Norway

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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

We arrived in Oslo via Copenhagen around 2 in the afternoon. We were upgraded to Economy Plus :) We immediately went and sat on the steps of the train station and started calling hotels and hostels for a place to say. Having no luck, we decided to go by foot, fully loaded with our 30-pound backpacks on our backs and our daypacks strapped in front, to find a room for the night. Unlucky for us, there was a convention in town and all of the rooms were fully booked. Many of the places even had waiting lists. We eventually managed to reserve a mattress at the YMCA hostel that was a 20-minute bus ride from the Oslo Center Station. Once off the bus, there was another 30-minute hike uphill to the hostel. The hostel was very clean and we were happy to have a place to sleep. The rooms were separated by gender--I had four other women in my room and John’s room was almost full.

I have seen sights like these only in paintings...

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Wednesday, June 13, 2007

We took the bus back to Oslo Central Station and stored our backpacks in the lockers there. The lockers make me extremely happy and I feel light as a feather after dropping off our backpacks. We took the local tram to Vigelandsparken—the famous sculpture garden by Gustav Vigeland in Frogner Park. The sculptures, made of granite, bronze, and iron, number more than 200 and are all of men, women, children showing the stages of life and a few other sculptures of dragons and people showing the fight between humanity and evil. We walked from Frogner Park on Glydenloves Gate to Slottsparken, where the Royal Palace (Slottet) is located. We had good timing as the king was in residence and the Royal Band was playing during the daily changing of the guard ceremony. We tested out the video feature of a camera for this and we were happily surprised at the video and sound quality of our camera.

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After leaving Vigelandsparken, John and I experienced our first and only outright and blatant anti-Americanism. I tried to ask a guy on the street where Glydenloves Gate was situated. He immediately started asking, “American? American? Where you from?” I responded New York. Apparently that was the wrong answer as this response prompted an outburst riddled with “snake” and “go back there” and other indecipherable outbursts that got his point across. I told him, “You ugly. You ugly. My mama said you ugly.” Well….that’s not really what I said, but that was what I was thinking. I must work on my detection for craziness skills.

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We walked around Oslo some more and went back to Oslo Central Station to take the train to Bergen, a city located on the western coast of Norway that serves as the gateway to the famous fjords of Norway. Finding the hotels and hostels in Bergen to be fully booked as well, we spent the night at Montana Youth Hostel, a hostel located about 20 minutes outside the city. The only rooms left were 4-bed dormitory style rooms for women or men. The check in lady was very nice and let us stay together in one of these rooms because it was unoccupied.

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Thursday, June 14, 2007

We had breakfast at the hostel and then headed back to Bergen. Again, we stored our luggage at the train station in the luggage lockers and set out to explore the city. We visited the Lepers Museum, which was very interesting.

Leprosy was a problem in western Norway (as compared to other parts of Norway) and there were many leper hospitals in western Norway throughout the 1800s and the first half of the 1900s. It is thought that the diet, which consisted almost entirely of fish, and the lifestyle at the time contributed to the leprosy problem. It was originally thought that leprosy was hereditary, as oftentimes entire families would be afflicted. In the 1860s, a Norwegian doctor, Dr. Hanson, discovered that a bacteria caused the disease, hence the alternative name of the disease, Hanson’s disease. The disease has two forms—a smooth form (this is the form most people think of and is evident when a person’s extremities, including hands, feet and parts of the face, lose sensation, circulation and eventually fall off or must be amputated) and a nodular form (exhibited by nodes or nodules that can appear on any part of the body, but often on the face, feet, and legs). The guide at the museum described the living conditions in the hospital during the 1800s and early 1900s where patients, numbering up to 150, would be housed two in a 4 foot by 6-foot room, the patients would smell of rotting flesh, and because the patients did not trust each other, they would store their food, i.e., fish, in their bedrooms. The doctors that visited the hospital could only stay for approximately 15 minutes with a sponge filled of vinegar held to their nose.

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After that uplifting experience, we walked through the fish market and enjoyed a sub sandwich with smoked salmon and fresh shrimp and lobster. We then walked through the area known as Bryggen, which is also the name of the main street in that area. This area was where the traders of the Hanseatic League lived in timber houses and traded dried cod during the medieval times. It now is home to many shops, boutiques, and restaurants. We also toured Rosenkrantz Tower, a defensive and residential tower that was constructed in the 13^th century medieval period and was rebuilt and enlarged in the renaissance period (around 1520).

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We took the ScanRail from Bergen to Myrdal and the Flam Railway from Myrdal to Flam. We spent the night at a charming pension called Heimly Pensjonat, in Flam, where we had a traditional Norwegian dinner of salmon with a butter cream sauce and boiled potatoes. Flam has a population of about 350 people and receives up to 520,000 visitors a year. It is a beautiful little village nestled in the mountainous fjords of western Norway. John started up a conversation with the table behind us. One of the guests at the table was the Norwegian Ambassador to India.

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Friday, June 15, 2007

We woke up at 10:30 a.m. and missed breakfast. I guess we needed the sleep more than the food. We walked back to the center and took a ferry through the largest fjord in Norway, Sognefjord. The scenery was unbelievable. Sheer cliffs, waterfalls, and sloping mountains dotted with farms and small villages surrounded us. After two hours on the boat, we loaded a bus to travel from Gudvangen to Voss via a narrow, winding road that climbed hundreds of feet providing a bird’s eye view of the houses and forests below. We arrived in Voss around 7 p.m. and walked around the city until midnight, when we took the night train to Oslo and on to Malmo, Sweden. We tried to book a sleeper car, but they were all sold out. We will try to book one on the train…hopefully somebody cancelled and we’ll get lucky…..No luck this time. Thankfully our seats reclined (a few of the seats are against the wall and do not recline). On each person’s seat is a package including a blanket, eye mask, and earplugs. We road on the train through the night and arrived in Oslo around 6:30 a.m.