My family tree is all over the place, and not always in the places it seems like it should be. The Scandinavian bits all seem to come from my father’s side, though any direct connections left for America 120 years ago. Still, he’s been diving deep into our ancestry in the last few years. He’s always had his eye on Norway. In particular, he’s often returned to a website about a specific part of Norway. Since the dawn of Internet webcams, he’s been spying on Voss Now, a website hosting webcams overlooking the little town of Voss. The town has ballooned in modern day to a population of 16,000 people. We have shadows of distant relatives in that town, and while most of the family uprooted and moved to the United States long ago, he kept returning to that site in periodic curiosity. Earlier this year I finally convinced him, in spite of his apprehensions about air travel, that we should finally go and see the place, and much of the surroundings, now that we had the means. So here’s the record of our June trip, a slow-paced version of the famed (or at least much-advertised) “Norway in a Nutshell” tour.
“Norway in a Nutshell” is generally experienced as a 1-day tour of a set of hot spots in the southern part of the country, where most major city centers are. One travels by train from Oslo to Myrdal, Myrdal to FlĂĄm, by boat through a beautiful set of fjords to Gudvangen, then by bus to Voss, train to Bergen, and then back to Oslo. According to various Internet sources, many prefer a leisurely 2 to 3 day version of this. I knew that was still going to be a little fast paced, so I planned out an extended 9-day version, spending a night in nearly every traditional stop, and adding a cruise from Bergen to Kristansand in-between the return from Bergen to Oslo. As is my way, I planned everything in a spreadsheet and picked out the best time slots to get us from place to place as I could while not rushing us too much. Once I plotted it all out I made the reservations and set out waiting for the dates of our trip to approach. Surely everything would go according to plan.
This first part will be mostly the lead in to getting there, with more photos in the next installments.
Flight of Fancy and Not-So Fancy Chairs
What I expected to be the main challenge would be the very start of the trip. I couldn’t predict how painful the flights within Europe would be as the seating charts were for some reason hidden from me. Our seats on Delta were going to be comfortable enough, but the plane would still have torture chambers for restrooms. I wasn’t sure how tired we’d be, or if we could wake up early enough for the 6:30am train. On the way to the airport it became apparent that we would want to utilize wheel chairs whenever possible.
We made it to the flight with time to spare, eventually boarded, and things seemed fine. We were in what used to be called “business class”, which meant more than sufficient legroom even for us. However, the aforementioned torture restrooms would wreak havoc on my father’s whole existence. Even for me they were a cramped, miserable experience, forcing me to wonder why they still make them this way. Is there some mysterious benefit to having every centimeter of “wasted space” extracted from the restrooms specifically? Would the sacrifice of maybe a single row of seating for the sake for adding 50% more square footage really be so terrible? Wouldn’t everyone be happier and more comfortable that way? For the staff, too? Why is this still a problem?
Anyway, it was bad. The restroom was bad. Apart from that the rest of the flight to Amsterdam was fine. The connecting flight on SAS was tolerable, but less comfortable. The staff were kind enough to schedule a wheel chair for us, but there’s not much to be done for people our size in “normal” airline seats. In fact, there didn’t seem to be any difference in legroom between seat “tiers,” the only difference being food/drink service and getting smiled at more if you wanted to pay more for that.
Oslo and Out
When we finally landed we got an escort to the taxi pickup area. I was amused that customs here amounted to a glowing green gate, which you walk through signifying you had nothing to declare. No interrogation, no beefy military-looking person waiting to grill you on the contents of your bags, not even a demand to pose for a photograph. Just a big glowing doorway that said “you’re probably not a liar, enjoy your stay” without the need for direct interaction.
We got a taxi to the hotel and proceeded to eat our first bit of local cuisine: cheeseburgers. That seemed like a silly thing to do, but they were some fantastic burgers, which we ordered just under the wire for the kitchen’s service hours.
After heading to the room, the next trial loomed over us. I had booked an early train to Myrdal, worried about possible delays. Though generally I tried to play it safe with bookings, I took a risk with that one. Could we wake up in time? That was my original concern, but we were able to wake up pretty early, which should have been fine. It turned out we were more limited in terms of maximum walking range than I had expected, so we had to make our way with taxis.
The taxi in Oslo had a baked in insistence on picking us up in a predetermined location. This appears to be some mandate from the city here that taxis and Ubers and the like can only stop for pickup at specific points on the map. We were close to one of those points, but not conveniently close. We eventually got in the cab, then watched from the back seat as the driver seemed to meander around the town, ignoring the advice of their own GPS instructions in front of them, and eventually getting us to the station in time to not be able to make it to the train platform.
This was a fairly major issue, and mucked with my calculation of the whole trip. I hurriedly tried to find an alternative transport to get us where we were going. Myrdal and the FlĂĄm train line were cute, but the priority was making sure we could get to the cruise in FlĂĄm in time, as it would take us to our second hotel. The Entur app, the apparent overlord of train reservations for this region, wanted to make me think I could buy tickets for the next train, showing a friendly, glowing, select-able time slot at prices I was more than willing to pay to get us on track, but each time I tried to buy the tickets I got an error message.
After waiting for the service desk to open, I was sternly told the train was sold out and they weren’t sure why the app was pretending it wasn’t. So we were going to have to take a bus, if one was available, or the whole schedule would be upended. This meant skipping Myrdal (which according to the locals has nothing to see anyway) and the train to FlĂĄm (which would have been cute, but not essential).
The Bus Less Traveled – Oslo to FlĂĄm
The bus station was “nearby,” but getting to and through it was still quite a trek. After getting across a small bridge between the train station and the bus stations, I left to scout ahead. The internal area was one long path, much longer than I expected. Thankfully the agents had a wheelchair I could use to bring him through the terminal and to the bus.
We boarded the bus, gladly on time, only to be delayed by a different set of passengers with their own, even more severe, mobility issues. It took them 15 minutes to board the bus, which put us well behind schedule, and to get to FlĂĄm on time we would need to make a connection to another bus on the way.
We rode the bus until those folks got off, then father north we went. Around 20 minutes before our arrival, and 5 minutes before our connection was due to leave, I finally overheard the driver talking on the phone. My ear for Norwegian is untrained, but I was able to make out several utterances of “ti minutter” and “tjue minutter,” so I was fairly confident they were talking about our impending lateness. A few minutes later, the driver announced for us in English what was happening, and validating my guess: The next bus wasn’t going to leave without us.
James Gets Through 