The World's Best Train Ride: Bergen to Oslo, Norway

From west to east across Norway's bottom-heavy configuration, starting in Bergen, ending in Oslo, is billed the finest train trip of the world. I believe it. All 7 hours of it. (click on map to enlarge)

When we first had the idea to do it, at the end of our Norway trip, we had nothing but confirmation that it was the thing to do. In fact, it would be a sin not to do it. Our 6-day Hurtigruten sea voyage ended in Bergen and we had to get back to Oslo for our flight back to Amsterdam. It was a no-brainer.

We didn't know what the weather would be like but thankfully, it did not rain at all the entire time. It wasn't always sunny, but not to worry. We were able to see!

Our MS Vesterålen ship had arrived in Bergen on Saturday afternoon at 2:30. That meant staying the night in Bergen before catching our train at 10:28 the next morning. No problem, since we visited with blogger-friend Charles and his husband, Odd.

So, first thing Sunday morning, we were packed and raring to go to the train station just 10 minutes away...taking pictures, of course, as we moseyed along.


Astrid and I are both on the same page when it comes to time: we'd both rather be waaaaay too early than even on time. It helps us calm down before we get started.
These are important things to know about each other, of course.
Once we walked into the station, we had plenty of time to get the lay of the land, look at the art, and people watch. Oh, yes, and to grab a bite to eat for breakfast!


Did I tell you how much I love trains?!
Don't worry, I set up the laptop only long enough to upload the images from the night before,
after which it was shut the rest of the trip.
Notice the outside temp of 20 °C at almost 5 p.m. I believe it was 6 °C when we started
and went down to 3 °C once we were in the snow-covered mountains.


Did you see the knitter in the collage above this one? She sat behind us,
creating this very typical Norwegian sweater. Don't you wish you knew her!
My guess is she is not a tourist but a frequent traveler on this train.


It didn't take too long before our tickets were carefully scanned and confirmed.
He was so cute and dedicated, coming through the train after every stop.
I should have asked him how long he's been doing this?


In 7 hours, we had 20 stops, including Oslo:
Arna, Dale, Voss, Myrdal, Hallingskeid, Finse, Haugasøl, Ustaoset, Geilo, Ål, Gol, Nesbyen, Flå, Hønefoss, Vikersund, Hokksund, Drammen, Asker, Lysaker, and Oslo.
Every station was unique.


At some of the stations we saw other varieties of trains,
some older than the hills, others fit for the future.


You should have seen me!
I was up and down, passing from one empty seat to another on both sides of the train to get in as much as possible. Sometimes Astrid stayed put on her side and I on the other, just so we could both take pictures of the different things we were seeing.
Thanks to Astrid for a few of her images here-n-there!


In a second I'll show you the part of Norway in the center where snow was still in abundance
and skiers were still having a heyday, even on 10 April.
But on either side of that, we saw the rivers and lakes of Norway's middle earth.


And structures of every kind....


And churches, of course!
(I doubt if one is a church but I included it anyway--2nd from the top right.)


And all kinds of Misc.


But it was the snow that blew us both away!
THAT is a LOT of it....


A paradise for skiers!
No wonder Norway wins so many Olympic medals during the winter games!

With this post I am winding down on our Norway trip, with one more to go for next week from when we visited Drøbak with blogger-friend Tor. For over a month now, Astrid and I have stayed put around home, partly for me to get these posts done before adding other photo hunts into the mix.

But all that is changing this weekend when we will visit Roden on a photo hunt with other bloggers...and the following weekend in Gent, Belgium. But more on that later. Don't want to jump the gun!

3 Oslo Museums: the Fram, Kon-Tiki, & Folk

One last post on Oslo before I start in earnest on the 6-day Hurtigruten sea voyage we took at the beginning of this month. After all, we were in Oslo 4 days before and one day after, so Oslo in and of itself was its own 'voyage.'

Renny was able to get us free 72-hour Oslo Passes (he's the Blogger's Ambassador, remember, with connections!) that allowed us to get into these 3 museums gratis.

The first 2 museums are basically next door to each other on the Oslo fjord waterfront. So before we went indoors, we scouted around to get the lay of the land:

The Maritime Museum is also there on the shoreline (top-left above) along with the Inukshuk, a centenary gift from Canada in 2005, representing the friendship between the two countries.
Our Canadian bloggers will like that!


Also there, just a stone's throw away, is the Krigseilermonument that commemorates sailors killed in WWII.

Similar to what we experienced the next day at the Opera House (from my last post), we viewed everything through the fog...


...before entering the Fram and Kon-Tiki museums. First, the Fram, which is the A-frame golden structure above.

1. The FRAM Museum

Since the museum honors Norwegian polar exploration and the 3 explorers who sailed to the north and south poles, I'll start with Roald Amundsen who happened to be the first person who reached both poles. This was important to me because Renny's last name is also Amundsen, though he swears he's not related (that's Renny at the wheel above). Kinda like all those named Smith, I guess?


Like church spires, it's the boat masts that suck me in!


This is the ship that was used in the Arctic and Antarctic exploarations between 1893 and 1912. Fram is said to have sailed farther north (85°57'N) and farther south (78°41'S) than any other wooden ship.
The ship was designed in a shape to let the ice push it up so it would "float" on top of the ice, instead of being crushed by it. A first for arctic exploration!

Fram = forward (as in forward-thinking, surely!)


And the best thing about it? You get to actually board the ship and walk all over it, up and down, looking into every nook and cranny. Everything is there, including the skiis!

2. The KON-TIKI Museum

Surely you've heard of Thor Heyerdahl's crossing of the Pacific Ocean in 1947 in the Kon-Tiki.
This is what happens when you're really curious!

The purpose of the expedition was to test the South American balsa raft seaworthy, and to investigate whether it was feasible for the original native of Peru, the Incas and their predecessors civilized and cultural, to reach the islands out in the open Pacific.

The Kon-Tiki raft eventually was caught in the surf and wrecked on the side of a coral reef, but not before it basically proved its point.

The documentary about the Kon-Tiki expedition won two Oscars in 1951, Heyerdahl's book "Kon-Tiki Expedition" has become an international bestseller, translated into nearly 70 languages.

But if at first you don't succeed, try, try again, right? So a bigger and better boat was built and THAT'S the one that the Kon-Tiki Museum is really about: the RA II:

A papyrus boat, Ra II traveled 3270 miles in 57 days across the Atlantic Ocean in 1970!
Heyerdahl's Ra I and Ra II expeditions proved it was possible to have transatlantic contact between the ancient civilizations and America.
During the first Ra expedition, oil clumps were discovered at sea and Thor was the one who presented his concern about the ocean being poisoned to the UN.

His environmental efforts resulted, among other things, that it was prohibited to drain waste oil from tankers at sea. An award, Thor Heyerdahl Environmental Award of 1 million dollars awarded by the Norwegian Shipowners' Association every year for efforts to combat pollution at sea.

3. The NORWEGIAN FOLK Museum

Last but not least, we took the bus from the Kon-Tiki Museum to Norway's largest museum of cultural history, out in the open air. I had been there in 2006 with Donica and remembered it well, but for Astrid it was a first.


Established in 1894, it contains over 150 buildings which have been relocated from different districts in Norway.


Though it wasn't high tourist season, when the place is buzzing with cultural life as it once was, we still had the chance to see much...and even got to sample some Norwegian lefse (flatbread), cooked the old-fashioned way.


It was this Gol stave church, from 1212, that most captured our attention. We weren't able to enter it but could see its altar through the front door. A stave church is of post and beam construction from timber framing. The load-bearing post is the stave.

All in a day's stroll! Enough information for all the senses to last a lifetime. We'll never forget it, the Opera House, and all the impressions of Oslo...most of which were through the generosity of our new-found friends, Renny, Diane, Tor and Anna.

Astrid and I are both richer and fuller and say TUSEN TAKK! A thousand thanks.

Now I'm ready to tackle the sea voyage.... :)

[Special thanks to Astrid for a handful of her photos included in my collages!]

The Oslo Opera House

Totally worth a post all on its own, as you will see: the Oslo Opera House!

Friday, April Fool's Day, was our first full day in Norway, after spending Thursday night at Diane and Renny's. It was cold but SUNNY. That was the day we took a 2-hour cruise on the Oslo Fjord to see the city from a different perspective.

Seeing the Opera House from the water was worth the entire mini-cruise!
Completed in 2007 (a year after Donica and I were there), it is like an enormous glacier sliding into the fjord. White granite combines with Italian marble to create the illusion of glistening ice. The sloping roof angles down to the water like a jagged chunk of ice.

On Sunday, 2 days later, when we went with our Oslo Pass to visit this incredible structure, the fog made of it a mystery to behold.

But first, before entering, we got distracted by the swans and ducks,
navigating on and off the ice for the bread crumbs being tossed to them...


...but not for long, because it was the Opera House we were there to see...if we could!
THIS is what welcomed us. THIS is what beckoned us to enter.


You actually do find the main entrance, even in the fog.
And just like that, you come in from the iceberg cold to the warmth of light (through windows that are 15 meters high) and oak 'waves' that curve/flow around the room.


Wall panels, like the one Astrid is putting her arm through, are illuminated from the floor and from behind with beams of white and green light. The lights fade in and out, creating shifting shadows and the illusion of slowly melting ice.


Diane really wanted us to take the Opera House Tour, approximately one hour, so thanks to her, we did! All tour guides work in some capacity or another there at the House. Our guide is an opera singer and was just delightful.


So, back behind the scenes, we entered the world of the opera and ballet.
The props, the sound system, the nuts and bolts of putting on a performance.


The costumes (which we found out after a few snaps were not to be photographed)....


The sewing room: "We don't make mistakes; we do variations."


And finally, the heart of the House, the main theater, seating approximately 1,370 in a classic horseshoe shape. The tour didn't take us to the ground floor but what we saw from above was convincing. Diane saw The Nutcracker there this past December and said it was incredible.


While we didn't see a real ballet while there,
we saw enough evidence to believe it happens!

That was the behind-the-scenes tour. Another "totally worth it!"


Then we went outside to play....


...and to see the famous "She Lies" iceberg sculpture sitting out in the water nearby, a sculpture made of stainless steel and glass, 12 x 17 x 16 metres, floating on its axis in line with the tide and wind.


At the beginning of this post, you saw the Opera House from the ground. Here you see if from the roof...the only Opera House in the world where you are able to walk up to and on the roof.


Two posts ago I showed you Diane and Astrid up there on the roof....
(the wall surfaces remind me of Braille)


Look who else was there! Two brothers, Daddy, Mommy and their dog.
There are no guard rails on the roof. Seriously. But there are signs to remind you that the roof has many steps and may be slippery. That should do for any tiger, right?


Even though it was still foggy by then, we could see a lot...and how high we were!
That's Astrid's mirror image on the bottom left (above).


One last reminder, as we were leaving, that the ice was not safe.
The little children had it down pat.

See why this had to have its own post. It ranks up there with some of the best architectural treasures I've ever seen, including the Opera House in Sydney. And that's saying a lot!

The Norwegian Bloggers

Because our 6-day sea voyage was bookended by THREE sets of Norwegian bloggers, that is where I will start this odyssey of our Norway trip.

Three sets. Three couples. 4 Norwegians. One American. One Filipino-Spanish. And if you add in Astrid and myself, another American and one Dutch woman.

The incredible power of virtual reality becoming real!

1. Renny and Diane: Oslo

The first weekend we spent 4 nights with Renny and Diane in Oslo.
He's Norwegian and she's American, from New York, now in Oslo for 12 years.
One main reason for showing their housing complex is the color...one of THE Norwegian basic colors for houses. Very hard to miss!


If you can't take a joke....!
Our first full day in Oslo was a SUNNY Friday, and while Diane worked, Renny took us out to see the sights. We walked out of the parking garage and immediately 'dealt' with these two lovelies, sculpted by Skule Waksvik.
What a way to start off our day!


Oslo's city center is right on the harbor where all the big crusie ships dock. I remembered it well from the Scandinavian cruise Donica and I took back in 2006. Nothing had changed.
Town Hall's two towers; the sculptures; the Nobel Peace building; the open fish market.


We had already decided ahead of time to take the hop-on-hop-off boat cruise that came with our free 72-hour/3-day Oslo Pass.



Renny and Diane had already hosted a big Blog Gathering last year, attended by our very own Vagabonde, amongst others. Thanks to that event (which we were unable to attend), we got some of our own freebies AND free Oslo Passes. THANK YOU!

BUT because there was still ice on the Oslo fjord, the hop-on/off boats (with wood bottoms) were not able to run. Instead, we took a two-hour fjord cruise in a boat with a metal bottom that could break through the patches of ice. It was worth every minute, giving us a foretaste of the longer voyage to come the following week. It was a great way to get many of the city's highlights. You can see Renny's take on it here.


After a full day on the town, we rendezvoused with Diane after her work, and stopped to buy fresh cod for dinner on our way home. Our appetites were more than ready for the typical Norwegian meal Renny and Diane served up for us, joined by Tor and Anna, the last set of Norwegian bloggers.

I'll get back to Tor and Anna later because we stayed with them the following weekend after our sea voyage. But it was wonderful to meet them at Renny and Diane's, to share the camaraderie that had been building for weeks.


Renny and Tor are both computer/IT wizzards, so you can just imagine how we all started going 100 mph on our different ways of uploading and sorting through all our images.
And that's saying nothing about the fact that Renny is THE consummate Blogger's Ambassador, championing the making of blogs and not war!


Diane's blog had been in hibernation for 3 months because of her social work stress. Babysitting these two gerbils who adore her was her lifeline. But it appears she became freshly inspired by our visit and started blogging again here after we left.
I love it when we can feed off of each other, don't you?!

By the way, that's her youngest son, Kyle, sitting next to her...and still living at home....


...and since he also was such a gentleman in welcoming us to his home, we got involved with his life as well.
His RUSS 2011 life! That's all about his high school graduation and the rite of passage they all go through, including this uniform, worn by the girls, too. That's another story altogether...but very Norwegian!
We got our education.


On a foggy Saturday, we were off again to see the Kon Tiki and Fram museums, all minus Anna. We had already become one big happy family. Too much like fun!


Then to the Norwegian open-air Folk Museum without Tor. Just the 4 of us.
See how Renny immerses himself into the lives of other people (bottom left image above)? He's like that...a friend to anyone and everyone from anywhere.

Are you still following this...and noticing that this is a post about the people more than about what we saw! But I'm still trying to whet your appetite for the posts to come. HA!

Our last full day, Sunday, before our sea voyage, was spent relaxing and visiting the Oslo Opera House. I'll talk about it more in another post but it's the only opera house in the world where you can walk up to and on the roof. Incredible, especially in the fog.
Thanks to Diane we had a lovely tour of the backstage inards.
And surely you didn't miss Tor, at 6' 6", waving his arms.


It really is an awesome construction!


Can you tell how much we enjoyed each other?
Thank you, Renny and Diane.

2. Charles and Odd: Bergen

Totally unbeknownst to us, we found out another blogger, Charles, lives in Bergen, the end city of our sea voyage. And since we were staying there overnight, before our next day's train ride to Oslo, we made sure we hooked up with them.
Charles is Filipino-Spanish and Odd is Norwegian, now married for 2 years.


Charles met us at the port, helped us take our luggage to the YMCA, and then we were off to meet Odd for sights of the city.


Lucky for us, Charles insisted on making us a Thai supper, and Odd insisted on a movie for our wonderful evening together. It was short but sweet. Friends forever.
Thank you, Charles and Odd.

The next day we were off on the 7-hour train ride to Oslo, west to east, across this incredible country called Norway. And that takes us back to Tor and Anna....

3. Tor and Anna: Oslo

It so happened it was Tor's 66th birthday that Sunday, April 10. Two month's later it'll be mine, so we have long ago decided we are long-lost twins. And why not!


Lucky for us again, we had a splendid meal prepared for us by Anna.
An avocado-caviar appetizer followed by a potato-fish casserole and home-grown berries with ice cream.
True Norwegian cuisine.


While eating, we found out that Anna had hand-painted not only the dinner plates but an entire set of Christmas plates. Just for fun and pleasure! An artist amongst us.


This is Anna, a high-school teacher of challenging kids! She has no interest in her own blog but clearly keeps herself busy with her collectibles and two Manx cats. I've decided after meeting her that she's an actress!
So much more full of life than I was expecting. Tor, too.


While Anna was off to school the next day, Tor stayed home to show off his neighborhood, overlooking the Oslo fjord...the same one we had crusied with Renny a week earlier.


Then we were off to Drøbak for the rest of the day before flying home.
Nice and relaxing and sunny, just like our first full day with Renny a week earlier.
Drøbak is where Tor's paternal grandmother, Martha, was born in 1882, so it was another special piece of Norwegian life.


And then, to top off the Incredible Adventures of Astrid and Ginnie while in Norway, Tor surprised us and took us to the scenic overview of Oslo from the Ekeberg hill where Edvard Munch got his inspiration for his famous painting, Skrik/Scream. Since we hadn't visited his museum, it was the next best thing.
And what a way to end our trip before driving to Gardermoen airport!
Thank you, Tor and Anna.

There you have it. The Norwegian bloggers. The bookends to our sea voyage. There was no better place to start for me but with them. Norway will never be the same without them!