The northernmost tram on Earth in Trondheim, Norway

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(the article below accompanies this video)

Some local claims to fame are just silly tourist-bait boasts, but I like the one I stumbled across in Trondheim, Norway today. It’s cool to be able to say you’ve ridden on the world’s northernmost tram line.

Thanks to last night‘s pizza, I woke up a little high this morning, but got it under control after breakfast. It was a fun day in the cold and snow, but unfortunately I ended the day with an extremely high BG after dinner at a nice restaurant.

Forty-two things for breakfast

At 9 am I was 224, and Masayo and I went down to the extensive and delicious breakfast buffet at the hotel again. I tried to get as many things as I could, just a little bit of each one. I ate it all, and counted 42 different items. Oh it was filling, and very good. And there were still several items on the buffet I didn’t have room for. I’m going to miss this.

Brubakken and the bridge

Later we went to see the old town bridge of Trondheim, the Gamla Bybru, that goes over the Nidelva River. They are doing construction on half of it, so you have to walk down a narrow walkway. It was nice, but kind of obscured the views somewhat.

But on the other side was the area called Brubakken that has a lot of cute little wooden houses, all in rows and colorful. Very Norwegian. We walked through the snowy streets until we got to a bigger bridge on the south part of the town that goes back to the center.

Trying to buy Lantus

I stopped at a pharmacy to ask about Lantus pens; I only have one and part of a second one left and will need them soon. The pharmacist spoke English, and said that although they had them, I couldn’t get any without a prescription. She said I could go to a hospital and a doctor would help me, but it would cost money to do so. Norway is so expensive that I didn’t want to chance that. I’d have to think of something else.

The snowy little tram line

After that Masayo and I went to the tram stop on St. Olav’s gate (“gate”, pronounced “gah-teh”, means street). Trondheim’s tram, which is a single line into the rural areas west of Trondheim, is the planet’s most northern tram. It isn’t a tourist line, it just takes people out to their homes in the woods. We got on it to ride it to the end and see what it was like.

It was actually nice, and fun. There were a lot of good views as the tram inched its way through the hilly and increasingly quiet areas. We rode to the end, a stop called Lian. A group of school kids was waiting to get on the tram when we arrived; they did, we got off, and the tram pulled away back to Trondheim. We were alone in the snowy woods.

I expected “Lian” to be a village of some kind, but it didn’t seem to be… anything. There was a road nearby, and a couple buildings, but mostly it was just deep snow and fir trees. Some people were around, actually: kids sledding down a hill, and someone camping and making a fire in a clearing at the bottom.

We walked down the road a little, and saw an older couple slowly skiing down a hill — possibly, their long driveway. The bearded guy, who smiled at us as he passed, did all right on his way down the slope, but the wife gave up and carried her skis down most of the way. They continued on, presumably on their way to do some skiing for fun. I couldn’t actually tell if they were using the skis for fun or for actual transport.

I checked my BG, mostly to get a cool photo with my OneTouch machine, and I was 138. Excellent!

After I made a snow angel (my second one of the trip, after the one in northern Coatia!) we went back to the tram stop of Lian. Our tickets were good for 90 minutes, and this would be the last tram we could take without having to buy new ones. (The trams run every 15 minutes so it’s really a good service.)

We got on and rode back to Trondheim, pleased with ourselves and impressed with the wild Scandinavian snow we had seen.

Back in town

In the room we had some leftover pizza, and then relaxed. I was getting sleepy, and fell into a nap that lasted a couple hours. A nap is usually a bad idea right before dinner, because it makes my dinnertime shot much less effective — and that’s what happened today, unfortunately.

When I woke up at 6:30 I was 175, which isn’t too terrible, and Masayo and I decided that we could afford a nice meal at regular Norway prices. (Breakfast is included in our room price, and the lunch was leftover pizza.) We settled on a place called Alma’s on Prinsens gate near the hotel.

I ordered vegetable lasagna, which was their special of the day, plus a glass of wine. They brought us bread too. The lasagna was good, but seemed like a pretty small portion. It came with some greens too. I ate several pieces of bread, plus some of Masayo’s French fries. The wine was good — red wine; I don’t know if that’s ok for lasagna but I liked it — but cost about $12. Welcome to Norway!

 

The entire meal was close to $70, which may seem normal to you but seemed like a million dollars to us. (Note that we spent a couple days in Macedonia just a couple weeks ago and spent less than that per person the entire time there!) But we knew it would be that much, and we enjoyed it.

Back at the hotel I took my laptop down to the lobby to get some work done, processing photos for t1dwanderer.com. I took more insulin had a couple cookies in the hotel room first, and then got some free hot chocolate from the machine downstairs, and sat down to work. It went well, but I began to feel that something might not be right with my BG.

I checked and my fears were proven correct: I was 378, by far my highest of February (so far). When I shot up for the lasagna, I assumed it had flat pasta in it, but it didn’t; it was just cheese and meat, mostly. So I ate more bread and fries than I had planned to make up for it, but not a huge amount. I don’t think I miscalculated enough to yield a 378 — I think it was the nap.

So I took several units of Humalog with my Lantus to get it down, and reminded myself to be careful about naps. They can be ok but I ought to wait longer before eating afterwards. Oh well. Nothing to do but try again tomorrow, when we’ll be on a 10-hour train ride north!

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