We're heading to the far western shores of
Norway to visit the charming seaside town of Bergen which is located on a picturesque harbor
lined with historic buildings and surrounded by seven mountains.
We're showing you a quick preview
of the city here with the historic waterfront and lively outdoor market scenes, including a trip up
the mountain top by funicular for a spectacular view over the city.
To get there we're going to
take a boat ride and scenic train journey from Oslo across the c
ountry, over the mountains, to
Bergen. There are several different ways to travel to Bergen. Of course there's an International
Airport so you can fly here in just a few hours from anywhere in Europe, but the train and
boat ride from Oslo is an excellent option that many savvy travelers choose, because taking
that ride can be just as enjoyable as being at the destination.
Coming right up we will show you
fine details of that trip across Norway by train and boat. The map shows the route will
be taking,
starting out in Oslo the capital of Norway, and then across the mountains on a beautiful ride to
Flam, where we catch the boat and travel through the Sognefjord to Bergen on the west coast.
Most travelers to Bergen are also visiting Oslo, the capital of Norway, as we've been doing. In
that case you can take one of the most spectacular train rides in all of Europe. It's easy to board
the train, you just get on with your carry-on luggage, in this case, and find your seat, settle
in kick back and let the journey begin, heading cross-country through some fascinating mountain
terrain, passing lakes and rivers and waterfalls. This special trip is called Norway in a Nutshell
because it shows you a big cross-section of the country in just one day. It's always a pleasure
to travel by train, especially with this kind of scenery gliding by. You don't have to worry
about driving, or getting stuck in traffic, you're not crammed in like on a tour bus, you can walk
around in t
he train, kick back and read a book or take a nap, have a conversation, visit the snack
bar. The scenery keeps getting more spectacular as you climb through the central regions of
Norway, seeming a little bit like Switzerland, with tall mountains in the distance and glaciers
with lakes where the water is clear blue color. This visual feast is like a natural painting with
trees and bushes along the edge of the water, lovely grasses and shrubs, and just wonderful
colorful elements of nature o
utside our windows. You'll see a few mountain cabins, lots of snow,
and people riding their bicycles on the mountain road. Most of the other travelers on board the
train are tourists from all different parts of the world, so it's kind of a nice opportunity to
have a little conversation, or at least attempt some conversation. Despite language barriers you
can always communicate. I've taken about 500 train trips in my travels through Europe, including
quite a bit in the Swiss Alps, which are
really spectacular, but nothing somehow quite compares
with this scenery out the window, these alpine meadows with glaciers and raging rivers. What a
combination!
The entire route from Oslo to Bergen covers a distance of about 300 miles. It's the
highest standard gauge railway in northern Europe, crossing the plateau at 4,000 feet above sea
level. We are travelling in July and there's still plenty of snow. The first short section of rail
opened on the Bergen end in 1883 as narrow gauge, an
d by 1909 the route extended all the way to
Oslo.
Typical of the European long-distance trains there's a dining car on board, so you
can just queue up, wait your turn, get a coffee, have a drink or a complete meal. It's like a
coffee shop on wheels. The train can be a friendly setting for meeting Scandinavians, and you'll find
that most of them speak some English. Nobody's in a rush at this point so it's an opportune place
to meet the locals and have a chat.
You'll change trains Midway at t
he junction of with Myrtle and
board the Flam railway which is one of the most scenic rides in Europe. The Myrdal Junction is
a busy place, but there's no real town here to see. You're just on the platform to wait for your
next train. There are also local trains from here down into Bergen, but we're going down, down,
down, down the mountain, down to Flam. That's a waterfront village where we catch our boat. It's
a busy train, so you do need to make reservations during the high season from M
ay through September,
and everybody gets a good view. The Flam railway fortunately stops now and then to let passengers
get off the train to enjoy the view. The most spectacular sight is a rolling gushing waterfall,
a terrific photo opportunity, but wipe the water off your lens. It's like being out in the Maid
of the Mist at Niagara Falls, or in a heavy rainstorm with a big spray coming at you. You've
got about ten minutes to take in the sight, snap your pictures. The only reason the train
stops
here is to show you the view, so take advantage. Some people just sit in the train but it's a
lot better to get out and experience it. Yes, you might get a little wet, but no harm, it's all
part of the fun and you'll soon dry off. No doubt there's something special about waterfalls, and
this one is very convenient because we're halfway through the journey, 30 minutes down, hop out,
take a break, jump back on, 30 more minutes to the bottom. At this point we've reached 2,000 foot
eleva
tion and it's a very comfortable platform. You could walk around on it, very safe with the
railings, and then you try and figure out what car you were on and get back in your seat.
And then
we continue the second half of the journey down which gets even more spectacular with beautiful
mountain scenery, many hairpin turns. Flam railway is the steepest standard gauge train in Europe
where almost 80% of the journey has a gradient of over five percent. Because of the sharp angle and
picturesqu
e nature, the Flam line is now almost exclusively a tourist service and has become the
third most visited tourist attraction in Norway, carrying about 600,000 passengers annually.
The train journey runs through fantastic nature, past deep mountains, breathtaking waterfalls, with
twenty tunnels and one bridge, and offers so many of you points that many people feel like traveling
it multiple times. National Geographic Traveler magazine has named the Flam railway as one of
the top-ten train
journeys in Europe, and Lonely Planet named it as the best train journey in the
world in 2014. Toward the bottom the line passes a spectacular waterfall with a 460 foot drop,
of the most exciting attractions of the trip. Maximum speed downhill is a leisurely 19 miles an
hour, and uphill it's 25 miles an hour. This train ride downhill takes one hour but the sights are
so spellbinding it seems like ten minutes. It's the only branch line heading out from that main
Oslo -- Bergen route.
Towards
the bottom of the journey the valley widens and changes character,
becoming flatter and with more vegetation and some houses. The little hamlet of Flam is located on
the Aurlandsfjord, a branch of the Sognefjord, with 400 permanent residents. It's almost entirely
a tourist area featuring among other things a little hotel and a cruise ship port. And you can
have lunch while waiting for the boat. It's a very pleasant little village. It's been called
heaven on earth, and of course there's a g
ift shop. There's an information counter and there's
a ticket office where you can buy train tickets or boat tickets. After about one hour the boat starts
boarding to begin the ride to Bergen.
You'll see lots of great scenery during the boat ride with
the mountains towering high above on both sides of this chasm. The best views are during the first
two hours when the mountains are steepest and the fjord is narrow, so be sure to spend time by a
window or even better out on a deck initially.
The Sognefjord is the largest and best-known fjord
in Norway, and one of the longest in the world. It stretches 127 miles inland from the ocean to the
small village of Skjolden in the municipality of Luster.
Sognefjord is more 3000 feet deep for
about half of its length, reaching a maximum depth of 4,300 feet. The captain pulls right up
to the big waterfall so we all get a good look. Cliffs surrounding the fjord rise almost cheer
from the water up to heights of over 3,000 feet, making this
most dramatic landscape. The average
width is nearly three miles. There's more than a dozen side fjords that branch off from the main
body and we see several of them while cruising along beyond the inner end of Sognefjord lies a
mountain range that rises over six thousand feet high and is covered by europe's largest glacier.
We also get a nice view of several picturesque villages along the shore, always with the dramatic
mountain backdrop. There is a casual snack bar on the ship for a ligh
t meal, like a hamburger and
soda, but not much else. The fjords were dug out by giant glaciers that shaped the landscape
through several ice ages. This created a deep, narrow and elongated body of water with steep land
on three sides. And all along Norway's west coast these inlets are often surrounded by dramatic
mountain scenery as we see here.
Frankly at five and a half hours, this ride is pretty long,
so you might want to consider alternatives, such as a shorter boat ride then take a b
us to the
main train line and continue on to Bergen by rail more quickly.
There is a very nice reward towards
the end of the boat ride as you approach the city of Bergen, travel through a vast archipelago
of islands and channels linked together by bridges. You'll see a lot of colorful houses
along the shore, some boats tied up at docks, probably some second homes that are vacation
places for the locals, as well as very large mansions up on the cliffs. It's really quite a
sight. After seve
ral hours in the boat, you'll get the first breathtaking glimpse of the town
of Bergen, located in the head of a long natural inlet enhanced by a picturesque harbor, lined with
historic buildings and many boats, and surrounded by seven mountains. You surely want to be out on
deck in these closing dramatic moments of the long boat ride, soaking up the view and getting your
pictures. The city wraps around the harbor with the especially exciting Brygen, the old historic
district on the north e
nd in buildings that have been warehouses for fish but are now shops
and restaurants.
It's a very easy exit from the boat because it's a pretty small vehicle
and it docks right in the heart of downtown. That gives us real easy access to walk to our
hotel, it's just a few blocks away. Be sure to look for the other movies we've made about Bergen
and the rest of Scandinavia in our collection
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