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Published: August 21st 2010
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So I am off on my travels again and this time to Norway, the land of the midnight sun, fjords and home to gorgeous women:-)
After the 1.5 hour flight from Liverpool a free bus service takes you to the train station ready for your onward journey, for me it was on to Finse via Drammen.
The main attraction in Finse is its glacier but it does have a very interesting history... Finse is at an altitude of 1222m and is snowbound most of the year, the previous winter it experienced temperatures as low as -40c but -20c is the norm! In the past arctic explorers such as Shackleton, Amundsen and Nansen trained at Finse before departing for their expeditions.
The population blooms to nearly a hundred in the summer but there are only 6 people who live there in the winter, the Glacier guide being one of them.
Finse was also used to film the planet Hoth scenes in Star Wars the empire strikes back and the glacier guide told us later that hundreds of fans descended on Finse to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the film recently and there were pitched battles between the rebel
alliance and Imperial forces on the train up to Finse!!
There are no roads to Finse the only way to get there is on the Oslo-bergen railway
I arrived at Finse at 20:00 and signed into the Norwegian Trekking Association (NTA) hostel called Finsehtta (Finse Hut). The NTA is a great association basically it is responsible for managing all the walking trails in Norway and it also manages hostel and self-service huts strategically placed along these routes. Stayed in a dorm room which as you can see was quite cozy for 200 NOK per night. The hut was originally built by the Germans during World War II who also came up with a crazy scheme to build a runway on top of the glacier to launch their bombers towards Britain. They tried to fill the 30 metre deep cravasses with sawdust - needless to say it wasn't a huge success.
I had a slight heart murmour when I visited the bar that evening as a pint of the local Hansa Beer which wasn't fantastic cost me 68 NOK or £7, just had the one!!!
Norway is incredibly expensive, everything at the very least cost twice as
much as the UK (which isn't exactly cheap for instance a bottle of water cost about 0.80p in UK the same bottle (and brand) cost £2.50 in Norway (from a supermarket). When it gets to entertaining booze and meals are 3-4 times more expensive - its not your normal backpacker destination.
Ironically the reason everything is so expensive is because of all the money we (the UK) give them, at least a quarter of the natural gas we use comes from Norway and a fair chunk of oil thrown in.
Boring Bits
Flew with Ryanair - Liverpol to Torp (Oslo)
Exchange rate 10 Norwegian Kronar (NOK) = £1
Book train tickets in advance on the NSB website, the majority of the tickets are 300 NOK each way. Where the seats are not reserved you can take a train with different times than those booked but where they are reserved you have to take that train.
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