Norway: The full report

Date: June 26, 2008
Location: Bergen, Oslo, Voss, and back to Bergen, Norway
Lat: 60° 24.09N Long: 005° 18.49E

Well, I’m finally back. That sure was a fun trip. It seems like we really did get to see the best parts of Norway. It’s real hard to remember everything we saw, but I’ll try my best.

First we boarded a night-train in Bergen. This was a good time as pretty much everyone on board laughed and joked around. We saw some great views of the Norwegian countryside, but that became a common theme of the trip. A funny thing happened, one of the windows on the other side of the train from the people I was hanging out with fell open in the middle of the train, the guys over there flipped as they had no idea what was going on. They tried to jury-rig a repair, but they weren’t too successful. Eventually a conductor type guy came by and they tried to explain the problem and he whipped out this little screw that shut the window tightly, kind of made me laugh how easy the solution was.

The beds were real comfortable. However, the beds are not made up the same way as they are in the US. In America you have you comforter on top and the other sheets laid down progressively. In Norway, it’s different. The comforter and the sheets are folded three ways on the y-axis, making something of a hotdog shape. This is laid down in the middle of the bed and then a small sheet, sort of like the size of a doormat is laid at the very end of the bed. This sounds real confusing, but it was pretty comfortable.

We were fed breakfast at the train station. The interesting thing about breakfast in Norway is that it seems to pretty much be cold-cut sandwiches. You have a selection of bread, meat, and various cheeses. This is accompanied by hard-boiled eggs and orange juice. I’m not sure if this was cheap fare, or if it is a cultural standard, but it was certainly different from the standard, milk and cereal, or maybe pancakes if you feel like doing some work in the morning.

After we got to Oslo we started a grand tour of the city. Our first stop was at the Vigeland Sculpture Park. This place was pretty odd, the park has 212 bronze and granite statues, of these 212, and only 3 have clothes on. Perhaps the oddest part of this place was the Monolith. This is a 46 foot tall pillar of naked people. Apparently it is supposed to symbolize man’s desire to be closer to the divine. I laughed at it and got a picture of me with it.

After we moved on from the Park, we then visited the Holmenkollen Ski Jump. This was used when Oslo hosted the Winter Olympics in 1952. I’ve always been impressed by ski-jumping. I guess it’s probably a bit more impressive on TV when it looks like the jumpers are birds floating miles above the ground. However, it was still neat to see how the ski jump looks. At the bottom of the jump, there’s a large amphitheatre style seating. The pit made by these seats is filled with water where people can swim in the summer. Apparently, there’s some controversy about the Holmenkollen. It does not meet the standards of the sanctioning bodies, so Norway is planning to demolish it and build a new one. I guess it’s kind of sad because it’s the second oldest, continuously operating ski jump. Oh well, if it doesn’t meet standards, it doesn’t meet them.

From the Holmenkollen we went to the Viking Ship Museum. This was real amazing. The museum has three Viking ships. Two of these are amazingly well preserved. The beautiful ivy work on the prow of the ships is still intact. However, the third one is a complete mess. The two well preserved ships were saved because they were buried in clay that created a hermetic seal. Apparently the Vikings buried their ships as a kind of tribute to their chieftains or other important people. The other ship was not buried in clay, so air was able to get in and leave only the keel and a few other timbers. It’s real humbling to observe these beacons of a culture that is more than a thousand years old. Geeze, the age of these things is staggering, it makes our Constitution look like it is still diapers.

After the ship museum, we all checked into our hotel. Our hotel was real nice. It had a balcony with a great view of the city. The hotel had some funny things too. Of course the beds were made in the same, weird, Norwegian way. However, I guess that’s standard here so I wasn’t too surprised. They also had a heated towel rack. This thing was awesome! It’s a real great idea, it’s so sweet to step out of the shower and have a warm towel waiting for you. Speaking of the shower, this was the odd thing. There wasn’t a shower curtain; instead there was a pane of clear glass that went about halfway back to the middle of the tub, leaving half of the shower exposed to the air. Of course actually figuring out how to work the shower was a nightmare. Usually figuring out how hotel showers work is hard enough in the States, but this was a different animal all-together. I did eventually get it to work, so I could enjoy the nice warm towel.

After we checked into the hotel we were allowed to wander around Oslo until we met up for dinner. I sure got a lot out of my wanderings. I headed out with a group of people and we sure saw a ton of things. The hotel was located near the U.S. Embassy so we walked by there, it was nice to see Old Glory flying and a little piece of sovereign U.S. soil. The Embassy was kind of a scary building; it was black with many angles. It almost looked like Sauron’s tower from The Lord of the Rings.

However, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself; we first went down to the waterfront. This was a pretty posh area of Oslo. There were tons of ritzy shops and things. It had an absolutely gorgeous view. There was also some fascinating architecture too. A lot of the apartment buildings had very large windows, or sun rooms where the spiral staircases, I guess it’s probably to let the sun in and helps warm the buildings up.

We also wandered by a lot of high-rise buildings. An interesting thing here was that the buildings had advertisements on them. Not like billboards, but like the company logo, like Lexus, Turtle Wax, Hewlett Packard, and others. It’s something you don’t see in America.

We also went by the Norwegian Royal Palace which was real pretty. Norwegian buildings are usually a vast panorama of color. This was a king of custard yellow that was real nice. There were also guards, obviously, dressed in traditional uniforms. Well, maybe they were traditional uniforms, sometimes it’s hard to tell, but they had bowler shaped hats with a big plume coming off the side. I enjoy the contrast of these uniforms that look like they could come from the 1800s yet the soldiers are carrying modern assault rifles. Another interesting thing is that the Norwegian soldiers swung their arms up as they marched to almost shoulder height. It was sure different than how our boys march. There was probably around 15 or so total guards, so I guess that’s probably near half of the Norwegian army.

From the Royal palace, we walked by the Parliament and the Hard Rock Café. I stopped in to get the standard t-shirt. The Interesting thing was the lack of security at the Parliament. At the Capitol back home, there’s an obvious security presence, yet in Norway, it was far more subdued.

Moving on, we went to the National Gallery of Norway to get our high culture in. The gallery was full of beautiful paintings. There was some Van Gogh, Matisse, Monet, and of course Edvard Munch. There were a lot of paintings that I really enjoyed. Perhaps my favorite was Arbo’s Åsgårdsreien. This painting depicts Odin and the Valkeryies riding over a battlefield with a mass of mangled bodies below. To the right, there is a ray of sunlight, depicting optimism for the future, despite the fog and carnage below...wow, I can’t believe I just said that, where’s my beret?

Seeing Edvard Munch’s paintings, such as the obligatory Scream as well as his other famous paintings: such as Madonna, The Dance of Life, and Self-Portrait with Burning Cigarette, was quite enjoyable. After the National Gallery, we moved to Norway’s museum of History and Culture. There were many neat things in the museum, such as Viking drinking horns, and classical stonework from the Roman and Greek days. An interesting thing was that the ancient stonework was extremely close and one could even touch it. It’s kind of humbling to feel the stonework that was worked on by the ancients. Of course in the US everything is behind glass with lock and key. I guess it’s a different kind of mentality.

After all this was over we made it back to the hotel. We then went out to dinner. It was pretty good; we were fed steak with a wonderful sauce. Afterwards, I went out to watch the football game between Turkey and Germany for the UEFA. Oslo was sort of disappointing, I sort of expected there to be more nightlife. We eventually made our way to a bar called, The Scotsman. I thought it was kind of funny given we’re in Norway. I guess the concept of the "sportsbar" is not a huge part of Norwegian culture. A kind of funny thing happened; as we were wandering we passed by a street performer who was playing The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkle. It seemed kind of out of place in downtown Oslo.

We left and then found a huge open air area where they were screening the game. It was kind of like a beer garden type atmosphere. There were hordes of people supporting Germany, but oddly enough there were plenty of people rooting for the Turks. I guess it’s because Norway is attracting a large amount of immigrants due to the welfare system, as well as the money with the oilfields. Things got rowdy with lots of yelling and shouting between the two fans. Nothing violent broke out, but it seemed more subdued than I expected.

We then went back to the hotel and sacked out. We had a real early morning; we had to be moving to the trains by 0545. Interestingly enough, the wakeup call wasn’t a phone call; instead the radios on the televisions were turned on automatically. This wasn’t all that effective, but we took off for the fjords.

We took a scenic, slow train to get out there. We passed the most beautiful scenery. We saw so many beautiful waterfalls and cliffs, it’s so hard to put their beauty into words, good thing I have tons of photos. It is kind of funny, it seems like all of Norwegian legends involve things trying to trick people. Like trolls, which are everywhere in Norway, can change shape, but they always have their tails. The Norwegians also have another legend about a beautiful lady who lives in the forest whose beautiful voice and body lure young men to their deaths as they are never seen again, but she also has a tail, so one should watch for it. It seems kind of odd, but at one point we stopped by a waterfall and to play on the legend a lady pranced out and started twirling around in the distance while nice singing played. I didn’t notice a tail, but I still stayed clear.

After the train ride to the fjords, we had lunch. There was a wide assortment of various meat and salmon. I didn’t realize it at the time but apparently I had cow tongue and reindeer. I probably swore I’d never eat tongue, but it was pretty good, and the reindeer was nice too. We then moved onto the fjord tour where we boarded a boat which took us around the fjords. The fjords are absolutely beautiful, the sheer cliff faces, juxtaposed with the water are stunning. There were also tons of waterfalls and plenty of greenery. Unfortunately the weather was cloudy with scattered rain, so it wasn’t as amazing as it could have been, but I was still very impressed. The kind of funny thing is how beautiful Norway is, it almost becomes routine. Like one becomes kind of jaded as they keep seeing all these waterfalls and cliffs, they get to be routine, yet anywhere else they would be magnificent, it’s almost boring when one looks at so many of them.

There was also a large group of Japanese tourists. I guess the Japanese love getting away from home because we saw an equally large group in Halifax. The annoying thing was that they kept feeding the seagulls. It’s real annoying when you have a Pulitzer prize winning photograph that would make Ansell Adams green with envy then all of a sudden a stupid seagull swoops in and destroys the image.

Eventually the tour ended and we started back to Bergen. We took a bit of a scenic detour going up an extremely steep road. There were 13 switchbacks to get up the steep face. I was impressed the buss could make it up; I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised; it was a Mercedes-Benz. Speaking of that, there are tons of real nice cars up here, such as a lot of Audis and other fancy machines.

We ended up going through the town of Voss. It was kind of nice seeing a smaller town. Voss is mostly built around tourism for its extreme sports, such as skiing, parasailing, and other fun things like that. We only stayed in Voss for like 30 minutes so there isn’t too much to say about that.

We eventually did make it back to the ship. It was sure great seeing so much beautiful scenery, though it was good to get back home.

Date: June 27, 2008
Location: The North Sea
Lat: 59° 41.98N Long: 004° 44.48E

Well, we are back at sea. The good ship M/V Explorer is hauling at 22 Knots. We’re on our way to our next port, which is Saint Petersburg. I’m real excited about that and I have quite the itinerary lined up. I’m going to be seeing Moscow, the Siege of Leningrad Battlefield, and will be seeing the city via the Neva River.

It’s good to get underway again. I had an absolute blast my last night in Bergen. I went out with some friends and we had a rip-roaring good time. Unfortunately, the prices are real rough. A Long Island ice tea will set you back 105 Kroner, with the exchange rate at around 5.16 NOK to 1 USD, that will set you back $20.35 per drink. I’m sure not going to miss the Norwegian Kroner and the prices here.

We got back pretty late, of course the sun was still out, but that’s to be expected in Norway. I woke up pretty late, but I was still able to get a bit more of Bergen in. Norway has some real neat food options. We didn’t know the Norwegian name, but we dubbed the product "the bacon-dog". This is a full length hot-dog wrapped in bacon. It is delicious. Another interesting thing is in Norway they have more than the standard Mustard and Ketchup, they have what they call, hot-dog dressing. This is essentially a garlic based sauce that was absolutely delicious on top of the bacon-dog. Norway also has a pizza dressing. It kind of looked like ranch, but I wasn’t sure, I didn’t have any. I also had a surge to drink, this soda was taken off the US market some years ago, and it was nice to have it again after so long being apart.

It sure stinks having to go back to school tomorrow. I have a quiz tomorrow, interestingly enough I saw my professor, who is giving this quiz, out at one of the clubs I was at, sure cracked me up. He’s a pretty young guy, like 25 or so, it’s not like old man winter was throwing back the brewskis.

I need to start getting ready for it, it’s pretty hard to believe that we’ll be in Saint Petersburg in a few days.