Christmas in Bergen (and the longest train journey ever...)

Yes, the plan was to spend Christmas in the city of Bergen which is located in western Norway. But the tricky thing was how exactly we were getting there. Getting from one end of Sweden to the other is easy, but Norway however, is a different story all together. The problem is that Norway is covered with fjords, mountains, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, hills... the list goes on and on. So the trains usually have to go in some roundabout zig-zag pattern around the mountainous creeks and canyons. That combined with the fact that Norway uses older trains which are already slow, we knew that the train journey across Norway was going to be epic.

So, we started in Abisko National Park, in northern Sweden. Unfortunately, we had missed our morning train from here since we did dog-sledding in the morning. So we had to take the afternoon train. So we did. We took the 4pm train from Abisko to cross the border into Norway to a city called Narvik. It was a 1.5hour train journey. From Narvik, we had to catch a bus to go to our next city further south. The problem was that we had missed the bus by about 1 hour. There were no train lines to go south. The only way to do it was to go by bus. So we were forced to stay the night in Narvik. This was indeed an unscheduled stop, we did not plan to stay the night here and had no idea where we could find any hostels. We decided to step outside and look around. Now the problem was, the entire city was covered with icy snow. It was impossible to walk on the streets here, each step we took would literally lead to a slip. But we managed to somehow continue on and we saw this petrol station up the hill. Now the roads here were laid with salt so it wasn't slippery on these, but ofcourse it was dangerous to walk on roads. So we were forced to walk on the side and attempt to climb this hill which led up to the petrol station. Imagine walking into an ice rink with no ice-skates. Now imagine you are standing on one end of the ice rink with a 40-degree slope going up towards the other end. Now imagine you are wearing a backpack which weighs around 10kg. Now imagine yourself trying to walk up this slope. You probably can guess what happened next. Chris was ahead of me climbing the hill. I was too busy trying hard not to slip myself to notice what happened to him. Apparently he slipped and landed on his knee about half way up the hill. But he managed to gain balance and use his hands to help himself up and made it up the top. So then it was me. Keeping in mind that I had my backpack on, this was already going to be tough to begin with. Anyways, Chris was looking down at me and I had reached the very same spot he had previously slipped in. I took a step forward and my heart sank. I almost slipped but just managed to regain my balance. Now I was royally screwed. It was so slippery that I was actually sliding back down the hill, but I still had balance. Any movement from me and it would be over. I looked up at Chris hopelessly (who had only moments earlier been in the same position as me). Deciding to soldier on, I tried to continue on. The next thing Chris saw (and probably everyone in the petrol station at the time) was me slipping, not backwards but forwards since I was leaning forward. I tried to land on my hands, but both of my hands slipped and I landed face first into the ground. It was so bad that it would be like something you saw in one of them 'Funniest Home Videos' shows that comes on the TV. I still don't know how I managed to get myself up, but we did eventually manage to find a hostel (with me complaining every 2 minutes how much my cheek hurts) and stayed the night in Narvik. I should add something about Narvik itself. Although it was dark, the city looked amazing. It was surrounding a giant lake, but the houses were all on top of mountains. I really wished we could have seen the city during the day, but we had to depart early morning to a town called Fauske. And so the epic journey begins...

It took us 5.5 hours to get from Narvik to Fauske by bus. From there, we hopped on a train to Trondheim which took 10.5 hours. From Trondheim we took an overnight train to Oslo which took 7 hours. From Oslo, the next train was to our destination, Bergen which took 7.5 hours. Each changeover, we literally got off one train and hopped on the next. All in all, the journey from north to south took about 31 hours continuous. It was the most uncomfortable trip ever and I have no idea how we pulled it off still in one piece.

So we arrived in Bergen in the afternoon and were immediately taken in by the beauty of the place. Hands down one of the most picturesque cities either of us has ever seen. A truely amazing place to live. Since we had arrived quite late we decided to take it easy and rest a bit, I mean, we have been travelling for more than 30 hours. We found our hostel and did some grocery shopping, grabbed some dinner and then basically hit the sack. We woke up on Christmas Eve with a lot to do. We had listed out the sights we wanted to check out and had a busy schedule ahead of us. Unfortunately, when we walked outside, there was literally nobody outside. We eventually found out that everything was closed. Not only that, but everything (even restaurents) were closed from the 24th to the 26th of December. Pretty much the 3 days we are there for. After all that travelling, it really was bad luck. The city would be amazing if it was buzzing, but it turns out that the Norwegians prefer not to leave their homes during Christmas and like spending it with family (rightly so!). But the reason why we could not see anyone on the streets was mainly because Bergen is known to be a 'uni-town'. The students that generally fill the streets have quite obviously all retreated home to visit family and spend Christmas in their home towns. I can also assume that this is why most things were closed. Not even supermarkets were open, let alone the sights. So we eventually decided to just wonder around the city and take in the breathtaking landscape that surrounded it. Whilst wondering around, we came across the Rosenkrantz Tower. This massive fortress dates back to medieval times and the view of the sea from the front was stunnning. On our way back we came across a very peculiar shop selling various Norwegian antiquities. Immediately we were fascinated by what looked like some form of a Chess game. The shop was closed so we could not see much else, but we deduced that it was Viking Chess. Intigued by this, we made a note of passing by the shop the following day to see if it was open. Whilst looking at this, a man walking towards us (noticing that we were foreigners), came up to us and told us that there was going to be a free traditional Norwegian lunch at the Mariott Hotel in the afternoon. It was nice of him to tell us and we quickly decided that we would attend this free lunch (we are 'budget-travellers' after all...). But first, we decided to wonder around the city some more. We wanted to take a closer look at the Domkirken Cathedral, but again, like everything else it was closed or there was a service being held. We walked around Bryggen, a Unesco World Heritage Site. Bryggen was established over 900 years ago by the Hanseatic League and became a thriving center of international trade. It is quite a famous waterfront due to its unique building style. After we were finished, we decided to go and have some lunch. We found the hotel and walked in. There was a free buffet on in the banquet hall. To be honest, we felt out of place there. The people however were nice and welcomed us in. The whole idea behind hosting such a lunch is focused towards people who have no family to spend Christmas with or are away from home, even homeless. Anyone and everyone was welcome. It was quite touching that the people that made the effort to cook such a meal and host it, gave up their Christmas Eve so that others would not be alone during Christmas. We started out with some fish and eggs, then we moved onto the main course. The traditional Norwegian main course consisted of reindeer and mashed potato. Neither of us had ever tried reindeer before, but I must say it was quite nice, maybe a bit tough to chew though. When we were done, we thanked everyone for the meal and head back out. We then wondered around Torget, which translates to the Fish Markets before heading back to the hostel.

Christmas Day! We met some americans who told us that there is a path that we could follow that would lead up to the top of the mountains, where there would be a spectacular view of the entire city. So we decided to hike up. We walked outside and again, there was literally nobody walking on the streets outside. It felt like a ghost-town. Niether of us has experienced Christmas like this before, but we decided to continue on and head up to the view point. The mountain we climbed was called Floyen and was steeper than either of us anticipated. We walked through the meandering paths for about 90 minutes until finally we reached the top. The view was amazing indeed. There were a lot of people here. It seems like every tourist in Bergen ended up here, since like us, they had nothing to do on Christmas day. We grabbed some lunch and Chris went to make a Christmas phone-call back home. Whilst he did that, I wondered around the tourist shop. Something in the corner of the room caught my eye. Viking Chess! When Chris was back, I told him about it and we both decided that we should get ourselves a little Christmas present. So we decided to buy it. Once we were done here, we headed back down to the city. It was obviously easier going back down than climbing up. We decided to wonder around Bergen a bit more and ran into the Johannes-Kirken Church (St. John's Church). One of the finest neo-gothic churches in Norway. We wanted to have a nice Christmas dinner at a restuarent somewhere (courtesy of Chris's parents, thanks guys!), but the problem was that every single restaurent was closed. Even the supermarkets were closed. The only thing open was a 7-11 store. We decided to check out what we would find in there and would save our Christmas restaurent meal for the following day. Sadly, we ended up eating frozen pizza on Christmas day. Bergen itself was an amazing city and would be even more spectacular if there were actually people there. Nevertheless, we had a great time and were soon on the road again to Oslo.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.