergstadens Hotel.
"Lauritzen & Bruse" pub
14:30 - We had some time on our own to discover the little town of Røros.
Bachelor party
Lysgård Keramikk - quite "particular" pottery...
For a little break we stopped at this funny, unique place called Frøyas Hus, a 17th century farm house, where we have some coffee and cake in the backyard.
After an hour we met a local guide at the tourist office for an interesting walking tour through Røros, showing us among others the old town and Røros Church.
The local authorities had made some mistake when chosing the front colour of that building. Yes, I absolutely agree!
Getting to the old, historical part of Røros, with houses from the 17th and 18th century. Apparently a little part in one of the "Pippi Longstocking" movies had been filmed in one of those streets.
The guide - can't remember his hame.
Røros Church - is one of the country's largest churches. It was built during the copperwork's golden age in the middle of the 18th century. Røros Copper Works financed the building of the stone church which explains the symbol of the Copper Works put on all sides of the tower wall.
In the late afternoon, after the walking tour, another guide picked us up for a "food safari", a tour with a totally different focus of rather culinary kind.
Once more we ended up in the backyard of Frøyas Hus, which is also part of this tour. They offer typical local food. A look around the little building showed the cosy atmosphere of the café and reveals that they also offer accommodation (well, just two rooms to rent).
Though we were already quite stuffed from all the food, we proceeded straight to Rørosrein for dinner served in a lavvo (=sami tent).
We tried to speed up the dinner a bit as I still wanted to watch Germany's first soccer match in the European Champioship against Portugal!
As I was the only one interested in watching that match I ended up going alone to the local pub where I was no longer alone. It was packed with people starring at the big screens following the match.
This is a picture of our hotel, which I had only taken to show how much light there was still outside when I went back at around 11 p.m.!
Sunday, 10th of June:
The morning started with a walk to Erzscheidergården Hotel, a family run house with cosy rooms, to have some nice breakfast followed by a site inspection.
Later on we met again the local guide from the day before for a guided tour through Rørosmuseet, the mining museum.
At noon it was already time for lunch. After a quick look around the place we had lunch at Kaffestuggu, Røros' oldest café.
After lunch Michelle and Jana already had their transfer to the airport as they had booked an earlier flight back to Oslo than Stéphanie and I.
We two we continued with the guide to the Olavsgrua mine for a guided tour through 300 years of mining history.
By 15:30 we were back in Røros, checked out from the hotel and had our transfer back to big Røros airport.
This was a short, but fantastic trip! In winter this place really must be quite nice as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment