Okay, so I am finally going to update you all on Fall Break! I'm sorry it's been so long... I just really wanted to get the details of break instead of just saying "Oh, we went from point A to point B and it was pretty."
So on Sunday we got up to head to the train station for our "Norway in a Nutshell tour" at 8.05 and got onto our train for the next however many hours. I had a nice little bag of snacks from the grocery store at the train station, my camera, lenses, spare battery, tripod, and iPod, so I was ready to go.
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| From Fall Break - Norway |
Heading out from the station we went past the outskirts of Oslo, and it being earlier in the day we got to see a lot of towns in the mist.
It was absolutely gorgeous, and as our train moved ahead, we were able to see mountains, towns, farms, sheep, horses, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, tundra, snow, and frost (a list I made wall on the train). Also, as soon as we headed out from the station, I began to make a fjord playlist. For anyone who's curious, here are some of the albums I went through (I was in a full-album mood, not a shuffling one):
• Sigur Rós - með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (Icelandic translation: with a buzz in our ears we play endlessly.) Will be seeing them here in London soon for a concert grand finale! Almost all their music is in Icelandic and is very... different. Very pretty and emotional with a lot of build-ups into kind of fjordy atmospheric jams. Actually, I really have no idea how to describe their music.
• Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago. Justin Vernon is from Wisconsin and made this while living there by himself. Saw him and the band play before leaving Minneapolis at First Ave, and it was amazing. Great acoustic music with interesting percussion oftentimes. A lot of emotion.
• Califone - Roots & Crowns. Experimental indie folk type stuff, I guess. Good earthy stuff.
• Jeremy Messersmith - The Alcatraz Kid. Cute acoustic music from a guy based out of Minneapolis. Studied music at North Central.
• Phantom Planet - Raise the Dead. Something more upbeat for when I started to fall asleep. I (re)discovered this album, which I'd had since about May, right before break and realised how upbeat and happy it was for strolling along the way to class or just around London.
• Sigur Rós on shuffle
Enough about music, though...
In the bag of food I'd gotten, I had Müsli, raisins, Smarties (like M&Ms), and peanuts... a.k.a. the makings of trail mix! Being the ever so cost-efficient student I am, I mixed them in a plastic zip baggie I'd gotten at airport security. Very tasty and lasted me a good amount of time through the day.
As we passed by Finse, the highest station in Norway at 1222 metres, I realized not just how fortunate we were to be on this fjord trip, but also how it was the absolute perfect time of year for the tour. With the fall colors, we left weather probably in the high 50s in Oslo and were able to still see tundra and snowmen up higher (I think the snowman was at Finse, actually).
It's really crazy to think about how there are people who live in these remote towns where it seems that the only way to get in or out is by train. It even looked like people had to snowshoe or hike to get from their house to the train. Still, these quiet towns were so beautiful and serene. I could definitely see Adam living somewhere like this... he'd have all the land he wanted and small ski hills in his backyard.
In the afternoon, we switched trains at a station to get onto one specifically for the fjord tour. On the new train, the conductor would announce where we were and what we were passing. We slowed down for especially scenic bits and even stopped for about five or so minutes so that we could get out and take pictures at a magnificent waterfall.
This train ride was much shorter than the one to get to it, and we stopped at Flam for about an hour and a half before getting on the boat. Alex, Kelly and I decided to try to walk around more and explore while the rest of the group got lunch, and we found the perfect little point to take pictures at – there was even a little canoe in the water.
As if it couldn't be any more incredible, on the way back to the town we found an old turret type thing from WWII. We were walking up this grassy hill and saw this little doorway framed with concrete slabs that led into a small room inside of a hill. There were little openings overlooking the fjord that had raised parts in front for people to kneel at with their guns. After we left that we found another smaller one with no openings (probably to store ammo?) with a trench running between them. There were no markings showing that there was this little piece of history here even. Very cool.
We headed back and grabbed food before getting on the boat, where we found a bunch of open chairs on the back deck for our group of eight. I can't even describe how beautiful the boat cruise was; we went through the fjords (even the narrowest fjord in Norway at one point) and passed by the most picturesque towns with little sheep running around in the hills.
The highlight of the fjord tour (and probably all of Norway or even break) was when we saw dolphins jumping behind the boat. They were following us for a little while, and I sadly wasn't able to get any good shots, but the picture will stay in my memory forever. This was actually one of the main things that encouraged me to choose Norway for break (I don't think anyone else had even considered it before I basically forced everyone to get on board with the idea) - I'd read that a photographer whose work I like went on a fjord tour and saw dolphins and basically thought that would be amazing. I'm going to Oslo.
There were fjord tours in Oslo we could have also done for much cheaper, but I'm so glad we did the tour we did since we were at much more impressive fjords for a longer time and saw so much of the rest of Norway on the trains.
After the boat ride (which was finally freezing after the sun went down), we stopped in Gudvangen and got on a buss to Voss where we walked around for a bit before getting on a train to Bergen. Voss seemed like a cute little ski town, so it was nice to be able to walk around a place with a much different feel than Oslo or Flam.
When we finally arrived in Bergen it was sadly quite dark outside so we weren't able to see too much of the city. We made our way to a bus that took us up to our hostel, and on the way we were able to see the football (soccer) stadium there and the city lit up for the night.
This hostel was one of the nicest ones, especially since the four girls and the four guys each got rooms to ourselves (without any people outside our group). The people working there were so nice and happy to help.
I'm so glad we did the trip to Bergen, even though it was probably in place of a day of hiking (for me, at least). The weather also held up quite beautifully for us since the weather forecast had said it would be rainy/snowy. Actually, before leaving for break, all of the weather forecasts for each of the cities looked like rain while we were there and nice the days we weren't.
I'd definitely love to go back to Norway and other parts of Scandinavia sometime, but even if I don't get the chance this was quite the amazing tour.
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