I can’t believe I’m still on my summer holidays.
Saturday August 8
We left Sweden by train from the train station across the road from the hotel. The whole thing was a delight. There was no stress; the train station was immaculate the journey was lovely and we arrived in the centre of Oslo rather than a distant suburb.
And the views on the journey were amazing.
We went to tourist information in the station in Oslo where the lovely staff gave us an excellent lunch recommendation. It was our first exposure to Norwegian prices and although somewhat acclimatised to Nordic prices after our Swedish adventure it was still…exciting. I would add that a Scandinavian holiday may not be for you if you don’t like fish.
We went up on the opera house roof – a new build and one without the anxiety about health and safety that you find in many other European destinations. Quite slippery and not closed in winter when it is presumably even more slippery.
We went back to the station to collect our luggage. There were these slightly odd horse sculptures in the station; the public art budget is clearly not insignificant.
As a special indulgence to Mr. Waffle who is a big pubic transport fan we took the bus to our accommodation which turned out to be a grim basement flat despite the picture on the internet which looked like the picture below. I mean it did look like this but what is unclear is that it is underground and that there is a sad table in the corner of the room for eating your meals. Our initial positive impression of Oslo was somewhat dashed.
However, all was not lost, after more hunting than might be expected, we found a roof terrace on the garage which was also part of the deal and improved matters considerably.
We went out for essential supplies (it was important to stop converting prices to euros in our heads, no good would come of that). We went for a cup of tea in a local cafe and had a chat with an Argentinian waiter who was thinking of moving to Ireland.
That evening we were invited to dinner at the house of a Norwegian friend of Mr. Waffle’s. I was slightly dreading it but I loved it: she and her French husband were great and I got to ask all my Nordic questions (sample, “How do the other Nordics regard Norway?” Answer: “Like the slightly annoying feckless younger brother who has recently come into money.”) Also, weird, she has one sister who is also living in Oslo and married to a French man. When we got home, we sent them a thank you card. Not so unusual I would have thought but she texted to say thanks and she couldn’t remember when she had last got personal post. Clearly, everything is online in Norway.
Sunday August 9
We got a call from home to say that the dishwasher was broken. However, after some worrying it turned out that the water had been switched off (by workmen? who knows?) and the return of the water supply restored the dishwasher. Rejoice.
We took the 30 bus to the folk museum. Mr. Waffle was troubled by the 30 bus which appeared to go different ways at different times but I was happy to ride along admiring the neat surrounds of Oslo. August is back to school and the end of summer in the Nordics so it is always slightly melancholic compared to mainland Europe for an August holiday. But lads, so much more temperate.
As you know, I love a folk museum. My children call them the butter knife museums (guide intones, “here is the very butter knife they would have used in the 18th century”). Oslo did not disappoint in this regard.
But they also had models of some of the unusual buildings from around Norway including the stave church. My favourite was an apartment block that was decorated from different eras on different floors all the way back to the 19th century.
One of the things we discovered was that until at least World War II Norwegian dental health was appalling. They had a real sweet tooth these Norwegians and not a lot of money to deal with th consequences.
The Hotel in Gothenburg rang me – I had forgotten my belt, did I want them to post it to me? Sure, why not. In fact, my sister told me that Swedish hotels have some kind of internal system and if you leave something in hotel A in Gothenburg, they’ll get it to hotel B in Stockholm for you free of charge. I didn’t ask how much it would cost to send to Ireland. A mistake. Off they went about their business and Mr. Waffle and I went for a restorative bun.
From the Folk museum we were able to take a boat to the city centre which I rather enjoyed.
Poor Mr. Waffle was feeling a bit unwell so he went to the pharmacy and bought supplies. €20 for strepsils and paracetemol. He was even sicker. We wandered around the centre for a bit.
We went for a cup of tea in a rather unpleasant Starbucks type place. I asked for some butter with my scone and they appeared willing but baffled. They brought me this. Is butter not a thing in Norway?
We dutifully went to mass. Mr. Waffle made us arrive early and we got the rosary as well. I suppose he was the sick one but I assure you mass was quite long enough for me without adding in the rosary. It went on forever. All around the church there were stained glass images of weird Norwegian saints.
Saint Eystein anyone?
We went home by our new friend the 30 bus. The mystery of its route choices continued to baffle us. As Mr. Waffle was ill and we were not made of money we had pasta and pesto on the table in the bedroom for dinner. A low point.
Monday August 10
It was a beautiful day. We went to a swimming spot in nearby Huk. It was full of razor sharp oyster shells. In contrast to the Nanny State Swedes who warned me anxiously about oyster shells (didn’t encounter any) the fearless Norwegians saw no need for this kind of caution and I cut myself once and was pretty careful thereafter. I saw a jellyfish as well which was a bit of a surprise in Oslo. Mr. Waffle chose not to swim. His loss.
We took the bus back to folk museum for tea. At the bus stop, a woman with same bag from me said “snap!”. My experience of Norwegians was not that they were the greatest at casual engagement. This woman looked entirely Norwegian but yet…I said to her, “Yes, I got mine in the National Gallery in Dublin, where did you get yours?” Berlin but that didn’t matter because she was from Dublin – only up the road from where we live – and in fact her mother still lived there. She herself had lived in Oslo for 50 years and had two Norwegian sons and five Norwegian grandchildren. She asked where we were staying and she knew our Airbnb because her relatives had stayed there. We were just about to definitively establish some people we knew in common based on where she went to school when we had to hop off the bus.
After our restorative cup of tea, we went to the Fram museum which I enjoyed very much. Good visit if you’re interested in Arctic or Antarctic exploration. I was gratified to see that they had material on Shackleton. Hilariously, if you are Norwegian, it’s one panel per person at a time. I went and stood beside (not on top of) a Norwegian man reading a panel and he put his hand out in alarm and mild irritation to ward me off. A rugged, adventurous people with a strong desire for personal space. I can see why polar exploration was for them. Also, there’s apparently a phrase, “Norwegians are born with skis on their feet” which I imagine is useful also.
We had lunch in the museum cafe. My own spirit of adventure made me decide to try the famous Norwegian brown cheese. Not all adventures are necessarily successful.
After our success at the Fram museum we went to the Kon-Tiki raft museum across the road. This was very well done but to my mind a bit less interesting. In any case, it certainly contributes to the Norwegians as adventurers stereotype I was beginning to recognise. Perhaps I loved it less because while I was there I received a communication from the Swedish hotel that they had posted my belt and (I read this several times), I owed them 1120 crowns for the pleasure. This, gentle reader is €102.60. I rang them to check whether I could stop this but it was too late. This for a belt that, you know, was grand but which I bought for about a tenner on a work trip to Florence in 2014. For the remainder of the holiday, everything was priced in belt posting costs. “I could buy that jumper for the cost of three belt postings to Ireland”. That kind of thing.
And then, I chipped a tooth. No holiday abroad is now complete without a bit of a tooth coming off. It was, mercifully, invisible to the naked eye and I soldiered on and got it fixed when I came home but, really, this is a very trying phase.
We took the boat back into town.
We went and looked at a castle near the harbour which still seems to operate as a barracks. Rather thrillingly, a helicopter took off just over our heads. It was nice but there was nowhere to get tea. A real negative, I can tell you.
We found somewhere nearby and got tea and, fortified by this, got citi bikes and had a lovely cycle around the quaint streets of the old town. We also took in a graveyard which I always enjoy.
We then cycled back to near the harbour where I had booked a nice restaurant for dinner. The food scene in Oslo is very happening, I’ll have you know. As we returned our bikes, I looked at our destination across the road. Funny that it had said great views. It didn’t look like it would have great views. I double checked our booking and found that I had booked a restaurant with a similar but, crucially, different name that was miles away up in the hills (that view). At enormous (I can’t bear to think of it) expense we taxied up into the hills.
People, that was a good view. It was also a good dinner and formed a pleasant contrast to pasta and pesto in the bedroom which was what we had enjoyed the previous evening. Our enjoyment was very slightly marred by a large group of English speaking tech bros with opinions at a nearby table but into every life some rain must fall.
There was a lot of sculpture that I enjoyed in Oslo; here’s more of it from the restaurant grounds.
We took the tram home which was a mild thrill for Mr. Waffle who was recovering apace.
We spent the remainder of the evening at home me (the intellectual of the group) doing Sudoku and Mr. Waffle finishing off Mary Wollstonecraft’s letters from Scandinavia.
Tuesday August 11
I woke up sick as a dog with Mr. Waffle’s cold. We were up at the crack of dawn (7) to get the train to Fläm. A very young Polish taxi driver – who confided us that he had only moved to Oslo the previous month and would be going home for Christmas – got us to the station without incident.
Notwithstanding my enfeebled state, I was very much looking forward to the train journey which was supposed to be absolutely beautiful. I mean Norwegian train tickets cost a fortune and dealing with the app to book them nearly cost Mr. Waffle his sanity but it was totally going to be worth it.
Were we pleased to discover that there was no train and we would be travelling by replacement bus service? No we were not. I was RAGING. And even though the drive was actually quite nice and we saw two stave churches I, of course, kept thinking about the train journey we were missing.
Also, hard to blame Norwegian railways for this one but the granola I bought for breakfast didn’t come with a spoon and I had to improvise.
We were finally to change for the train at Geilo where the station was chilly but sunny, a bit like an alpine train station. Norwegian railway staff were quite spectacularly unhelpful and we all milled about in confusion on the platform. I ate my sandwich; my cold was killing me; I was furious. Mr. Waffle took this photo of me looking like a serial killer.
Anyway, we got on the train; everything was wonderful. We realised we would have 4 minutes for our connection which would be tight but the station where we had to change – Myrdal – was tiny. But then there was a “technical problem with the rail” in a tunnel. I despaired. The very elderly Danish couple who were sitting opposite also despaired. I worried that if I gave them my cold, they could both be carried off.
In fact, most of the train seemed to be changing at Myrdal. When we got there it was actually fine and the worst thing that happened was that Mr. Waffle ran into a colleague on the platform. Perfectly nice man but you know, nobody wants to be reminded of work on holidays.
The train ride to Flåm was utterly spectacular and worth all the hype. I really do recommend.
When we got to the hotel it was lovely. To be clear, it is the most expensive hotel we have ever stayed in in our lives and it was the standard of a grand three star.
But the Portuguese man on the desk gave us a warm welcome; the Norwegians are the most beautiful people in the world but, I would say, a bit chilly. I mean I know it’s all about a beauty standard but routinely, the woman behind the till, checking your train ticket, whatever, was one of the most breathtaking people you had ever seen in your life. Not great on small talk though in my experience. Truthful and not prone to exaggeration however, if they say a train ride is spectacular, it is.
I took myself to bed. I had a restorative nap and some paracetamol and finished off the last of the 12 pack of paper handkerchiefs I had acquired. Mr. Waffle went for a stroll and a drink at the bar where he ran into his colleague. Of course
Flåm is exceptionally touristy,
but in a beautiful setting.
I dragged myself from my sick bed and had the best ever fish and chips for my dinner. Hard to know whether this was because I was ravenous or because the fish was fresh from the fjord. It was almost certainly the most expensive fish and chips ever.
Wednesday August 12
I woke up feeling so sick. I dragged myself to breakfast. We had a boat trip booked and I was determined to go. So very often with these things you realise that, in retrospect, you should have stayed in bed and no matter how good something is, if you’re really ill you won’t enjoy it.
However, this was not one of those occasions. Little though I knew it at breakfast, the worst was, in fact, over and I recovered further in the course of what is hands down, easily the most amazing boat trip I have ever had. The fjords are beautiful. The Norwegians were not lying. All the photos I took look a bit samey but, trust me here, it is quite different and jaw-droppingly beautiful.
Your not entirely well, but happy, correspondent smiles for the camera.
We had lunch in a mining town. It ‘s on the fjord and very beautiful but there is a mine there and boats loading this material, which apparently is popular in kitchens, and large lorries rumbling in and out. It was a bit incongrous and slightly depressing. Though we did see a boat which had recently been in Derry; presumably Northern Ireland’s kitchen worktop needs are met.
We walked out to see what was billed as a “war memorial”. It was a bit hard to find and it turned out to be the local German observation post which, I suppose, is a war memorial but not quite what we had in mind.
When we got back to Flåm, I felt well enough to walk to a waterfall outside the town. No one was more surprised than me by this development as the previous day, I thought I might be carried off.
As we were panting up the hill there was a French family from Marseille with two small children one of whom insisted on being carried by his mother. It was 42 degrees in Marseille they told us. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to see the south of France in summer again which is depressing in its own way.
When we arrived at the waterfall there was a large group from India (extended family group, I would guess) dominating the waterfall and all its views. I was enraged. In the photo below, imagine a large talkative group immediately to my left and my right.
I will say that they seemed a lot less obsessed with personal space and a lot better at talking than the Norwegians. Herself says I am an ethnic essentialist but there is nothing like living in Brussels to confirm your belief in all national stereotypes and I am clearly still recovering from that experience.
I bought a new anorak in one of the many tourist shops in the town. I was served by a Brazilian. Most of the staff were seasonal workers from other places. Like many touristy places, actual locals were in short supply. I’d say you’d find them in winter. My coat seemed really cheap because I had adapted to Norway. It was only when I got home that I realised how expensive it was ( two belts sent home from Sweden). Look, it has a Norwegian flag.
Thursday August 13
We wake up to see that a cruise ship has docked. I would say that it makes the view from the balcony in the hotel bedroom a bit less good.
We hired bikes and had the most beautiful, if somewhat steep, cycle up to a place called Otternes which was once a small village but is now a sort of small open museum.
We went to an exhibition about the Flåmsbana. If I may summarise, the railway itself is an engineering miracle and the English milords had a huge role as the first tourists everywhere as far as I can see. I did not expect to find English 19th century aristos in their yachts as the key people in the development of Flåm as a tourist spot but so it appears.
Everyone in Norway speaks English as a matter of course. Mr. Waffle made some efforts in Norwegian following his duolingo immersion but I made none- shame. In my defence, Norwegian is complicated with more dialects than you can shake a stick at. One of the things that the great command of English means is that museums don’t seem to bother running things by native speakers. I was very tickled by this description of the Huldra as “The most common mythical creature in the valley”. In case you didn’t know, it looks like a beautiful human (more beautiful than a Norwegian, how?) but has a cow’s tail.
Then we got the the Flåmsbana up to the junction with the main line where we were due to catch the train to Bergen. We enjoyed the start of the trip but then the train stopped for ages. Would we miss our train to Bergen? We would not. It waited for us. The ticket inspector was getting on the Bergen train, something that would have set our minds at rest, had we but known it.
Train delays notwithstanding, the trip to Flåm was amazing and I would love, love, love to go back and see more of the fjords. Once I have recovered financially from my first trip to see the fjords.
The train journey to Bergen is also spectacular. And the train was not replaced by a bus.
We arrived into Bergen, the wettest city in Europe. It was very wet.
After we found our Airbnb we discovered, to our horror, that there was no washing machine. After a cup of tea and a trip to the supermarket and some tramping around in the rain we found Messrs Clean Coco and loaded our laundry in.
We went back to the Airbnb and Mr. Waffle nobly volunteered to go back and fetch the laundry when it was due to be done. Meanwhile, it was my job to find somewhere for us to dine in Bergen. He went and he was gone ages. I could not find a restaurant to feed us; everywhere seemed to be fully booked. When Mr. Waffle came back he had our laundry but he was gloomy; he said he’d been waiting for ages and some kind of battle had taken place over dryers and it was all very grim. He said the general environment put him in mind of that Edward Hopper picture of the diner. Was he delighted when I said that I had been unable to find somewhere to have dinner? Look, anyhow, I found a Vietnamese take away around the corner from the studenty zone we were staying in and it saved our bacon. And we had clean laundry.
Stay with us for Norway part 2 and see how things develop for our intrepid adventurers in Bergen.
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