That is quite a title for a letter home -- it is quite a lot of ground
to cover! I am going to have to rush this email, as I could write
forever about hiking in Norway, London is calling me, and I am sitting
in a stuffy, dusty room. My hostel here sucks, just as it should, as it
only costs something like 13 pounds Sterling per night. This is yet
another reminder that one should not always go for the cheapest option
available; I am going to move towards booking better, slightly more
expensive accommodations over the next few years.
The views on the train from Bergen to Oslo were the best that I have ever seen, better even than those in southern Austria (Thank you, Rebecca.). At first, I could see nothing but moss-covered rock, as we were right next to the mountains and could not get any view of them, but I soon saw mountain after mountain, and we passed alpine pastures, meadows, valleys, and, of course, inlets and lakes. Many of the mountains were wooded, but some of them had almost barren slopes with skinny waterfalls stubbornly snaking down them; in other places, we passed only meters away from riverbanks and were able to see white, foamy breakers churning the rivers' green water as it hurled itself through rapids and crashed against the rocks, sending a gauze of spray into the air. We passed isolated farmsteads and little towns of solid, maroon wooden cabins, many of which had the same turf on their roofs as I had seen at the touristy cafe on the way to Kjeragbolten -- clearly, it serves a practical purpose. Many of the outbuildings in these parts, such as people's sheds or, in some cases, outhouses are built on stilts, like at Elfin Lake, in case of heavy snowfall. People have modest houses, many of which have half-basements, covered porches, and little flowerpots or beds of flowers to combat the bleakness of the landscape. Train stations often have signs indicating, with arrows in either direction, how far they are from Bergen and Oslo. I saw a great many people biking despite the rain and somber sky, and some people smiled and waved at the train as it passed.
Norway is the most beautiful part of the planet that I have ever seen, even more beautiful than the North Shore or Swiss Alps. Its uniqueness lies in its combination of water and mountains: the mountains here are not abutted by a single, giant body of water like those north of Vancouver, but are interdigitated with innumerable smaller rivers, lakes, and inlets, the visual effect of which I cannot find a way to adequately describe. One is always close to water, surrounded by it and often almost alone with it due to Norway's low population density. Perhaps the charm of all of these waterways is the variety that they lend the landscape, which does not look the same in any two places and, in fact, seems to change with every few seconds on a train. At times, when the railroad curved to the right (I was sitting on the right side of the train; both sides, from what I could tell, offered equally-incredible views.), I looked at the front of the train as at another, wholly separate entity, unable to believe that I was travelling through a landscape that made it onto postcards.
It is, perhaps, a fallacy to compare B.C. with Norway so much, as the two areas are so vastly different. One can, I assume, drive for hundreds of kilometers through B.C. without passing through any but the smallest of settlements; in fact, one can do the exact same thing in Norway, come to think of it, but the towns here are vastly older than those in B.C., and, not only are the people here and their food and customs different from those back home, but their having lived in such a harsh environment for so long has given them a sort of ruggedness and eschewal of adornment, which one does not see anywhere in, say, Germany. The one church that I entered during my stay here was no more than forty feet tall, its few supporting columns completely unadorned, and its walls were long blackened by incense. The images of its stained glass windows were as clear as paintings -- it was a relatively new church -- and its only inner ornamentation, if one can call it that, was the paintings of its former priests. This church had no unnecessary displays of wealth, unlikely almost all of the churches that I had seen in the rest of Europe, and it seemed much more aimed at piety than its German counterparts. One could easily imagine people's coming here on a cold, wet, snowy winter night to observe vespers on Christmas Evening, huddling together in the nave's faint light.
In short, I would love to return to Norway, as I would to Lake Konstanz, northern Germany, and the Netherlands, given the chance, for about a week. (I also want to see more of B.C. now.) I am going to brick back a bunch of information about travelling through Norway, as I will about Stockholm, and will try to describe the type of trip that I would recommend for people coming here, as I am pretty sure that some of you, my readers, would also be interested in coming.
Everything here is, indeed, expensive, and groceries cost two or three times as much as they should. Still, it is possible to budget one's stay. First off, do not eat out. A pair of English people whom I met said that they had seen a burger selling for 18 pounds Sterling in a fast food joint here. For my own part, I spent around 250 kroner, or just over forty dollars, on enough groceries for four or so days with the supplement of free breakfasts at one of my accommodations and a free spaghetti dinner that someone gave me. Round-trip transport from Stavanger to Preikestolen and Kjeragbolten cost 734 kroner, or around 120 dollars, and one-way transport to Bergen cost 440 kroner, or just over 70 dollars. My flight from Stockholm to Bergen cost 130 pounds, or something like 200 dollars, and the train from Bergen to Oslo cost 164 dollars. So far, we are looking at around 600 dollars for 4 days in Norway, which is, admittedly, a fair bit of money, but it does not break the bank (if one starts out in Europe). My hotel in Stavanger (which was fantastic) cost 85 dollars per night, or little more than a low-rent hotel in many parts of the United States (so we are now closer to 1000 dollars), and I have heard that staying in mountain huts costs around 350 kroner per night, or something like 55 dollars, and that one does not need a reservation for them.
As for destinations, I would recommend that one visit Stavanger for 3 days, as Preikestolen and Kjeragbolten are trivial day-trips and can be arranged on the day before one sets off for them, or the day of one's arrival in town; one should visit some combination of Odda, which is near Trolltunga, and Lodhus for four or five days (or perhaps three, if one is being stingy with one's time); one should see Bergen for two or three days, depending on the amount of hiking that one wants to do; and one should travel through Sognefjord and north to Kristiansund for a day or two. I would recommend skipping Oslo entirely, as it is a featureless city, the only one in which I saw any real underbelly or heard police sirens in all of Norway. Bergen has a lot more character than Stavanger and seems to me to be Norway's most culturally-interesting city; it has a very pretty harbor with lots of old buildings, a fish market, where one can "window-shop" without buying anything for fear of the prices, and a lot of interesting statuary. One statue that I particularly liked there was a bust of a man who was obviously trying very hard to look sober and imposing, but who had desiccated pine needles sticking out of his eye sockets due to his being at the edge of the woods.
Finally, I have heard that Jolanda Linschooten's "Hiking in Norway" is an excellent guide. Hiking in Norway is vastly different from doing so in British Columbia. First off, it is a bit more of a tourist activity, so one comes up against man inexperienced hikers who do not know to move to the right to let people pass and who sometimes even go off of the trail, damaging the mountainside. Norwegian mountains are much less wooded than those of B.C.; rather than hiking switchbacks for hours through the woods before breaking through the treeline, one hikes up craggy mountainsides and massive rock fields. Estimates about the amount of time that it takes to hike trails here are more accurate than those back home; if a hike is supposed to take, say, five hours, it really will take roughly that amount of time. The steepness of Norwegian hikes could be represented by a step function: one often goes straight up for an hour or two, along an approximate plateau for an hour or two, and then back down for an hour or two. The views here are good, but one cannot see as far as on peaks in British Columbia, as the tops of these mountains are largely flat (they are probably older than the ones back home). Driving in the mountains would be quite dangerous, as, while the drivers here are sane and the roads well-maintained, many roads are only wide enough for one car to drive on them at once, and they have practically no shoulder, making two-way traffic (which is inevitable) exciting. The highways here are a bit better than the mountain roads -- they have a whole two full-sized lanes, one in each direction.
Finally, you should treat this as a real hiking trip if you plan to come here. I left my hiking boots and other gear at home, as I was only planning to hike for three day and did not want to deal with the extra weight. As it turned out, it was very hot on my first day in Stavanger, as a result of which two liters of water was just barely enough to finish my hike to Preikestolen; I drank a whole extra liter on the way back (by bus and ferry, I mean), as I was able to refill my water bottles for free at the bottom of the hike. It would have been better to have some iodine tablets with me so as to be able to drink the water from the streams that I came across on the trail. Hiking in runners sucks, mostly because of their flimsy soles, and hiking to the actual peaks of mountains here is a bad idea, as they are poorly marked.
The views on the train from Bergen to Oslo were the best that I have ever seen, better even than those in southern Austria (Thank you, Rebecca.). At first, I could see nothing but moss-covered rock, as we were right next to the mountains and could not get any view of them, but I soon saw mountain after mountain, and we passed alpine pastures, meadows, valleys, and, of course, inlets and lakes. Many of the mountains were wooded, but some of them had almost barren slopes with skinny waterfalls stubbornly snaking down them; in other places, we passed only meters away from riverbanks and were able to see white, foamy breakers churning the rivers' green water as it hurled itself through rapids and crashed against the rocks, sending a gauze of spray into the air. We passed isolated farmsteads and little towns of solid, maroon wooden cabins, many of which had the same turf on their roofs as I had seen at the touristy cafe on the way to Kjeragbolten -- clearly, it serves a practical purpose. Many of the outbuildings in these parts, such as people's sheds or, in some cases, outhouses are built on stilts, like at Elfin Lake, in case of heavy snowfall. People have modest houses, many of which have half-basements, covered porches, and little flowerpots or beds of flowers to combat the bleakness of the landscape. Train stations often have signs indicating, with arrows in either direction, how far they are from Bergen and Oslo. I saw a great many people biking despite the rain and somber sky, and some people smiled and waved at the train as it passed.
Norway is the most beautiful part of the planet that I have ever seen, even more beautiful than the North Shore or Swiss Alps. Its uniqueness lies in its combination of water and mountains: the mountains here are not abutted by a single, giant body of water like those north of Vancouver, but are interdigitated with innumerable smaller rivers, lakes, and inlets, the visual effect of which I cannot find a way to adequately describe. One is always close to water, surrounded by it and often almost alone with it due to Norway's low population density. Perhaps the charm of all of these waterways is the variety that they lend the landscape, which does not look the same in any two places and, in fact, seems to change with every few seconds on a train. At times, when the railroad curved to the right (I was sitting on the right side of the train; both sides, from what I could tell, offered equally-incredible views.), I looked at the front of the train as at another, wholly separate entity, unable to believe that I was travelling through a landscape that made it onto postcards.
It is, perhaps, a fallacy to compare B.C. with Norway so much, as the two areas are so vastly different. One can, I assume, drive for hundreds of kilometers through B.C. without passing through any but the smallest of settlements; in fact, one can do the exact same thing in Norway, come to think of it, but the towns here are vastly older than those in B.C., and, not only are the people here and their food and customs different from those back home, but their having lived in such a harsh environment for so long has given them a sort of ruggedness and eschewal of adornment, which one does not see anywhere in, say, Germany. The one church that I entered during my stay here was no more than forty feet tall, its few supporting columns completely unadorned, and its walls were long blackened by incense. The images of its stained glass windows were as clear as paintings -- it was a relatively new church -- and its only inner ornamentation, if one can call it that, was the paintings of its former priests. This church had no unnecessary displays of wealth, unlikely almost all of the churches that I had seen in the rest of Europe, and it seemed much more aimed at piety than its German counterparts. One could easily imagine people's coming here on a cold, wet, snowy winter night to observe vespers on Christmas Evening, huddling together in the nave's faint light.
In short, I would love to return to Norway, as I would to Lake Konstanz, northern Germany, and the Netherlands, given the chance, for about a week. (I also want to see more of B.C. now.) I am going to brick back a bunch of information about travelling through Norway, as I will about Stockholm, and will try to describe the type of trip that I would recommend for people coming here, as I am pretty sure that some of you, my readers, would also be interested in coming.
Everything here is, indeed, expensive, and groceries cost two or three times as much as they should. Still, it is possible to budget one's stay. First off, do not eat out. A pair of English people whom I met said that they had seen a burger selling for 18 pounds Sterling in a fast food joint here. For my own part, I spent around 250 kroner, or just over forty dollars, on enough groceries for four or so days with the supplement of free breakfasts at one of my accommodations and a free spaghetti dinner that someone gave me. Round-trip transport from Stavanger to Preikestolen and Kjeragbolten cost 734 kroner, or around 120 dollars, and one-way transport to Bergen cost 440 kroner, or just over 70 dollars. My flight from Stockholm to Bergen cost 130 pounds, or something like 200 dollars, and the train from Bergen to Oslo cost 164 dollars. So far, we are looking at around 600 dollars for 4 days in Norway, which is, admittedly, a fair bit of money, but it does not break the bank (if one starts out in Europe). My hotel in Stavanger (which was fantastic) cost 85 dollars per night, or little more than a low-rent hotel in many parts of the United States (so we are now closer to 1000 dollars), and I have heard that staying in mountain huts costs around 350 kroner per night, or something like 55 dollars, and that one does not need a reservation for them.
As for destinations, I would recommend that one visit Stavanger for 3 days, as Preikestolen and Kjeragbolten are trivial day-trips and can be arranged on the day before one sets off for them, or the day of one's arrival in town; one should visit some combination of Odda, which is near Trolltunga, and Lodhus for four or five days (or perhaps three, if one is being stingy with one's time); one should see Bergen for two or three days, depending on the amount of hiking that one wants to do; and one should travel through Sognefjord and north to Kristiansund for a day or two. I would recommend skipping Oslo entirely, as it is a featureless city, the only one in which I saw any real underbelly or heard police sirens in all of Norway. Bergen has a lot more character than Stavanger and seems to me to be Norway's most culturally-interesting city; it has a very pretty harbor with lots of old buildings, a fish market, where one can "window-shop" without buying anything for fear of the prices, and a lot of interesting statuary. One statue that I particularly liked there was a bust of a man who was obviously trying very hard to look sober and imposing, but who had desiccated pine needles sticking out of his eye sockets due to his being at the edge of the woods.
Finally, I have heard that Jolanda Linschooten's "Hiking in Norway" is an excellent guide. Hiking in Norway is vastly different from doing so in British Columbia. First off, it is a bit more of a tourist activity, so one comes up against man inexperienced hikers who do not know to move to the right to let people pass and who sometimes even go off of the trail, damaging the mountainside. Norwegian mountains are much less wooded than those of B.C.; rather than hiking switchbacks for hours through the woods before breaking through the treeline, one hikes up craggy mountainsides and massive rock fields. Estimates about the amount of time that it takes to hike trails here are more accurate than those back home; if a hike is supposed to take, say, five hours, it really will take roughly that amount of time. The steepness of Norwegian hikes could be represented by a step function: one often goes straight up for an hour or two, along an approximate plateau for an hour or two, and then back down for an hour or two. The views here are good, but one cannot see as far as on peaks in British Columbia, as the tops of these mountains are largely flat (they are probably older than the ones back home). Driving in the mountains would be quite dangerous, as, while the drivers here are sane and the roads well-maintained, many roads are only wide enough for one car to drive on them at once, and they have practically no shoulder, making two-way traffic (which is inevitable) exciting. The highways here are a bit better than the mountain roads -- they have a whole two full-sized lanes, one in each direction.
Finally, you should treat this as a real hiking trip if you plan to come here. I left my hiking boots and other gear at home, as I was only planning to hike for three day and did not want to deal with the extra weight. As it turned out, it was very hot on my first day in Stavanger, as a result of which two liters of water was just barely enough to finish my hike to Preikestolen; I drank a whole extra liter on the way back (by bus and ferry, I mean), as I was able to refill my water bottles for free at the bottom of the hike. It would have been better to have some iodine tablets with me so as to be able to drink the water from the streams that I came across on the trail. Hiking in runners sucks, mostly because of their flimsy soles, and hiking to the actual peaks of mountains here is a bad idea, as they are poorly marked.
My final note about Norway is that someone offered me a
ride back from Kjeragbolten when I asked her if she knew where the bus
stop was. People here are extremely dour-looking, and one is constantly
reminded that one is in Europe when one passes them; very, very few
people smile or even acknowledge one as one passes by them. I have heard
that Iceland has some excellent wilderness, and it is very easy to get
to from Oslo; there are multiple flights per day there. I would
recommend tacking Iceland onto the end (or beginning) of one's trip to
Norway and spending three or four days there or, if one is more
interested specifically in Scandinavian culture, going to Stockholm,
from which one can easily fly to Stavanger, for a few days. Stockholm is
vastly more cosmopolitan than Copenhagen and Oslo combined; it was
funny that the Australian couple whom I met during my attempt to escape
from Copenhagen could not stop extolling Stockholm and telling me how
shocked they were that Copenhagen was so much worse, as I had the exact
same reaction to the two cities as them, and they had met other people
who said the same! I did not get to see hardly any of Oslo, as the
hostel at which I was staying had no storage lockers, and I did not want
to leave my stuff in my room while I went out to explore the city. I
instead visited a fascinating Middle Eastern grocery store on the way to
the train station and spent my remaining kroner there.
London has so far interested me very much, and I am about to head out to learn a whole lot more about it. People here are exceedingly friendly towards foreigners, unlike the Norwegians, and, while major train stations are large enough that one inevitably gets lost in them at first, public transport here is pretty good once one gets the hang of taking it. I am staying at the edge of town, far from the glitz and glamour of the city's more touristy districts, which is interesting because it has shown me that London is partly a city full of ordinary people who were either born here or came here because they could make more money here than back home; it is not a city strictly of medieval buildings and rich people. Nonetheless, I am about to head out and look at those exact two things, as they are part of what separate London from so many other different cities.
London has so far interested me very much, and I am about to head out to learn a whole lot more about it. People here are exceedingly friendly towards foreigners, unlike the Norwegians, and, while major train stations are large enough that one inevitably gets lost in them at first, public transport here is pretty good once one gets the hang of taking it. I am staying at the edge of town, far from the glitz and glamour of the city's more touristy districts, which is interesting because it has shown me that London is partly a city full of ordinary people who were either born here or came here because they could make more money here than back home; it is not a city strictly of medieval buildings and rich people. Nonetheless, I am about to head out and look at those exact two things, as they are part of what separate London from so many other different cities.
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| This is a poor photo of a west Norwegian landscape. |
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