What I like most about Norway?

What I like most about Norway?

Egalitarian social system.

Very nice people (most of the time).

High standard of living.

Alcohol policy... NOT! :) (I can't buy a bottle of wine after 15:00 on Saturdays and not at all on Sundays - I feel being treated a irresponsible kid by the society as whole, but, well, that's not the focus of this blog post) :)

There are even more things about Norway I like. But most of all - by far - I love the nature in this country. The fjords and mountains are so magnificent, the lakes so colourful. There are so many breathtaking views all around the country - and I have only seen a small bit of it.

Norway belongs to the TOP 3 countries for me in terms of the nature. All three are those I have lived in - Norway, Croatia and Kazakhstan. Norway has a great combination though. It is both not so much densely populated (there is a lot of untouched wild nature over here) and it has great infrastructure for hiking (marked paths, simple tourist accommodation, updated maps, safe roads etc).

My latest trip was to the area of Voss which is not too far away from Bergen - below are just some of the snapshots speaking for my love affair with the Norwegian nature (and the tiny lovely settlements around).

Trip to the western coast of Norway - Geirangerfjorden

The last weekend I had chance to visit the Western coast of Norway again - this time the famous Geirangerfjord. The small town of Geiranger was a sort of the tourist nightmare - plenty of cruise ship travellers from Germany and England. But the moment we went farther from the town towards the nature, I started to truly enjoy the trip. Me and my wife (I got married this summer) walked the way from 0 to 550 meters above the sea on medium-challenging hiking path.

The new Gartner hiking boots proved to be a good investment (as well as tent from Helsport and the air-mattresses from artiach). We put up a tent on the picturesque hill from which we had a magnificent view on the fjord. An amazing place to have a self-cooked dinner and breakfast in the nature!

We were also lucky with the weather. The western coast of Norway is famous for its rainy climate. Yet we did not experience any rain and in the second half of the second day we even had  a sun.

All in all, it was a very fulfilling trip - the best during this year so far.
 

Visiting the fjords area in the Western Norway

Almost exactly one month ago I had an incredible luck to visit a fantastic area of the fjords in the Western Norway. That is the region where my friend Sveinung comes from - who was kind enough to invite me and Sergio, the common friend of ours to visit his home area.

Only now I sat down to write a little bit about it and put out a few pictures from this trip.

We spent there just three days. Very intensive days these were!

Day 1: Sailing in the fjord

Day 2: Wind-surfing in the ocean

(the first time in my life I was surfing - I almost manage to stand up on the board) :)

Day 3: Climbing a mountain next to the bay where we had surfed the day before

I must admit that I enjoyed climbing the most - I love mountains, I love hiking atop of them.

And, once again, I realized how incredibly beautiful is the nature of Norway.

Beautiful Estonian nature

I spent a wonderful holiday in Estonia in June. One great part of it was a four-days-long hiking trip in South-Eastern Estonia with four friends of mine. We spent very quality time together - as we haven't seen each other for a long time - hope to be able to repeat such trips every year! We had a lot of fun, some good deep conversations and truly enjoyed the sights of beautiful nature around us.

Here are some snapshots of what we saw around us:

A beautiful Internet ad

I have recently stumbled upon a marketing campaign of clothes collection at YouTube. Rarely do I see such a beautiful advertisement meant for Internet - with a subtle humour and intelligence. And it is quite an interesting example of using the social media for marketing purposes.

Simply beautiful

Tribute to Viljo, a man who appreciates beauty in this world.

Beauty of the mountains

Mountains - this is something, which makes the heart of every Estonian beating faster, when he sees them. There is no mountains in Estonia. And that is one of the greatest thing, which I love about Almaty - mountains.

Pictures of Prague

Prague - one of my favourite cities in Europe.

Once I will get back there for a longer time!

There's so much beauty in the worlds...

"Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in."
American Beauty

That's one of my favourite quote from one of my favourite movies ever.

Indeed, there is so much beauty around us. And people enjoy beauty. We want to look nice, we spend a lot of money and time on that. We would like to have good-looking partner, nice car, we enjoy watching beautiful people playing in movies etc.

It's strange, but despite all of that I very often feel that in most of the cases people just don't see and don't appreciate beauty around them. Do we often pay attention to the green colours of the trees around us, to the beauty of some shadow, to the beauty of sounds around us? It sound awkward, but isn't food on our plates sometimes just too beautiful to be eaten?

Take Eurovision Song Contest for example. Vast majority of my friends thinks that Eurovision is 1) commercial event which has nothing to do with culture; 2) contest of low-quality pop songs; 3) contest where politics and not real performance is involved.

I actually pretty much agree with them. And still I consider myself fan of Eurovision. Why? Isn't it great to see many beautiful people from whole Europe coming together not to discuss new policies of energy market, coming together not to compete in making proposals for new laws, but for singing. And there is always 3-4 songs out of all of them which I really like. Which are beautiful.

What I want to say, is that there is actually beauty everywhere, not just in places, where it is supposed to be. But how to see it everywhere, without taking drugs, for example?

I think, seeing beauty can be trained. That's what I do, actually. In the moments I feel bad, unrest or even stressed, I stop for a moment and make myself think - "OK, it is hard, but what is beautiful about it - about people I am dealing with, about this day/night, about life as such.

It is actually one of my several business ideas. To make trainings for people who want to be more successful, happier in their lives. It has become new direction in trainings in USA recently - "Positive psychology".