Do you remember seeing those places on most of people’s desktop, clear lake reflecting clouds, hills, houses horses? That is Norway. Yes The train journey to Bergen is the most beautiful train journeys in world, just comparable to Interlaken-Luzern etc. You will pass scenery that will make you rub your eyes and wonder. Yes those places exist.
We five people took a train to Myrdal. The route from Myrdal to Flam is known as one of the most scenic route in world. Flam railway is a special different train for that short route. I thought it is utterly overrated. It stops at waterfalls and shows a dance something…Highly overrated. We have much better waterfalls in India-many. Hence I realized the most popular destination was most overrated.
From Flam, we took a cruise for Fjords tour. This tour starts from Flam to Gudvangen. From Gudvangen, there is a bus ride to Voss from where one can resume the journey to Bergen. What is exciting is that our trip flam-Gudvangen-the cruise was free. What happened was that when we reached, the cruise had almost left and it was last for the day. So we waved and stopped it. Hence we had to buy tickets on board. The cruise guy told us to buy tickets, but he forgot. We went down and looked for him but nowhere to be seen. By now we had greta adventure vs guilt dilemma. Hoping he doesn’t spot us but going down to give him ample reasons to spot. We never saw him again or frankly didn’t recognize him. So we went up and hoped he will not remember us. That’s how the journey was free. We very happyas we internally accounted it for the huge money we had given for the disappointing Flam railway journey. The bus ride from Gudvangen to Voss was included in ticket which means free for us again.
That’s how we reached Voss and on way I saw Houses that belong to nowhere-will write about them soon. We took train and reached Bergen late. We had just couple of hours in city and then it was time for night train back to Oslo. I thought it was a normal nice city-nothing to be gung ho about. Good thing is we saw the Harley-Davidson gang there.
Harley Davidson must be a favorite MBA topic. It is about how this bike positioned itself as an aspirational macho brand for middle aged balding men. Guess what, this was as if someone cast a magic spell and characters came spilling out of the book. Middle aged bunch of 5-6 men, longish hair, all in their Harley’s. Ditto!
The next morning we reached Oslo and thought now what. We did the reckless thing. First and many to follow. We took the train going to some place. It was Lillehammer. The only claim to fame of that place must be that it hoisted winter Olympics in 1994. We did a long trek to Olympic village and saw people practicing ski jump. It was a marvelous site. What stamina and posture these guys had. They practice right from childhood and it’s a treat to the eyes to watch them ski jump. We must be the only Brown people to have ever visited that place because people literally came out of their houses to see the ‘bizarre’ creatures in town. These were one of few beautiful trips as we walked without an idea, aim and food. We were surviving on bland buns which we started calling dog food!
We visited a town called Hamar as well. It had a usual castle. We sat on lake side and only memory of this place will be a crazy rich guy who owned a boat which had engine to take off as a glider. He did that in front of us and people around told us how he is some rich guy who has this thing.
That is all about journeys in Norway. There was one more-my last-alone, a train journey in the middle of snow clad Norway when I tried writing about houses in the middle of nowhere- I will write about that with the houses soon.
We five people took a train to Myrdal. The route from Myrdal to Flam is known as one of the most scenic route in world. Flam railway is a special different train for that short route. I thought it is utterly overrated. It stops at waterfalls and shows a dance something…Highly overrated. We have much better waterfalls in India-many. Hence I realized the most popular destination was most overrated.
From Flam, we took a cruise for Fjords tour. This tour starts from Flam to Gudvangen. From Gudvangen, there is a bus ride to Voss from where one can resume the journey to Bergen. What is exciting is that our trip flam-Gudvangen-the cruise was free. What happened was that when we reached, the cruise had almost left and it was last for the day. So we waved and stopped it. Hence we had to buy tickets on board. The cruise guy told us to buy tickets, but he forgot. We went down and looked for him but nowhere to be seen. By now we had greta adventure vs guilt dilemma. Hoping he doesn’t spot us but going down to give him ample reasons to spot. We never saw him again or frankly didn’t recognize him. So we went up and hoped he will not remember us. That’s how the journey was free. We very happyas we internally accounted it for the huge money we had given for the disappointing Flam railway journey. The bus ride from Gudvangen to Voss was included in ticket which means free for us again.
That’s how we reached Voss and on way I saw Houses that belong to nowhere-will write about them soon. We took train and reached Bergen late. We had just couple of hours in city and then it was time for night train back to Oslo. I thought it was a normal nice city-nothing to be gung ho about. Good thing is we saw the Harley-Davidson gang there.
Harley Davidson must be a favorite MBA topic. It is about how this bike positioned itself as an aspirational macho brand for middle aged balding men. Guess what, this was as if someone cast a magic spell and characters came spilling out of the book. Middle aged bunch of 5-6 men, longish hair, all in their Harley’s. Ditto!
The next morning we reached Oslo and thought now what. We did the reckless thing. First and many to follow. We took the train going to some place. It was Lillehammer. The only claim to fame of that place must be that it hoisted winter Olympics in 1994. We did a long trek to Olympic village and saw people practicing ski jump. It was a marvelous site. What stamina and posture these guys had. They practice right from childhood and it’s a treat to the eyes to watch them ski jump. We must be the only Brown people to have ever visited that place because people literally came out of their houses to see the ‘bizarre’ creatures in town. These were one of few beautiful trips as we walked without an idea, aim and food. We were surviving on bland buns which we started calling dog food!
We visited a town called Hamar as well. It had a usual castle. We sat on lake side and only memory of this place will be a crazy rich guy who owned a boat which had engine to take off as a glider. He did that in front of us and people around told us how he is some rich guy who has this thing.
That is all about journeys in Norway. There was one more-my last-alone, a train journey in the middle of snow clad Norway when I tried writing about houses in the middle of nowhere- I will write about that with the houses soon.
Comments
Post a Comment