Meeting strangers

On the train to Oslo I sat next to a woman from Denmark who was living in Norway making a living as a traditional Norwegian hand weaver.   I never would have thought this was possible, but apparently there is a moderately large market for hand woven fabrics for national costumes.  Everyone in Norway has a national costume at home which they wear on special occasions such as weddings etc, something like bringing out a kilt for a wedding in New Zealand, I assume.  Her name was Laila and she gave me a link for her website -  www.handveveriet.no.

She was also an interesting person to talk to for the six hour train trip and was reading a book that was a fake travel guide, kind of like a Lonely Planet, which instead of being a guide to a country, was a guide to a world without poverty or environmental damage.  I was intrigued and would have liked to take a closer look, but sadly it was in Norwegian.

When we changed trains she was nice enough to lend me some money to buy some food for lunch, as I had forgotten to get any Swedish krone before the trip, and for some reason the machine wouldn't accept my credit card.  I was impressed by her trust.  I ended up getting a selection of junk food from the little dairy at the station, which included the yummiest chocolate bar I have tried.  It was two layers, one chocolate, one sort of like a slightly more solid Nutella.  Yum!  Disappointingly I've not seen anything similar since.

We said goodbye at the Oslo station, where she helped me find my way.  It was a very pleasant way to spend a day travelling.









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