Bergen Part I: Go West Young Man!

This is the first in a four part series on my trip to Bergen, on Norway's west coast.

On Wednesday, July 11th, after taking a nap and packing, I walked through the rain and got on a double-decker bus to journey along with 70 other summer school students to the city of Bergen. We left at 2 in the afternoon, and started west, away from Oslo. Six long hours later, the bus stopped and we tumbled out into the rain. Our first destination was the Borgund Stave Church, and if you remember my thoughts on the stave church at Heddal, you might understand that I was trying not to get my hopes up too high.

I must say, that I was pleasantly surprised. Our guide was knowledgeable and cheerful, even standing out in the rain to greet us, but more importantly, they had done a much better job preserving the essence of the church. It was quite dark inside (the church only has one window), and the smell of the fresh pine tar that they had recently spread on the outside filled the whole space. The guide did a good job of keeping things quiet, and it was really quite an experience to stand inside and look up at the dark, high ceilings as the first Christians in Norway did a thousand years ago. Also, a useful bit of information from the builders of the church that I pass along to anyone who can use it: The Norwegians refused to build doors on the north side of churches, because they knew that everything evil (mostly winter) comes from the north, and if a door was built on that side, evil would just come waltzing right on in.

A picture I took during my pre-bed walk in Lærdal

After visiting Borgund, we drove another half an hour and arrived in the small town of Lærdal, nestled at the foot the mountains. We dined at a seafood restaurant catering almost exclusively to Japanese tourists (seriously. The menus were in English and Japanese), and then after walking around and watching a mother duck put her ducklings to bed, I followed suit. I slept well, except for when my roommate, returning to the hotel room at an early hour of the morning, opened our window and disturbed the pair of sea gulls and their two chicks nesting outside our window. The seagulls calmed down after a while, and when I woke up to start my day, I packed my lunch and we continued our march to the sea. At about 10 in the morning, we drove through the tunnel to Flaam, which is carved 24 kilometers (about 15 miles) through a mountain. Despite its impressive length, it is as you might expect, rather boring, being primarily a dark tunnel. On the other side, we reached Flaam and boarded a ferry to see one of the famous fjords of Norway.

While it's not an albatross, I'm guessing it's still not good luck.

Though it was raining as we departed, I found a seat under an awning and settled in as we traveled down Sognefjord, the largest fjord in Norway, stretching from the sea 205 kilometers (127 miles) inland. It was beautiful, but fjords share the characteristic of other landscapes possessing beauty in grandeur, in that their really too darn big to capture adequately in a picture. I gave it a shot, but it's really something you need to see for yourself. I really can't even do them justice with words, so having told you that after touring the fjord, we got on the bus and headed down to Bergen, I will give you the best picture I got and leave it at that.