Berlin

Long weekend in Berlin from 16 Nov 07 to 19 Nov 07

I arrived late in the afternoon Friday, taking the airport shuttle from Tegel to my hotel at Alexanderplatz. The bus ride into town was very long and uncomfortable. I spent over an hour on the bus, and the bus was extremely crowded. I dumped my luggage at the hotel, and went out in search of some food before turning in. The weather was fairly cold, around 0 degrees Celsius, and it was windy. I walked along the "Unter den Linden" which was supposed to be one of the main touristy streets in Berlin according to my travel-guide. All I saw was lots of closed museums and old buildings. As I couldn't find a restaurant that was open, I decided to go back to Alexanderplatz and grab some junk food. I was quite cold at this point, so I decided to try to use the S-Bahn to get back. I spent almost 45 minutes waiting for a S-Bahn train that didn't show up. Turns out they were on strike. The annoying thing was that the loudspeakers in the station were still announcing the trains, so it took a while before I understood that further waiting would be fruitless. In retrospect I should probably have done some more research on which areas the restaurants were.

Saturday I had designated to be a shopping-day. I had decided to go visit the "Kaufhaus des Westens", which is biggest warehouse in Europe. I found it very nice, especially the delicacy section. I spent the rest of the day shopping on the KurfürstenDamm and at Potsdamer Platz. At Potsdamer Platz there was a snow slope advertising skiing areas in Austria, complete with Glühwein-stands.

Museum-wise I visited the Dali exhibition and Berlin museum (The story of Berlin). The Dali museum was very nice, much better than the one in Paris. The Berlin museum was also well worth the visit, lots of effort had been put into the exhibition.

I had designated Sunday to be my main touristy day for this trip. I started off by visiting the Pergamon museum. It contained archaeological artifacts from German expeditions to the Middle East. I was mostly impressed by the Ishtar gate and all of the Babylonian stuff (hadn't seen such things "in the stone" before..).

I walked over to the Brandenburger Tor - more or less the symbol of the reunited city. I continued past the memorials of people that had been shot trying to escape the DDR over to the Reichstag. There was a one hour line to get in, due to security inspections of everyone entering. Once I got in, I took the elevator up to the roof. On top of the roof there is a glass dome where you have a nice view of the city.

Next stop was the Checkpoint Charlie and the Mauermuseum next to it. There were some nice exhibits at the Mauermuseum, but the museum itself was really crowded.
Afterwards I walked over to the Jewish museum. The Jewish museum is located in a oddly shaped building, so much so that the building itself is the main exhibit. There's crooked angles everywhere, and the building is supposed to resemble a broken star of David.

On my way back to the hotel I had dinner at a Bavarian restaurant, where I finally tried the famous Schweinhaxe. I had heard from friends earlier how the waiters would try to kill you with meat. Turns out their explanations were not exaggerated - there was no way I was able to eat even half of it. They also served me proper Lövenbrau, which was very nice.

In the evening, in order to be touristy and get the full Berlin experience, I had the green beer - Berliner weisse mit schüss. Which was...interesting.

Monday morning, I started off fighting with my suitcase to make it accept all the stuff I had bought on my shopping spree on Saturday. Luckily, I managed to fit it all, but I was worried about whether the zippers would pop in transit.

This morning I went further east in Berlin, to see the longest preserved piece of the Berlin Wall -the East Side Gallery. Only a small part of it was preserved, and many of the pieces had been worn away. Also, scum had tagged over some of the pieces. Still, it was interesting to see what was left of the wall.

I took the U-bahn back to Mitte, and visited the "Topographie des Terrors"-exhibition, detailing the atrocities committed by the Gestapo and the execution commands during WW2.

Next I went to the Ku'Damm and visited the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gedäcthnis-Kirche - a monumental church damaged by bombing raids during WW2. Part of it is old and bomb-damaged, part of it rebuilt and very modern, with very special stained-glass windows and a strange altar.

I had a few hours to kill before going to the airport, so I decided to visit the famous Zoo and aquarium.

After a quick lunch I picked up my suitcase and went to the airport. It was a long bus ride to get there, but at least I had a seat this time. If I go back to Berlin, I will certainly be using a taxi rather than endure more hours of the TXL-shuttle.
Arriving at the airport, I had another surprise waiting: It was impossible to check in until 1.5 hours before the plane leaves. I was there two hours before, so I had to lug my suitcase around while waiting for them to open up the check-in. It was also hard to find places to sit, because of the layout of the airport. I managed to get a chair at a Starbucks. I sat there wondering how such a big city could be so amateurish in how they arrange their airports and airport links. Probably it has to do with the fact that they have three small airports rather than a big one, owing to the history of the place.

Overall:
Berlin was very good for shopping, there wasn't that many museums there. Signposting in general was bad, you had really look around to find direction signs in the U-bahn stations. I was also surprised by the sucky airport and communications to and from the airport.

Pictures are here

Paris

Since we had November 1st off from work (love those "Official Holidays"), I decided to go to Paris for the long weekend. I had never been to Paris before, so I was planning on doing all those touristy things.

I took the Thalys-train to the station called "Gare du Nord". The train ride itself was fairly unpleasant, very crowded and some kid puked a few seats away, so the whole carriage was smelling of puke and kids were screaming at the top of their lungs. That's what I get for traveling monkey-class, I guess, but since the train ride was already more expensive than flying, I wasn't too keen on forking out extra cash for an upgrade.

I was staying at a hotel called "Hotel Magenta" which was close to the Gare de l'Est railway station. This was not a very nice neighborhood. Every few hundred meters you would see hobos, and there were the occasional puddles of puke and urine along the sidewalk. The upside was that it was not very far from the metro station, and it wasn't too expensive.

I dumped my luggage at the hotel and took the metro to Notre Dame. I went inside the church and visited the treasury, where they had some nice artifacts. The afternoon I spent walking around in the Latin quarter.

In the evening walked around in Montmartre. I ended up walking past Moulin Rouge into the Pigalle neighborhood, which is not a nice place to walk alone as a guy. There were lots of people hassling me,and at one point an old woman grabbed my arm and tried to pull me into a club. Uncool.

Friday morning I decided to get the Eiffel Tower out of the way. I went over there by metro and found my place in line. An hour and a half later I was finally at the elevators. They closed off the top level because of overcrowding, so I could only get up to the second level. The whole site was very crowded, and you were walking in a line the whole time. It was a relief to get back down to the ground and away from the crowds.

Next, I walked over to The army museum and the dome church. The dome church is the burial place for some of France's war heroes, and at the center of the church you can find the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte. The army museum was very interesting, and well maintained. It had a very big collection of suits of armor, and some very interesting Great War-stuff.

I proceeded to walk through the touristy areas, the Champs-Elysees, Place de la Concorde, and the Rue Saint Honore. I made the mistake of having lunch at a cafe in this area. They had a very rude waiter who was very focused on clearing tables. He was almost tossing out people when they had finished their meals. I had never seen anything like this before. Eating in the most touristy areas is maybe not the best thing to do in Paris.

In the evening I went back to the Latin quarter and had dinner at a very bad Greek restaurant. I had bad food and bad wine, and spent forever waiting to pay my bill. Just another reminder to stay away from touristy areas, I guess...


Saturday I got up early to try to beat the crowds to the more popular places. I started out by going to the Sainte-Chapelle. There were no lines so early in the morning, so I could just walk straight into it. It was the most beautiful church I have ever been in.

Later I queued for an hour to get up to the roof of the Notre Dame. The lines are long because they don't let that many people up at the same time, which means that you actually get to see something once you get up there. I really liked the gargoyle viewing platform. The roof had a really great view of Paris, much better in my opinion than the view from the Eiffel Tower. There were also many interesting gargoyles up there. This was definitely my favorite spot in the city.

Next I took the metro to Montparnasse and had lunch at a very nice cafe. I received excellent service and they had very good food. I decided against going down into the catacombs that day as there were very long lines - several hundred meters.
Instead I took the metro to Arc du Triomphe. I walked up to the roof and watched the "Star" of roads beaming out from the arch. Of course there was a line to get up there, but it moved really fast, so I think I only waited for twenty minutes or so.


After the arch, I went by metro to Montmartre. I watched the crowds and walked around for a bit in the small streets. I visited the Dali museum, but it was not that nice. It sort of felt like those movie score cd's which say "music from and inspired by" with one or two tracks from the movie, and the rest just generic crap they threw in to fill up the album. Not worth the time or the entrance fee of 10 euro.

I took the metro back again to Arc the Triomphe and walked down the Champs-Elysees, doing some shopping on the way.

In the evening I walked around for a few hours in the Marais district and Les Halles. I ended up having dinner at this cafe with really pretty waitresses and really crappy food. Again I had a bad experience eating in the touristy areas...

I took the metro to Bastille, found a nice bar and had some nice drinks while watching the nightlife. Bastille looked like a lively area.

Sunday morning I took the metro to Catacombs, and managed to get there before a huge line had formed. The catacombs were pretty creepy - corridors full of skulls and femurs stacked to head-height forming walls and monuments.

After exiting the catacombs, I walked around Montparnasse to Pantheon. I went inside, and visited the crypt, where the famous French thinkers and statesmen are buried. I had lunch near the Jardin du Luxembourg.

Since I still had a few hours to kill, I went to the museum called "Metiers en Arts". It was an engineering museum, and would probably have been more interesting if I had been more geeky.

In the afternoon I took the Thalys back to The Hague. This time one of the toilets malfunctioned, smelling up the carriage. Good thing the train ride was only three and a half hours or so.

In general I liked Paris, and I will return, although I think I will go by plane the next time...
Pictures are here

Krakow

I went to Krakow with Lukasz in the weekend of the 21st of September to the 24th of September.

We flew with Sky-Europe from Amsterdam. The only remarkable thing from the flight was the amazing speed of the delivery of the English version of the in-flight messages. The words came at us like they were coming out of a fire hose, and it was utterly incomprehensible. It would probably have been better with a taped version of the messages.

We stayed at the Lemon Hostel in the center of Krakow. Very cheap, the room looked decent enough, although the walls were paper-thin. They also had some windows above the doors that would rattle like crazy every time someone was walking in the hallway outside. Across the hall from us were some really loud Greeks that would spend forever every morning getting up, chattering incessantly in very loud voices. This made it hard to get any sleep, as we would be partying every night until 3 or so, and the Greeks would start shouting around 8 in the morning.

We met up with one of Lukasz' friends, Paulina, and her boyfriend, Kuba. We walked through the main streets of Krakow, and then into a narrow alley, up some dark stairs, past some scary-looking dude with camouflage pants and a shaved head and suddenly we were inside this cool pub. We sat there talking and drinking for a couple of hours and met up with Sylwia, another one of Lukasz' friends.

We went to some other club(hard to remember those Polish club-names) and started dancing and doing vodka-shots. After a couple of hours Lukasz, Paulina and Kuba went to another club. A few shots later, the cherry vodka started to go to my head, so I found it best to leave for the hostel. Lukasz had given me the keys to the hostel and written down the address on notes stuffed in two different pockets. He had also sent me a SMS with the address. Obviously he was very worried about my navigational skills. What he does not know is that I have super-human navigational skills when I am properly drunk. It's kind of like a homing pigeon always knowing the way back. I walked back towards the hostel, and stopped to sample the local kebab. I always have less of a hangover if I snack on my way home, and this time I had the distinct feeling I might need a hangover-cure. Suddenly I received a SMS from Lukasz. I browsed through the SMS with my left hand, keeping a tight grip on the kebab with my right for balance when I heard someone screaming my name. Turns out, the club that Lukasz and the others had been in was right next to the kebab-shop, so we practically ran into each other on the way back. I wasn't the only one being drunk at this point, as the others tried to board a taxi to drive us the two blocks we had left to the hostel.

The next morning we had breakfast at a nice cafe called "Dynia" (If I remember correctly). The others tricked me into trying a Polish specialty for curing hangovers: a tall glass of beer mixed with Sprite. I'm not sure it helped all that much...

We started the day by walking around the city center up to the castle at Wavel. We went into the cathedral and down into the crypt to watch the graves of the famous Polish kings. We also went up into the tower to look at the Zygmunt bell, the biggest church bell in Poland, which is only sounded when significant events happen in Polish history.


We had a quick lunch at the market before going to Kazimierz - formerly the Jewish part of town, now mainly the entertainment-part of town. We had a stopover at a nice pub, downed some beers before going to an very nice Italian restaurant. From there we walked around until we found Sylwia's place. She was having a housewarming-party and naturally there were lots of vodka shots involved. After a few hours everyone went to a gay disco close to where Sylwia lived called Disco Plastic. We had the place almost to ourselves. It had a very nice party atmosphere with people dancing on the bar counter and lots of happy people drinking and dancing. We kept on dancing until four in the morning.


Sunday morning we woke up to the sound of the noisy greeks starting at 8 in the morning. We had breakfast at the same place, including the glass of beer and Sprite. It tasted better this day, maybe my hangover was worse?


We took a local train to visit the salt mines at Wieliczka. A miner guide took us down into the ground through a series of wooden stairs. We followed a very touristy route, complete with garden gnomes, salt statues and some hobo pretending to be the mountain king. "Stay away from my salt! Stop licking the walls!"

They also had a cathedral underground complete with a salt statue of John Paul II (The REAL pope according to my Polish hosts, not "that German guy"). The tour ended up in the gift shop - we had to queue up for the lifts up to the top floor to get back into the daylight. At the top we had to wait in a room for ten minutes before we could go outside without anyone telling us the reason why. Maybe they expected us to tip them or something?

We took a minibus shuttle back to Krakow and went to a very nice restaurant close to the market. The restaurant was serving traditional Polish cuisine and had many interesting dishes that I had not seen before. Here we also met up with Paulina's room mate Dominika. After a very nice meal, we went to a couple of pubs before ending up at a very cool club called Spokój. This club had a nice selection of booze, decent clientèle , 70's interior design and decent music (except for playing way too much U2). We met up with Sylwia after a while. Lukasz and I had a very nice time, drinking, talking and feeling the smoothness of the juice. We had a master plan of going to bed at 22.00 in order to get some sleep as we would have to get up at 04.00 to make our flight back to Amsterdam. With the pleasant company, and the drinking, we were having too much fun to be able to pull ourselves back to the hostel. None of us wanted to leave , and we ended up drinking until 01.00.

The flight back was painful, and in the evening I was really trashed, but it was totally worth it. Krakow to me was lots of nice clubs, gorgeous women, extremely cheap booze and decent food. It is definitely a city I want to go back to at some point.

My pictures

Lukasz' pictures

Barcelooonah!

I traveled to Barcelona the weekend of Thursday 6 September to Sun 9 September.

The trip started with a delayed flight, making me come in late to Barcelona. The flight itself was pretty unpleasant, as I had some kid grabbing my shirt from behind , screaming like crazy, and kicking my chair. Gotta love the Dutch approach to raising children...just letting them do whatever they feel like and never yelling at them...no matter how much they piss off their surroundings...

The hotel was very easy to find, as I stayed on the Plaza Catalunia. My room was on the top floor, so the noise outside was not a problem. I walked down the famous La Rambla before turning in, watching different street-hustlers try to con tourists out of their money. There were human statues everywhere, with great variety of acts. Human statues are one of the most annoying thing about European big cities. Sometimes they draw crowds of people, clogging up the street. As a Polish friend of mine said "Easiest thing in the world! They just stand around all day doing nothing...Why should I pay them for doing nothing?"

Friday I got up early, grabbed a quick breakfast at a cafe, and jumped on a open-air bus tour. This was a two and a half hour affair, with stops along the main sights. The ticket was valid for a day, so I could jump on and off as I felt like. This was convenient as there was a new bus stopping every ten minutes at each of the major sights. I got off at the Parc Guell.



The Parc Guell is a park in the outskirts of Barcelona, designed by Gaudi when he was in his "nature"-period. It was a very nice park, with oddly shaped bridges and artificial caves. There was a very good view of the city from the top of the park.

After 11, the park started to get very crowded as the groups of tourists started swarming in. I hopped on the sightseeing-bus again, and continued the tour, going all the way around Barcelona.


After doing the full round-trip with the bus, I entered the famous Casa Mila , or "La Pedrera" ("The Stone Quarry"). This is probably the most famous building Gaudi ever made, and it looks very different. It also houses the Gaudi museum, which was pretty OK. The main thing to see is the roof, as it has the weirdest chimneys and decorations.

After visiting the Casa Mila , I went into the Casa Batillo, walked up the stairs, looked at the chimneys, and that was pretty much it. Not exactly a bargain, at 11 euros.

I spent the rest of the day walking around getting acquainted with the Barrio Gotic. I found the Barcelona Cathedral there, and spent some time looking at that, and getting my gargoyle fix.

In the evening, I had decided to go shopping for clothes. I wandered into the "El Corte Ingles"- department store that was right next to the Placa Catalunia. I didn't really find much I wanted, except for kitchen stuff that would not fit my suitcase.



Saturday I started out by using the metro go to the Gaudi Cathedral. The Gaudi Cathedral (or the Sagrada Familia) is a very special, modern church still being built in the center of Barcelona. This building is a work in progress...so it feels very much like visiting a construction site. They had closed off the stairs to get to the top of the towers, so one had to use the lift to get up. Naturally there was a loong line. They put up small signs telling average time to the lift, and I noticed there was a line up to the "60 minutes"-mark, so I didn't bother to stand in line for the lift.

Later i used the metro to get to the Parc de la Ciutadella. I found it very easy to navigate the metro, but it felt like a sauna in the stations. Funny how the trains were air-conditioned , but the stations were not. There was some sort of concert going on in the park, so they closed off half of it, the part with the fountains and the monuments, so there wasn't all that much to see.
I walked back through the Barrio Gotic, stopping at the church called Santa Maria del Mar which was reputedly the most pretty church in Barcelona.

In the evening I did some more shopping for clothes in the street next to catalunia plaza, visited the Maremagnum department store and the aquarium.


The city was very different on Saturday evening, compared to the earlier nights I had been there. The streets were full of people. It was very crowded, even by Dutch standards. On the square in front of the cathedral people were dancing, both traditional dances and more modern stuff. It was nice seeing probably a hundred people dancing in the traditional Catalan way on the square in big circles.

I had to walk around for a long time before I found a cervezeria which wasn´t full. The good thing was that the cervezeria I found had a very good selection of beer. They even had Paulaner! I was sitting on a sidewalk between two very busy streets, so it was very noisy and polluted, both from traffic and Spanish people smoking on tables very close to me. I probably lost a few weeks of my life from just sitting in the pollution. This was not near the tourist areas, so no-one spoke English and my Spanish is limited to things like "quenta costa cerveza?" and "Uno cerveza, por favor"...but through some inventive sign language, I managed to get some bratwurst and beer from them? I ended up sitting there for hours sipping beer, as they had Lövenbrau, which I had not drunk since leaving Norway...

Oh, and there was a traffic collision right next to the restaurant while I was sitting there..and the amazing thing was that the police were there like 30 seconds later. Amazing!

Sunday morning I got up around nine and walked around in the Barrio Gotic. The streets were empty, and everything seemed to be closed. I decided to go up to the Montjuïc hill, to look at the castle, and some of the museums up there. I took the cable car to get up to the castle, and from the cable car you had an amazing view of the city. From the top of the castle itself, the view was very nice. I visited the museum inside the castle, and this museum had a large collection of medieval weapons. It also had a number of photographs of army units taken in the 1890's which were very interesting. Lots of very intense guys posing for the camera. Slightly different from the haphazard snapshots we do today in the age of the digital camera.


I took the cable car back down the hill, and visited the surrealist art museum "Fundacio Miro". After a short while, I found out I didn't really like any of the stuff they had there, so I left. ( I like modern art, but mostly the freaky stuff...it should not be boring )

All the other museums were closed off for some reason, so I was left with having to take the metro back into the town center to get some dinner. It was hard to find a table, so I ended up having dinner at a shady-looking restaurant in the Barrio Gotic. The food was bad and service was almost non-existent, but that's probably what I deserve for eating in the touristy part of the city.

I decided to leave early for the airport, to see if I could find something in the tax-free before going home. This was a mistake, as the shops at the airport were very expensive. Some of the standard clothes-brands were twice the price of what I would pay if I had been shopping in Holland, so in the end I just picked up a bottle of Guatemalan rum and flew back to Holland.

Overall, Barcelona was noisy, smelly, crowded and expensive(compared to Holland anyway, not Norway). I must say..from the cities I have visited this summer, I liked Venice more...

Pictures are here

Scotland

On the weekend of August 31st to September 2nd, I traveled to Scotland, to see the Highlands, and travel on the famous West Highland Line.

This trip started out bad even before I left home, as I had a lot of trouble ordering train tickets from the website of firstscotrail.co.uk. At first, they refused to sell me tickets for picking up at the railway station, as I did not have a valid UK address. After a bit of googling to find a valid UK zipcode to keep the webshop happy, they refused to accept my credit card. I found out that they tried to validate the card using my full name...and the dutch cards are usually made out to firstletter dot lastname. The problem was - there was no way to change my billing name, so I had to change the first name on my account to "F.". The problems were not over, though. Somehow, they had cached the failed order, and now they charged me for TWO trips. To make things even better...in order to cancel my first ticket, they would charge me half the ticket price. I sent them an angry letter, and they promised to refund me the whole amount. We'll see if they make good on their promise...freakin' webmonkeys!

As if this wasn't enough, I had a lot of trouble booking hotel rooms as well. They had no online booking, only "response forms" accessible from the web. I filled out a couple of these and never heard anything more from them...so eventually I had to start calling around. visitscotland.co.uk has some sort of booking agency that can arrange accommodation in most of Scotland. Trouble was that whenever they offered me something, when I accepted, the room would be no longer available. After three failed attempts to book a hotel room, I had to accept a room at a B&B in a private home. I was a bit skeptical at first, because there was very little information about the property. The good thing was that it was very cheap, just 22 pounds per night.

I landed in Edinburgh and took the Airlink shuttle to Waverley station, where I picked up my train tickets at the ticket machines. Since I had a couple of hours to kill before my train left for Glasgow, I walked up to "The Royal Mile" and walked to the castle. I had been to the castle once before, but I was 11 at the time, so I didn't remember all that much of my previous trip. The castle is on the smaller side, but you have great views over Edinburgh, as the castle is situated on a hill above the city itself.

The ticket inspection system on the train between Edinburgh and Glasgow would put the ticket inspectors on the dutch trams to shame. My ticket was checked on entry to the platform, by a guy on the train and on exit in Glasgow. Three times for a journey of 45 minutes!

From Glasgow I boarded the diesel train going up the West Highland Line. The diesel train was noisy and slow, and there was nothing interesting to look at until a couple of hours had passed, and we started going past lochs and steep hills. I was amazed, by the way, that they sold whisky from the trolleys on the train...so you could sip whisky while looking at the grand view of the Scottish mountains. What I could see of the Scottish mountains, anyway. The sides of the railway track were somewhat overgrown, so at times it felt like we were going through a green tunnel. After a couple of hours it turned dark as well, so I missed out on seeing the area around Glencoe on my way up to Fort William.

The B&B I was staying at had given me quite detailed location information, so it was easy to find the house. The room at the B&B was fairly OK, good size and comfortable bed. The landlord had a shower in the hall, so it wasn't as spartan as I had feared. In the morning the guy running the place cooked up an enormous breakfast for me: Bacon, eggs, sausages, bread, potato cakes and black and white pudding. Very good value for the price I was paying. I walked down to the train station and boarded the local train to Mallaig on the coast. This is supposed to be "The most scenic train ride of the British isles". Unfortunately, the weather was rainy and foggy, so I didn't see that much on my way to Mallaig. On the way back, though, most of the fog had lifted, so I got to see the beautiful landscape that they used as backdrops in the "Harry Potter"-movies, among others.




Coming back into Fort William, I discovered why it had been so hard to get a room. This weekend was the "Nevis-weekend", so they were hosting a race for people to run up to the top of Ben Nevis and back down again. There were a number of hiking stores in the town, and they had a lot of good equipment for hiking in wet and cold weather. I bought myself a pair of waterproof, windproof gloves.

They also had a number of whisky-shops, and I managed to find something I had been looking for for years: a bottle of Port Ellen whisky. I had looked for this before in specialist whisky shops in London, so it was funny that I found one in a touristy whisky shop in a small town up in the highlands.

Sunday I traveled back by train the same way I came. The good thing now was that it was daytime, so I was able to see Ben Nevis, Glencoe, Rannoch, and all the other stuff I missed on the way up there. After a few hours most of the interesting stuff had passed, and then it was just another boring train ride. I spent far too much time traveling on Sunday, so I was very tired when I finally came back to The Hague.

I think the west highlands could be very good for hiking. I saw a lot of nice mountains over there, although it would probably be good to have a car for going from place to place. Didn't seem like there were too many trains up there. The roads were narrow up there, with lots of single carriageway roads. They also drive on the wrong side of the road, so I think it could be stressful to drive up there.

Pictures are here.

Road trip back to Norway

For my summer vacation this year, I decided to go back home to Norway for three weeks. I had two major goals during this vacation - meet up with friends and family who I had not seen for a long time, and try to do some hiking in the mountains. As I live in a flat country, I need to look at mountains from time to time. I figured it would be easier to get around if I had a car, so I decided to drive home.

I had packed everything I needed for the trip on the evening of Fri the 27th of July, and got up early on the 28th, had a quick breakfast and walked out to the car. I turned the ignition...and the friggin GPS wouldn't start. The damn thing had turned into a brick overnight! I had checked the route the evening before, checked battery levels and everything looked good. Now the thing was just not starting up. This TomTom-gps had crashed on me once before, and then I had to wait for a whole month for Mediamarkt to send it in for servicing. I feared the same thing had happened again, and I was not very happy with the prospect of driving to Norway using only paper maps. Luckily, I had discussed the TomTom unit with a colleague the day before, and he had told me that they had a habit of freezing up. You could, in some cases, bring them back to life with a reset to factory settings. I did some frenzied googling and found out that there was a hole for a paper clip to reset the thing in case it had gotten confused. Only... I didn't have a paper clip. Seriously, who keeps paper clips around their house anyway? I rummaged through most of my tools before finding a set of screwdrivers small enough to fit the hole. Luckily, the reset function brought the unit back to life, and I could start my road trip, one hour late. Damn you, modern technology!

The trip through Holland and Germany was fairly uneventful, except for that I picked the wrong weekend to start my vacation. Large parts of Germany were starting their vacation period that weekend, so I ended up being stuck in line for the ferry at Puttgarden for three hours. I spent the evening driving around the countryside of Lolland, Denmark to try to find a place to sleep.

The next morning I drove through the rest of Denmark in a couple of hours before crossing Storebæltsbroen - the second longest bridge in the world. It was weird driving over the bridge and seeing really big ships on both sides of the bridge. Other than that it was a hassle-free way to get from Denmark to Sweden, and I wasn't too keen on being stuck in another ferry line. The drive through southwestern Sweden is long and boring. The roads are of good quality, compared to Germany and Denmark, but they get crappier the closer you get to Norway. In the afternoon I finally arrived at my destination - my parents cabin in Strømstad, Sweden, near the border to Norway. This is 1300 km from my home in The Hague, so it was a long drive.

I met up with my parents and my sister there, and stayed two days. Monday evening I had a nice meal with my uncle on my father's side(Arne), two of my cousins(Marianne and Sigurd) and Marianne's daughter(Sara).

Tuesday the 31st of July I drove to Kongsberg to meet my friend Jan Kristian, dropping of my sister in Oslo on the way. The next few days we went hiking in the Blefjell area north-west of Kongsberg, walking on top of Blenuten in the process. Originally we had planned to go to one of the big peaks of Rondane, but due to bad weather we decided to go to Blefjell instead. It was a nice trip, although slightly windy. Pictures are here.

After a couple of days in Kongsberg, I drove to Lillehammer to stay at my parents' house. I spent a day visiting my grandparents, shopping and preparing equipment. During the weekend I also met up with my brother, who had just returned from climbing the Matterhorn .

Sunday the 5th of August, the weather forecast looked good, for the first time in days, so I decided to try hiking to one of the easier big peaks of Rondane . After driving for two and a half hours to get to the plateau below the peaks, I found out the weather forecast was wrong. The cloud cover was low, and you couldn't see the peaks. I started walking uphill anyway, thinking that the skies might clear up in a couple of hours. It turned out they didn't. The fog only got thicker, the wind started picking up, and it started to rain heavily. Since I couldn't see anything, and there was no sign of the fog lifting I decided to turn back, three hours up the mountain. Turning back and walking back to the car for hours on loose slippery rock through rain, wind and fog was no fun, but there really was no point trying to climb the mountain in this weather.


On Monday the weather forecast was better than the day before, so I decided to go to the mountains again, this time to Jotunheimen . I had bought a new book about Jotunheimen while dropping off my sister in Oslo, and this mentioned a mountain close to the roads with a good view of the southern part of Jotunheimen. I drove up there and found out the cloud cover was just as low as the day before, but it was still higher up than the mountain I was going to, Synshorn. I parked my car at the bottom of the mountain and hiked up to the top of the mountain in only an hour. The viewpoint at the top was very nice, and the hike up was really easy, so it was a nice trip. I drove a different way back, taking the scenic route over the mountain back to Lillehammer. Pictures are here .



Tuesday the 7th I spent visiting my uncle and aunt(Liv and Jarle) and preparing to go to Trondheim to visit my friend Håkon Humberset. I got a tip from my uncle about it being faster to drive across the mountain plateau near Ringebu if I wanted to go to Trondheim. This was also the route my GPS unit picked...it turned out it was almost 20 kilometers shorter than the regular route through Dombås. I had never driven this route before, so it was a nice experience. Part of the way I had a great view of some of the big peaks of Rondane, so it was very scenic compared to the regular route.


I met up with Håkon in Trondheim, and we planned a big hiking trip into the Trollheimen area. The next morning we drove towards Surnadal, to park my car down at the Kårvatn car park in Todalen. On the first day we crossed the mountain pass at Bjøråskaret to get to Innerdalen. We walked into fairly thick fog near the top, but this was not all that much cause for concern, as I had brought my Garmin GPS unit with me, so we always found our way back to the path. What was more worrying was the amount of snow we were seeing around us, and just below the top of the pass our fears came true: We had to cross a steep snow flank to get across. We were carrying heavy backpacks and we were not carrying ice axes, so if we were to slip, there was a big chance we would slip forcefully all the way into the rocks below and injure ourselves. We walked really carefully up the flank, and fifteen minutes later we had crossed, without incident. The wind was picking up, but the fog was only getting thicker, robbing us of the magnificient view we were supposed to have into Innerdalen from the top of Bjøråskaret. The way down from the pass took a lot longer than we planned for. At the top the trail degenerated into steep piles of rock, and the rocks were very slippery, so we were very careful going down. On the way up to the mountain pass, we had climbed about 900m of elevation spread out over 12 km. Going down now into Innerdalen, we were descending about 800m of elevation in just 2 kilometers, so the path was really steep in places. Not being able to see anything because of the fog was also starting to sap our morale, and the trip was getting a lot longer than we planned for. Eventually, after seven hours of hiking, we found Innerdalshytta, were we spent the night.




The next morning the weather was totally different. The clouds had lifted and the sun was shining, giving us a great view of Innerdalen. We walked the length of Innerdalen, up to Innerdalsporten, over Medskaret and down the road to the Bårdsgården farmhouse. The hike was a bit wetter than we planned for, and we had to make some detours around some of the worst marshes, due to Håkon having brought hiking shoes rather than hiking boots (which is a problem with wet soil). I really liked the first part of the hike. Great view, nice weather, not very strenuous. The three-hour walk down the road to the farmhouse on the other hand was grueling, especially since we knew we had to go back the same way the next day. The placement of the cabin was really bad, and this contributed a lot to our decision to change to a three-day trip rather than a four-day trip. Håkon had developed blisters on his back from the backpack, and he was having a real problem carrying a backpack, so we decided to repack in the morning, stuff all clothes and unneeded equipment in his backpack and leave it at the cabin. We would then go to the car and drive all the way around to the other side of the mountain range to pick up the backpack. We were in a bad mood in the evening, as we were tired and there were no showers available, as the ones that were there were coin-operated, and we didn't have the right type of coins.


Saturday we got up really early and walked along the road up to the trail head. just before hitting the trail, the fog rolled in again, leaving us hiking in the fog. To add to the problems, the trail didn't go where the map said it should go, so the gps wasn't all that useful. The trail markings were fresh, though and easy to follow, so there were no big problems in finding our way. The path was very overgrown in places and it was very muddy down next to the river. We tried to avoid the worst mudholes, but in some areas there were nowhere else to go. I sank in to my knees in some places. Luckily my boots and hiking pants held up, so I had dry feet the entire trip. We had a very long drive back to Trondheim, taking a detour over a very crappy mountain road to pick up Håkon's backpack.


I left Trondheim early on Sunday in order to meet up with my uncle and aunt (Steinar and Liv) and my cousin Ingrid. I spent Monday meeting up with family and resting after the trip. The trip to Trollheimen had been fairly tiring, and I was limping for several days after all the bumps from jumping from rock to rock with a heavy backpack. I decided to put my other hiking plans on hold and do road trips instead. On Tuesday the 14th I drove north from Lillehammer, going to see the wild and mountainous northern part of western Norway. I drove through Lom, up to Grotli, to drive the old road over Strynefjell, which is a road now only used by tourists. This was a very narrow, winding mountain road way up in the mountains. I built up a healthy hatred of camper vans up there, as it is difficult to pass them when they come the other way. I had to position my car at the very edge of the road and in some places you ran the risk of sliding off the road, so the drive was somewhat stressful. It's probably better outside the main tourist season when you don't meet so many other cars.


I took the new road through the tunnels back towards Geiranger, and took a detour towards Dalsnibba. This is a mountain which has a great panoramic view of the area around Geiranger, and there is a nice viewing platform at the top. To get up there you have to drive a winding, steep road. The road is missing guardrails in some places, so it feels exposed, but the road itself is quite wide, compared to gamle strynefjellsvei . There could be a problem if you meet a bus in a hairpin bend, though.

I drove down all the hairpin bends to Geiranger, stopping to see the view from Flydalsjuvet on the way. Luckily there was a room available at Hotell Union, so I didn't have to spend a lot of time finding a place to sleep. I spent the evening walking around Geiranger. Geiranger is one of the top tourist destinations of Norway, and is classified as a Unesco World Heritage Site. There's nothing there except camping sites and souvenir shops, so spending more than a day there would be boring. Pictures are here.
The next day I left to take the scenic drive over the mountains towards Trollstigen.


I found this drive very interesting. Lots of nice mountains to look at on the way. It was pretty crowded around Trollstigen, though, with busloads of tourists going up and down the narrow road. I found that Trollstigen wasn't as narrow as the rumors would have it. The only problem was that it had a lot of traffic, with buses going up and down all the time, so I spent some time waiting for buses to clear the hairpin bends. I went back through Romsdalen, making a quick stop at Trollveggen . The weather was really bad, heavy rains and near gale-force winds, so driving back was tiring.

The next day I drove down to Kongsberg to meet up with Egil Rugland and Stein Gjøen, two friends from back when I was working for Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace. We had a nice dinner, and talked the whole evening. Friday I drove to Oslo and took the ferry towards Kiel. I traveled on the Color Fantasy (not as good as it sounds). Saturday I arrived in Kiel, and drove the 6,5 hours back to The Hague.

To sum up, I managed to do most of the things I planned, so it was a good vacation. There was a lot of driving, though. In three weeks I drove 5200km. Good thing the car held up...

Trip to northern Italy

As part of my summer vacation this year I had decided to go see the Dolomites in northern Italy. The trip became significantly cheaper when I got my plane ticket for free (I had a canceled flight in January, so they gave me vouchers for a free flight), although I had to fight a bit to actually get my ticket. Six weeks of phone calls and promises of "We'll send you the tickets first thing tomorrow morning" finally resulted in valid flight tickets. The worst thing is that I have gotten used to dutch "customer service" by now, so I wasn't too pissed off about this.

Venice


I started my trip Saturday the 7th of July going to Venice on a surprisingly painless trip into the city. Bus shuttle from the airport was convenient and on time, the Vaporetto was easy to find and use and not too crowded, I had no trouble finding the right spot to get off, and the Hotel was right where I expected it to be. And guidebooks tell you that Venice is supposed to be hard to navigate...

I dumped my luggage and went off to do some basic sightseeing to orient myself. In a couple of hours I found the Rialto bridge, walked along the San Marco Sestiere and found the Piazza San Marco with the basilica, the Doge's Palace and the Campanile. I queued for probably 30 minutes to get up to the top of the Campanile to get the big picture of Venice. There were lots of people everywhere, so I decided to postpone the Doge's palace and the Basilica San Marco for now. I spent the rest of the afternoon just walking around aimlessly, trying to get to know the city.

Sunday morning I went into the Doge's palace, looking at the courtrooms, the bridge of sighs, the prisons and some other rooms. I liked the cartographer's room. It had two giant globes and wall paintings depicting maps of the known world at the time of Venice's golden age. Back then traveling really was an adventure...

I had hoped to see the Basilica San Marco early, before the tourist crowds arrived, but it was closed due to Sunday service. I had the general feeling in Venice that most tourists stayed in a really small area of the city - around the Piazza San Marco, along the walk along the Grand Canal next to San Marco, around the Rialto bridge and on the "main street" between the railway station and Piazza San Marco. I found that just by walking a couple of blocks away from the "main street" you would stop hearing people speaking American, and start hearing people speaking Italian. Side streets in Venice were often quiet and charming, and it was good fun walking around, looking at old houses and narrow, winding streets. I must say that the street layouts were different from most cities I have been in, so I had some trouble navigating whenever I wanted to go somewhere other than the main touristic sites. The path between the railway station and Piazza San Marco is really well signposted, so contrary to what guidebooks tell you , there is no problem finding your way to the main sights of Venice.


As I could not go into the Basilica San Marco, I decided to explore the islands of the lagoon around Venice. I had a really nice tourist map which explained the boat system in Venice really well, so it was fairly easy finding the right Vaporetto stop to go to the outer islands. I spent a couple of hours going on the ferry out to a small fishing village called Burano north of Venice, known for its colorful houses and lace-making. This was a charming small village, very different from Venice itself. I probably spent an hour just walking around looking at the small, colorful houses. I spent the rest of the afternoon just walking along the Dorsoduro and St. Croce districts letting myself get lost in the maze of twisting streets and crooked bridges. Venice is small enough that you're never really lost, because sooner or later you'll end up on the "main street" or some tourist sight and then you can easily find your approximate location. One confusing thing was that some streets had more than one name, so the name you're looking for may not be on the map. I spent some time looking for the Scala di Bovolo, and in the end I only found it because I spotted a street sign pointing to it. I don't think I would have found it using only the map, due to this "many names for the same place"-problem.


Monday morning I walked to the Basilica San Marco, without my camera. A lot of the churches and other sights in Venice don't allow photography, and won't let you bring in a backpack. I saw a lot of tourists figuring this out only after they'd queued for half an hour to get into the church... The church itself was pretty spectacular, with big mosaics and lots of statues. I must say I think Hagia Sofia in Istanbul is more impressive, if only for sheer size and the sense of awe you get when you walk in there. What I found most interesting in there was the four really detailed, full size bronze horses from the 2nd century. It is a special feeling to look at art at this level that's almost two thousand years old. They were stolen from the Hippodrome at Constantinople after Venice invaded. In fact, the whole church was full of stuff the venetians had stolen from other places, so it felt a bit like the British Museum in London.

I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the city parts of Venice I had not yet seen, taking some small rest stops at the hotel room in order to cool down. It was really hot in Venice when I was there - around 32-33 degrees, and there was a lot of moisture in the air, so it was really nice to have a quiet hotel room with a kick-ass air conditioner.

The next morning I got up really early to get a look at the city without the tourists. Most tourists live outside the city and "commute" into the city in the morning, so by living in Venice itself I had the opportunity to have a look before the first trains rolled into the city. It was nice to see the Rialto, the Grand Canal and the Piazza San Marco almost empty.

Bolzano
I left my hotel, and took an early Eurostar-train to Verona and then to Bolzano. The train system was easy to navigate, ran on time, the ticket-machines had the option of English language, and they accepted my dutch pinpas as payment, so the trip to Bolzano was also quite painless.


I spent half an hour walking around with my backpack, looking for the hotel, because the hotel had the wrong location info on the booking site I used. I walked around in the center for a while after dumping my luggage, picking up some hiking maps of the regions I was planning to visit. In the afternoon I took the cable car up to Soprabolzano to see the view of the western Dolomites. From the top I took the small train to Klobenstein to get the panoramic view. The villages on top of the hill seemed really overdeveloped. Everywhere where you had a vantage point, someone had built a hotel or a restaurant, so I had to walk for maybe 30 minutes into the forest before I found a spot where I could see all of the mountains. The area up there was hilly forests, much like eastern Norway, with spruce trees and blueberry.

The evening I spent trying to find out how to get to Val Gardena. There's a lot of buses going from Bolzano to the western part of Sud-Tirol, but they're not very good at giving out information. There were almost no bus schedules at the bus station, so I had to go to the train station to find proper schedules. At the bus station, the clerks did not understand any language other than Italian, and the tv screens with departures only listed final destinations for the buses. After the first day I figured out that the best way to get around was just to ignore the bus station and walk straight over to the buses to talk to the bus drivers. They spoke native German, knew where all the buses were going and would sell me tickets to wherever I was going...


Wednesday morning I jumped on the bus to Ortisei, at the start of the Val Gardena. The bus drove along a very scenic, narrow and steep(18% in places) road to get to the Val Gardena, so it was a nice ride up to Ortisei. From Ortisei I took a cable car up to Mount Seceda (2450m) and walked into a truly spectacular panorama. From the top you could see six or seven different mountain groups, all looming over the Val Gardena. The high point for me was seeing the Odle Geisler group in real life. It was a picture of the Odle Geisler that first made me look into going to the Dolomites, and it really felt like I had accomplished a mission by finally getting there and being able to walk over to the crease and look over the edge.

I had bought a trail guide translated from German earlier, and this proved to be the best guidbook I brought with me. The Eyewitness books had lots of factual errors, and completely ignored some major sights, so I was not very impressed with those. The trail guide suggested a classic route from Seceda down to Selva di Val Gardena, so that was my goal for the day. I walked for four hours down the side of the mountains into Selva, and it was a really great hike. The only problem was that it was very steep - the altitude difference was 1100 meters. The trails were easy, and I was in better shape than I've been for a long time, so I was partially running down the slopes, stopping only to take pictures from time to time and to admire the fantastic view. The last hour or so of the hike into Selva was boring - gravel roads and paved roads going into what turned out to be a 110% touristic village. It seemed like every house in Selva di Val Gardena was a hotel or a rental apartment of sort, and they were building several big hotels in the town center. Selva di Val Gardena is the main starting point for many tourists hiking in the western Dolomites, and I am very happy I didn't stay there.


The next morning I was really feeling the 1100m descent from the day before. My thighs were really hurting and I had difficulties in walking down stairs. It took some time to pull myself out of bed to get down to the bus station for a new hike. This day I took the bus to Seis, to hike the Seiser Alm, and hopefully get up the backside of Sciliar(Schlern). The Seiser Alm is an enormous alpine meadow on the plateau above Val Gardena, and from up there you have great views of the surrounding mountains. I walked towards the Touristensteig, trying to do another classic hike, this one going up to the top of the mountain, to the Rifugio Bolzano. The views from the Touristensteig were awesome, so I soon forgot about the pain in my thighs. One problem with living in Bolzano, though, was that I was had to make sure I made the last bus home, so early on I found out I could not go to Rifugio Bolzano and back in time. I went about two-thirds of the way up the mountain, had a quick lunch and turned back. This was also a very nice hike, although it would have been nicer to reach the summit.


Friday I wanted to see the Rosengarten group, so I took the bus to Karersee(Lago di Carezza), which is one of the major tourist sights of the western Dolomites. It is a small lake with a lot of different shades of green, and normally you can see the Latemar peaks reflected in the surface of the lake. From the lake I walked into the village, to take the lift up into the Rosengarten group.


The Rosengarten group is the subject of a local legend. Once upon a time, there was a dwarf king called Laurin who had a nice castle and a very pretty rose garden at the spot where this mountain group stands today. Through magic and trickery, the dwarf king managed to kidnap the fair princess Simhilde from the humans living in the valleys, to live happily ever after. But a human hero called Dietrich von Bern wouldn't stand for this, so he rode up to the castle, fought the dwarf king and forced him to give up Simhilde. In a last bit of defiant sorcery, the dwarf king screamed "You can have my woman, but you can never have my ROSE GARDEN!!!" (Italians are strange...) and with a snap of the fingers he transformed his rose garden to huge mountains. once in a while, at sunset and sunrise, you can see the mountains turn their original pink and red color.

From the top of the lift I walked around the edge of the mountains, until I got to a rifugio under the Red Wall - one of the more popular mountains in the range. I climbed a small ridge myself, and got some nice pictures from the top. I really felt the fear of heights coming on when sitting up there taking pictures, when I realized I was less than half a meter on either side from a drop that was probably 6-8 meters. I was really careful climbing back down again.

The views on this day were probably the best of the trip, and by now I had seen most of the major mountain group of the western part, so I felt satisfied when leaving Bolzano. I didn't get to see Cortina and Lago di Misurina, so I'll have to do the eastern part some other time.
I think the funniest thing about going to the Dolomites was having to speak German in Italy, because people didn't understand English. It's been some years since high school, so I was struggling a bit for the first couple of days, but later in the week it came back to me. Thank you, high school!

Verona


I had a very early flight from Venice on Sunday, so I spent my last day in Verona, in order to be able to make the flight. I walked around the city looking at the main sights. The opera was sold out so I didn't get to watch the opera from the Arena. I went into the arena during the day, and it felt more like a football stadium than an ancient ruin. When I saw the lines of people starting to queue up to get in two hours before the show started I was glad I didn't get tickets. I couldn't get a reasonably priced hotel in the center of Verona, so I had to stay in a hotel at the edge of town. This meant I had to ride in a bus for twenty minutes to get to and from the city center, but I got to see a lot of Verona. It was extremely hot. 35 degrees Celsius during the day, and 30 degrees at 20.30 in the evening.

The next morning I had to get up at 05.45 to make the train, changing to bus at Mestre before leaving from the small, crowded and inefficient airport at Venice Marco Polo. After a week of sun, it was a downer to get back to rainy Holland.

For pictures, look at my flickr feed.

Venice pictures

Dolomites pictures

Verona pictures

Travel insurance

Bah.

So Europeiske , the biggest provider of travel insurance in Norway has decided that if you actually move to Europe, your travel insurance will no longer be valid. They were still happy with letting me pay for their services for a year, though. I have now canceled my service with them and changed to a dutch insurer. Let's hope they don't invalidate my insurance because I am a foreigner or something...

Trip to Bergen and the fjords

I am currently on a business trip to Stavanger, and this time they gave me the weekend off. Rather than going back to Holland, I chose to go to Bergen, to see the city and the fjords in spring. This is something that has been on my to-do list for years, but somehow I never had time off during this period.

I started out Friday evening by taking the fast boat to Bergen. This is a fairly good, cheap way of travelling from Stavanger to Bergen. The boat ride takes four hours and ten minutes, driving by car takes around four hours and 30 minutes, so it's actually faster than driving. The price was 200 NOK(around 25 Euro) to Bergen and 320 NOK(around 40 euro) back to Stavanger, so it was cheap compared to driving or flying.

It was quite moody sitting back enjoying the view of the rugged coastline in the sunset, with the boat pounding against the waves as we sped towards Bergen. The weather was very nice for a change when I arrived in Bergen, so I dropped off my backpack at the hotel and went for a walk in the city center.

Saturday I started out at around 07:30. I had ordered my tickets from Holland, so I had to pick them up at the railway station. This day I was doing the "Norway in a nutshell"-tour, which is the most popular roundtrip for tourists visiting Norway. I took the local train to Voss, there I changed to bus. The bus stop was kind of a mess, because there were lots of buses, but only one said "Norway in a nutshell", so all the tourists lined up in front of that one. Kind of funny to see probably a hundred tourists lining up in front of this already crowded bus, while the five or six other buses there were empty. The other ones said "Gudvangen" on the front, and I knew that was where we were going, but due to this bad signage they probably spent a good fifteen minutes extra loading up the buses before departure.

The bus ride from Voss was nice. We passed some waterfalls, and drove next to a beautiful green/white river. The river was nothing compared to Otta in spring back east, but it was nice to look at a properly angry river. Rivers in Holland are docile, and the rivers I looked at in Switzerland were all muddy and greyish, so it was a welcome change.

After about an hour's drive, we reached the entry point of the Nærøydalen. At this point I understood that some of the other passengers in this bus had not read the tour description. We started descending the Stalheimskleiva, and people started screaming. A woman in front of me started crying hysterically as we started going into the hairpin bends, which by the way were more like figures eight. I was enjoying the fantastic view of Nærøydalen along with a couple of big waterfalls while we were descending this really steep road with a cliff face at one side. It wasn't really that scary, as the descent was only 18%, and there were some big stone blocks between the bus and the edge of the cliff. I did slide forward slightly in my seat, though, and this is probably the steepest road I've been on outside of my army service. The bus driver had to yell at people to stay in their seats as some people were going from side to side trying to take pictures, making the bus tilt to one side.

At Gudvangen I entered the ferry going to Flåm. This was the high point of the trip for me, only it was a shame the weather was so bad, rainy and foggy. This would have been truly spectacular if the weather had been good. Nærøyfjord is one of the narrowest fjords in Norway, and it is one of the two fjords on the UNESCO World Heritage list(the other one being Geirangerfjord, which I plan to visit in August). I think going in springtime is probably best, because it means you have lots and lots of different shades of green in the trees and bushes on the sides of the fjord, and there's also flowers on the ground and snow in the mountains. Supposedly, there's also less tourists, but I must say there were a lot of Americans and Japanese on the boat. I don't think there were many Norwegians on board, reinforcing my belief that people in general don't go to touristy places close to where they live. After an hour or so, the boat comes out of the Nærøyfjord and goes into the wider Aurlandsfjord, before ending the trip in Flåm.

Flåm is a super-touristy village with cruise ships, souvenir shops, cafes and the starting point of the Flåm railway up into the mountains. I changed to train here, to take the famous Flåm railway up to Myrdal. Maybe I'm jaded from going on the really nice panoramic trains through Switzerland, but I thought it sucked. They did do the story about the underground people, and the Hulder, who would entrance men with their beauty and song and trick the lovesick men into coming underground with them. Then the train stopped at Kjosfossen, a really big waterfall right next to the train track, and suddenly there were these women in traditional costumes dancing in the waterfall, while some traditional singing was coming from hidden speakers in the mountain. It seemed to be very popular with the tourists...

At Myrdal I changed to the regular train going back to Bergen. The car I was in was full of tourists. They were amazed at the amount of snow up there. I told them that this is normal up here, because in the mountains you have snow until late in summer.

I spent the evening having a nice dinner with my uncle and aunt at their home in Bergen.

Sunday I went on the "Explore Hardangerfjord"-cruise. The weather was very nice, which made the trip more enjoyable than the one I took the day before. I took the train to Voss, changed to bus, and then we took a pictoresque side road to Ulvik, stopping to take pictures of some big waterfalls. There were big rainbows in most of the waterfalls...sweet. Only thing missing was the unicorns ;P


From Ulvik we took a fast boat to Eidfjord. With the nice weather, I really enjoyed standing on the deck with the wind in my hair taking pictures of the fjord.

In Eidfjord we changed to a bus, taking us up to Hardangervidda Nature Park Center, a mountain museum complete with a panoramic cinema showing helicopter views of the fjords and big waterfalls.

After a couple of hours, the tour continued up to one of the bigger remaining waterfalls in Norway - Vøringsfossen. Because of the regulation due to electricity production, the waterfall is muted compared to the old days. It only releases 15 cubic meters of water per second instead of 60. It's still nice to look at, though. I wonder if they have many accidents up there, because there were a lot of warnings before we could enter the viewing platform (It's about 200 meters down, and the rocks can be slippery...).

We finished up with two and a half hours of driving around the Hardangerfjord. I got to see the blooming cherry-trees and apple orchards of Hardanger. It was less impressive than I had hoped for. I had expected the trees to be bigger, like the cherry trees my grandfather used to have on his farm. The ones that were here were small, in neat rows along the water. As an eastern boy used to regular farmland, it was interesting for me to see all the fruit farms and fish farms in the fjords.

On Monday I went for the generic touristy things in Bergen, like visiting the Aquarium, going to the top of mount Ulriken for the grand view of Bergen, and going to mount Fløyen, just to compare views before jumping on the fast boat back to Stavanger. Bergen is a really pretty city when the weather is good, so it was kinda sad leaving Bergen to go back to rainy Stavanger. At least I had a good trip, met up with some family, and have a few more things ticked off from my "Things to see"-list.

Pictures are here and here.

Switzerland

I made a short trip to Switzerland between 17.05.07 and 20.05.07 to get a "big picture"-view of the country, and also to take a few of the panoramic railway trips my family have been telling me about.

I had totally forgotten that 17th of May was Ascension Day in Holland, so I had made plans to take the tram to the station. One problem with that...this country doesn't work well in the mornings, and especially not on public holidays. There were no trams in the morning, so I tried to call for a taxi. Tried two different companies, and they didn't answer. I figured I'd find some closer to the Kurhaus, or flag down one on the way, so I started walking. When I came over there I found no cabs, so I started walking down the 9-tramline as that one started earlier. On the first tramstop down, I met Peter and his daughter. They had the same problem I did, so we started walking along the road and finally managed to flag down a taxi..I have to get a number for a 24 hour taxi service, because this was just silly (I'm not used to taxi centrals being closed in my country...)

This was a short cityhopper-flight, so I spent about half the time flying as I did getting through the hordes of Dutch people going on vacation. Funny how much the gates where you need a passport suck compared to the Schengen area. Much less hassle whenever I fly to Norway...

The airport at Zurich is spread out, so you have to take a short train ride to get to the baggage claim from the gates. Inside the train, they play mooing sounds, cowbells, yodeling and show images of Matterhorn and hot milchmadchen on the walls. Cheesy...

Getting my railway tickets were surprisingly easy, and the guy at the counter spoke perfect english and was very helpful. After grabbing a Bratwurst, I was off on a five hour train ride to Zermatt. It was raining, and a little foggy, so it wasn't a good day to watch mountains, but I was still very impressed by some of the mountains, especially after Thun on the way past Kandersteg to Brig.

Getting into Zermatt was a downer. I was worried before I left, because the weather forecast was not very good. It would suck royally to go on a panoramic trip through Switzerland without being able to see anything because of the fog. Now, in Zermatt, it was foggy, raining, cold, and I could barely make out the bottom part of Matterhorn. To make things worse, the museums closed as I came into the station, and so did the shops. In frustration I went hiking, just to have something to do. I started walking the trail towards the foot of the Matterhorn. After a couple of hours of walking in the rain I turned back. I had walked to a few minor stopover points on the way to the Hornli Ridge, but it was getting darker, and I did not have proper gear, so I found it best to turn back. The biggest problem was that I was wearing new shoes, which had not been "walked in". I was rewarded with big blisters on my toes.
I normally walk a lot when I'm traveling, so this could have been a problem, but the next day I picked up a pack of synthetic skin from a hiking store, solving the whole issue. The footpath here didn't look anything like what I'm used to. It was very well maintained, with water ditches, sign-posting, benches for resting and in general it felt more like a maintained mountain road rather than a path. The whole place felt like a resort, rather than a mountain village.

In short: First day, no museums, no gornergrat, no Matterhorn, just another generic artificial alpine village with ski rentals, shops selling equipment and luxury goods. Bah!

Decided to get up really early the next day to try to catch the GornerGrat. This was risky, as the ride was 42 minutes each way, and by skipping breakfast and taking the first one I would have only 25 minutes to check out and get to the station. But, as Lukasz always tells me, "No risk, no fun!".
The next morning I woke up to clear skies, and the gorgeous Matterhorn staring me in the face from the parking lot of the hotel. The ride up the Gornergrat was awesome. I could see all these gorgeous 4000-meter peaks that I didn't see the day before, and it was a truly great view of the valley and the surrounding peaks. Going so early meant I also got up there before the morning mist, so I got to see the mist gently rolling into the valley. This made up for the whole cold and wet evening I had before. This was also a personal height record for me, at 3089 meters, even though it was cheating using a train to get there. I got off the Gornergrat, ran to the hotel, checked out, ran to the station, and made it with just five minutes to spare. Normally, I'm always on time, and I don't like to be late, so I was a bit stressed out, but it worked out in the end.

Friday's program was going on the Glacier Express to the capital of the canton of Graubunden - Chur. The weather was really nice - it had turned around completely from the day before, so it was a good day for watching mountains. Swiss trains in general have big windows, so you get a good view from the regular trains, but replacing parts of the roof with windows was very nice when the train was running in the deep valleys. When upgrading the coaches, they could have put a little bit more effort in by spraying on a layer of antireflective coating on the windows. The reflections are really disturbing, and I have reflections in the windows in nearly every shot I made from inside the train. Lots of stupid tourists on the train, taking pictures with the flash enabled on their small compact cameras and shouting every time a snow-capped peak would emerge.

I really liked some of the terrain we passed, especially around Andermatt. My brother tells me the skiing is good up there too, so maybe I'll have to go next winter, as there will be no Avoriaz-trip for me next year. Going up the to the Oberpass was the most interesting part. The pass itself was boring, as I've seen this sort of terrain many times before, in Norway. I like the small villages you often see high up in the mountainsides. Not the same "How the #$%#! did they get up there?"-feeling you get in some of the fjords back home, but still...
I think this train is probably better if you take it the other way, because then it starts off boring, and gets gradually better, rather than seeing all the good parts early on, and then just waiting to get to the end.

For me, the Glacier Express ended up at Chur - the oldest town in Switzerland. People have been living there for 5000 years. Chur was a nice, small town. Lots of narrow, winding alleys and nice houses with pretty mountains in all directions. One thing I found strange here was all the people smoking in the street. I saw people smoking everywhere. I even saw a couple of pregnant women chain-smoking!
Also, most of the young people were wearing gangsta-outfits with caps, bling and sunglasses. I blame MTV.

Saturday morning I got up early to catch the Bernina Express . The first couple of hours on the train were boring. I don't know if it was just that I was jaded from having seen so many great mountains the day before, but it wasn't too appealing. Then we got close to the pass itself and things changed for the better. The landscape turned into dry mountain terrain, different from the other parts of Switzerland I've seen. The train would turn in tight circles in order to climb up to the pass. The pass itself wasn't too spectacular. Some high mountains with stone desert in between, one big glacier-fed lake, and a couple of smaller ones. A sign was marking the watershed where water from one lake is going into the Adriatic, and water from the others are going into the Black Sea.

The descent from the mountain pass was really great. It made the whole trip for me. This was a really bright, sunny day, and the train was descending in big circles into this deep valley below. The landscape here was different from what I'd seen earlier on the trip, with orchards and wine ranks everywhere. At the end, we drove into Italy, but only 2 kilometers or so. The border is just outside the town of Tirano. I passed through the most cursory passport inspection I've ever experienced (You just held up something with a picture and walked past. Half an hour later they took off for lunch or something, so there were no more checks). The town center of Tirano seemed to live off the tourists coming from the Bernina Pass. There were restaurants and bars everywhere. I looked around for a kiosk to grab a sandwich or something, but didn't find any. Normally, I don't bother to eat at restaurants when I'm traveling alone like this. Mostly it's because I don't like to sit alone and wait for my food. I finally found a tobacco-store that also sold Gatorade, so I could at least get some sugar into my bloodstream for the trip back.

Going back the same way I came turned out to be boring. After the awesome ascent up the Poschiavo valley, when you get to the pass, you know it's going to be boring for the rest of the trip. It doesn't really help either that down the line they point out "sights" like a soda factory over the speakers. You sort of know it's going to be downhill from there... In retrospect, I wish I had planned to take the bus to Lugano, stay overnight in Lugano, and then take the train back to Zurich the next morning...

Sunday I went back to Zurich, walked around the city and looked at the Zurichsee from the walkway. There was also a park there with lots of girls in bikinis - sweet...
There was this long shopping street outside the central station, but since this was a Sunday, all the shops were closed. They were mostly selling hideously expensive clothes, shoes and jewelry, so no great loss anyway. I walked up to a small railroad that would take you up the side of the Zurichberg. From the top of the railroad you could walk into this forested area that had nice views of the city.

Parts of eastern Switzerland looked really familiar- like the hilly bits of eastern Norway where I grew up, so I felt a bit homesick right then and there. This doesn't happen a lot, as I'm not normally very tied to places. I had no problem moving around from Lillehammer, to Trondheim, to Kongsberg, and now to The Hague...but I'm having some issues with living in a flat country..

I was really impressed with the swiss rail system. Fairly cheap, very organized, well maintained cars and a commitment to run on time. I almost cracked up when I first heard "Wir bieten um ihre Verstandnis." over the speakers when the train had to stop to let an oncoming train pass. They're asking for forgiveness for waiting for other trains? Also, on one of the trains they had a two minute delay, so they would regularly apologize over the speakers for this.

I had a good time in Switzerland - except for that last boring part of the rerun of the Bernina Express, but there was too much rail for one long weekend. Can't say I'm looking forward to going on more trains next weekend...
I got an overview of the central and eastern parts of Switzerland, and it gave me some ideas about where I want to go when I go back.

Pictures are here

Weekend trip to Cologne and Aachen

Due to bad weather, my weekend plans were canceled. On an impulse I decided to go to Cologne for the weekend. I took the early morning train to Utrecht, then the Intercity to Cologne. I arrived in Cologne just after 11 am.

The big tourist attraction in Cologne is the Dom, so I started out by seeing the interior. For a cheap 2 euro surcharge you can climb one of the towers up to a viewing platform, 153 meters over street level. There's a very good overview of the city from up there, and the city is surprisingly big. Cologne is the fourth largest city in Germany, and from up in the tower you can see buildings as far as the eye can see.

The Cologne Dom is the largest Gothic building in Germany. This, of course, means lots of nice gargoyles to look at. I had a very good time checking them out through my telezoom.

Next I decided to walk around for a bit and find my hotel. I had booked a room in advance in what turned out to be a very good location - 15 minutes or so from the Dom, and close to lots of shopping areas. I stayed at the Astor & Aparthotel. This was next to the Hohenzoller Ring, which is more or less a restaurant/entertainment street in Cologne. Since this was a weekend, I only paid 75 euros for a single room, so it was not expensive for the location. It was very nice to be able to just stop by the room and dump shopping bags before going out for more shopping.

I ended up spending far too much time at the Globetrotter shop. This was something I'd been wanting to go see since before I moved down to Den Haag, as this is supposedly the biggest outdoor store in Europe. I ended up finding lots of cool stuff there that I know I can't get in Holland, but space constraints restricted what I could buy then and there. Some of the stuff I probably only need in Norway anyway, so I may just as well buy it at home. Prices for the quality gear seemed about the same as in Norway anyway.

I went over to the Seilbahn to enjoy "The most attractive view of the city". It wasn't all that much, really. I walked up there to "enjoy the view of the Rhein", and that was a pretty boring experience as well. Once the I had taken the gondola to the other side, I found out that there was no quick and easy way to get back ot he city center from that side, so I had to take the boring gondola ride back again. Good thing it was only 1 euro each way. Had to struggle for a bit to find my way back to the city center, as the subway map the tourist board had given me was different from the one on the subways (some trains were cancelled for part of the distance so I had to change a couple of times to get to the stop next to my hotel).

By now, after all that shopping, and after losing a lot of time on the gondola, all the museums were closed. After a quick dinner at a restaurant, I went back to the hotel and fell asleep right away. I had had to get up at 05.30 to make my connection from the Hague to Utrecht , so that was probably the reason why I collapsed so early.

Sunday morning I woke up early, had a nice hotel breakfast and went for a walk in the city to look at the sights. I like to get up early for sightseeing like this because it lets you see things before the crowds arrive, and it also helps you spot little details that are lost when the streets are full of cars and people. I also find it helps me get to know the city better and it helps me calibrate my inner compass for determining where things are in the city.

There were a few museums I would like to see in Cologne still, but they didn't open until 11 or so, so I decided to jump on a train and go to Aachen to see the Pfalz - the burial ground for Charlemagne. Aachen turned out to be a very nice city, apart from the fact that there were street-merchants selling crap everywhere, and there were lots and lots of beggars. Almost more beggars here than in Oslo. I visited the Pfalz and also the Schatkamer where they keep the chest that used to hold Charlemagne's body.

After a couple of hours of looking around, I wanted to take the train back to Cologne to check up on the museums I missed before going back to Holland. This turned out to be a problem, since for some reason the track was closed between Aachen and Stolberg. This information was given out in German only, so I had to concentrate a bit to find out what they were saying. The Deutche Bahn wasn't too good at giving out information, so there were a lot of angry Germans waiting around for trains that never would leave the station. I asked around, but it seemed that other people didn't know more than I did. After waiting for an hour, buses arrived, and drove us to Stolberg, where we were supposed to get on a train back to Cologne. Only...there was no train. Lots of angry shouting back and forth between train passengers and DB-personnel led to there being a train - 30 minutes later. Not exactly my idea of how I would spend my Sunday afternoon, standing around a backwater station waiting for a train that may or may not come. At least I made it back to Cologne in time to catch my train back to Holland, but I missed my chance to do the last museums.

Maybe I'll see them if I go back again. Cologne wasn't really a good city for tourists, but for shopping it was excellent...so I will probably be going back. If only to get more stuff from the globetrotter store...

Pictures are here