Journeying to Bergen
A little before noon, I boarded a bus in Stavanger for a bus ride to Bergen, Norway. The bus ride was scheduled to take a little over four and a half hours. At least, it was billed as a bus ride.
Most of it was. But, much to my surprise, another mode of transportation played a significant supporting role. I’m not complaining. Quite the contrary.
The Bus (and Ferry) to Bergen
Not terribly far out of Stavanger, the driver announced, first in Norwegian, then in English, that we’d soon be taking a ferry. The bus drove onto the ferry along with a bunch of other vehicles, large and small.
Passengers then got off the bus and walked up to the upper deck of the ferry. There, a large enclosed cabin covered most of the deck, but there were some small, open, standing-only areas at the front and back.
The rather workaday-looking cabin had a lot of benches, chairs, and tables—and a cafeteria. Because I thought it was a bus-only journey, with no onboard food options, I feared I’d suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous hunger. But, thanks to the ferry, I had a bland sandwich from the cafeteria.
Aside: About buying that sandwich, before I left Canada, I bought 800 Norwegian kroner, the equivalent of a little over $100 Canadian, from my bank. I haven’t used any of those kroner yet. Almost everyone here uses cards for everything. I may be selling all of the kroner back to the bank when I get home.
Five minutes before the end of the 25-minute ferry ride, in response to an announcement on the ferry’s PA system, the bus passengers, myself included, descended to the bus, got back on board, and, after the ferry docked, the bus drove off to continue its journey to Bergen. (And beyond, but Bergen was my stop.)
That is to say, all of the ferry passengers descended, not just the bus passengers. But the rest of them went to their respective vehicles. They couldn’t all fit on the bus I was on. Besides, I imagine it would gum up the works if they abandoned their vehicles on the ferry.
The driver resumed driving and we came to another dock a little more than three hours out of Stavanger. There, the driver announced that we were running late, had just missed the ferry we were supposed to be on, and would have to wait for the next one, about a 20-minute delay—yes, another ferry on the bus trip.
This ferry ride was longer than the first one, about 45 minutes, but the process was the same except for the sandwich. I didn’t buy another sandwich. The second ferry got us relatively close to my stop, Bergen. I didn’t have much more than half an hour on the bus from there.
The scenery during the ferry rides included, of course—pay attention, they were ferries—water, but also shores of forested hills and mountains, along with a few habitations.
The road portions of the trip took us by mountains, hills, forests, farms, pastures, cows, seasides, fjords, lakes, cities, towns, and lots of concrete. (See below for more on the concrete. You’ll recognize it when you see it.)
I’m not a fan of riding on buses, but most of the scenery out the windows, except for the concrete, was splendid.
The bus drove over some bridges and through several tunnels.
Three of those tunnels seemed next to endless. Another appeared to be approximately a half or maybe two-thirds of the way to being endless, give or take.
About halfway through one of the next-to-endless tunnels, the driver had to negotiate a roundabout that accommodated traffic from an intersecting tunnel that would have formed a T-junction with the tunnel we were in were it not for the roundabout.
Don’t imagine for a second that, for most of the time in the long tunnels, I worried about the ventilation in the tunnels, not to mention what would happen if there were an accident in there. You’re busy people. You can’t afford to spend your time imagining such things. Of course, I did. Take that as a given.
Pretty well all of the journey outside of the tunnels was under overcast skies and there was a period of rain.
Eventually, the bus arrived safely in Bergen, about 20 minutes late. The ferry rides broke up the trip and made what would have otherwise been an almost five-hour bus ride more bearable.
In Bergen
When I arrived at the bus terminal in Bergen, I checked Google Maps. It told me it would take 25 minutes to walk to my hotel. The area around the Begen bus station and the city’s nearby train station did not look interesting. Furthermore, no raindrops fell at the time, but the roads and sidewalks were thoroughly wet and the sky looked like it was preparing to resume raining. I decided to take a taxi.
As a result of that decision, I can no longer truthfully claim that I’ve never ridden in a Tesla. For those of you who still haven’t and would like to know more, here’s my review of the Tesla. (I don’t know what model it was.) A Tesla is a car. A quiet, electric car. That’s all I’ve got.
My hotel is right across the street from the Bergen harbour. The harbour is lovely.
My hotel incorporates two small, wooden, heritage buildings that are part of a neighbourhood called “Bryggen” or, alternatively, “Tyskebryggen.” “Bryggen” is Norwegian for “the warf.”
In addition to the two buildings that my hotel incorporates, Bryggen includes a row of similar buildings facing the harbour. Plus, similar cheek-to-jowl buildings sit behind that row. A few lanes with wood beam floors perpendicular to the harbour provide passage between some of the buildings. There’s also a slightly wider brick-paved walkway parallel to the wood-floored lanes.
The colours of the heritage buildings include a few shades of brown, burnt orange, mustard, and white. (Predominantly one colour per building, not all on each building.)
By the time I checked into my hotel and settled in, it was already about 5:30 p.m., so I didn’t have a lot of time to do much. I strolled a bit through Bryggen (it’s not very big), along my side of the harbour, and then inland for a couple of blocks past the landward end of the harbour. The harbour is a long finger of water probing the city, if you’ll excuse the disgusting imagery. So there are buildings on either side of it. It’s a very visually pleasing, welcoming area.
Farther inland from Bryggen, along my side of the harbour, there is a row of taller (five storeys), gabled buildings constructed of I don’t know what material, that are also dignified old buildings that complement Bryggen. And beside them, is a row of four buildings of a roughly similar design, but three are made of grey brick and one of red brick. The total package is very charming.
The land on the other side of Bergen’s harbour holds taller buildings, which, from the distance of the width of the harbour, look plainer and less interesting than the buildings on my side of the harbour, so I haven’t walked over there yet. I might at some time during my stay in Bergin go there to see if they look more interesting close up. Plus, I’m debating about taking a short boat trip or two while I’m here and I think they leave from that side of the harbour. So that might take me there whether or not I walk there just for the sake of walking there.
Along a wide sidewalk at the landward end of the harbour, there was a short, single-aisle fish market, with vendors on each side of the aisle. Apart from large umbrellas protecting the vendors and any customers visiting their stalls, it was an open-air market. (Take my use of the past tense in this paragraph to mean that I don’t know if I just lucked into the market being there when I was, or if it’s there every day.)
UPDATE: It’s an ongoing market.
Vendors in the market sold primarily fish and seafood, both fresh to prepare at home and foods that they cooked on-site for consumption at some tables there. Some vendors also sold caviar.
Despite a sign out front saying it was a fish market, they didn’t sell only formerly water-inhabiting creatures. A few vendors offered sausages (both salami-like types and the type that they grilled there to eat in buns). There was also a food truck adjacent to the market that sold reindeer sausage, moose burgers, and baked potatoes.
Oh, there was one previous swimming creature that I should probably single out. Whale steak. They sold whale steak. I’ve seen it on the menu elsewhere in Norway. I don’t know if I’m going to try it here. I don’t know why it bothers me. I eat other mammals. But the concept of eating whale meat freaks me out for some reason.
I can’t recall if I ever read Moby-Dick. I kind of think I did, but I don’t remember much about it and what I do remember might just be references to it that I read elsewhere. However, if I did, I probably cheered for Moby Dick rather than Ahab throughout the book. And, for the record, don’t call me Ishmael. (The opening line is famous enough that I would know it whether or not I read it in the book. Maybe it’s time I read re-read Moby-Dick, or reread it as the case may be.)
I’m in Bergen for five nights, four full days. So stay tuned for more posts from here.
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Well, that was a pleasantly surprising journey. Who doesn’t like ferries? And who likes 5-hour bus trips, even without the neurosis-inducing tunnels? So, good for you. What you have shown so far of Bergen certainly looks very promising. Looking at the wood-floored lanes I thought how unusual! How charming! But as a backyard deck owner, and looking at the weather you have been having, I wonder how practical that is. Because then I think: green slime, mould, rotting wood. It’s outside, isn’t it? And rain (and snow) falls on it, soaking in rather than running off. Is it a special kind of wood or does it get refinished or replaced often? Do they just think of it as a pier on land rather than water, and thus with no right to be moaning about getting waterlogged? Or am I asking too many practical questions? Really, I should probably just sit back, relax, and enjoy the views.
Were it not for the ferries, my level of grumpiness would have shot up much beyond its already normally high level after that “bus” ride.
I hadn’t thought about those practical questions about wood specifically, but if the degree of wetness and dampness I’m experiencing here is typical, I have been wondering why everything and everyone isn’t covered in moss and mould. Yet I haven’t noticed any here. Then again, I haven’t been looking.
That having been said, I have been greatly enjoying Norway. To be fair, there haven’t been many thoroughly drenching downpours while I’ve been here, just occasional drizzles and seemingly incessant gloomy, threatening skies. But even the downpours I’ve experienced haven’t lasted long.
And I did have some nice weather in Oslo. A waitress in Stavanger told me that pattern is to be expected. She said it rains more in the west of the country than in the east because the winds typically come from the west. They push up over mountains and lose much of their moisture before they reach Oslo in the east.
The bus, ferries, mountains, and tunnels of your journey to Bergen make for gripping prose. The hyper vigilance and sheer fortitude tunnels demand of the sensitive soul and active imagination? You describe them very well. To think of a roundabout in a tunnel boggles my pedestrian mind. Thinking of all those tunnels bored into the mountainous terrain of the west Norway coast makes me appreciate concrete tunnels. In that context, much to be preferred to, say, glass tunnels (the likes of which figure into the wonders of certain aquariums).
Bergen’s picturesque Bryggen district? Picturesque. Great image for merchandise like the souvenir tea towel given to me, as it happens, last year: all the peaked-rooftops in a row. A satisfying geometry and symmetry.
Thank you.
If it boggled your mind to read about the roundabout in the tunnel, imagine how much it boggled my mind to experience it. I had no idea there were any intersecting tunnels anywhere.
The tunnel milage in Norway must be a very large number. I’ve experienced tunnels elsewhere in Norway when going from one city to the next. Not as much as on the Stavanger to Bergen, journey, but still not nothing.
Bergen is in general picturesque, but, yes, especially Bryggen.