Land of fjords, waterfalls and perpetual rain

The first stop on our Scandinavian trip was Oslo.   We walked all over the city and checked out a few sights, my favorite being the harbor. But my overall impression of Oslo was really affected by the weather – cold and grey and rainy.  We ended up buying TWO umbrellas and even they did not keep us quite dry.   They came in quite handy because it rained pretty much every day we were in Norway!

From Oslo we took a train to Bergen, a second largest town in Norway.  I was the one who wanted to go to there because I thought it was almost mandatory for us go to the ‘original’ Bergen being that we are from Bergen County ( in all honestly, I am not sure if there is any connection between two Bergens).   Bergen is locally known as the ‘Getaway to Fjords’ and being that ‘fjord’ is a Norwegian word we could not leave without seeing the most spectacular (according to the Tourist Information booth guy) fjord in Norway – Nærøyfjord, which as we later found out is on the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites.

I know that many people will disagree with me (and Victor is one of them!) but I believe that a fjord is a fjord is a fjord and I’ve  filled my quota of fjords in New Zealand when we did a tour of the Milford Sound fjord a few years ago.  But the train ride to get there was one of the most scenic ones I’ve ever been on.   Beautiful waterfalls, tundra, glaciers everywhere.  At first I was resolved at just enjoying the scenery and not take any pictures but I could not do that for long and before I knew it I joined many other travellers and was glued to the window with my camera – these two pictures below were taken from the train:

Our last stop in Norway was Tromso a small town located above the Arctic circle – which was one of the major reasons why Victor wanted to go there.  Victor is a bit obsessed with geography (viewing google maps is one of his favorite past times) and he could not get over how far north we were.  It became sort of a game and every once in a while Victor would educate me on how far north we were- with lines like ‘we are so far north that we are 150 miles ABOVE the Arctic Circle’; ‘We are so far north that we had to drive SOUTH to get to Finland’, ‘we are so far north that even polar bears have to wear jackets!’ 🙂   In all honesty it was pretty cool to be so far north – it is the one of the most geographically remote populated places in the world and definitely the most remote we’ve been to.  It definitely felt like a frontier town – something close to the end of the earth…

On our last day there we rented a car and drove to Finland, which was only about 1.5 hours hours away.   The border between Finland and Norway was the least glamorous and ‘border-like’ border we’ve seen – what separated two countries was a flag post with that we thought were large black garbage bags attached to it.  At first I thought it was an odd place for a garbage bag flag but when, in a few miles we saw a border patrol station, we figured that it was an actual border.  Not sure if we were supposed to show our passports to the guards we slowed down and I even gave them a friendly wave but they did not seem to pay any attention to us so we went in and out of Finland totally ‘under the grid’:)

Victor did drive extra careful – to avoid a collision with a moose:)

Next stop on our trip was Stockholm, Sweden – check back soon for an update.