June 2019
I’ll begin with a travel tip. Go to Norway. It is so beautiful. Of all of the Scandinavian countries, this one is my favorite. Though I have not yet been to Denmark and absolutely want to return to Stockholm.
The trip began in Oslo, which is a perfectly nice city but nothing too special about it. If you are thinking of visiting Norway, I recommend going through Bergen. It is the second largest city in Norway, only around 272,000 people, and is more interesting, old fashioned, and unique than Oslo.
Something I have certainly noticed in my travels through Scandinavia is that all of these countries seem to “get it.” They are so accessible and easy to get around. Despite only having a few hours of daylight in the winter, they all rank among the happiest countries in the world. Free education and free healthcare certainly helps make a happy and healthy society.
Back to the trip, after landing in the Oslo airport I took an express train to the city center and snapped this picture of the “Barcode” buildings out of the window.
Oslo certainly has some great modern architecture and the Opera house is another example.
Not sure what this is about, but there must have been a thousand shirts on it.
Walked through Akershus Fortress.
Was surprised to come across a FDR statue. This was a thank you for aid during WW2.
They had an interesting exhibit in their harbor of blown up insect closeups.
This is the Norwegian Royal Palace. It is nice, but no where near as grand as those of Sweden, Germany, England, France, or other European powers.
The guards are all friendly. You can talk with them and take pictures.
This clown and I must have crossed paths at least five times.
The Parliament building. Norway has had universal voting rights for over 100 years.
Now Chelsea (my sister) has landed!
If Chelsea was just a little shorter and hairier they could be twins.
We have a running joke, “this would be so romantic if I wasn’t with my brother.” It started with us riding together in a gondola in Venice.
We went to an iced out bar and were the only people there for about 20 minutes.
From Oslo we took a beautiful train ride to Bergen.
Bergen has a lot of charm and class. Between these old buildings are lots of good shops.
We ate a lot of phenomenal salmon, as well as moose, reindeer, and whale.
No joke, 7/11 is pretty great here. Chelsea loves their healthier options.
We only had to toss a few kids to get this epic hiking picture.
We totally cheated to make it look like we are better at this than we really are.
Decorative manholes are a nice little touch.
They love their trolls.
From Bergen we rented a car and Chelsea drove us three hours to Odda so we could hike Trolltunga the next day. It was a really nice drive.
For sure the highlight of our trip was going up to Trolltunga. We had purchased a ticket to do a bike, hike, climb combo to get there. Because of weather and a flooded rode we had to hike, but I think it was actually better this way.
We had an awesome Norwegian guide named Vegar, as he said it, “like Vegas but with a r.”
Our assent to Trolltunga began on a Sherpa built path. The Norwegian government wants its citizens to be happy and healthy, so it invests a good amount into trails and ways of making the outdoors more accessible. Everybody knows that the Sherpas of Nepal make the best hiking trails. So the Norwegian government flew them in and paid each Sherpa a years salary per month for 2 years. So these Sherpas made 24 years worth of salary for their families in just 2 years. And there was absolutely a noticeable difference between this hand laid Sherpa path and a later path we took made by Norwegians with machines.
You can drink directly from the steams.
Because of wind, this waterfall goes up. We went for a closer look, we got wet.
These several meter deep holes along this little creek are pretty interesting. For the past thousands of years the current has been moving a harder rock around that has bore a huge hole into this massive rock.
Approaching Trolltunga
What we came for…
What we got… Chelsea was fortunate that the clouds had cleared for about ten seconds when she was out there.
The decent was also beautiful.
These are the machines the Norwegians use on the mountains. Each wheal can operate independently and they can go pretty much anywhere.
After we got down, we were really hungry. So naturally we went to “Thai Take Out” to get sushi, and we saw the nice couple from Jersey we had been hiking with all day already there. They had ordered a lot of food and we had not ordered enough sushi. So once they left, we looked out the window to make sure they had gone, then stole their leftovers. All of the Thai cooks were laughing at us. It was so worth it.
This picture does it no justice, but all of the employees at the Bergen airport were getting around on scooters and clearly having a lot of fun doing it. This is just a little thing that makes their work a lot more fun and efficient. The whole system here is really meant to make people happy and healthy. It’s great.
I wouldn’t say maybe, I’d say for sure.