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

Trip to Belgium

For the long weekend of 28.04.07 to 01.05.07 I went to Belgium. I visited Brussels, Waterloo, Ghent, Bruges and had a short stopover in Antwerp to get some chocolate.
I visited Brussels and Waterloo during the first two days and Ghent and Bruges during the last two.



One big lesson learned from this trip...do a little research before you leave..I booked a hotel through an online hotel booking service in Brussels, and truth to be told , I was wondering a bit why this hotel was like half the price of most of the other ones..but all the reviews on the site were really glowing. Turns out this hotel was in a really slummy area of Brussels with smashed up cars and garbage everywhere...with angry immigrants shouting things as you walked down the street. I had a room facing the street, so half the night I would be listening to angry men quarreling in Arabic on the street outside. On the other hand..nothing happened and the hotel was very cheap...so..

I spent some time trying to negotiate the trams of Brussels, but in the end I learned my lesson and kept to the metros. Trams in Brussels are overcrowded, they don't run on time, they are generally messy, and they don't announce which stop they're at..making it sort of painful if you're nowhere near the windows. These where the most tightly packed trams I have ever been into. Metros are fast, convenient and leave with fairly good regularity, although they don't go everywhere the the trams go, notably not to Beurse.

Saturday the 28th I arrived in Brussels, found my hotel, and walked along near the city center. I also went over to Schuman and looked at the buildings of the European Commission and the European Parliament. Took a small stroll in the Park du Cinquantenaire before returning back to the hotel.

Sunday the 29th I took the Metro to Heysel to look at the Atomium and some of the royal palaces in Laeken. Turns out this was the day for the national jamboree of the belgian scouts, so all trams, metros and parks were jam-packed with screaming kids. There also were a lot of older scouts teaching the kids to scream as loud as possible. Never having been a scout myself, I don't know much about it, but it seems to involve a lot of screaming, blowing with whistles and playing with balloons. When I finally made my way to the royal palace, I noticed the several hour long line in front of it. I decided to skip the palace, and took the train to Waterloo on an impulse trip instead.

This turned out to be a bad idea. Only my guide book thinks going to Waterloo by train is a bright idea. The train station is about 1.5 km from the Wellington museum, which by the way is a sucky museum. Not a lot of exhibits, and a bunch of unrelated stuff to beef up the exhibition. I also went into the Eglise St. Joseph, and that was a fairly powerful experience. You walk around looking at the ages of the soldiers' gravestones there, and then you realize that this was just some of the officers, and there could be like 50.000 more of these. Sort of beats the beaches at Normandie for sheer numbers.

After the church I took the bus to the battlefield, only I exited the bus at the wrong gas station, so I had to walk for a couple more kilometers. (For reference the correct one is the Esso). Finally got to the battlefield and took the full tour, with the multimedia show, the film and the panorama, finishing up by going up the Butte du Lion. Great view of the area from up there. I took the bus back to Waterloo, the bus driver spoke only french, so I had only a general idea of where I was going and ended up walking a couple of kilometers back to the train station. Waterloo is a backwater station, so the trains back to Brussels only runs once an hour. Of course I ended up coming into the station five minutes too late. Kinda worrying to stand around and wait for a train that may or may not come, all the timetables were in French, and they were generally confusing (with lots of exceptions and whatnot), the station had no displays telling what trains were going where and Belgian trains do not list directions on the front, nor on the side.
In the end I got on the right train and made a mental note to learn some basic French for later...

The main site of the waterloo battle can easily be done in half an hour. I ended up using five and a half hours with all the walking and waiting and doing the full tour. For reference: The bus marked "W" goes from Brussels Zuid every 30 minutes and stops at the Esso-station next to the battlefield. This bus also returns to Brussels every half hour. This information would have been good in the friggin' guidebook.

For the rest of my journey, I took the train from Brussels to Ghent, spent a couple of hours walking along the city center, and then I took the train to Bruges and spent the night there. There's a lot of nice architecture too see in these towns. I liked Bruges, as a lot of the houses are like miniature versions of what you would see in Brussels, Ghent, Antwerp or even Amsterdam. In Ghent I walked around in the city centre and entered Het Gravensteen - the old fortress protecting the city. In Bruges I went up into the Belfort and looked at the view of the city. There were 366 steps to the top, and the top stairs were really narrow, so people had to queue up to get in either direction. Overall, I liked Bruges the most, although it is really touristy. I got bored after a day, though, so I don't know how good these towns are for longer stays...

Other than that, these are some images that will stay with me from this trip:

• Small boys(4 or five years or so) doing boy scout salute to passing trains

• People smacking up their kids in public

• People fighting on the trams - several times

All in all - Belgium was nice, but parts of Brussels were really crowded, even by Dutch standards...


Pictures are here and here.

First post!

Ok, I finally started blogging again. We'll see if this becomes a regular feature.