Post 153 - From Sweden into Norway

      Getting into Norway, we soon arrived in Oslo. It was very large, and confusing. Near the north side, we stopped for lunch, and a tall, blonde,slender guy showed us how to get on the road to Bergen, the city we were angling for, since it was supposed to be the most beautiful area.

      A pair of french youths hit us up for a ride when they found we were going that way, and the girl was well spoken, but we explained our little car was full. And it was. Very full. It was only 150 miles or so away, but, as it turned out, it took us days to get there. Not far out of Oslo, we passed a giant pile of flowers along the road, with lots of people stopping. Looking out into the lake, we recognized the Island where so many young campers were shot recently. We pulled over at a grocery/diner there, and the owner, who seemed to still be somewhat traumatized by the event, told us all about it. He said the people living in the trailer park there got in boats and saved 200, many in the water. He went on about “That's just what happens when a country allows so many foreigners in,” seeming to ignore the fact that this was a home grown terrorist. Ironically, He seemed to be expressing the same sentiments the shooter stated at his hearing. His anger seemed to be pointed at a group that supported allowing more foreigners to move into Norway. These gentle people just could not seem to wrap their minds around the fact that one of their own could ever do that.

      Travel was very slow, crowded with a lot of construction. That was a very well-worn path, constantly along the very large lake. Near the end of the day, we saw a motel advertised on a convenience store, but the motel was closed. He did tell us we had just passed a Pensjonat, and then I remembered. A Pension was a place to stay in Germany. We decided to stay there two days, reasonable with lots of side trip possibilities.

     We saw the Flam Railroad was advertised ahead, with a very steep track up to the top of a very high mountain, so we decided to take a paying side trip, very rare with us. The rails looked awfully steep to me, but we were assured the train had five different braking systems. Surely one of them would work. On the train, we talked a lot with a couple who were from the far north of Norway, and their description sounded a lot like the North Pole. We would not go up that far. Housing was scarce up there, and very cold.

     We were approaching a stop at a beautiful waterfall, and we were warned of an evil maiden, who often appeared near these falls, singing a beautiful, darkly seductive song, attempting to lure unsuspecting tourists to their deaths. As we looked at the beautiful waterfall,  she suddenly showed up in the mist, singing her beautiful, dark song from different locations around the falls. Good thing we had been warned. We now knew better, and held our position. Amazingly, all the other tourists did too. Our group was just too smart for that beautiful maiden. Did I tell you she was slender and blonde? How could anybody so tall, blonde and beautiful be so evil!  It was a very scenic trip, well worth it.

      To get from Oslo to Bergen, the route used to involve many ferry rides in that fjord country. But Norway got very rich in oil, and they set in to drill dozens of tunnels through the bottoms of those tall mountains, and now one can drive straight through. The longest, and the worlds longest tunnel, was 12 miles. Sorta scary. I think they must be well ahead of the rest of the world in that technology. They originally brought up Italians, who also were pretty good with tunnels, but they decided Norway rocks were too hard, and soon left. Then they just went ahead and figured it out for themselves. We seemed to be, more often than not, in a tunnel.

      We drove into Voss, where we had gotten wind of a guest house, reasonable. Having no luck finding it, we went into a grocery store. A tall, thin, blonde guy told us to follow him. He walked to a window, pointed way up on a mountain, and identified it. Though there were other houses up there too, it seemed pretty likely that we could now find it, since we had already seen it. But it was not that simple. There were many dirt roads heading up the mountain, and it was a while before we found the right one.

The guest house had a variety of interesting people, but as always, we were the oldest. As always, Barbara would be friends with all of them before we left. It had a self help kitchen, and a clothes washer, but toilets and showers were few, and they stayed pretty busy. Since we had already heard that Bergen was very touristy, and very expensive, we decided to stay there for two nights and make a dash to Bergen and back the next day.

Continued     Thanks for reading!