Billy-Goating Fjord Style

One of the things we really, really wanted to do in the fjords was hike. We both love hiking, love the outdoors, and had heard good things about the hikes here. Plus, on a practical side, we need to get some hiking practice in. Our plan is to do some serious hikes in the Alps, and we need to do some conditioning before that. Especially for me (Becca), this is important. Those who know me well know that I currently am far from my normal level of conditioning or athleticness and I'm still recovering from my double foot (feet?) surgery in April.

Anyway, we discovered some things about hiking in fjords versus just about anywhere else we've ever hiked. Namely: there's no where to go but straight up. Even in the Alps or Rockies your path goes up, but it also has down parts or straight parts in between. Here it just goes straight up, and there really aren't many switchbacks on the trails (which you also see a lot of in the Alps). You just kind of billy-goat your way up. On the other hand, you get some great views!

On our first hike, I think we climbed about400 meters (a little over 1,300 feet) up in the first hour or hour and a half. Brian kept checking my pulse when we stopped for water or to enjoy the view (or gasp for breath). I was going about 180 bpm, so it was definitely some good exercise. It's pretty much like using nature's stairmaster for an hour plus on high. This hike started up above the town and climbed to a nice view point (Panorama from right to left of fjord and Balestrand 1, 2, 3, 4). At that point you had a choice. Continue up to the peak up and over a ridge that required some technical skill and had a lot of warnings about sheer dropoffs or continue up a little more into the forest, and then come back down. We decided that discretion was the better part of valour on tired legs and chose Plan B.

Down of course was just as steep as up (so we hated it even more) but for a part of it at least, we went through a way cool forest with a mossy ground cover. Once we got 2/3 of the way down we wanted to add to the hike, so we detoured on to 2/3 of another hike, which was easier (it stayed pretty flat with some minor ups and downs) but added another 4-5 km.

All in all, not a bad first effort!

We took the next day off to let our legs recover a little and did the ferry trip down another fjord arm (see "and we only bought one...")

Our second hike started from the town directly opposite Balestrand on a small fjord arm. (picture a really thin elongated U with the two towns on either end. It was silly, it felt so close that you could just swim it (it probably was only about a few hundred meters), but you had to go all the way around the U. Not trusting ourselves to rent a boat and paddle over, we caught the bus.

Right when we started we found a fantastic secluded little spot and just sat and enjoyed the view for a half hour or so. (See...we are getting better at relaxing). We watched the ferry we had been on the day before head around the corner from Balestrand and off down the Fjaerland fjord.

Then we got going again. This hike didn't seem quite as insane (in terms of steepness of the grade), but it was still steep and we actually went higher, probably more than 600 meters (approximately 2,000 feet) up. The views along the way were incredible (here are some from our lunch stop: 1, 2, 3,) and gave us a good sense of where Balestrand sat in relation to the rest of the nearby Sognefjord.

We also were fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of the rare wild Norwegian sheep. . Actually, there was high entertainment value in watching Brian try to get close to them while clearly being fairly terrified that they were going to charge him.

Again, this hike had an option to continue up to a point where technical climbing ability was recommended, so again, we went until my legs finally started cramping and then again had the fun (not!) task of going back straight down. Really, really not our favorite part. Still, we were fairly proud and pumped up and tired when we got back down.

After a brief rest by the edge of the fjord we went back up to catch the bus. Slight problem. No bus. We don't know whether Becca read the schedule wrong (very possible), the bus missed the ferry to get to this spot (also possible) or they changed the schedule just b/c they had to get home to pick up the kids (highly possible in this small of a community), but it meant we had three options to get back to Balestrand: swim, steal a boat, or walk the 5 miles back around the fjord. While walking 5 miles on a 1.5 lane road with light, but still occasionally large, traffic didn't sound like a great idea at 5 pm after a killer hike, it turned out to be a wonderfully serendipitous occasion. The scenery was amazing, it was very peaceful (except when the large trucks went by), we got up close and personal to a lot of scenary we would have otherwise missed, we met Etienne (mentioned in a previous post) and as we finished walking up into Balestrand with the sunset behind the town, we thought it was a perfect farewell to a wonderful place.

And we only bought one...

In between hikes in Balestrand, we took the ferry out to the Fjaerland fjord, home of the Jostedal glacier (the glacier is one the far left and the right middle). The Jostedal glacier is the largest in Europe and from a distance it was quite an impressive sight. We decided not to take the tour up to it (mainly b/c the tour only allowed 15-20 minutes at the actual glacier itself though having the cost equal 2x what we paid for the ferry over didn't help). The ferry ride was enough for us anyway, it was wonderfully relaxing to be sitting watching the views as we slowly (especially compared to the express boats) glided by waterfalls, and little hamlets on the shoreline dwarfed by the mountains, and huge cliff faces.

Instead we explored the town of Fjaerland (aka Mundial) and it's 2.5 miles of books (nested in bookshelves in nooks and crannies of 30+ used bookstores). I'd hate to be the person who had to measure that but they weren't kidding. Here's the map of all the stores in town. Needless to say this town's calling card as Norway's "Book Town" is well deserved. Becca managed to drag Brian away from the used book stores enough to go for a walk to the end of this fjord arm and back, meeting up with the rest of the crowd coming back from the glacier tour at the ferry.

As the title of the post hinted though, thankfully we're packing light. Despite the heavy amount of Swedish titles, we definitely found more than enough books to keep us busy for the rest of the trip. As it was, it was one so-so paperback for Becca and back onto the boat to Balestrand!

During the trip home the weather clouded up and gave us much different views of the same awesome scenery, and scenery.

PS Becca highly recommends you DO NOT read this book . Her quote was something along the lines of "this isn't going to even set the Irish literary world on fire"

Bliss in Balestrand

So we've really got to hand it to Rick Steves. We would never have known about Balestrand with out his suggesting it (our Danish and Norwegian friends hadn't heard of it). And it was EXACTLY the type of place that we want to spend time in.

As we mentioned in our previous post, we got away from the Norway in a Nutshell crowds (of which there were many!) on his advice and made tracks to Balestrand. Balestrand is a little fjordside village (pop 1,850) on the Sognefjord that feels light years away from the crowds (click on this link just to see the fantastic photo of the town it opens with before it turns into the hotel's website. Rick Steves highly recommends this hotel for any of you thinking of visiting..it just didn't fit our budget). You can walk from one end of the main town in less than 5 minutes.

We couldn't afford either of the hotels in the town, but we happily got rooms at one of the hostels, the Kringsja Vanderhjem. One of the nice things we've been discovering in our travels is that in the last 10-20 years, as hostels have evolved from focusing solely on youth travelers to any budget travelers, they have been adding more and more double rooms and family rooms in addition to the traditional dorm-style rooms. So we have been able to get our own room (with it's own toilet/shower) in these places. Granted it's a little more than paying for two beds in the dorm rooms, but it's still usually far less than a hotel room and that way we aren't sleeping in different rooms and worried about our bags, etc.

Anyway, we didn't know what to expect of this hostel. Rick didn't make it sound that great and our Oslo hostel, while perfectly functional, was either previously a bombshelter or the old USSR embassy. Boy were we blown away. We had a large room of our own with big windows opening out to our own balcony overlooking an unbelievable view (gotta show that to you again). Add on a kitchen (good for cooking cheap, if suspect dinners), a generous breakfast (included in the price) and an internet connection in the common room and we were in heaven.

After researching Balestrand, Becca had decided that it sounded so good that she stole a day from the Oslo visit and from the Stockholm visit in order to have 3 full days plus an afternoon and a morning in Balestrand. It was definitely worth it as we filled our time with hikes and excursions (see the next entries). (We ended up giving a day back to Stockholm by stealing it from Finland/Helsinki and just going straight to Estonia...but more on that later)

In short we highly highly recommend this location to anyone looking to experience the beauty of the fjords, to get away from the crowds, to do some glacier hiking/canoing/learning, and who enjoys outdoor activities and reading a book/relaxing in front of unbelievable scenery.

Some more scenes of life in Balestrand: relaxing on the balcony, enjoying a picnic-style dessert, and trying to figure out how to sleep up here near the land of the midnight sun.

Fjord me Seymour!

Excitedly left Oslo for the fjords. We took Rick Steves' advice and went west instead of trying to get up north to the artic circle and all the fjords up and down there.

The train ride between Oslo and Bergen is supposed to be one of the most beautiful (or at least dramatically scenic) in northern Europe. The whole railway is 300 miles long, goes under 18 miles of snow sheds, travels over 300 bridges, and passes through 200 tunnels in just under 7 hours. We rode about 60% of the way.

The countryside just outside of Oslo is very pretty with woods and trees and farms. After about three hours the track starts rising up over Norway's mountainous spine. At this point you see the barren, rocky, windswept heaths and snowmelt lakes existing into rushing rivers and streams. The track reaches the highest train station in Norway at Finse, 1,222 meters above sea level. This place looked COLD, with the snow covering a lot of the town and the lake only partially melted. An amazing thing was then seeing how many houses were out in the wilderness along the way. Especially the ones with outdoor outhouses!

We got off at Myrdal, a high-altitude (2,800 feet) train junction with a platform, little station house and bed and breakfast. That's it. (there aren't any roads to get to it). There we changed onto the train to Flam. This is probably one of the most famous railways in Norway. It goes down from 2800 feet to sea level in 55 minutes, stopping at scenic viewpoints and providing many oohs and ahs. The train represents an amazing engineering feet. It's evidently the steepest train line to use normal guage tracks (not cog wheels, etc) in the world and requires 5 brake systems. It also goes through 20 tunnels (more than 3 miles worth) and at one point does a 360 in a tunnel through a mountain so that the view through windows in the tunnel wall is first on one side of the train and then on the other. You can read more about the flam railway and see more pictures at: http://www.flaamsbana.no/eng/Index.html

One of the sights on the way down is the Kjosfossen waterfall (with over 300 feet of free fall), where legend says a siren lives behind the falls and tries to lure men to the rocks with her singing. We had gotten out of the train with the rest of the passengers and were trying to take pics in the swirling spray without us or the cameras getting too wet when all of a sudden a lovely haunting tune came out from the rocks. Then suddenly a woman with long black hair in a long red dress appeared at the window of a ruined house. She beckoned seductively then disappeared and then another woman appeared almost in the falls and completely covered in spray beckoning alluringly. They traded back and forth for a while (creating the illusion of a magic creature who could move through rock and water. Fairly touristy, but still, a pretty cool effect. We found out later that they had wet suits on under the dresses and were tethered by safety lines and in between trains would go warm up in a lodge. Good thing too...it looked like a pretty extreme job.

At the bottom we had about 30 minutes in Flam before boarding an express boat to Balestrand. Most of our fellow tourists got on another ferry to make a U around through this fjord and another one and then to head back up to the railway. This trip is called Norway in Nutshell and is one of the most famous trips in Norway. We highly recommend it for anybody who only has a day or two from Oslo and wants to experience some of the best of the fjords and maybe get out to Bergen. We would have done that too but we really wanted more time to experience the fjords and to get away from most of the tourists.

So instead of boarding the nutshell boat, we got on our express boat, left flam and the cruise ships behind, and headed farther into the Sognefjord on our way to Balestrand. The Sognefjord is Norway's longest (120 miles) and deepest (1 mile) and provided us with our first glimpses of fjords scenery and scenery and scenery. And btw, for anyone who takes on of these boats: 1) they are actually catamarans, so they are FAST, and 2) that means if you are outside it is WINDY. But they can cover the trip to Balestrand in about 1.5 - 2 hours (depending on which version of the boat you take) instead of probably 5 hours or so on a ferry.

And some people think we're a little crazy

One of the things we value most about this trip is the chance to make random connections with people. While walking between two villages in the Norwegian fjords, we met Etienne Leroux, a South African who was just beginning a three-year odyssey to bike around the world. He had a 15 kg bike and another 16 kg or so of packs (he put our packing light to shame, as he also carried camping and cooking gear and more electronic equipment in not much more volume than us.) and was covering about 100 km or so a day.

This isn't the first long distance trek he's done. He's biked across the middle east, from London to Istanbul, and other such adventures. We really enjoyed talking to him about travel and life philosophy, and look forward to following his adventures on his site. It certainly re-inspired us (not that we were uninspired) to approach this adventure with the right attitude.

And for anyone who is looking for an free and easy way to sleep while travelling around the world? Etienne highly suggests football (soccer to the Yanks) fields. Every town has one and even if they do have a security guard, they are usually more than willing to let you crash for an evening.

Statues and Shrimp Sandwiches

Norway at last! This is a place that both of us have always wanted to visit. After a little bit of replanning, we left ourselves just a day in Oslo so that we could maximize our time in the fjords, but it was a great day of exploring and getting a feel for the city.

Oslo is much smaller than Copenhagen, but like Copenhagen has the pedestrian streets, the royal palaces, and the lively scene around the harbor and waterfront. We spent the morning walking through some nice residential areas (which included many embassy or ambassadorial residences) that reminded Becca a little of Paris and a little of DC.

The highlight of the day, sightseeing-wise was the visit to Frogner Park and to see Vigeland's statues. Gustav Vigeland was Norway's greatest sculptor. He had been doing work outside of the coutnry, but in 1921 he made a deal with the city. In return for a studio and state support, he'd spend the rest of his creative life creating this 75 acre sculpture garden. From 1924 to 1943 he worked on the site, creating 192 bronze and granite statues (encompassing over 600 figures, each nude and unique) and designed the landscaping.

We really enjoyed walkingaround the garden and were really struck and touched by his ability to capture human emotion and relationships so clearly in his medium. Becca went kind of camera crazy, trying to get portraits of her favorite works.

The park features a bridte with 58 bronze statues, each dealing with relationships between people, like this, and this, and this, and this, and this. One of Vigeland's most famous statues in the Sinnataggen, the hot-headed little boy. It's said that he gave his model chocolate and then took it away to get this reaction.

The park also includes a fountain surrounded by 4 more scupltures and 50 bronze reliefs all exploring the circle of life, and a 180-ton, 50 foot tall monolith that took 14 years to carve surrounded by 36 granite statues exploring more human relationships

The other highlight of the day was the chance to catch up with Karen Borseth, a friend that Brian had met when he was traveling in Australia 8 years ago. It was great to have a chance to catch up and see each other again in person after trading emails over the years. She took us to a fun local joint, where she instructed Brian on the finer points of peeling, preparing, and eating shrimp on toast. Yum.

We were sorry to only have a day to see things, but are eager to hit one of the places we've both always wanted to go: the fjords of Norway.