Well, I did what I set out to do, and have officially toured the fjords of three different continents. (Ok, so no, I didnæt set out to do it exactly, but I realized early on that I would be doing it, and the name "Tour de Fjord" as a subheading for my trip was too good to pass up. Hee. Fjord is a fun word.)The short version is that I love fjord landscapes - I think it is probably the prettiest scenery I've ever seen. It's so dramatic that it's gorgeous in sleeting rain (thank you, Milford Sound!) or on a pretty, pretty day like I had yesterday.I went on what is apparently the most popular day trip in the country, called "Norway in a Nutshell" (cute), so it was me, tons of senior citizens, Germans and Japanese tour groups. In some respects, as day trips go, this was just the right kind - it's mostly packaging up existing trains and buses to see things and get you back to where you want to be. There's no guide, they just give you a ticket and a timetable and send you off, so that was right up my alley.The train part I'd done before, getting to Bergen in the first place. Then we switched to a bus to go down the mountain to the water - down the steepest road in Norway, apparently, at an 18-20% grade the whole time. I kept thinking how fun that would be to go (down) on my bike, but considering I am lousy at cornering, the constant switchbacks would have gotten me into trouble. Anyway, there were pretty valley views, waterfalls right by the road, really pretty.Then was the two-hour fjord tour on a boat. It was the kind of day that brings out postcard photographers to convince people this is the way fjords always look - blue sky, white fluffy clouds, smooth clear water that reflects like glass. We cruised by wee waterside "villages," most with only a handful of structures and no road access. I can't even imagine it - I mean, it's pretty, but can you imagine the winters? And there's something tragic about living THAT remotely, and having your tranquility broken twice a day by tourists swinging by to take pictures.Speaking of, man did I take pictures. I need to go through them, because it was all so pretty that I am sure I took like 7 of everything because I couldn't believe it. But I just couldn't get enough of the overlapping mountains plunging into the glassy water of the mountaintop snowpacks that gave way to lovely waterfalls.Unfortunately, that was pretty much the highlight of the day. The boat left us off in Flåm, which is touted as a picturesque fjordside village, but which is, in fact, a really remote truckstop with overpriced tourist cafes and overpriced, mediocre souvenir shops. I thought the Flåm railway would make up for it - it's called Flåmsbana, come on! It's supposed to be this incredible feat of engineering, climbing huge mountains with relatively little distance, and I 'm sure it IS impressive, but it never felt like we were climbing. It felt like we were on the Roaring Camp Thunder Mountain Railway. And we even had to stop right next to an (admittedly impressive) waterfall to watch a random costume musical number by two women who I THINK were supposed to be some old Norwegian folk legend or Ren Faire participants or something. And the scenery was better on the Bergen line to boot.So, you know, if planning a trip to Norway's fjordland, now you know.Today I am spending in Bergen itself, until my night train (oh, yes, I'm leavin' on a midnight train to Oslo). Unfortunately, I don't like Bergen. I didn't like it on sight, but I tried to reserve judgement. Turns out I was totally right. It's a drop-dead stunning town, maybe one of the prettiest I've been in, but it combines all the worst stuff from big cities and tiny towns. It's weirdly sprawling and big and hard to navigate, so the expensive and slow bus system is actually a necessity to getting placed, and the people are brusque and impersonal and probably tired of tourists. But at the same time, everything shuts down early, and even when it is all open, it's so small that once you're done ogling the scenery, there isn't much to do but go visit hugely expensive one-room museums or go souvenir shopping. It's also strange, but I find the short 3 hours of nighttime more disorienting here than I did in Oslo, even, for some reason.It's pleasant enough, I guess, so I am spending the day wandering, but inside I am stamping my foot and saying "I wanna go to Paris!"Demain.
i only tried one for the region - hey, these countries are practically the same, right? - for three reasons:
#1, it is friggin' expensive. i found one all cheap and was excited to only have to pay 3.50US for the privilege. it's what i get for being a completionist.
#2, it's "coca cola light." ergo,
#3, it sucked. or i guess, in the correct language, it søcked (or really, for pronunciation, it såcked. hee).
I won't spout politics, I swear.
I took the train today - all day today, really, which is surprisingly exhausting - from Oslo to Bergen. I was really excited about it, too, because the Bergen railway is supposed to be one of the prettiest train trips in the world.
Yeah, it lived up to it. You would think that like, after hour 4 or so, the scenery would get tired of being so relentlessly jaw-dropping and like, be dull or something, but no. It just got lovelier. Coming out of Oslo was pretty much town, and then we moved into the verdant pastures and charming painted wooden homes amongst green trees that is Scandinavian pastoral suburbia. As we kept going, though, it just stayed incredible. There were big mountains and valleys, fields of heather, lovely lakes with glassy water, rushing streams, the occasional surprise waterfall, charming little villages and wee seaside cottages.
Getting further along, we hit Finse, the highest part of the trip, and it looked...chilly.
I will remind you this is mid-June.Granted, not many people do, but can you imagine living like that? So cold!
Anyway, the scenery got a lot more fjordy as we got closer to Bergen, and the town itself, while bigger-feeling than I expected (it's only 200 thousand about, but it's also the second-largest city in Norway...) still has quaint houses perched on hillsides and what I expect are phenomenal views. I'll go exploring tomorrow.
I realized, though, that this is the last new city I am going to. The only places on my itinerary I have left - London, Paris, back to Oslo - are all places I've been to. In six months, I haven't been to anyplace I had been before, and that's done now. Weird.
It is a really fascinating, different experience to come to Oslo both with someone, and with someone who is moving here. It makes you see a lot more in depth of the place you are visiting, even if it means going to fewer museums and tourist sites. (I can't say I'm sorry about the latter, though, considering how friggin' many muesums and tourist sites I've been to in the last six months. It's a number bested only by the number of tombs/churches/temples/religious monuments I've been to.) Last night, while walking from the park where we had spent the evening eavesdropping on the outdoor Foo Fighters concert (so we couldn't see it, but could hear it just fine. And the Foos are very Big In Europe, apparently, so we were not the only squatters) to the night bus, we had a fascinating discussion with Terje, our Oslo host, about the economic structure in Norway. Yep, it's 7US for a soda, it's about 12US per gallon of gas (and you can't even say that it pays for public transport, because while it DOES pay for public transport, the bus still costs 8US one way) cigarettes are more than 15US, a bottle of spirits about 80, etc. And yet, apparently there is viertually no poverty here. There are, of course, problems - it may seem sometimes like a utopia, but it isn't really. Heroin addiction and prostitution are social problems in Oslo, and as it is the queer capital of Scandinavia, there is also a correlation to a rise in homophobic violence (though they also just passed, by an easy margin, a new law that makes gay couples equal to straight couples when it comes to adoption, so that's one more step forward for them).But on the other hand, the way Terje describes it, there is very little true poverty here that doesn't have some aspect of choice to it, and there is always an escape route in place, even if people don't take it. Addiction is a major deal, of course, but there are government-funded programs to help people who want it, to get them jobs and places to live. There is negative unemployment in Norway, so there is a vested interest in its citizens working. In essence, people in Norway can be born into unfortunate circumstances - addicted parents, uneducated parents, parents who for whatever reason do not take advantage of services made available to them and do not give the children access to things like the free schooling for all. So there is a possibility of some small percentage of the society who is unaware or uneducated about their opportunities. Barring that, however, if you are in a terrible position, a lot of it is a result of your own choices and actions - people aren't stuck with a shitty lot in life. People seek out the advantages, too - in addition to the refugees that regularly move to Norway from (predominantly) the Middle East and Africa, there is apparently like a begging toursim culture, of people bussing in from (mostly) Eastern Europe on a tourist visa and using their time to beg in Norway, and living on that money the rest of the year. The minumum wage here works out to about 19US for any kind of job. Immigrants, uneducated, and under-the-table workers (generally those operating on some sort of social disadvantage) might be stuck making as low as 16US an hour. It costs a lot, but they pay you what you need to live. Isn't that a revolutionary lifestyle?There's so much more than that, too - people complain about the price of beer here, obviously, and things like that, but there is a very mature and responsible outlook on it as well. Yes, I have to pay so much for a gallon of gas, but that money is also paying for me, for my education, my health care, my entire infrastructure that is entirely in my interest. They also recognize that, yes, a bus trip is 8US, but that money is going to mroe than paying to take me 10 kilometers outside of Oslo center, it's åpaying for a system of buses that run with virtually no one in them up north, but which provides those few people who live in far north Norway a means to travel around a far more harsh landscape for longer distances at the same rate. There is an understanding here that is what we need more of in the world, that it is not enough to serve just yourself, but that there is a larger sense of communal good. Sometimes it means paying higher taxes for someone else's healthcare if they get ill and you do not, but that is better than having crap private healthcare that is hard to get. The greater good is the good for all, not just one. It's so inspiring to hear twenty-somethings with that progressive, insightful a worldview. You become a little more socialist each day in Norway.It's not all sociopolitical revelations, though. Yesterday in addition to the concert, we went to the film museum, to the National Gallery (where I saw The Scream, and other fantastic Munch paintings, and some Norweigan painters I had never heard of and liked, and van Gogh's self portrait), and today we went to the old vortress right on the harbor overlooking the city. Oslo is lovely, tiny, and lively - a great combination for a tourist. The weather has finally turned bad/normal, and today is cold and rainy, but it's still a great place to visit. Tomorrow I am heading west to Bergen to spend my last Scandinavian days on the fjords. Which I am certain the Norweigan government also takes care of in some advanced, progressive way.
Well, strike one for Norway. I mean, seriously. We got on the train this morning and were chugging along across some truly stunning scenery - I don't think we went more than 5 minutes without passing some lovely body of water, and the rest was verdant and green. But then about 90 minutes from Oslo, we stopped to do some hooking or unhooking of cars (Alix is doing her best to learn Norweigan, but is still on page 13 of "Teach yourself Norweigan," so we can only understand so much from the announcements). Anyway, the 5 minute wait stretched out, and then stretched out, and then it turned out that there was some problem with the track that they had to fix, and more waiting, and then we all got off the train to be taken to Oslo by bus, and then waited, and then got BACK on the train because the track was fixed, and then had to switch trains for the last 5 minutes of the journey. It was hilarous, but alsto unnerving - things like that happen in Norway? I mean, it's not very efficient. It was as devastating as finding out that glass does break in Sweden. Not very ideal, if you ask me.But then Oslo is lovely. Itæs super tiny, in both population and size, but it seems more populated because it is denser than Stockholm. It also has such a young population, and feels very edgy, that Alix and I are loving it. We wandered basically the whole city and found wonderful Indian for dinner, and then proceeded to give up on finding affordable - today I spent 7US on a Sprite and 10US on a bottle of cider, among other things. We just gave up and had fun with it.But then in the cheapest bar in town (8US for a pint! Practically free!) we happened to sit next to two typically fantastically nice Norweigans, and got offers of jobs and housing for Alix, an offer of a place to stay if we needed it, a hook up for a spin class tomorrow (really not kidding) and some interesting discussions on American soldiers in Kosovo and the economic basis for the Euro. Norweigans are amazing.So despite the disillusionment of a train being LATE, Oslo rocks hard core. If I could afford it, I almost wish I were here longer. I'd only have to sell my kidney on the black market. Do they have a black market in Oslo?
Even though I am now home, if you are at all into this sort of thing, I do recommend taking a look, because Scandinavia is gorgeous
both out at the fjords
and in cute towns like Bergen
and in places like Copenhagen.
