Norway: Fjords of Fun Part 1

Hellestylt

So, I am finally getting around to posting about our trip to Norway. Two weeks after getting home from Norway, I took the GRE which I had been anxiously studying for and now I've completed most of my graduate school applications. I submitted two out of three applications and had one interview. My final application should be completed within the next few weeks and I should receive a decision from two of the schools by February. Here is to hoping I get into grad school!

Beautiful Bergen

Anyway, now that I am done with the bulk of the work for grad school, all that's left to do is wait and finish up the last bit of traveling we plan to do before moving back to the states. Norway was a more recent pick to visit. Last year, we started looking at trips to the northern-most parts of Europe to see the Northern Lights. Unfortunately, these trips are extremely expensive. So, we started looking at less expensive ways to visit Scandinavia. Norway seemed to be a top travel destination for outdoor sports enthusiasts and offered a lot of options for train travel and road trips. Unfortunately, this was also extremely expensive as is a visit to any Scandinavian country.

I was getting a little upset until I looked into the possibility of a cruise of the fjords, which was significantly less expensive. So, we went that direction and I booked it in late January to get the best price and ensure we could get the vacation time.

We went with MSC again, mostly due to the itinerary and price. The ship left from northern Germany and sailed up the coast of Norway, stopping in the major fjords along the way. We didn't get to see everything we would have liked on the cruise, but that's the trade-off for the price we paid. Traveling is getting expensive and, as mentioned previously, I'd like to start saving for grad school.

The night before departure, we took a train from our home city to Hamburg. We almost missed our connection in Frankfurt and the ICE train was packed when we got onto it. Luckily, we reserved seats this trip. Once in Hamburg, we had a short walk to the hotel which we stayed for the night before departing to Kiel in the morning. I actually wished we had stayed longer in Hamburg because the city was pretty cool and everyone was very friendly. We may have to take a weekend to go back and visit some other time.

The connection from Hamburg to Kiel was on a commuter train so even though the cities are not far from each other, it was a pretty long trip. The views were very beautiful through farmlands and dotted with lakes. We solved a long-standing mystery while sitting on the train. Since arriving in Germany, we've noticed that people have stickers on their cars that are shaped like a Rorschach test: Greg thinks it looks like a gun and I think it looks like a ballerina. We could never figure out what the image was because it was impossible to explain it to a German to ask as it doesn't look like anything obvious. Turns out, after studying the map of Germany on the train, it's an island off the eastern coast in the Nordsee that borders Denmark. So, the car sticker was to indicate that the driver has vacationed on that island, similar to the "HHI" stickers you see in Georgia for visitors to Hilton Head.

Arrival in Bergen

Once we arrived in Kiel, the fun started. Just kidding. Our last cruise, everything ran extremely smoothly and we had no trouble finding the ship or boarding. This time was completely different. I read on the internet that the port was an easy walk from the train station, so we set out in the direction of the port. When we got there, our ship was not there. Actually, it was across the fjord on the opposite side. Some friendly Germans stopped to ask if we were lost and pointed us in the direction of a ferry which rounds the area. We waddled with all of our bags back to the ferry terminal and bought a ticket from a woman who didn't speak any English and of course my German is not good enough to ask her where in the hell the ferry lands. After buying the tickets, we stood next to a map which seemed to indicate that the ferry we bought tickets for did not stop in the port, but was instead a Gilligan's Island-esque 3 hour tour. Whoops. An older German woman approached us with our bags and explained that there was a bus that would take us to the cruise ship. We were luckily able to return our tickets and discovered that, in fact, about 20 steps from the train platform was a kiosk directing passengers to a bus to the cruise port. At least our detour afforded us 3 miles of brisk exercise and a visit through the illustrious red light district. Half of the adventure is getting there, right?

in Bryggen

At the ship, check-in was also much less smooth. There seemed to be a lot of people standing around looking confused. But, we made it onto the boat and into our room. This ship was a bit older and not as nice as on our previous cruise. Greg also forgot to bring dinner clothing so we looked extremely under-dressed each night. Honestly, we kind of didn't fit in on this particular cruise at all. The majority of the ship were older Germans. Our last cruise was primarily younger families. There were no other Americans, not even military. The upside of this is that we were given our own table at dinner because they didn't have any other Americans to sit with us. The downside was on English speaking tours, the majority of the passengers did not actually speak English as a native language, but spoke Eastern European languages like Polish and Romanian. While there is certainly nothing wrong with this, it made it more difficult to make friends as we never met a single other couple on the boat who was from an English-speaking country.

Sunset from the boat

Our first day on the ship was pretty boring because we were just out at sea. We played bingo and got addicted to this strange game where you flick coins onto a platform which pushes them down onto a cascade of platforms with the end goal being to knock more coins from the machine. We spent several hours playing that game. People started to crowd around. In the end, all we won was 10 euros and a bingo ticket, but we didn't really spend much money on it so I guess at least we had some kind of payback. I think that's the extent of my interest in gambling.

Bryggen in Bergen

The following day, we landed in Bergen. Norwegians have unusual laws regarding their docks and you aren't allowed to walk on the dock without special permission, so everyone has to take a bus into the city. This is actually a positive, though, because in Greece and Croatia, you had to pay to take the bus. At the docks in Norway, it was always free and they included a map of the area.

We decided to walk around Bergen on our own which was a good choice. Bergen is not a very big city. The main sights are the fish market which you can buy a wide assortment of fresh and smoke fish, and bryggen. Bryggen as a location in hard to explain. We didn't really know about it before we went to Bergen. Bryggen is an area of the city that we established in the middle ages, mostly by immigrants to to city. It's an area of wooden buildings of varying ages built on top of each other with an unusual network of alley ways and above ground wooden walk-way. It will occasionally open up into large courtyards. Today, most of the area is souvenir shops, but it use to be homes built atop commercial industries. Over time, the wooden structures would burn to the ground and be rebuilt. It's a tourist hot-spot, but it's actually very cool and worth the visit.

 

Other than Bryggen, we mostly just wondered around town taking in the sites and eating.There is always plenty of fish to eat in Norway. I found an antique camera store and bought a camera that I had been considering ordering for several years for half the cost. We also encountered Norway's military band, which was putting on a concert for preschoolers in a courtyard. Bergen was, by far, the cleanest and best organized city that we've visited in Europe. It was beautiful.

That night, we ate sushi on the boat. It was a poor choice. Greg ended up getting extremely sick and was up all night because of it. The following morning when we landed in Hellesylt with a hiking adventure planned, Greg was too sick to leave the room. So, I decided to still go on our adventure alone.

From Hellesylt, I took a bus through the mountains and valleys to a campground at the base of the 2 mile trail to Briksdal Glacier. Along the trip, a Norwegian women explained the interesting architecture of Norway. She explained that it was once only possible to get three colors of paint in Norway: red, yellow and white. White was the most expensive so it was used for houses. Red was the cheapest so it was used for barns. Yellow was used by families that couldn't afford the white. The houses were built with grass roofs for three main reasons. First, it was expensive to ship in the materials to make roofs, but a grass roof could be easily created by throwing tree bark onto a wooden base and covering it with soil. Second, this roof would last many many years, whereas more traditional roofing would need to be replaced often. The only maintenance needed for the grass roofs was a sheep to place onto of the home occasionally to trim the grass. Finally, the soil kept the home better insulated and warmer in the very cold and snowy Norwegian winter months. Despite years of progress and development, many of the Norwegians still preferred to paint their houses the traditional colors and cover the roofs with soil and grass.

After a beautiful and informative bus ride, I began a 2 mile hike to and from the Briksdal glacier. It was pretty cool outside, but extremely humid. So, despite wearing relatively good hiking clothing, I was pouring sweat by the time I reached the glacier. Greg would have been miserable. The second you took off your coat, you were wet and freezing. Several waterfalls crossed the path and sprayed you with cool glacier water. The river and the lake at the base of the glacier were a milky turquoise color from the high levels of silt. As a result, most of the many bodies of water in the area had similar varying hues. It was an experience I've never had anywhere else that we've traveled.

Back at the trailhead, I boarded a bus for Olden, a nearby town, and ate lunch at a small restaurant on a pier. Another cruise ship was docked in Olden and was filled with primarily older British people. There isn't much to do in Olden accept to take in the views of the fjord. It was a cute town. I ate salmon for the third time that week.

Finally, I took another bus back to Gieranger where our cruise ship was now docked. We stopped along the way at various towns, lakes and waterfalls to take pictures. The area was very crowded with tourists at this point. The Norwegian woman explained that this area of the country is only really open for tourists for a few months of the year and after this time, most of the inhabitants move back to the cities for winter as there is no work available in the area during that time. There is some farming in the area, but most families only keep as many livestock as can be handled themselves. It's customary to bring the livestock to higher ground in summer and the lower pains in winter. Norway requires that animals are able to spend at least 4 months out of the year outside.

"Summer Farms" for the livestock to get different grass

On the boat, I joined back up with Greg and we watched from our balcony as we sailed through the famous Gierangerfjord and Storfjorden with it's beautiful and famous waterfalls. It was a great day and I wished Greg was healthy enough to join. He would have really enjoyed the trip.