Bergen - Sunday and Monday

On our second last full day in Bergen we went up to another of the seven mountains surrounding Bergen, this time the highest of them, the Ulriken with its top at 643m above sea level. While that doesn't sound terribly high I was quite impressed what a difference these meters made. First of all, the top of Ulriken is above the timberline, something you'd find in Switzerland at around 1800m. But in Bergen the trees just disappeared and there were only rocks and grass left.

I was also really amazed by the different world up there. On the one side you could still see all over Bergen, we even saw right back to our hotel and all over the harbour and the surrounding fjords. But if you turned your back to Bergen, it felt like a very different place, very isolated and going on  and on into the distance.

When you go for a hike in Switzerland, there are lots of paths and so close to the city most of the walks are really easy, you almost never need anything more than sneakers. Up on the Ulriken we realised quite quickly that proper hiking boots where not just a silly idea but were really the only thing that would have made sense. We climb over rocks right from the start and once we were a little bit further away there was a lot of soft ground with water underneath it, so our feet got wet pretty fast.

Also it wasn't all that easy to find where to go, because the signs seemed rather random and far apart. I'd say that I am a moderatly experienced hiker and I almost never get lost in the Swiss Alps but here it only took us about 20 minutes till we had kind of lost our way. We weren't really lost, because it was obvious where we'd come from but we didn't know how to walk on, so we turned around and tried a different path. It was fun to explore but if we'd actually wanted to go to a fixed spot, I am not sure how fast we'd got there.

Nevertheless I very much enjoyed being up there and I kind of wished we'd have better shoes to really get walking. It was also lovely to took back up to the Ulriken in the evening and to see where we'd been...

On our last day the weather changed again and we were back to fog and drizzle or actual rain. Perfect weather to go to the museum. Well it was ok weather because the museum we went to was mostly outside. Gamle Bergen is a reconstructed town of about 50 houses a bit outside of Bergen. You can enter these houses from the end of the 19th or the beginning of the 20th century, read about their former owners, see how these owners used to live and in some houses you can meet and talk to the actual inhabitants. We had a lot of fun shopping at a little convenience store and visiting with a maid.

So this was it from our holidays in Bergen. We had a great first impression of Norway and I am sure I'll go again, I'd really like to see more of the country. Enjoy your summer, wherever you are and skål!