There are a couple of train rides worth doing out of Bergen. One is to ride the train from Myrdal to Flam, either combining with a long boat ride up a fjord to Flam or a local train from Bergen to Oslo. The Flam railway is an amazing piece of engineering work and passes by an impressive waterfall. A great sightseeing train.
The other ride is to take the train over the top of Norway all the way to Oslo. A much longer ride, but you actually get somewhere at the end of the day.
You CAN do both in one day. Ride to Myrdal, take Flam down to Flam then back up to Myrdal, then take next train to Oslo. The trouble with this is you need to send your luggage on separately, and it makes for a really long day, departing about 7 AM and arriving in Oslo after dark.
So, we are saving the Flam for "the next time" and we took the train straight to Oslo. I made the reservation through the Norwegian Railroad web site before the trip and purchased first class (Komfort) tickets - more leg room and free coffee and tea. It was about $12 a ticket more to a $60 ticket. Still pretty cheap for a nearly 7 hour trip.
"All aboard" (They don't say that in Europe. They just blow a whistle)
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| Bergen Station |
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| A place as rainy as Bergen needs a train shed. It has one! |
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| Our train. All their electric locomotives in this class had murals on the side. |
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| typical Norwegian train station |
The train left Bergen and immediately entered a tunnel. A long tunnel. Almost all of the trip to the next stop, 10 minutes out.
Then train wound around the base of fjord, gaining elevation with each mile.
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| Climbing up into the mountains |
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| The higher the elevation, the more fall color there was. |
At Mydal, it even snowed a bit
The scenery in the mountains at the "top" of Norway was just as spectacular as the fjords.
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| A camping group. Hardy folk. It was seriously cold outside. |
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| Starting down the long downgrade toward Oslo. Lots of farming. |
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| Meeting a westbound. |
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| The new Oslo station. It used to be stub-ended, but they tunneled through and built a new station. |
The old station was connected and converted into shops and restaurants and our hotel.
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| Old station concourse |
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| Old station head house |
So, our room. It was really small - we were expecting that. It was clean - we were expecting that, too. The decor and lighting? It was so bizarre we forgot to take a picture!
Wallpaper designed to look like there were several layers with wide strips peeled off. The bottom layer featured what looked like a Virgin Mary holding a baby Jesus, expect Mary had a lizard head cut and pasted on and I think Jesus had lizard hands and feet. The bottom layer looked like Mayan or Incan bird heads with cigarette butts superimposed randomly around the surface. All in loud colors. All around the room. With a small vignette of more bizarreness in the otherwise normal and functional bathroom. (expect the bathroom lights were on a motion sensor with no manual on/off)
It was lucky that the lighting was very dim. The overhead lights were two low wattage spotlights. We had to break out our flashlights at night to find the TV remote. We also found there was an LED strip light that was to illuminate that glorious wallpaper, along the bed's headboard, but it was unplugged. Not sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.
Two nights. We survived. The location was good as was the included breakfast.
Oslo is another nice Scandinavian city. We took a free walking tour that started at the tiger.
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| The tiger. Why? A poet described old Oslo as an untamed tiger - a rough and tumble place. |
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| City Hall |
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| City Hall clock |
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| Bas relief stories around city hall |
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| Ibsen. Most famous Norwegian playwright outside the theater |
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| Auto-cleaning toilets in Norwegian colors. |
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| Grand Hotel - connected with Nobel prize somehow. |
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| Many much moosen |
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| Trolls are a thing in Norway. Many legends include trolls. |
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| Need a backback? These are everywhere. |
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| Good chocolate company! |
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| Fancy manhole covers are a Norwegian thing? |
After the walking tour, off to the Viking ship museum. Three ships resurrected from the mud. Most of the wood is original. The ships were used for burials.
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| The museum also has other Viking artifacts, some recovered from the ships |
Vigeland Park. Lots of naked statues - because having clothes would "date" them and this was supposed to be "universal".
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| When you leave dad home alone with the kids.... |
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| Oslo has a ski jump. Does your city? |
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| Rode the Metro from down to the palace. |
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| Norwegian Royal Guards |
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| Palace view |
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| Opera House. EVERY city has one. |
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| On top of the opera house |
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| Iceberg sculpture |
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| Inside the opera house |
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| View from the opera house |
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| Norway capitulated to the Nazis but didn't particularly like it. Thor's hammer smashes swastika. |
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| Very easy to use transit in Oslo, even the buses. |
The last day in morning in Oslo, we headed to the fort in the Harbor.
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| Another guard |
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| More socially conscious art work involving shirts. |
Not to be done out done by Sweden, Norway also has a 120 mph train to the airport. They run every 10 minutes. Not too shabby for a city of only 1.5 million people.
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| Modern train station in a modern airport |
We got our boarding passes and dropped our bags using a fully automated system. Not a single person involved anywhere. World class technology and infrastructure.
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| Reindeer burger (good!) and Ringnes beer (meh) at the airport |
One to Edinburgh.
Oslo nice !!
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