Norway- The Land of Expensive Things

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I finally put some photos up on here...so I wasn´t lying when I said I would do it!

I´ve had a few days of trains- I stayed in Narvik for 3 nights and did lots of fun stuff like watching boat races (the "Ofotfjorden Grand Prix 2007"!!!) and climbing mountains! I also went to ANOTHER museum! WHAT is going on with all these museums?! It was interesting though, Narvik was occupied by Germany in the war, because it is an important iron ore port, and the museum was about the battle and the German prisoner of war camps in the area.

I got a bus and a night train down to Trondheim (the nearest train station to Narvik, apart from on the line to Sweden, is a 6 hour bus journey south!!) and spent the day there, then got another night train to Oslo and came to Bergen! Trondheim and Bergen are quite close, but there are no trains between them. It was good anyway, because the one thing that is cheap here is night train reservations! And the train journey between here and Oslo is incredibly scenic- mountains and lakes and all that kind of thing... Plus, I met an Austrian girl at the train station in Trondheim while we were both waiting and we had a train station party with 2 German guys I met in Narvik!! She was intelligent enough to realise that it is a good idea...no, absolutely necessary actually, to bring alcohol from outside Norway!

Despite the extreme expensiveness, I still love Norway! Although it is even more expensive than Sweden and Denmark! And the other thing about Scandinavia (apart from the expensiveness and beautiful people) is the distinct lack of queues. You queue for nothing in the Land of Beautiful People and Expensive Things. Everything has a numbered ticket bleeping signs system. So you see what number they´re on and then the number on your ticket and the tourists sit on the leather sofas that are everywhere and the Beautiful People estimate how much time they will need to wait and then go off and run up a mountain or gaze at themselves in the mirror or something.

Bergen is a really nice city, it is surrounded by fjords and wherever there is no water, there is a mountain! I´m staying in a really great place- I´m in a building round the corner from the hostel, and it´s like a little apartment- a 12 bed dorm (!!) upstairs and downstairs we have a kitchen/dining room/living room, and because no one can afford anything here, as I already mentioned, we´re all cooking, so it´s really good for meeting people. I discovered the fish market here today- it is right by the harbour, and they sell raw fish and also loads of fishy sandwiches and stuff, plus FISH AND CHIPS!!!

I´m off to find something free to do...let me guess...sitting around the table playing cards...

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