Hello and welcome back to your favourite travel blog on the web. This post will recap my trip to Norway that happened just over a week ago. So here’s the thing. We needed to find a weekend that worked for both Indra, Curtis, and I. Of all the weekends left in our exchange, there was only one weekend. So November 1st-4th it was.
Here’s the dilemma. Norway’s “on season” is until the latest, the end f November. Now you may think, oh but Mira, you came one day after the last day of October, I’m sure everything was still peachy. To that I would say “you naïve, naïve soul…”. That’s right, lots of attractions literally closed the day before we came. Not only attractions, a lot of roads close for Winter as well. Given that we booked this nearly a month and a half in advance, we opted not to book a car. This is because the day that the roads close changes every year, and last year the route that we would’ve taken closed on October 20th.
If you know me, you know I am a worrier. You know I get intense fomo. So seeing my friends do the same trip in a car, in the sun, a weekend before us made me instantly regret our decision to spend a day on 4-hour bus ride from Bergen to Aurland. Was it worth it? Did I have intense resent the whole trip? Read to find out.
Day 1:
Bergen bound baby! Bergen is Norway’s second largest city, and is known for its beautiful fjords. I arrived in Bergen at 11:30 AM, fresh and ready to start the day. However, Indra and Curtis wouldn’t be there till around 1:45. That’s fine I thought. I’ll grab some coffee, sit around and do some work in the meantime. Let me tell you, if I mentioned that Denmark’s coffee is expensive, just wait till you hear me complain about Norway’s prices. They were through the roof! Instead of ordering coffee, I drank out of my water bottle and starved myself because I had already spent $4 CAD on a tiny bag of chips at the Oslo airport.
Seeing Indra and Curt was amazing. Mostly because Indra had this junk food cocktail mix and I ate about half the bag in a total of 5 minutes. Of a more notable manner, on our way out we stumbled upon some free cheese samples. It turns out we had just stumbled into Bergen during the World Cheese Festival, what a time to be alive. There was a news film crew filming us as the lady explained in Norwegian. We just looked at her with blank faces and ate the cheese. She then said “Oh, you didn’t understand any of that did you?” and proceeded to explain what was happening in English. Let’s be honest though, that lady knew damn well the two brown girls with gigantic backpacks were not fluent in Norwegian and it was 100% for the news clip. I can see the head line already: Bergen’s World Cheese Festival Brings Tourists from India!
We made our way to Bergen Bus station, where we had two hours to kill before our bus came. We went to Kiwi and grabbed all the groceries we’d need for Aurland. We then walked around their mall, found some really cheap chocolate that was on clearance after Halloween, and checked out their alcohol prices. $14 CAD for a bottle of beer. A single bottle. Let that sink in.
We finally got on our bus and headed toward Aurland. Aurland is a small (tiny) town situated on the Aurlandsfjord which is an arm of the Soverjnfjord. More notably, it is about 15 minutes out of Flam which is a tourist destination home to the Flam Rail. The Flam Rail is a scenic 45-minute journey rated by National Geographic as a top 10 railway. So, pretty much, it’s a bucket list experience.
The ride to Aurland was pretty smooth. Our only notable stop was in Voss. Voss you say? As in … Voss water? That is correct. The pretentious water brand Voss is based off this city in Norway. But let me tell you where the false advertising begins, the water is bottled like 400 km away from Voss! What a sham. That’s like calling your water “Vancouver” but then bottling it in Abbotsford. #BoycottVoss2018.
We arrived in Aurland around 9 PM and decided to have a luxury dinner of Carbonara out of a pre-made packet and ramen. While I do admit that Curtis is a good cook. The man didn’t know how to properly make ramen noodles. I don’t even understand how you don’t know how to do that when the only instruction is “add hot water”. Enough of roasting Curtis though, he’s a good man.
Day 2: We had planned to be up for the sunrise to see it on the fjord. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. Our Air BnB was on the fjord. It was pretty unbelievable. Hands down my favourite Air BnB so far. If you’re looking to head to Aurland, my girl Viktoriija has you covered. We woke for sunrise, only to be disappointed by the fact that indeed, we could not see sunrise through the clouds. We went back to bed until 9 AM.
When we woke up, we were in awe of the magnificent view. Even though there was a layer of fog over the fjord, it still blew us away and we kept going to the window to look at it. After a cozy breakfast and tea, we decided to walk by the fjord for a bit. We had a bus ride to Stegastein, a mind-blowing fjord view point that would pick us up at 11:30. This walk on the fjords was hands down my second favourite part of the trip. It’s crazy how things like that happen, you think it’ll be the tourist destination that blows you away but it ends up being the hour walk along the fjord in a tiny town in Norway. The best part about the clouds and fog was that it was almost like a curtain, and they changes so quickly that we’d get to see something new every couple of minutes. It was an hour of “oh my god look over there now!”. Check some photo’s courtesy of the ever-talented Curtis Kothe:
We then headed to Stegastein view point. I was PUMPED. All my friends had seen it and it was jaw dropping. I just want to say that this was the single most upsetting moment of my trip so far. I was so excited for the view point and the weather gods were not having it with me.
Check what Stegastein is supposed to look like (and did look like the weekend before):
What Stegastein looked like for us:
Nice. We then took the bus back into Flam, a larger (but still very small), touristy town to take the Flam Rail. While we waited we ate our packed lunches. They were very bad I am not going to lie, but when in Norway, you buy the cheapest sandwich ingredients. This includes very questionable meat. Our train was from 2:40-4:15 PM. This was my favourite part of the trip. I cannot put into the words the beauty I saw on the Flam Railway. Also, given that it is down season, we had 9 seats to ourselves. That meant if the view was good in the right side, we went to our seats in the right side. If something showed on the left, we’d shuffle to the left. We were in complete awe the entire time. Think snow capped mountains, valleys, water. My photo’s didn’t do justice what so ever so here is a mix of professional photos and my own:
When we got to Myrdal, where the Flam rail takes you we were shocked to find out there was a TRAIN that could’ve taken us back to Bergen. We had bought a bus again that we would have to wait for again. This was an L. But alas, we had paid for the bus and this train would cost $60 CAD, the sum of both our bus trips. When we got back to Flam, we bought some groceries from their Co-op and waited in their train station until 6:40 PM for the bus to take us back into Bergen.
When we got to Bergen I knew that I was in a city I loved. It was alive. There were people walking the streets, talking everywhere, and all young. Definitely a university town. It was small enough to not be a big city, but alive enough to feel like one. Our Air BnB in Bergen was this beautiful apartment on top of a coffee shop. It had a rainfall shower and included breakfast, a solid W.
We made a very late dinner of carbonara and called it a night.
Day 3: We had initially planned on doing a fjord tour, but one look out the window and we decided not to. There was a silver lining to this day, because our Air BnB host cooked us the best meal I had had yet. He cooked us salmon omelettes with cheese and my mouth is watering as I type this. But anyways, it was so foggy you could barely see 5 ft in front of you. No one was getting a view of the fjords this day. Despite Curtis’s nags to visit the home of famous composer Edward Grieg, we decided to do a hike Mount Ulriken. It is off season for hiking. I just want to clarify that. This experience was most definitely my least favourite of all of my exchange so far. You’re talking to the girl who walked an hour and a half with no phone battery in the middle of nowhere in Denmark, and this was worse. I would like to start off by saying that I don’t like hiking. I know, you can gasp. “WHAT? A girl from Vancouver who doesn’t like hiking?!”. But it is true, it is simply not for me. Even at my fittest, it’s a different type of cardio that absolutely kills me and I hate being out of breath for hours at a time. I’m more of the HIIT kind of workout girl. I want to work hard, sweat, and then leave not spend 5 hours exercising. Unfortunately, I love two people who love hiking. So we hiked.
Boy did we hike. I mentioned that maybe we should try to get a better map before starting but Indra insisted she was sure it would be well marked. It was not well marked. We got lost. We ended up in this abandoned weird hippie cult in the middle of the forest at one point. My socks were soaked, like walking in two tiny swamps every time I stepped. We walked on the mounting biking part since we weren’t sure where the hiking trail was. I fell and got a gnarly bruise that still hurts (it’s been a week and a half). When we finally got to the top, the wind was so intense that I nearly got knocked over. This is not an exaggeration, I feared that the trees would fall and I would get hurt. Knowing that November is a month of full on travel for me, I did not want to travel with a broken anything. Neither did I want to foot the hospital bill in a country like Norway. We nearly got to the top, you could barely see anything. We had already seen views below that over looked all of Bergen and I told Indra I wanted to turn back. That was our hiking experience. There were a lot of slips and close falls on the way down, but luckily I had a patient, loving boyfriend who held my hand all the way down (literally).
We got back to the Air BnB and had tomato soup and grilled cheese and regained some body heat. Then, Curt and I decided to walk down to the Fisherman’s Wharff, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. While we got their just at sunset, there were a couple shops still open which we strolled about. Most notably, a lot of them were ready for Christmas and one shop even had a 3 story Christmas Shop in it. My dream come true. My heart was so full. I love Christmas time.
We headed back home just in time for dinner at 7 PM. Our AirBnB hostess is a chef at a high end hotel. He offered to make us a nice dinner for my last night for $15 CAD each (100 NOK). Seeing as we had been living off packaged soup, pasta, and ramen for the past couple days we figured this would be a nice end to the trip. As Curtis says “Oh ma lawd”. That dinner was the best dinner I have had yet. I don’t even want to describe it because I am currently starving in my Ryan Air flight and reluctant to buy food. But for you, for my readers, I will. There was this super delicious rice that was creamy and rich, a slice of meat covered in a “brownie sauce” as he called it, with a side of Brussel sprouts, carrots, and other veggies. You know how much I love brussel sprouts.
After dinner, Indra and I went for a walk around town and grabbed coffee while Curtis prepped for a later interview and did the interview. We did more or less the same walk Curtis and I did, and ventured into a grocery store so Indra could try the infamous Scandinavian Skyr. If you are unaware, skyr is just a way better version of yogurt. It is the perfect amount of creamy, thick and not too sweet. Not to mention, it is crazy high in protein.
We then called it a night. I had one Scandinavian cinnamon bun before calling it a trip and heading back to Denmark just in time to leave for my week long Hamburg school trip.
