Beerrrrgen!

So for the first several weeks, I had been planning on going somewhere that most people wouldn’t ordinarily consider visiting, and when we found cheap airfare to Norway, we jumped on it and went to the land of the vikings!

When we first got to Norway, we had to take a train to Oslo from the airport, and we were overjoyed to experience what I believe to be the most comfortable trains in Europe.  The Norwegian trains had comfortable chairs with plenty of room (Yes! even in second class) and free wifi.  From our first few steps in the country, Norway was already shaping up to be a remarkable place.  Once in Oslo, we took a bus to go the viking ship museum, where they have three recovered viking ships and several artifacts.

Our next destination in Norway was the city of Bergen on the west coast, which is reachable by a 7 hour train ride.  Catching this train, however, was easier said than done, because unbeknownst to us, Oslo had experienced the single biggest flood in the past 50 years in the past week, and because of this, all trains around Oslo were shut down.  We then had the stressful experience of attempting to find the right shuttle bus along with several thousand other people mobbing around the Oslo train station.  We eventually got on the right train after an hour long bus ride, but all our stress melted away as we began our ride through the flooded Norwegian countryside, one of the single most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen.  The train ride to Bergen alone made the trip worth it.  We arrived in Bergen late at night and reveled in Norway’s everlasting summer days, where the sun won’t set until 2-3 in the morning.  We had neither the time nor the money to take a fjord tour, no matter how much we wanted to, so we took our time the next morning to hike up a little mountain in Bergen and enjoy the sites.  We soon had to get back on our way to Oslo, but we were lucky enough that we were sitting on the other side of the train this time and much of the flooding had subsided, giving a whole new view of the country.

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