it's a girl, my lord, in a flatbed fjord, slowing down to take a look at me

it sure is hot here. i for one am very surprised. but it's great. everything is so beautiful, and i'm surprised by how lush and green everything is. it's like the winters are so long and difficult that the plants put all their energy into living hard and fast when the weather is good. the people do the same, spending all 18 to 19 hours of sunlight outside getting tanned.

i got on the train this morning, heading west to a little town called myrdol. after travelling in norway for a few days, i'm unimpressed with their transportation service. the systems are good, but the utilization of those systems is severely lacking. every train, tram, bus and boat i've been on has departed between 5 and 45 minutes late, arriving sometimes even more behind. they're just unrealistic on their schedules, i guess. and yes, i was irritated at the eurail pass scam, and it got even worse. the train was delayed about 40 minutes, and only had 4 cars instead of 8. so all the 2nd class people were crammed in with us 1st class people. so they paid much less than what i supposedly paid with my pass and the 'seat fee', and got the same service. but the trip was beautiful. there are many tunnels, dozens and dozens, but in between them are great mountains, forests, farmland, lakes, rivers, etc. we climbed up to about 3600 feet, and the lake there was frozen almost solid, and there was snow all over, even though the hills were pretty low. at that point, the tshirt and shorts i was wearing began looking a little light. the trains were heated, of course, but i knew we'd be getting out to change trains and walk around. myrdol was lower, though, and not at all cold. that's when we all piled on the train to flam.

the flam train run is only about 25 miles, but it's very very steep, going down some cliffs, through tunnels, around waterfalls (i had never thought about there being waterfalls here, but there are thousands of them...all that melting snow has to go somewhere, i guess), and even on suspended tracks. at one point we stopped at a big waterfall, and some woman was up there singing, apparently re-enacting some goddess or another. at flam, i had about a 50 minute layover waiting for the boat, so i walked around the edge of the fjord.

the boat was nice, with a new coat of paint everywhere. norway is a very clean country, by the way. it's apparently the least densely populated country in europe, and i think when there are so few people it's easy to keep up with things, especially when the country has a ton of money from oil in the north sea. anyway, i stayed on the bottom deck of the ship so i could move from front to back. i took more pictures today than i did in the past week, i think. every time i turned around there was more breathtaking scenery. snow often was still laying on rocks down near the water, because the sun never hits that side of the fjord. there were seagulls following our ship, and some people saw some small dolphins playing around the bow. the water was a bright teal blue color, really contrasting with the deep blue water in the lakes and rivers i saw from the trains.

the boat got into gundangen (i'm sure i spelled that wrong) 2 hours later, whereupon we all piled into buses and drove to voss. there were a lot of people doing the same tour deal as i was...it's very popular. that reminds me...and someone asked me this question in an email too...most of my traveling in asia was off the beaten path, so to speak, so i saw very few tourists most of the time. beijing was one exception, and i was really shocked at that point to see so many obese people for the first time in awhile. there were americans and europeans in these tour groups, older folks traveling around in luxury buses from buffet to buffet, i guess. you obviously don't see such obesity in such poor countries, so it was a shock for me to see it again. now that i'm in europe, i see many more people that eat way too much. that's one of the prices of having an advanced, wealthy society i guess. the bus ride to voss wound up and down the steepest road in norway, and the views from that road reminded me of yosemite in some spots. in fact, all of norway reminds me of parts of colorado, montana, and washington state, and pictures i've seen of alaska. voss was a neat little town, with an old stone church with a big wooden cathedral. it was very hot, even at 7pm, and people were swimming in the lake there. i went to feel the water and it was ice cold...but they get very little summer here, so they take advantage of it, i guess. then it was another 1 hour by train to bergen, the second largest city in norway.

bergen is on the west coast, and is a good sized port city. there's a funicular railway going up the main mountain, so i rode that up to get a good view. from up there, the city reminded me a lot of san francisco, laid out on hills and on the water like that. i took my time getting back to the train station, in the slowly fading light, for my 11pm train back to oslo.