Day 80: Bergen

Our "early" day today started at 10:30 at the Fish Market. The market sort of confused me. I felt like they catered to the tourists as well, rather than just the locals. And then sometimes I wondered whether it was a market *for* tourists, but that didn't make sense at all because what tourist would buy lots of fresh fish?

We got to try a little bit of whale at the market! It was interesting, but I don't think I'm a fan of whale. We tried samples at two different stalls. The one from the first stall tasted "bloodier" whereas the second one was slightly milder.

Historical walking tour of the small preserved part of Bergen near the harbor. The area called Bryggen has rebuilt buildings from the 14th to 16th centuries, from when Bergen was part of the powerful Hanseatic trading empire. Hanseatic? I only had a slight feeling of "I think I've heard that word somewhere" before arriving in Bergen (not very strong with the history thing =/). It was basically a very wealthy trade monopoly along the coast of Northern Europe all the way to the Baltics.

The buildings are "rebuilt" ones because most of the area had already burned down many times over! I think it was something like six or seven times (maybe more?). There was this cool soil cross-section in the Bryggens Museum where you could see that people just kept on building right over the remains of the previous fire, and with wood each time, again!

Our last stop of the day was the Floibanen viewpoint over the city...


I then went to the supermarket to spend our last NOK (minus bus fare). It's always a bit of a headache when I do it, trying to use every last coin to buy things that I would buy anyways sometime. This time around we messed up somewhere along the way, because when we got to the bus, we realized we were 5 NOK short of the fare. Though the driver wouldn't accept our 1 EUR coin (which was a brilliant exchange rate being that 1 EUR > 8 NOK), someone on the bus traded with us so we could pay our fare and use up all our krone. Otherwise, we would have had to use our credit card for one of the fares and then have leftover krone.

The Bergen to Copenhagen flight had a really cute CGI video giving all the usual safety procedures. Airline: SAS.

We arrived in Copenhagen a little after 7:30pm. It was the first time we've ever had the screen in the baggage area alert us that our luggage would be late -- it would be 15 minutes before the luggage from the flight was to start appearing.

After finally grabbing our luggage, we got on the subway, stopped at a supermarket to pick up some food, and showed up at our new "home". We're staying in a room in this nice lady's apartment/house. The entrance goes to four doors: our room, the shared bathroom (us and her), and two doors to her side of the apartment.

Day 79: Oslo => Flam => Sognefjord => Bergen

The morning started out a bit stressful. We had an early early 6:38am train to catch, but after waiting at the tram stop for a while, we looked at the schedule to discover that the tram just doesn't run that early on a Sunday morning. Eek, we should have checked out the tram schedule last night! Thankfully, eventually a taxi passed by, and we managed to wiggle our way to a slightly lower taxi fare from the super-nice driver ^-^;; After that, we made our train and everything was happy ^o^

Oslo to Bergen is one of the most scenic train routes in Europe (though we only did half of it by train). Right as it got colder, we started seeing more snow, water, falling water, and also some cute towns. We got off the train at Flam and got some food as we waited for a boat to take us the rest of the way.



Fjord: a word that entered my vocabulary during scrabble in college, played by the ever-so-knowledgeable E. Even after that, I never really *knew* what it meant until last year. Explained in the context of something I already knew, it's like Yosemite Valley, except filled with water (both were carved by glaciers).

Here I was, seeing a fjord in person. I can't believe I'm saying it... actually, I was a little underwhelmed. I think it's one of those meeting-of-expectations times. Like our train ride earlier in the day, there was snow, water, falling water, and cute towns, but this time, we were seeing it from water instead of land. Waterfalls falling into water one after another... it was incredible! But there was something missing. We've been to amazingly gorgeous places set on water (e.g. Halong Bay) and my expectations were high. After the exhilarating train ride in the morning, I had even higher expectations >_< Perhaps if we were hiking next to the fjord it would have been different?

Having said all that, I did have a good time. It was cold and super-windy outside the boat. K says this is a really weird-looking picture of me. Of course it is! My face is all distorted by the wind!

I was standing at the very front of the boat at the time and took the picture with one hand while holding on to the railing with the other. I would have been blown back otherwise! I had a tough time keeping my eyes open, too. Once most people actually got to the front of the boat, they started heading back pretty quickly. I stayed there longer than most ^-^ K went out for only a couple of minutes and promptly returned back inside where he could enjoy the scenery from the comfort of his seat. I absolutely loved the wind, but it eventually just became too cold to stay out there!

Typical fjord scenery...



Entering into Bergen harbor was a definite highlight; it all looked so cute from the water! It was 9pm and as expected, there was still plenty of light out.


A few more twitter recaps from Oslo:
- Midnight. Looks like darkness might finally be starting to settle in. Maybe in another hour? (Or two?)
- False friend... applesin = orange!
- Actually, it never really gets fully dark! Nearly there and then haha, just kidding.

Day 78: Oslo

We walked around some of the main streets of the city today. On Karl Johans Gate, *the* pedestrian street, we passed by the erotic shop Kondomeriet. From the outside, it fit right in with all the other usual high-end shopping stores next to it and inside, there were lots of people browsing the shop. It sort of gives you a feel for the openness here. They have a pretty cool commercial, too.

As expected for a Saturday, a lot of people were out and about. There were probably even more people out today because we noticed a lot of people staking out spots on the side of the street. It turns out there's a gay pride parade today! I haven't been to any gay pride parades before, so I have nothing to compare against, but it seemed everyone, from kids to adults, were very supportive of the gay community. Some people in the parade were indeed quite dressed up, but there were many who were just wearing normal clothes and waving rainbow flags.


A bunch of rainbow flags were blowing in the wind right across from the city hall, too.

K wanted to visit the National Gallery (free) to see one picture, Munch's famous "The Scream", so we detoured from the gay pride parade (well, actually, the gay pride parade was the detour, but anyways...). Strangely, walking through the gallery felt refreshing! Have we visited any other art galleries this trip? Hmmmm. After visiting more than enough art museums during our Europe 2007 travels, I pretty much cut them out this trip ^-^;; I especially liked seeing the landscape painters here.

Frogner Park, aka Vigeland Park. A lot of people were out in the park, hanging about and grilling stuff on inexpensive grills. Vigeland is a well-known Norwegian sculptor (maybe the most well-known?) and Frogner Park is filled with his later work. His huge 46-foot monolith sits in the center of the park...



There was a huge maze on the ground around his fountain!

Getting off the tram and walking back to our flat/B&B today, K remarked that it 'feels just like the U.S.', complete with plenty of SUVs parked on the road.

We heard/read Norway is expensive, and it's true. On basic foods, there's a 14% tax. 14%! In Cali, we pay 0% tax on these same foods. It's the same 14% if you take away from an eatery, but 25% percent to eat there. And I was surprised at Czech Republic's 19% tax on eating out only a month ago! It's all a trade-off. For the high taxes, Norwegians get free university education and health care.

We're hardly eating out here; everything is about twice as expensive as we'd normally pay back home. But the supermarkets are great... plenty of yummy smoked salmon, meatballs, fish cakes, etc. I bought some meatballs for dinner today and managed to set off the smoke detector again! I think it's sensitive to heat. When I open the mini oven door, the intense rush of heat into the room inevitably sets it off >_<

Day 77: Oslo

We decided to get the Oslo Card yesterday. It gives you admission to a decent number of sights and we calculated that we would save a tiny bit with that over paying admission separately for each place we were already planning to see.

The Bygdoy Museums...
- Viking Ship - huge, cool, awesome-looking ships from way way long ago!


- Fram - another big ship, not nearly as old, but they used it to explore the Arctic!
- Kon-Tiki - huge raft they used in the mid-1900's to sail from South America to Polynesia to show that it was indeed possible!
- Norwegian Folk - I could hang out here for a loooong time.

When we were at the folk museum, we first walked around together and then K found some shaded tables and chairs outside one of the general stores while I ran around because I really do *take my time*. It takes me even more time when I'm by myself though because I tend to get a bit "lost" >_< Well, not entirely lost. Just lost in the way of 'I wanted to take that route but somehow I ended up here instead, so I guess I'll try this way?' At least I had a map.

I got stuck at the stave church for a while. There was a wedding ceremony there and everyone was waiting for the bride to arrive. The cute flower girls distracted me >_< The church itself was cool, too, especially when I thought about how the church supposedly doesn't have nails, just wood "fitting together"!

The city hall is where they hold the Nobel Peace Prize ceremonies. (Why is there a separate ceremony for the peace prize from all the other Nobel prizes? K says it's probably because the invitees are slightly different.) RS says that in Scandinavia, rather than churches or cathedrals, city halls are the dominant buildings. It seems he may be right.


Nobel Peace Museum. We didn't originally intend to go here, but since we had the Oslo Card, we thought we'd give it a quick walk through. The exhibits made pretty good use of technology.

Small city tour. Something else we just tacked on because it came free with the card ^-^;; I liked this statue we passed while on the tour...

The guide told us about a certain exhibit to check out after the tour. Apparently Oslo is undergoing a massive (really massive) project to revitalize the harbor area. The white in the picture is all new development (knocking down current stuff and building new stuff)! It's crazy. So, whenever we do make it back here, all that we've seen this trip will likely be entirely changed!


I thought it curious that there were no pots or pans nor cooking utensils in the flat. When I contacted the landlady about it, she replied that such items are not included and that we're only provided with the things we need to make breakfast. Still, there was a little toaster oven, so I used it to make dinner. I set off the smoke detector even though there was no smoke! >_< K acted quickly to kill the detector and we waited a bit to put it back in.

Day 76: Dubrovnik => Oslo

We were awarded with some nice views of the old town during our bus ride to the airport...


Originally, the Northern Europe portion was going to start in Helsinki and move back west, but after extensive airfare and train-fare searches, it turns out the least expensive route is actually
Dubrovnik
=> non-stop flight to Oslo
=> train + boat to Bergen (mode of transport on this leg was non-negotiable)
=> non-stop flight to Copenhagen
=> train to Stockholm
=> overnight boat to Helsinki (non-negotiable mode of transport)
=> day-trip to Tallinn
=> non-stop flight back to Zurich

It's super-nice that all our flights turned out to be non-stop! ^o^

I actually managed to book reasonably-priced accommodations in Scandinavia, "reasonable" meaning 600 NOK (70 EUR) a night in Oslo, which was a lot better than I'd hoped. We're staying in a three-bedroom apartment and it turns out the other two rooms are going to be empty during our stay, so we get the whole flat to ourselves ^o^

The flat is a bit out of center, 15-20 minutes by tram, but it's not too bad. And K speculates that we might be one of the first tenants in the seemingly-recently-renovated flat. We paid the landlady and she told us where to leave the keys when we leave on the last day and how to contact her if we need anything. Otherwise, we probably won't see each other again.

Aside from settling in and walking around a bit, we didn't do much else today.

While we were in Dubrovnik, K commented that he feels we've been in our comfort zone too much during this trip. When we were planning, I wanted to visit Sarajevo and travel further into Eastern Europe, but he wasn't interested. There really was just too much to see.

There's sort of two perspectives to it. In one respect, we are already entirely out of our comfort zone -- moving every week and sleeping in new beds, dealing with each new environment, the changing language "barrier", thinking about the next meal, talking to strangers all the time. But, in our long travels, these discomforts have become part of daily life, and we've gotten "used" to them so much that we feel the need for even more "raw" experiences.

Neither of us would have changed this trip though (we don't think). Each place and experience has left their impression on us. But we did start talking about our *next* trip. The K that previously said he had many more places in the world he wanted to travel to before checking out South America is now saying he might want his next trip to be South America.

Here we are, the final part of our short-of-four-months travels starts in Oslo!

I did manage to somewhat keep up our twitter. One post a day? It's probably not how twitter is intended to be used but oh well.

Twitter post for today:
10pm and it's still bright out. Sunset today is supposedly 10:45pm! O_o