Norway - 2005

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DAY

ENTRY

Monday 5/23

Today we rode the train through Sweden. It was a bit disappointing as it was the same train as for Cobenhavn. It was classy in the city, but uncomfortable for a 4 hour trip.

All the trains in Scandinavia are electric and very quiet. That was a pleasant surprise.

At Gothenburg, we changed trains and this one was great – foot rests, reclining seats, large picture windows that didn’t get dirty when it rained.

I slept much of the first train. When we changed trains, I wanted to get some food. We had a 15 minute layover. But in Scandinavia, there’s a problem with currency between countries. Although they all use a version of the kroner, each country has it’s own version and doesn’t accept coinage from the other countries. I had to run to a bank, change my Danish currency to Swedish currency in order to buy tuna bagels (bialys) and sparkling water (water with gas).

The second part of the train trip was more interesting. The scenery looked very much like Pennsylvania. PA was settled by Germans and Swedes so it stands to reason there would be so many similarities.

We also had an interesting conversation with a Norwegian woman who was traveling with her 3 sheep dogs on the train! Customs are quite different toward animals in Europe. This woman was Norwegian, spent half the year in Sweden because it was cheaper, and had a Danish boyfriend of 13 years. And I also found out that the Norwegian language is the more difficult of these three countries and that Iceland kept the Viking language pretty in tact while lower Scandinavia has changed through the centuries. Norway is, this year, celebrating its 100^th year of independence from Denmark. It was also, at one time, under the rule of Sweden.

Our hotel is the Rainbow Munch (pronounced Monk) in Oslo. This one is tiny. The toilet faces the sink so sitting on it your chin is fighting contact with the basin! Another problem with the hotel is that it’s convenient to nothing. It’s a mile from the train station and the cab fare for that one mile was $26 for us! To take the trolley it costs $16 for two people. In Denmark, the hotel was a couple of blocks from the train station.

One unusual aspect of Scandinavia is the beds. They were very comfortable in all the hotels, but it took us awhile to figure out the thin white part is the mattress and the folded thicker part is the down coverlet. The attendant couldn't understand why we were asking where the cover was.

Tuesday, 5/24

We began the morning taking the trolley and the subway to the ski jump in Holmenkollen, overlooking Oslo. The area was beautiful with a grand view of Oslo below and we were able to climb to the top of the ski jump and look down it. We spent about two hours here, then subway to Vigeland, a park of statuary by a single artist. The centerpiece of the park was a human obelisk of intertwining bodies. Gustav Vigeland was Norway’s most famous sculptor with over 180 thematic works displayed on the 79 acre Frogner Park. His work is a study of the human form from infancy through old age in accurate and explicit detail.

We next saw the city hall, begun in 1918 and finally completed in 1950. Politics had much to do with the slowness. This is where the Nobel prizes are handed out (all except the Peace prize which is given out in Helsinki).

I have learned that the Nobel Peace Prize is handed out in Oslo at the City Hall and that all other Nobel Prizes are given out in Sweden. Thanks to Erik of Norway for this correction.

From City Hall, we walked across the street to Akershus Fortress and found the castle closed. Darn. It closed at 1600 and we got there at 1605. Darn. I really wanted to tour this one of dungeons, banquet hall, state rooms, and chapel. Maybe on the back end of the trip.

We skipped lunch yesterday and today and had Italian dinner which was very good if pricy - $80 for 2 bottles of water, spaghetti with meat sauce, and a vegetarian pizza. All ala carte and no vegetables. The restaurant was the Mona Lisa.

We’ve been sleeping with the windows open since beginning holiday and that is so great. In Florida, it’s very seldom one can open a window.

Wednesday, 5/25

Today is our 30^th anniversary day. The day did not start well. We checked out of our hotel and dragged the luggage to the trolley stop. The number 10 trolley was there and we ran to make it. Just as we got there, the driver closed the door almost in our faces and drove off! It was 20 minutes before another number 10 came by.

Then at the train station, I went off balance on the escalator and fell backwards, landing on my suitcase but then sliding several steps backwards down the escalator. I screamed for Richard but there was nothing he could do. I was hoping he could grab me at the top. I was afraid I’d get caught in the teeth. Richard couldn’t make out the coding to find the emergency cutoff button among the clutter of foreign symbols. Luckily, a passenger at the bottom hit the stop and the woman directly behind me struggled to lift me upright. I was badly shaken, but not badly hurt. I don’t even remember how I got to the top of the escalator but suddenly I was in Richard’s arms and he was comforting me.

The rest of the day was more pleasant. The Oslo/Bergen (pronounced Beergen) train ride was delightful and the main reason to go to Oslo. There was snow and ice on the mountains that we passed through. People were still skiing in Finse (Fin see) at the 3000’ elevation. We passed the area where we would later catch the Flambann train. That’s in two days when we do the ‘Norway in a Nutshell’ tour.

We found out later that this has been the coldest May in 50 years. I didn't mind too much. I love snow and it was wonderful to see it.

Our hotel is the best yet. It is the Grand Terminus and is across the street from the train station. The rooms are luxurious and spacious with an actual tub.

Tonight’s dinner was fish and chips for Richard and fried scampi with rice and salad for me. We shared an appetizer of tomato soup with quartered hard boiled egg and I had hot chocolate for my drink. Total for dinner was about $60.

After dinner, we took the funicular up Mt. Floyban for a spectacular view of the city, even though it was drizzling and chilly. We also stopped at an Internet Cafe to check messages from home.

Thursday, May 26

Bergen is a beautiful city - larger than i expected. today, though, it was cold. In the 40's, windy and wet.

Our first stop was the wharf area which boasts the oldest wooden structures in Europe still remaining from the 12th century. We also visited the fish market, which is huge. This was on our way to Rosenkrantz Slotz, a twelfth century tower.

At Rosenkrantz Slotz, we were disappointed that we couldn't see the great hall which was being prepped for an affair. The tower rooms were completely devoid of furnishings. You had to try to imagine how they might have been decorated. The narrow, twisting stairs, high arched windows and parapet were all interesting and some of the glass windows looked to be original.

The castle had a parapet that we were able to go out onto. The rain wasn't hard but was blowing sideways across the walkway. I had to turn my back to it as I moved along the narrow wooden parapet. I found out later, as we watched the movie Richard filmed, that it was ice pellets I was dodging. Apparently it was cold enough to produce hail.

Next, we visited Mariakirken, built in the same era as the castle. It's the best preserved medieval building in Bergen. I loved the painted wooden carvings and beautiful art work on wooden planks.

We also visited Korskirken and got some history of the place from an historian and volunteer docent. He pointed out things we never would have noticed like how the cross wings of the church didn't line up.

The third and last church we visited was Domkirken, an austere church newer in design and closer to the style of today's churches.

Lunch was at the Storecenter and then we went back to the hotel to dry out and warm up. Our short nap turned into a two hour sleep.

When we woke up, we loaded the laundry into a suitcase to find the laundrymat the hotel had pointed us to only to learn it was non-existent. Asking local businessmen where there was a laundrymat proved fruitless as well. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at a sushi and noodle house for a very good dinner, then went to the internet cafe to download and answer email.

Back at the hotel, we got ready for our 'Norway in a Nutshell' trip that we would take the next day. Today's walk clocked in at 6.5 miles.

Friday, May 27

Today we did the “Norway in a Nutshell” trip. This was a good trip and I recommend doing it but in reverse to the printed schedule. We took the train to Voss, (Vahss) got the 2 hour fjord tour at Gudvangen, then the train from Flam (the Flamsbann) to Myrdal and another train from Myrdal to Bergen. It was much less crowded this way. The cost is $152 a person and worth it.

(One word of caution: take plenty of medications along with you to Norway. I ran out of lactaid tablets and it cost $44 for 100 pills in Norway. Advil was closer to $60. However, I found the lactaid tablets to be better than the lactaid pills in this country. )

The fjord was as beautiful as expected. It was intermittent cloudy/sunny and at this time of year, with the snow melt, there were literally hundreds of waterfalls. Some of the passengers were tossing bread to the gulls so they were in tight proximity to the boat. Our tour covered two of the smaller, most beautiful arms of the Songnefjord, one of the largest fjords in the world. The arms were the Naeroyfjord, the narrowest in the world, and the Aurlandfjord.

One of the highlights of the Flamsbann was Kojosfossen Waterfall. there was a Maiden of the Mist show with music, short but a plesant distraction. The waterfall is 305'.

We took the train to Voss where we got the bus to Gudvangen. The bus made one stop high above the valley and fjord for a spectacular view which was, of course, a pit stop and souvenir gift shop stop as well. The bus took us down to Gudvangen where we caught the boat for the fjord trip. We exited the boat at Flam and spent about an hour at the few shops along the port and then took the Flam train up to Myrdal. The Flamsbann follows one of the steepest train grades in Europe for a non funicular train. At Myrdal, the train took us back to Bergen and it was snowing while we waited for the train! This was the one and only time it was snowing although we did see plenty of snow on the ground later on.

Saturday, May 28

This was the day we rented our car, an Opal H class wagon from Avis, adding me as a driver. This one gave us plenty of room for suitcases, jackets, etc. Nice. The A class cars won’t even hold a large suitcase, I found out.

We spent the first hour trying to navigate our way out of Bergen. I was driving and Richard was using the GPS. The GPS has been a blessing. Even if we get lost, it doesn’t take much to get back on the right path with this hand-held Magellan unit to guide us.

We drove a scenic route from Bergen along E16, stopping at a restored stave (pronounced stahv) church, Fantov Stavkirjke. It was difficult to find off the beaten path.

At one point, I pulled off into a shopping center and I was followed by a motorcycle. He pulled even with Richard to point out our left rear tire was low and direct us to the nearest gas station! The air was free at the station and we found that both tires on the passenger side were low. We had to keep an eye on these for the rest of the trip, but when we returned the Avis car and told them about the tire problem, they took off charges for adding me as a driver and for the extra day we had the car. Really nice of them!

At Fantov, we learned that stave refers to the pole construction used in making the church, not to the ornate decorations on many of them. Several stave churches had dragons to protect them as well as Christ figures and paintings inside the church. That’s because when they were built, the Norse people were in transition between their gods and Christianity.

In 1992, the church was burnt to the ground (vandalized). With all the tar used to protect the wood from insects and rot, they said it was more like an implosion and the church was completely destroyed in minutes. It was rebuilt with tools reconstructed to emulate those of the period. Only the roof tiles were machined. There were over 20,000 0f these and to make each by hand as they did when the church was first built would have taken years. The only metal in this church were the door hinges and candle holders.

The girl who was giving us all this information was studying English and American history at university. She was reading a book called “Fear of America” that piqued Richard’s interest and started a lengthy discussion. We talked also of dragons and speculated about them actually having been real creatures at one time. I recommended “Dragon Riders of Pern” by Anne McCaffrey and she got excited about the book and had me write down the information.

From Fantov, we drove southerly to Oystese (Oy stes e), stopping along the way for photo opportunities. I shot over 3800 pictures this trip! Isn't digital wonderful? We brought the laptop computer along so I was able to dump the card each day into organized folders named for each date of the trip.

One stop was especially thrilling to me. It was a roadside farm with lots of sheep and lambs! We pulled into the driveway and got out of the car to watch the farmer guiding the sheep up the road from one pasture to another. No sheepdog. As they passed, two lambs actually came over to me to sniff and take a look. It was idyllic. The farmer’s wife came out of the house to call her English spaniel, a beautiful dog, and her cats and we chatted a bit as she spoke English.

On the way to Oysteses, we crossed the Hardangerfjoid to Vaga (Vah gah) by ferry. What a surprise when I spotted a large dorsal fin cutting the water that turned out to be attached to an Orca!!! I’ve never seen killer whales in the wild before. They were too fastfor me to photograph, although I did manage to snap a shot of the fin. Richard got some wonderful movies, though. We saw them breach as well.

After we left the ferry, it was a pretty intense drive, twisting and turning, to the hotel. Our first action, after checking in, was food! But the hotel dining room was closed between 4 and 7. The clerk recommended a Chinese restaurant across the street that was open and the food turned out to be very good.

Our room was about as far away from the front as you could get and no elevator to lift our luggage. The clerk recommended driving down this gravel path to the back of the hotel and bringing in our luggage through the sliding doors leading to a small porch. Since in the back this was ground level (from the front we had to go down a flight of stairs), that proved the best way to handle things – with one exception. No way could I back the car up the long gravel road and the only way to turn around was to avoid bushes and go on the grass. Richard had to come out and guide me through this maneuver. It was tight!

After unloading our luggage, we drove to a wonderful waterfall. This one was much wider then most we’ve seen. Someone told me this was the coldest May in 50 years. That might account for the snow just starting to melt.

The second site we visited was Goldfish Lake. Signs to the site were problematic and we got lost. There would be a sign saying Goldfish Lake, then a 3 way split in the road with no indication which path to take for the lake. We were about to turn around when I pulled into the driveway of one home and a woman came out. I got out of the car to talk to her and ask directions. She struggled to tell me she didn’t speak English so I showed her the map with the Norwegian name of the lake and by signing and my repeating the directions in English, we figured it out. She gave excellent directions and we found the lake in a lovely hidden valley. The lake was stocked with Koi.

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Norway is closed. We were fortunate to find a Shell station open for gas and soap suds and a campground with a single washer and dryer. These were tiny by US standards, only holding 4 jeans some shirts and socks per load, but I’m thankful they were there. One campground would not let us use theirs since we weren’t staying there but this campground outside of Voss had no problem with that.We couldn't get laundry service in Bergen at the hotel and could not find a laundrymat, which seemed non-existent. The hotel told us where one was but it wasn't there and a native we spoke to said there were no laundrymats in the city. This was the first trip we planned on doing laundry in a country and this occupied a considerable amount of time trying to find a place to wash clothes. Go figure. But Norway is very new to tourism.

We had to exchange our cash for tokens in order to use the machines. The washer ran on low water and took an hour per load, regardless of the setting you chose. The same with the dryer. Low heat and an hour per setting so it took 3 hours to do 2 loads of wash and dry.

Today was rainy with low visibility most of the day. While we were waiting for our last load of clothes to dry, we walked to the nearby waterfall to take pictures. The falls were large enough to create a refrigerator effect so we were well chilled when we went back to get the clothes.

The hour was late when we left for our hotel. We had to rush through Vik without stopping. Pity. They have the oldest stave church there and I wanted to see it.

However, the drive was spectacular across a road seldom open with snow drifts 12’ high! The terrain was Arctic tundra. The snow was crystallized ice, not powder. At one point, the highest, we pulled over and I go out to photograph. There was exposed vegetation, purple, green and brown, and near the edge a grand view of the valley below. The wind was gusty. The car temperature gauge read 2C (34^o).

Our hotel for the night was the Kvikne. Okay. This is now my favorite spot in all of Norway. The city is Balestrand and we had to take the ferry from Vangness to Hella, then get off the ferry, do a U turn, get back on the ferry and take it from Hella to Balestrand. Then we had to drive around a tiny fjord to the hotel. Richard jokes (but it's true) we rode more ferries during our two weeks in Norway than we did in our entire previous lifetime!

The view surpassed our Mountain room view in Banff. We were in Banff shortly after our marriage. In Balestrand, we had a picture window room that appeared to look over a parking lot until you stepped out on the balcony. Then it was a 180^o view of Sognefjord, the artist community of Balestrand, and a snowcapped mountain.

We are far enough north (61^o latitude) that although the sun set at 10:15, the twilight effect lingered past midnight. It didn’t really get dark until 2ish and then the sun rose again around 3:30. if we had known about this place before the trip, we would have spent more time here and less time in Oslo.

To see the videos of Denmark and Norway, click here.