Just so y'all know, writing has inertia. Once you get started, it's easier to keep going, but once you've stopped, it's harder to get started again! I tell you this to explain why it's taken so long to get part two written.
Also, I'd like to apologize ahead of time for the number of pictures included in this entry, more specifically the section around Bergen and Flåm. I've finally figured out how to access the family photographer's pictures for myself, and don't have to rely on her sending me a sparsity of pics... I actually get to choose what pictures to include now! Bergen and Flåm were among the most picturesque places we've ever been, and I had a hard time choosing pictures not to share, so... I erred on the side of sharing more instead of less.
As a reminder, this is part 2 of our Scandinavian vacation with Todd (aka "coworker") and Brenda (aka "assistant manager"), our long time friends from Austin. You'll have to read the previous entry if you want more of an explanation of their respective titles.
I mentioned the original capital of Sweden in the previous post - on Saturday, we took a train and bus up there. Basically, just a little old town. Nothing noteworthy to report, except a couple of Rune Stones and some viking ruins. Sigtuna was founded around the year 980, a couple of miles away from Signhildsberg (also called "Old Sigtuna" for some reason)... which was supposedly founded by the Norse God Odin when he first came to Sweden.
Now look, people... I can see that look on your faces from here. I can't be held responsible for all of the facts and figures that I pass along. I simply do my research and tell you what I find. Whether you believe what I'm telling you or not is completely up to you... and I'm telling you that, according to my research, the Norse God Odin founded the city of Old Sigtuna.
Sigtuna was founded on the edge of an arm of the Baltic Sea, and - in addition to the frequent incursions I mentioned in my last blog entry - Sigtuna had another problem. While attempting to remain apolitical, we all know that the earth goes through weather cycles, right? In the last Ice Age (until ~12,000 years ago), much of Scandinavia was covered by glaciers. With the melting of the glaciers, areas of the earth itself actually expanded once relieved of the weight of hundreds of millions of tons of ice, in a process called "Post Glacial Rebound," or "Glacial Isostatic Adjustment." These vertical movements continue to this day, and are expected to continue for the next 10,000 years or so. As an example of the scale of movement that happens, the country of Finland gains an additional 7 square kilometers of land every year, as the earth continues to recover from the disappearance of the immense weight of the glaciers. Back to Sigtuna though... with the physical rising of the land (over a relatively short period of time), the arm of the Baltic Sea that Sigtuna sat on got cut off from the Baltic and became a freshwater lake in the 12th century, Lake Mälaren, meaning the city wasn't accessible from the Baltic any more. This caused a problem for folks shipping their wares through the city, and led to the city losing most of its population. Perhaps they followed that mythical hollowed out log out of town to a better port location.
Post glacial rebound continues to affect other countries as well. Scotland continues to rise around 10 centimeters (4 inches) per century, causing a corresponding downward movement of the southern half of the island; southern England sinks about 5 centimeters in the same amount of time.
Anyway, Sigtuna is a town of around 10,000 and is mostly a tourist town now.
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| Sigtuna Town Hall, completed in 1744 |
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| Upplands runinskrifter Nf 56, from the 11th century. The runic inscription reads: "Anund had the stone erected in memory of himself in his lifetime." |
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| Busy downtown Sigtuna |
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| Some of the local (feathered) wildlife |
We had lunch in town and wandered around for a little while, then headed back to the bus station and headed to our next destination, Uppsala.
Uppsala is quite a bit more populated, closer to 200,000 people. It's a big college town, and is the religious center of Sweden, containing the largest cathedral in Scandinavia. For around 400 years, Swedish kings were coronated in the cathedral. The castle in the city was built by Gustav Vasa, the great-great-grandfather of Gustavus Adolphus, who commissioned the ill-fated Vasa from our previous blog entry. Gustav Vasa is entombed in the cathedral there.
We had a quick fika when we got there, then took off wandering through the town. The day that we were there, there was a wedding going on in the cathedral, so we couldn't go inside. Cute little town, nothing else to report.
We took a commuter train back to the central station in Stockholm. We had dinner in the food hall again, then metroed back to the apartments.
After all of our traveling the previous day, we started a bit slowly the following day. We took the metro to Gamla Stan and stimulated the local economy a bit, then had lunch... meatballs, if you must know! We took the metro back to the main shopping street and, after wandering a bit more, stopped for fika, then metroed back to the apartments to retrieve our luggage.
We metroed back to the central station in the pouring rain and hail, racing to the other end of the terminal to catch our bus to the airport. We made it with 2 minutes to spare... only for the bus to be delayed for 10 minutes.
Airport? Did somebody say "airport?" Yep, yet another mode of transportation. We flew from Stockholm to Bergen Norway, arriving early evening. We stopped at the car rental counter and picked up our trusty steed, a fairly new VW id7. This was my first experience driving an electric vehicle, and honestly I was a bit concerned about being able to find places to charge it. I needn't have been worried, there were plenty of places to charge... the difficulty was with my inexperience with electric cars. More about that later though!
I kinda figured out how the car worked, enough to get us to the hotel, anyway. After we checked into the hotel and dropped off our luggage, I found a nearby lake on the map and we took off exploring - even though it was approaching midnight. You'll notice that the pictures are quite bright- the wife has a powerful flash on her camera! Seriously though, despite it being midnight, the sun was still quite bright in the sky because of our northern latitude. Quite pretty and peaceful - please pardon the number of pics of this lake!
Next morning, we headed to downtown Bergen. We parked in a parking garage next to the local concert hall, which was named after Edvard Grieg, one of Bergen's most famous residents. Take a listen to the first part of Peer Gynt, or The Hall of the Mountain King, and you'll know who he is.
We walked the rest of the way downtown and wandered through the old town.
Bergen was established as a trading post as early as 1020, and in the 1300s, it was the capital of Norway. Today, it's the second largest city in Norway, after the (current) capital of Oslo, with a population of around 300,000.
Bergen was a member of the Hanseatic League, a medieval commerce and defense network across northern and central Europe. The Hanseatic League dates back to the 900s, as a means for coordinating trade between member cities. While that Hanseatic League doesn't technically exist anymore, I discovered in my research that you can still see references to it today... the German airline Lufthansa, for example ("Air Hansa"), a theme park in northern Germany called "Hansa Park","Hansa Brewery" in Bergen, "FC Hansa Rostock" in Rostock, Germany, among many other examples. There's evidently a new Hanseatic League that was established in 1977, but I haven't been able to figure out what kind of benefits cities get from belonging to the current "league."
What remains of Bergen's wharf (after several fires over the years) is a UNESCO Heritage Site - that section of the city is referred to as Bryggen. We found plenty of stores there in which to spend our tourist money!
We walked to the far side of the wharf to board the boat for our fjord tour. Nothing to report about the tour, just some pretty pictures:
Once we got back, we stopped for a quick fika, then explored through town until we got to the funicular station, and took the train up to Fløyen, one of the seven mountains overlooking the city. Quite the beautiful view from up there, and they had a herd of goats who live up there. The goats were just lying around, and were quite noncommittal when you went up to pet them. They didn't seem to mind, but they also didn't react much - they just continued with their business chewing their cud - or whatever it is that goats actually do.
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| Two old goats and our team librarian (ret.) |
There was an area in the forest at the top of the mountain where you could "hunt" trolls; trolls are mythical creatures who figure pretty strongly in Norse mythology and Norway really leans into it, with troll merchandise available at every single tourist shop we visited. There was a pathway through part of the forest with trolls halfway hidden throughout it, to give tourists a chance to "hunt trolls in the wild." Yeah, one of us just had to do that.
After she found all of the trolls, we rode the funicular back down and wandered back through town toward the car... until we found a shopping mall - y'all know how much I love shopping malls! I bought a raincoat - parts of our trip had been pretty wet, and my current raincoat hadn't been holding up very well.
We were all ready for some food, so we found a local pizzeria and chowed down before heading back to the hotel a bit early - long day tomorrow!
So, we got on the road bright and early (6:45) the next morning, big plans later that day... On our agenda today was the town (village, really) of Flåm... but first, a three hour drive through Norway's fjord country.
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| If you're tired of landscape and waterfall pictures already, you may just want to stop reading now. It's not gonna get any better for you from here on out. |
Flåm is a picture perfect little Norwegian town of less than 300 people, with earliest mentions dating back to the mid 1300s. You know how the southern Canadian provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan) are all lined up across the top of the US, with their northern borders being a straight line? Turns out, that straight line is on the 60th northern latitude, the exact same latitude as the city of Flåm. I haven't been able to find out anything substantial about the town, just that it's been popular with tourists since the 1960s, when cruise ships would anchor in the fjord and expel loads of tourists. In 2000, a larger pier was finally built, allowing the ships to dock in the town. Tourism continues to be their main source of both income and overcrowding. Cruise ships dock here about 160 times a year, leading to around 450,000 visitors annually. They must be coming here for something, right? Oh boy - are they... but you'll have to keep reading to see what it is!
One of the things Flåm is known for is having the steepest conventional railway in the world, with a maximum gradient of 1:18, or 5.5%. The Flåm Line (the train itself) is the third most visited tourist attraction in Norway. The Flåm Line climbs out of the town of Flåm up to the Myrdal stop 12 1/2 miles away, up in the surrounding mountains. The train runs through 7 stops, 20 tunnels, and over one bridge. There's a stop halfway up at a particularly picturesque waterfall where everyone on the train piles out for a picture opportunity for 5 minutes, then gets back in to continue the journey.
We got out at the second stop from the end, Vatnahalsen, with absolutely nothing at the stop except for a hotel... perfect time for lunch!
After lunch, we walked about a quarter of a mile to our next stop, the top end of the longest zipline in Scandinavia (1381 meters, ~4500 freedom units). At 305 meters elevation change (about 1000 freedom units), you get up to speeds of 100 kph (~60mph). We strapped in and flew down the mountain through the valley, flying for about a minute.
Once we got unhooked, we walked to the other side of the clearing and selected our bikes for the 18 kilometer (~11 mile) bike ride back to Flåm. According to everything I'd heard (and read about online), the entire bike ride would be all downhill, all the way back to Flåm. While overall, the journey was mostly downhill, there were some sections we had to pedal uphill, getting off the bikes and pushing them up a few different times. Overall, not a horrible amount of walking, just enough to lead to near constant complaining from one specific party member. Just in case I haven't been clear enough about my willingness to engage in strenuous physical activity... it was me. I felt lied to (in a "good natured" way). Incredibly beautiful scenery, and probably only a half mile total (if that) pushing the bikes uphill - but that didn't stop my whining every time I had to dismount.
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| An HR write-up immediately followed. The counseling session threw off the schedule for the rest of the day - can't take him anywhere! |
We eventually got back to the car, after soaking up all of the pretty views and "powdered nature," which didn't agree with the Assistant Manager's allergies.
We left the parking lot and figured out a place to stop on the way to charge the car, which was an adventure. The rental company had suggested a specific app which would navigate us by charging stations when necessary. Driving straight back to the hotel would have gotten us there with 20% battery or so remaining, and I wanted more of a safety margin than that, so we stopped at the nearest charging station to our point of origin, and the car wouldn't charge. A nearby driver helped us out, evidently, there's a setting for electric cars to keep them from overcharging... when you start charging, the info screen in the car lights up and lets you set the limit for how much of a charge you'd like, with 60% being the default. We were already at 60%, so... no charge for us. Once we'd figured the max setting out, I upped it to 80% to give us a good cushion to get home.
We stopped in the town of Vossevangen to take pictures and got some dinner while we were there at a local burger place, "Inside Voss Rock Cafe." Decent food. After everyone else retired for the evening, I drove over to the airport and charged the car up to 90%, so we could return it the next day.
Afterwards, I dropped the rest of the group off at the train station and drove over to return the car, then took an Uber back to the train station. We were early for our train - coworker and boss had left the assistant manager camped at the train station with all of the luggage, as she was still recovering from her exposure to all of the airborne nature the day before.
Coworker and boss were off exploring the harbor and fortress when I got back, then they returned and the management team took off to check out the city library (because assistant manager was a librarian before she retired).
We loaded our stuff onto the train for the long journey to our next destination. Just for future reference, six hours is a long train ride without having our own cabin. The scenery was quite pretty, winding our way across Norway, including passing by multiple glaciers.
It had been a long day, and we got separated coming out of the train station, and for the life of us, the boss and I couldn't manage to figure out where the other person was. I'd had quite enough of it, and took off walking to the hotel, dragging my suitcase behind me. The rest of the gang figured out where to catch a bus or tram, not sure which. I beat them to the hotel by almost half an hour.
The next morning, assistant manager still wasn't over the pollen assault of the last couple of days, so she stayed at the hotel for the morning activities.
We took yet another walking tour (seems like we did a lot of those, huh?) and learned quite a bit about the city...
Oslo was founded at the end of the Viking age, in about 1040, under the name of Ánslo. When it burned down and was rebuilt in 1624 (catastrophic fires seem to happen quite regularly over here, huh?) it was renamed Christiania is honor of the King of Denmark. The spelling was briefly changed to Kristiania from 1877-1925. When the boundaries of the city expanded to include the previously named village of Ánslo, they changed the name of the whole metropolitan area to Oslo.
Today, it's the most populous city in Norway, with around 1.5 million residents of the metropolitan area. Over the last 15 years, it's been very highly ranked, from the perspective of the quality of life there, and the cost of living; it's considered to have the highest quality of life of any "city" or "large city" in Europe, while simultaneously being either the second or fourth most expensive city in the world in which to live.
Regardless, quite a beautiful place, at the northernmost end of the 75 mile long Oslofjord, which is filled with small islands to explore.
We met up with the tour group at the train station and wandered around the downtown area, learning interesting facts about Oslo the whole time.
For instance: the Oslo Opera House was specifically designed and constructed to look like what?
A glacier. Scroll back up to the pic, and let me know how successful you think they were.
Also: Where do you think Norway lands in the category of "Most tacos eaten per capita?"
Second, right behind Mexico. Interestingly enough (to me, at least), the word for "taco" in Norwegian is the same as in English: taco. With the Norwegian words for Tuesday and Thursday being tirsdag and torsdag (respectively), you'd think this would lead to tacos frequently being consumed on those days (leading to the alliterative tacotirsdag or tacotorsdag), but you'd be incorrect. It's usually tacofredag - Taco Friday. I don't know if alliteration just isn't a thing that far north, or what.
After our tour, the boss and I stopped at a circus themed restaurant for drinks while coworker headed back to the hotel to check in on assistant manager. After drinks, the boss headed to the National Museum and saw some van Gogh paintings and (a version of) the Scream, painted by native Norwegian Edvard Munch. Coworker checked on his boss, then headed out to a local sauna. I wandered around town, doing pretty much nothing.
We all met up for dinner, and went for burgers at a famous dockside area called Aker Brygge. Afterward, we just wandered around town for a while.
The next day, we'd signed up for an Island Hopping Tour. You remember how I told you about Oslofjord, filled with small islands? Turns out, there are ferries that run out to those islands as part of the public transportation system. For our tour, we met up with our guide, then got onto one of the public ferries.
We rode to the island of Hovedøya, a tiny island with a population of 5 people. It's best known for a Cistercian Monastery, Hovedøya Abbey, originally built in 1147. The monastery was closed and burned down at the beginning of the Reformation in 1532, with some of the stones from the building's construction used to expand Akershus Fortress, the (now former) royal residence in Oslo. While we were there, the site was actively being studied; we saw an archeologist hard at work in the ruins.
Next up (after waiting for a few minutes at the public "bus" stop) was the island of Gressholmen. From 1927 to 1939, this island was the site of Oslo's main airport, accessible only to seaplanes. Now, the island is mostly a nature preserve. After we parted ways with our tour guide, the management team headed over toward the bird sanctuary, while us blue-collar peons went to the bar, conveniently located next to the ferry stop. We had drinks and snacks on the island before heading back.
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| They rent these floating saunas you can cruise the bay in. Before you ask, no, we didn't. |
After we arrived back on the mainland, I headed back to the room to relax and cool down, while the rest of the group visited the Opera House and Library (one of the dangers of traveling with a librarian... gotta stop at all of them!).
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| Coworker climbed the Opera House while management waited below |
For dinner, we walked to the local food hall; it was definitely off the tourist path - I think everyone else there that night were locals!
We all had early departures the next day, so we said our goodbyes that night. They took a bus (or tram, not sure which) to the bus station early the next morning for their bus to Copenhagen, while we left a few minutes later and took a bus to the train station, then a train to the airport for our flight back to Frankfurt.
Stay tuned to this site... there might be an extra special entry coming up, written by a guest author (not the librarian)!
