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N O R G E - Bergen & Flåm
Well...it's been awhile since I last posted and some you (Tricia!!) are getting anxious to see some stuff about Norway! So here I am at the library in Oslo with an hour of FREE internet (finally!) and some time to finally post some stuff about this wonderful place called Norway! 
I arrived here on the 5th of May after taking a train up to Bremen from Muenster where I had just finished visiting Anne. I spent an hour or two sightseeing in Bremen but I mainly just wanted to see the the BremerStadt Musikanten statue that depicts a german folktale that has been in my memory since childhood. If you're not sure what it is, just take a look at the photo and I'm sure it will come to you! 
From Bremen I flew with my 50 cent (!!) Ryanair flight to Oslo Torp. It's hard to believe that an airline can make money selling flights that cheap but if they're going to offer it I'm definately taking advantage of it! The flight was bare bones, no food or drinks or anything but really not any worse than a regular airline, I was actually pretty impressed I would definately say I got my money's worth! After stepping out of the plane I definately noticed that I come north. In Bremen it had been a warm sunny day and Norway (only about an hour north) was cold and cloudy. The landscape was also quite changed,
instead of thousands of squares of farmer's fields there was a lot more forestland and open space. It almost felt like coming home to Canada! So the airport I flew into in Norway is actually about an hour and a half south of Oslo so instead of going all the way up there I stayed at a hostel in Tønsberg, a town that is close to the airport and had a train line that would get me to my next destination in Norway: Bergen. Bergen is on the west coast of Norway and the train ride out there took about 7.5 hours and 
went through almost every imaginable landscape this country has to offer, it was incredible to see the scenery change so often. At first it was raining as we ascended up the side of the Hardangervidda plateau which at it's highest point in Finse is 1222 metres. When we got to Finse it was snowing like crazy and the landscape up there was like taking a train through the tundra or the very top of a snowcapped mountain. I've never seen anything like it, not even in Canada. Really quite barren and beautiful at the same time. The coolest part is that there's still buildings up there where I can only assume people live in summer, how else can they get there? After descending down the other side of the plateau we lose the snow but we gain the fjords. I only caught minor glimpses on the way into Bergen of some fjord landscape but it was enough to get me super excited to explore them even more! Upon arrival in Bergen I settled into my room at the hostel almost directly in the centre of the city, really great location! 
There's a rooftop terrace there overlooking the Bergen harbour which was a great feature! I got some great sunset shots from up there one night with my singaporean roomates one evening. My first two days in Bergen were blessed by pouring rain so I decided it might be good to invest in an umbrella to make being a tourist in miserable weather somewhat more bearable. Bergen is well known for it's rainy weather, that's why almost every shop sells umbrellas for twice as much as anywhere else, they're really milking it from unprepared tourists like me! Anyway, I bought myself a Bergen Card and proceeded to do as much indoor stuff as possible on the rainy days. The Bergen Card granted me free access to a lot of museums and such so I did quite a bit of that my first two days. I went to the Marine museum, Bryggens museum, Haakon's Hall, the Hanseatic museum, the museum of Cultural History and a few more. 
The really unique thing about Bergen is that in the past it was a major player in the Hanseatic trading routes in northern Europe and has some really unique buildings on the harbourfront where all the German traders lived, did business and pretty well isolated themselves from the local Norwegians. Now they house lots of souvenir and touristy shops, but they still look pretty, even on a rainy day! I also decided to escape the rain on day and see a movie. Here they don't dub movies into Norwegian, they just put subtitles at the bottom so any movie in made in english is still heard in english. I saw *Next* with Nic Cage and Jessica Biel. I'd never heard of it but it was starting shortly after I arrived so I decided to try it. Wasn't too bad, a really unique idea for a movie! At movie theatres here they also assign you a row and seat number so it's not a free for all, very organized people up here! So finally on Wednesday the sky cleared and we got a nice sunny day, time for some outdoor adventure!! I took the Fløiyban up one of the 7 mountains surrounding Bergen and did some hiking around up there. 
The fjord scenery isn't as spectacular in Bergen as I had hoped but it was still nice to be outside with the sunshine and the from above views of Bergen. The next day, instead of taking the train to Flåm, like I had originally intended, I thought it might be cooler and more scenic to take a 5 hour ferry ride from Bergen to Flåm. 
So I embarked on the ferry at 8 am and proceeded to sleep for about an hour, which is ok because the view didn't really get good until about 2.5 hours into the ride, that's when the ferry veers off the coast and into the longest fjord in Norway, the Sognefjord. Flåm is located all the way at the end of one of the offshoot fingers of the fjord so I got to see a lot of amazing scenery. One jawdropping scene after the next. Western Norway is truly spectacular and deserves the UNESCO World Heritage Site title that was bestowed upon the western fjords a few years ago by the UN. I really was not regretting skipping the train ride and taking the ferry instead! When I arrived in Flåm I was greeted by a familiar feeling of having been there before. It reminded me so much of Field, the town in Yoho National Park in B.C. where I worked in the summer of 2005. Just a cute little tourist town surrounded by an incredible landscape, the only difference being that Flåm has an ocean front view instead of a riverfront view like it was in Field. Even the hostel I stayed in was like a mountain lodge, 
it was really pretty and I had a really comfortable stay there....I miss it now!Unlike my time in Bergen, my two days in Flåm were blessed by beautiful sunshine and I spent both my days outside making the most of it in spite of the fact that I've been a little sick the last few days. Sore throat or not I wasn't going to waste what precious little time I had in the fjord country being sick so I did a 6 hour hike instead! It was one of the hardest hikes I've done in my life but it was so worth the view in the end. I started in Aurland, a town 8 kms up the fjord from Flåm and proceeded to climb up the side of the mountain there along a cascading waterfall (one of thousands in this area) in the valley behind town. The higher I got, the better the view of the valley became, but I was workin' it to get to the top and see over the other side into the Aurland fjord. When I finally got close to the top I realized I had gone higher than I had originally planned, but that only means the view was that much better when I got up and over that ridge! Wow, absolutely breathtaking. I just lay down in the sunny mossy field up there for about half an hour and just soaked it all in. 
That was defintely the high point of my stay in Norway thus far, not only because the scene spread before me was so picturesque but because my butt is definately in the best shape of it's life after that uphill hike! I almost didn't want to leave the view but I still had a long way to go to get back down and I also sat in a berry patch so I had berry stains on my bum and wanted to clean up. I took the road down the other side so I was able to enjoy the view th whole way down anyway! Not a day I will soon forget! The next day I planned to take the ferry from Flåm to Gudvangen, a town in the neighboring fjord which also happens to be the narrowest fjord in Norway, the Næroyfjord. The weather once again was gorgeous and the air was still, no wind, so it was a perfect morning for a boat ride and for taking pics. It's really amazing how some of the Norwegian people have managed to live out here. 
I saw one house that was high up on a cliff with no road access and only a small boat in the water at the base of the cliff...what does this person do for a living, how do they even scale the cliff to get up to their home?? It's crazy! but I guess they make it work! After I arrived in Gudvangen I took the bus to the Borgrund Stavekirke, an 800 year old traditional norwegian stave church. Normally I might have skipped this site but the building is so unique I had to see it. I love the way it's 
shaped like a viking ship at the top with the dragon heads, a really clear look at norwegian architectural culture from 800 years ago. After I was done there I headed back to Flåm and decided to rest up a bit and relax before my trip to Oslo the next day. Yesterday, when I travelled to the Norwegian capital city I awoke to rain, how perfect for a travelling day! I've really been so lucky in a lot of ways, not just with the weather, even when things don't go exactly as I planned they always seem to work out. Anyway, I left Flåm on the famed Flåmsbana, a feat of railway engineering in that it has the steepest climb in the shortest distance than any other railway in the world. It was pretty amazing. 
Dad I know exactly what you would have said had you been there...*those engineers...they know their stuff, they make things happen!* or something like that! Just before we arrived in Myrdal, where I would catch my train to Oslo, we stopped right overtop to a huge *fossen* (waterfall). Really cool. So now I'm in Oslo and you're all caught up with what's been going on here at my end world. Tomorrow I will be attending the Global Ecotourism Conference that just happens to be taking place here in Oslo this week and then just taking in the sights and sounds of Oslo. I'm also super pumped about May 17 which is the National Day in Norway, should be a good time to be in Oslo I've heard!
I arrived here on the 5th of May after taking a train up to Bremen from Muenster where I had just finished visiting Anne. I spent an hour or two sightseeing in Bremen but I mainly just wanted to see the the BremerStadt Musikanten statue that depicts a german folktale that has been in my memory since childhood. If you're not sure what it is, just take a look at the photo and I'm sure it will come to you! 
From Bremen I flew with my 50 cent (!!) Ryanair flight to Oslo Torp. It's hard to believe that an airline can make money selling flights that cheap but if they're going to offer it I'm definately taking advantage of it! The flight was bare bones, no food or drinks or anything but really not any worse than a regular airline, I was actually pretty impressed I would definately say I got my money's worth! After stepping out of the plane I definately noticed that I come north. In Bremen it had been a warm sunny day and Norway (only about an hour north) was cold and cloudy. The landscape was also quite changed,
instead of thousands of squares of farmer's fields there was a lot more forestland and open space. It almost felt like coming home to Canada! So the airport I flew into in Norway is actually about an hour and a half south of Oslo so instead of going all the way up there I stayed at a hostel in Tønsberg, a town that is close to the airport and had a train line that would get me to my next destination in Norway: Bergen. Bergen is on the west coast of Norway and the train ride out there took about 7.5 hours and 
went through almost every imaginable landscape this country has to offer, it was incredible to see the scenery change so often. At first it was raining as we ascended up the side of the Hardangervidda plateau which at it's highest point in Finse is 1222 metres. When we got to Finse it was snowing like crazy and the landscape up there was like taking a train through the tundra or the very top of a snowcapped mountain. I've never seen anything like it, not even in Canada. Really quite barren and beautiful at the same time. The coolest part is that there's still buildings up there where I can only assume people live in summer, how else can they get there? After descending down the other side of the plateau we lose the snow but we gain the fjords. I only caught minor glimpses on the way into Bergen of some fjord landscape but it was enough to get me super excited to explore them even more! Upon arrival in Bergen I settled into my room at the hostel almost directly in the centre of the city, really great location! 
There's a rooftop terrace there overlooking the Bergen harbour which was a great feature! I got some great sunset shots from up there one night with my singaporean roomates one evening. My first two days in Bergen were blessed by pouring rain so I decided it might be good to invest in an umbrella to make being a tourist in miserable weather somewhat more bearable. Bergen is well known for it's rainy weather, that's why almost every shop sells umbrellas for twice as much as anywhere else, they're really milking it from unprepared tourists like me! Anyway, I bought myself a Bergen Card and proceeded to do as much indoor stuff as possible on the rainy days. The Bergen Card granted me free access to a lot of museums and such so I did quite a bit of that my first two days. I went to the Marine museum, Bryggens museum, Haakon's Hall, the Hanseatic museum, the museum of Cultural History and a few more. 
The really unique thing about Bergen is that in the past it was a major player in the Hanseatic trading routes in northern Europe and has some really unique buildings on the harbourfront where all the German traders lived, did business and pretty well isolated themselves from the local Norwegians. Now they house lots of souvenir and touristy shops, but they still look pretty, even on a rainy day! I also decided to escape the rain on day and see a movie. Here they don't dub movies into Norwegian, they just put subtitles at the bottom so any movie in made in english is still heard in english. I saw *Next* with Nic Cage and Jessica Biel. I'd never heard of it but it was starting shortly after I arrived so I decided to try it. Wasn't too bad, a really unique idea for a movie! At movie theatres here they also assign you a row and seat number so it's not a free for all, very organized people up here! So finally on Wednesday the sky cleared and we got a nice sunny day, time for some outdoor adventure!! I took the Fløiyban up one of the 7 mountains surrounding Bergen and did some hiking around up there. 
So I embarked on the ferry at 8 am and proceeded to sleep for about an hour, which is ok because the view didn't really get good until about 2.5 hours into the ride, that's when the ferry veers off the coast and into the longest fjord in Norway, the Sognefjord. Flåm is located all the way at the end of one of the offshoot fingers of the fjord so I got to see a lot of amazing scenery. One jawdropping scene after the next. Western Norway is truly spectacular and deserves the UNESCO World Heritage Site title that was bestowed upon the western fjords a few years ago by the UN. I really was not regretting skipping the train ride and taking the ferry instead! When I arrived in Flåm I was greeted by a familiar feeling of having been there before. It reminded me so much of Field, the town in Yoho National Park in B.C. where I worked in the summer of 2005. Just a cute little tourist town surrounded by an incredible landscape, the only difference being that Flåm has an ocean front view instead of a riverfront view like it was in Field. Even the hostel I stayed in was like a mountain lodge, 
it was really pretty and I had a really comfortable stay there....I miss it now!Unlike my time in Bergen, my two days in Flåm were blessed by beautiful sunshine and I spent both my days outside making the most of it in spite of the fact that I've been a little sick the last few days. Sore throat or not I wasn't going to waste what precious little time I had in the fjord country being sick so I did a 6 hour hike instead! It was one of the hardest hikes I've done in my life but it was so worth the view in the end. I started in Aurland, a town 8 kms up the fjord from Flåm and proceeded to climb up the side of the mountain there along a cascading waterfall (one of thousands in this area) in the valley behind town. The higher I got, the better the view of the valley became, but I was workin' it to get to the top and see over the other side into the Aurland fjord. When I finally got close to the top I realized I had gone higher than I had originally planned, but that only means the view was that much better when I got up and over that ridge! Wow, absolutely breathtaking. I just lay down in the sunny mossy field up there for about half an hour and just soaked it all in. 
That was defintely the high point of my stay in Norway thus far, not only because the scene spread before me was so picturesque but because my butt is definately in the best shape of it's life after that uphill hike! I almost didn't want to leave the view but I still had a long way to go to get back down and I also sat in a berry patch so I had berry stains on my bum and wanted to clean up. I took the road down the other side so I was able to enjoy the view th whole way down anyway! Not a day I will soon forget! The next day I planned to take the ferry from Flåm to Gudvangen, a town in the neighboring fjord which also happens to be the narrowest fjord in Norway, the Næroyfjord. The weather once again was gorgeous and the air was still, no wind, so it was a perfect morning for a boat ride and for taking pics. It's really amazing how some of the Norwegian people have managed to live out here. 
I saw one house that was high up on a cliff with no road access and only a small boat in the water at the base of the cliff...what does this person do for a living, how do they even scale the cliff to get up to their home?? It's crazy! but I guess they make it work! After I arrived in Gudvangen I took the bus to the Borgrund Stavekirke, an 800 year old traditional norwegian stave church. Normally I might have skipped this site but the building is so unique I had to see it. I love the way it's 
shaped like a viking ship at the top with the dragon heads, a really clear look at norwegian architectural culture from 800 years ago. After I was done there I headed back to Flåm and decided to rest up a bit and relax before my trip to Oslo the next day. Yesterday, when I travelled to the Norwegian capital city I awoke to rain, how perfect for a travelling day! I've really been so lucky in a lot of ways, not just with the weather, even when things don't go exactly as I planned they always seem to work out. Anyway, I left Flåm on the famed Flåmsbana, a feat of railway engineering in that it has the steepest climb in the shortest distance than any other railway in the world. It was pretty amazing. 
Dad I know exactly what you would have said had you been there...*those engineers...they know their stuff, they make things happen!* or something like that! Just before we arrived in Myrdal, where I would catch my train to Oslo, we stopped right overtop to a huge *fossen* (waterfall). Really cool. So now I'm in Oslo and you're all caught up with what's been going on here at my end world. Tomorrow I will be attending the Global Ecotourism Conference that just happens to be taking place here in Oslo this week and then just taking in the sights and sounds of Oslo. I'm also super pumped about May 17 which is the National Day in Norway, should be a good time to be in Oslo I've heard!
2 comments:
FABULOUS!!! Laura you write so well...I feel like I've been to Norway....what beautiful pictures! The ecotourism Conference should be great too! Make sure you get yourself in!!
It's raining here today, but no thunder and lightning!
Look forward to the next installmanet...
Love, MOM
The jealousy is threatening to overflow at the moment... but at the same time I am relieved. You like Norway. My attachment to the place is so strong that if you didn't like it, it would have some how affected my psyche.
I think I'm crazy. But isn't Norway phenomenal? I've done a decent amount of travelling and it's still my favourite place. It does very much have a "home" (ie: Canada) feel to it. I love it.
Seeing your pictures of Norwegian flags nearly sent me over the edge. I need to plan a trip soon. Have fun on Constitution Day! The Norwegians love to celebrate their distinction and separation from Sweden!
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