Adventure 2016 – Bergen/Netherlands

We managed to catch an earlier train to Bergen than the one we had reservations for, and Jessica happened to also be on this train. I talked with her for a lot of the journey. We knew that Leonora and Thijs were also heading to Bergen next, but once we actually arrived in Bergen, we never saw any of these people again. Oh well, that’s what email is for!

I think the first evening we arrived, we just collapsed at the hostel. There was another actual kitchen that had pretty much everything (except a grater, somehow?) including a bunch of spices in the ‘shared’ cupboard. While Martijn checked that out, I went to the common room, where I’d heard there were amusements. I was wondering if there would be a piano…

And there was! So I sat down and started playing. It was a terrible piano with no tonal subtlety, no working una corda, and no dynamic nuance besides ‘loud’ and ‘louder’, but it had 88 mostly-in-tune keys.

Martijn: *in kitchen* I hear a piano. I should tell Jen… wait a minute…

So I played both the songs that I knew by memory, the Prelude from Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin, and the Animenz arrangement of Swordland. …I don’t play it as fast as he does, though.

And then it turned out to be waffle night, so after we ate dinner we went back to the common room and ate fresh-made waffles with everyone else. It seems that the type of waffle which is ‘five heart shapes in a flower pattern‘ isn’t normal everywhere in the world? Apparently it’s Norwegian? Never knew that; my mom’s waffle maker is that shape.

I also heard some lovely music from someone’s iPod while they were making waffles.

The next day was the ‘explore Bergen’ day. We started by going down to the old harbour with the fish market, looking at all the vendor stalls, which were cheaper than in Flåm (gee, I wonder why). There were woolen goods and t-shirts and reindeer sausages and whole crabs everywhere. We walked up by the old warehouses to the Bryggen museum (bryggen is an old Norwegian word meaning ‘wharf’, I think?) where they had an excavation display of the remains of some of the first buildings in Bergen.

The Mariakirken was right next door so we dropped by to see if I could see the organ. I could not (50 NOK entrance fee? really?) but guess what? There’s an international summer organ festival in Bergen and there was a concert at the Mariakirken that evening!

At that point we had to head for the light rail to get to the Grieg house museum. We got some help from a nice random lady who showed us how to use the ticket machine. The train was playing a different jingle at each station, and the one at the station closest to Grieg’s house was the first few notes of the piano concerto! Which I totally derped on and thought it was someone else’s piano concerto. Why I would think that, I don’t know, and it’s very embarrassing. But anyway, then Bergen Tourism failed us, because in our guidebook, directions to actually get to the museum were very vague and there was again inadequate signage. So we walked for 5 minutes in the wrong direction first. And then it started to rain. Hard. I was a miserable wet cat by the time we actually made it to the museum, but we were in time for the concert in the nice new concert hall. The pieces selected, all from Lyric Pieces Book 10, were very nice and very characterful, but I felt the pianist played the quick ones a bit rushed without regard for clarity or nuance.

After that, the weather had dried up a bit, so we walked around the grounds, which were very nice. Apparently it is a Norwegian thing to have a secluded cabin in the wilderness without electricity or running water; this is called a hytte and everyone has to have one. Norwegians really like being alone. Now, Troldhaugen is today surrounded by suburbs, but back when Grieg lived there, it must have really been in the middle of nowhere – like a hytte. But if you take a little trail down to the lakeside, you’ll come across the komponisthytte – a hytte for the hytte, with just a desk, a piano, and a couch.

There was also a little causeway out to a couple of rocks in the lake. It looked much too slippery to go to the further ones.

The Griegs’ grave, I suppose; as isolated in death as they were in life.

The rest of the museum was rather short. Troldhaugen itself has a bunch of pictures of Grieg all over the walls, but I was expecting to see something more like having the furniture set up as it would have been when he was living there. There was a bit more information in the modern reception building, but still.

We got back and walked around some more, including up the hill to the Johanneskirken, which was closed by the time we got there.

Moomintroll?

Moomintroll!

Click for larger. A panoramic of the old harbour, with the castle on the left, the warehouses/tourist shops in the middle, and the fish market on the right. This was taken from the decidedly un-touristy side of the harbour where we went walking just to see what was there.

You see that antenna ominously swathed in cloud in the background? That’s Mount Ulriken. If you look closely, you can see a cablecar. More on that later.

These guys were surprisingly cheap, for live whole crab in Norway? Didn’t get any, though.

And then in the evening, it was time for an organ concert! The inside of the Mariakirken was very interesting; it’s just as old as the outside. (still don’t think I should have to pay 50 NOK to see it without a concert, though.)

The organ is brand new, however; according to the program it was finished in 2015. The program was:

Saint-Saens: Prelude and Fugue in E-flat major (I want to learn this)
Michel Boulnois: Sarabande from Symphonie pour Grand Orgue
Bach: Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C major BWV 564
André Fleury: Tres lent, from Premiere Symphonie
Naji Hakim: Theotokos

The performer was a rather young person from the Oslo Domkirke, Marcus André Berg. Martijn tried to tease me about having the hots for him, but the fact was that his performance left me cold. (do you see what I did there; it was almost clever) The Saint-Saens was pretty good, but the Bach was rushed and confused and I had trouble finding the pulse through the entire concert. After attending that one workshop at the RCCO convention in Kingston, that really bothered me. The slow pieces were okay, but I think that Mr Berg is very proud of the fact that his fingers and feet can move very fast and doesn’t care about anything else in the music. *sigh*

When we went home, Martijn let me download a bunch of sheet music onto his tablet, from IMSLP and anime arrangements, and then I played them for him. : ) Meanwhile, he made dinner – fishcakes (cheap at the grocery store), fried up with a cream cheese/potato salad.

The next day was the craziest day yet; a slightly accidental 9 hour hike across the mountains of Bergen. I say accidental because: we picked up a bunch of hiking brochures at the hostel, showing paths around the east side of Bergen. We’d seen the mountains from below in the Sognefjord, now it was time to see them from above. The longest hike was advertised at 4-6 hours, so we figured it would take about 6 since I’m not very experienced at hiking. We walked to Ulriken and took the cable car up to that antenna in a previous picture. Immediately we saw magnificent views and sheep making hilarious noises.

Then we proceeded to get lost. You wouldn’t think it was easy to get lost up there on the highlands, with no trees to obscure the path. But that’s just it. If you’re not following the most main trail which is marked with big stone cairns, there isn’t anything to mark the path. We always knew where we were in relation to Bergen, but finding our place on one of our multiple maps… good luck. XD Not to mention that the heavy rain had turned all the paths into streams and made the ground outside the paths soggy and muddy and slippery. Since the soil is so shallow with solid rock underneath, the water doesn’t soak into the ground at all. Hence all the zillions of waterfalls. So we zigzagged back and forth towards the Turnerhytte, where we began following the main trail again.

Here is a map, which we did basically in reverse and with some alterations in the southern section, inadvertent or on purpose.

There was heather everywhere, and it was in bloom. Very pretty, if you had time to see it while watching your footing.

These three lakes were easy to find on our map, but even so it was very difficult to gauge our location relative to them. The thing about distances looking smaller than they are is still very much in play here.

The fact that all these mountains are made of granite, which doesn’t appear naturally on the surface, and the fact that all the layers are standing on end, is suggestive of massive tectonic activity in the geologic past. I don’t know exactly why they’re all wiggly here, though. Boots for scale.

When we found these lakes, we knew we were going in the right direction. We just had to find where the path was that would take us past them.

An unfamiliar sight: Martijn behind me? (he was taking pictures. Thanks to longer legs, a higher cadence, and more endurance, he was in front most of the time.)

There were stepping stones over most of the bigger streams and even a lot of the muddy spots.

Lunch spot between the lakes! There were some ruins here. What they might have been, I have no idea.

The first cairn we saw.

Another bridge over a stream.

At the Turnerhytten, I needed to use the bathroom while Martijn got directions. When I came out, there were more sheep. These must be some of the sheep that provide the wool for all of Norway’s beautiful handmade expensive wool products. I wanted to touch them, but I didn’t.

Ulriken on the left, where we came from. The similar tower on the right is Rundemanen, our waypoint to our goal (which was Fløyen below it). We’d gone maybe three kilometers in two hours, thanks to all our detours, and we still had at least 11 more to go. But I love how you can see right out past the islands to the ocean.

There are at least five cairns in this picture. How many can you spot?

Tea-time! Which did much to revive my flagging morale. Also there was a bit of sun, and not too much rain until the last hour of walking. Which means my shoulders bear some resemblance to an almond: milky white where my sleeveless top covered, and a nut-brown tan where it did not.

One thing about granite is that apparently it can form into quartz under the right conditions. But this was a pretty dramatic seam.

An even fatter one a couple feet away.

We had a long and interesting discussion about rocks thereafter, because part of Martijn’s degree involved geology and it’s a thing he finds interesting. We also talked about how these mountains in Norway are the same as those in Scotland and even the Appalachians in North America.

Rundemanen might be a tiny bit closer. Still a long long way to go, because we’re not heading straight to it. We have to head a long way north and then circle around.

Quartz and rust? Interesting.

This lake was easy to find on our maps too. It meant we were about halfway.

There’s a part where the trail goes down one cliff, across a narrow valley, and up another cliff. This was actual rock climbing, coming down what you see in the picture. The footpath does go around to the right, but that’s not exciting enough.

The other side to climb. Not as easy as it looks. In fact, none of this terrain is as easy to traverse as it looks. And yet. There were people in light exercise gear, RUNNING along the whole trail. There were families with kids as young as four or five who passed us (at the end when we were very very tired, granted). Norwegians be cray-cray, yo.

A reservoir, dammed at the side. The path we were on joins that winding trail about halfway up the side of Rundemanen, in those trees there.

After climbing down another very steep incline (pictures from Martijn’s camera coming), the path hops across the stream that joins the top lake to the bottom lake. Since the water was suitable for drinking, we filled our waterbottles. It was rather rusty, but it tasted fine and it was cold and watery.The orange rope is one of the VERY FEW safety measures on the whole trail, to prevent dumb tourists from falling down the cliff while taking pictures.

The trail wound around the side of the next hill, instead of going over the top. Thank goodness. My feet were starting to hurt and I was starting to need another bathroom. We did take a short stop for peanuts and water.

Looking up to Rundemanen. This was the last part of the ‘wild’ trail; we were very close to the more smooth gravel path up to the top and down the other side to Fløyen. I didn’t take any pictures from this point on. We did have a bit of a break one more time on the other side, and then Martijn lent me his mp3 player with a Brazilian band playing that he thought I would like (he was right). It gave me energy for the last trudge downhill.

At Fløyen, you get a great view down to the old city. You can see the Mariakirken wayyyy down on the right of the image, the two little white towers.

This giant park was a good landmark for us when walking around the city. The Johanneskirken is in this picture too but don’t strain your eyes trying to spot it. : P

The train station is in the middle of the picture, and our hostel would be just a bit farther left of this picture.

And this was after I rinsed them in a puddle, mostly. But I had no blisters! They did their job! Our feet were all so sore, though, that we took the cable train down from Fløyen to the city centre, picked up fish and chips as take out, and went home.

The next morning (after sleeping in as long as we could (this hostel was one long room with about 20 bunk beds and some rather sketchy showers on the end, no privacy at all)) we walked around Bergen some more. Slowly. And we went to the noon organ concert at the cathedral, the front exterior of which was being worked on but that didn’t affect the inside. This concert was very good; the performer was Lars Sømod, and he played the first movement of Widor’s Symphonie Romane, the chorale “Dies sind die heil’gen zehn Gebot” by Bach, and Reger’s Phantasie über den Choral “Wie schön leucht’t uns der Morgenstern”. This concert was very satisfying. He played with taste and shape, but he also didn’t spare the power when it was required, and the organ, which was built in 1997, was magnificent. Even the Reger wasn’t terrible. Although it did go on and on a bit in the middle (as Reger does). The Bach was lovely, and I think I would like to learn the Widor as well.

Yellow roses in the big central park where we had lunch while waiting for the bus.

Wildflowers after we got off the bus at Herdla. Supposedly there was a museum around, but we didn’t see it, so we saw a sign that said ‘Fort’ and followed that road, and it took us to something resembling a museum vaguely. We were more interested in the nature reserve there. The fort was mostly from WW2, when German soldiers occupied the place. But Herdla has been inhabited for hundreds of years.

This little courtyard looks pretty new, and has a lower covered part with a big steel door that must lead to a bunker of some kind. I dunno. It was locked, obviously.

We climbed through the woods up to an outcropping upon which had been built some kind of emplacement – all that was left was a big ring of concrete. That was the highest point of the island, and it was a good view. Out west there’s only one more island separating this water from the Atlantic.

In fact, you can kind of see it from here.

We continued exploring past this big rock, and came to the paved road again, going to the eastern side of the peninsula where the birdwatching area was. But we didn’t have any binoculars or anything, so even though we saw some duck-like birds we had no idea what they were. Then I decided we should go down a steep muddy slope, and the path had wooden boards in some places to help, but the boards were more slippery than the mud and I fell down. : P I fell down twice when hiking across the mountains, too, but this time stung a bit more and left a bit of a bruise. Also, totally covered in mud. : P

But that was okay, because at the bottom of the slope was this little bay with beautiful stones everywhere.

It was so strange to see water-rounded stones after all the jagged glacial remnants we’d been seeing.

We headed for the main museum prior to going back in order to inquire about getting new bus tickets, since ours had expired. The girl there was excited to see us, and I gather they very rarely get visitors to the museum itself. We didn’t go in (there’s some German WW2 plane recovered from the bottom of the ocean there, I saw pictures on the internet) but we did buy some beet/chocolate cupcakes with raspberry sauce that were very nice.

We returned to the hostel, where Martijn made his best dinner yet: fish and mango curry. And he said it could be even better if the mango was a bit riper. And then there were more waffles, although I didn’t have space for more than two.

Actually, the first thing we did the last day was make some recordings on the piano. I’d given Martijn a couple lessons over the last couple days and he can now play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star hands together. : D Then he made me play something too, so I played Toki Tsukasadoru Juuni no Meyaku which I’d been practicing but isn’t memorized yet. You don’t get to see the videos because recording quality reasons. Then we went out and did more tourist shopping around the wharf. The perennial Christmas shop was terribly disappointing. Tacky junk everywhere. The Christmas shop in Victoria was much better. But there were other stores, art stores, stores that only sold moose-related products (as in, moose-patterned shirts or keychains or mugs), wool product stores, animal product stores (fur is AMAZING), artist galleries, even a gem store. But we wound up at the castle, of course. It’s not very big, and there’s not much left of the original medieval 12th-13th century structure. Only Haakon’s Hall, which is in the picture above. The rest has been remodeled more recently, even more than Akershus.

Then we got on a bus to get on a plane, which stopped in Copenhagen, where we got very good burgers (not fast food) with very good fries, and then we ended up in Amsterdam Schiphol, where the trains were super confused about which ones were running. But we ended up on the right train and were in Diemen late in the evening. It was pretty familiar. The Ontario North railcar and its engines are still sitting in the Amsterdam Centraal station trainyard. Martijn suggested that it was brought over during/immediately after the Second World War, when the Canadians were assisting the Netherlands. Then, its job done, it was forgotten in plain view.

The following day, Arjen and Meta came over, and that was super exciting. And they’re crazy busy, holy cats. We did a slideshow for them of everything that was in all my previous Norway posts, but with about half the photos being Martijn’s (almost the same number of pictures, though). The day after, Martijn took me to Wageningen, where he’s been living and studying ever since I knew him, and it was really nice. The old town centre has a moat still around most of it, and it has a nice-looking church in the middle. The only problem was, we were there so early on a Sunday morning that none of the shops or cafes were open, including his favourite tea place. Oh well. We did walk past Hotel de Wereld, where the German capitulation of the Netherlands was signed. I’d seen it before in miniature form at Madurodam in den Haag. We went back to his place for lunch, and he showed me his synthetic practice swords, one a two-handed sword, one a straight sabre, and he showed me his bow and let me draw it (but not to let it go because I wasn’t wearing protective equipment for my arm, duh). And I got to try his homemade ginger beer, which I liked pretty well. It was very carbonated because he set it up before he came to Norway, which is about five times as long as he normally leaves it.

Then we went for a walk in the forest back to the train station, which took about three hours. It reminded me of forests I’d seen in the Tour de France. On the way, we made a little detour to see the Celtic fields: