Norway Part 2

Welcome to Bergen, Norway!

After an amazing few days in Tromsø (which you can read about in Part 1), I continued my journey through Norway by flying down along the coast to Bergen, a popular city on the West coast of Norway. Here I met up with my aunt and uncle and enjoyed telling them about my trip so far!

Unlike Tromsø, the sun did set (late) at night so sleep was a little easier to do :) Bergen is also said to be the most rainiest city in Europe- but it didn't rain a single day that I was there! I'm convinced I had an influence ;)

 Bergen was really nice with a big fish market and old colourful houses, but we moved on (gradually towards Oslo) and visited a few tourist attractions along the way- one being Preikestolen.

Now Preikestolen is what you can see in the photo. It's 604m over the fjord below. It was quite a long trek climbing up rocks and mountains with a few of the other tourists deciding to turn back along the way as it was too tough to continue. It was a real example of The Survival Of The Fittest to reach Preikestolen- and I made it! It was also a breath-taking view!



Here I am! The guy sitting on the edge got blown off the cliff soon after. Not really :P But the wind was so powerful up there that I definitely didn't want to get that close to the edge! A 604m vertical drop is gut-wrenchingly high, especially when there is nothing preventing you from falling!

Everywhere I looked there were just beautiful landscapes that were just crying out to be photographed- which meant that my camera certainly got a work out! The picture above shows the kind of terrain we had to trek through to get to Preikestolen. Norway is so attractive.

I went along the coast and visited towns such as Stavanger and Kristiansand before finally reaching Norway's capital city, Oslo! It was actually quite a long trip as fjords and mountains were in the way! I travelled on many ferries to cross the stunning fjords and drove through countless tunnels that cut through mountains and sometimes fjords. I drove through the World's Longest Road Tunnel which was a whopping 24.5 kilometres long! One of the tunnels I also drove through was 350m below sealevel- so in just under a week I had been on the top of mountains and deep below the sea! That sure is quite a change in altitude!



Ancient rock carvings of boats around 1500BC. This is way before the vikings.

 Of course being a tourist I visited many other interesting attractions, one being the rock carvings above, and a few viking-related stuff too. But after visiting things from Norway's distant past, I finally visited Oslo's newest and most popular tourist attraction- The Holmenkollen Ski Jump!

It is in fact the world's newest ski jump and was used for the first time early this year hosting the 2011 World Ski Championships. I got to stand on the top of the tower and from there you could see Oslo and its surroundings. 

 Just imagine sliding down that! Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to try it, because there wasn't any snow :( I was also told that if some one non-professional were to try it, they'd most likely get killed. What a shame. Sadly I neared the end of my Norway-trip, but the last thing I did before leaving was to go sight-seeing in the city-centre of Oslo!

This building is Oslo City Hall, which is where the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony takes place. I'm looking forward to revisit this place in the future when I come to collect my award ;)

 And finally, here is the Norwegian Parliament, or as Norwegians sophisticatedly call it Stortinget which literally means The Big Thing. My trip in Oslo was really nice, and it was shocking that is was only a day after I left the city, that those terrifying terror attacks happened. I was only a few hundred metres away from where the bomb went off the day before it happened! Scary stuff.

So that was the end of my trip exploring the wonderful country Norway! I really didn't want to go home! As soon as I crossed the border between Norway and Sweden, the clouds appeared and it poured down raining all the way home to Denmark. It was as if the weather knew I was upset about leaving. You can probably sense though that I thoroughly enjoyed my holiday and I experienced so many things that I am so grateful to have done! I'll never forget those 2 adventure-filled weeks of my life!

"But I don't wanna go home!"



Norway Part 1

This summer I had an incredible time travelling through the beautiful country Norway. I experienced so much! So much in fact, that I'll have to break down the holiday into 2 blog entries! So let's start right from the beginning!

Standing almost on top of the world, inside the Arctic Circle with Tromsø and the Midnight Sun in the background :)

Last year a beautiful girl called Kristine from Norway walked into my life at my school in Bundaberg. We became friends instantly and had some great moments together- I even made a documentary about her!

I was of course sad that she had to leave Australia to go back to Norway- but 7 months later (a month ago) I visited her in her hometown Tromsø in Norway! It was beyond amazing!



Scandinavian Airlines took me up to the top of Norway :)

It started with a drive through Sweden to get to Norway and Oslo's airport. I got there way too early, which meant I had to wait 14 hours before I could catch my plane to Kristine's town called Tromsø. It was a LONG night uncomfortably trying to sleep at the airport- but it was WORTH IT!

My trip to Norway. I started in Munkebo, Denmark, and drove up through Sweden to Oslo, Norway. Then took a plane to Tromsø, flew down to Bergen, and slowly drove back down to Denmark!

Tromsø is a town situated 350km inside the Arctic Circle and is only 2000km away from the North Pole! Ho Ho Ho! Because it is so far North, the sun doesn't set for around 2 months at summer! That means the sun is up 24/7!!! But don't get me wrong- although the sun never sets and it's summer-time, it doesn't mean it's warm at all! 12 degrees was about the hottest it got!  



I took this photo of Kristine and her friends in town on our way home from a night out! This was in the middle of the night!



It was so strange that it never got dark! It was also really strange to see Kristine again but this time on top of the Earth instead of Down Under! I had such a great time catching up with her, meeting her friends and her family! Also, we hardly talked English at all! Everyone spoke Norwegian to me, and I spoke back in Danish :) At first, I was like "Wha?" but it wasn't long before I really got a hang of fully understanding Norwegian :) Danish and Norwegian are really similar languages so we can pretty easily understand each other- thank god for that!  



I met Kristine's father! Here he is in the living room after a long day hunting seals, walruses and polar bears. Unfortunately he didn't catch any that day- so we just had dried fish and some crispbread for dinner. :P

Let me tell you about Norwegian food! Let's just say they aren't exactly famous for their food culture ;) Don't go to Norway if you're allergic to seafood! Luckily I love it (though whale-meat didn't really taste of much). Norwegians also seem to have a fascination with putting things in tubes; Bacon cheese, prawn cheese, ham cheese, caviar, mayonaise and dressings are all stuffed into toothpaste-looking tubes! Strange.

The shelves were packed with food in tubes...

How does Whale-meat toast sound? :)

Kristine and I also went and saw a movie together- but forget about popcorn or potato chips! Norwegians have chips like no other- Dried Fish Chips! Although I am always open to trying new things, Kristine opened the packet of "chips" and a fishy smell polluted the air making me think to myself How can Norwegians eat that smelly trash? whilst consciously making sure I didn't breathe through my nose.  



Kristine advertising dried fish chips to the camera. She certainly did a good job selling them to me... until the foul smell was released.



After trying so many different Norwegian foods I am surprised I found something that I actually liked. I did! Strangely enough, it was a type of cheese! If you know me well, you'd know that I rarely like cheese. Especially in Denmark, cheeses stink so so bad (though not as bad as dried fish chips ;P) that despite washing your hands and mouth with soap afterwards, you still stink of cheese hours later. It's disgusting! But a type of cheese in Norway, called Brunost, meaning Brown Cheese actually didn't smell too bad and tasted reasonably nice! It has a caramelised taste to it, though not being sickly and cheesy. And it tasted really good with Kristine's mum's special Cloudberry jam. 

A photo I took of beautiful Tromsø on my way up a mountain late at night

One of the last days that I stayed in Tromsø, the sun came out from behind the clouds at 11pm (yes, at night) so Kristine and I decided to climb the nearest mountain and watch the Midnight Sun! That was probably the most beautiful thing I have ever seen!

Even though it was in the middle of the summer, snow had still not melted on the mountain! That just shows how far North it is!

 At exactly midnight we got a picture taken together with the Midnight Sun in the back. It was amazing. Now I can happily cross off "Experience The Midnight Sun" on my Things To Do Before I Die list :)

Me and Kristine :D

But of course, that wasn't enough. Although we were high up, we decided to climb the mountain to the very top- where there was absolutely no one else! It took some time but we finally made it to the top of Fløya Mountain at about 1 in the morning! It was an unbelievable feeling having climbed a mountain in the middle of the night with Kristine by my side and the sun still shining! I felt like I was on top of the world! I literally wasn't far away from it!

On the very top of the mountain facing The Midnight Sun

I have never experienced anything as magical as that before in my entire life, and I wouldn't have wanted to experience it with anyone else than with Kristine. It hurt saying goodbye to Kristine once again, but I know we will see each other again soon ;)

Stay tuned for Part 2 of my exciting trip through Norway...