NORWAY

We left you last time in Copenhagen from whence we headed towards Norway via the west coast of Sweden. We had only two "travel stops" in Sweden along the way, one in Malmo and one in Goteborg.  Neither place was especially riveting but here's a quick "photographic essay" of our short time in each.

Malmo is the town directly across the water from Copenhagen.  It was apparently quite a derelict town some 10-15 years ago until a new bridge connected it with Copenhagen. So now it has become a transport hub, if you like, on the Swedish side of the Denmark-Sweden land connection.

Cathy in front of the town hall

A quite remarkable new building by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. It 's just an office building in the middle of an industrial area but is noted as one of Malmo's main tourist attractions - probably an indication of how little there is to do in Mamlo...

It's referred to as "the turning torso"

It is in fact the tallest building in Sweden

OK I'm an architect and I probably got a little carried away with the photos (side note from Cathy.....a little carried away??)

We did however have the pleasure of a rare sight of an otter in the wild on the banks of the river in Malmo. 

Apparently, in Malmo, you have to crouch down behind your pooch to catch the poop 

Some old fisherman's cottages. Still used as the local fish markets

Adrian having breakfast - yep TWO cakes, but I've gotta keep my fine figure up somehow

Some wonderfully crooked half timber construction in the centre of town

Has anyone ever heard of a spirit level. and a plumb-bob..?

Malmo's resident marching band

Goteborg is the second largest city in Sweden and the fifth largest in Scandanavia.  Containing two universities it is home to many students. Volvo cars was founded there in 1927 (something we didn't know when we were actually there but just found out when searching the web for a few words about the town!). We only had a short stay overnight and then a few hours in the morning before our train to Oslo. It was a nice enough town with a very similar feel to Melbourne. Unfortunately there wasn't a hell of a lot to do in the short time we were there - on arrival we went to the local tourist office for advise on what to see....the girl behind the counter opened with 'there's not much to see here really'......obviously she is taking her job seriously and working hard to ensure tourism is booming in her local town! One of the few things she did recommend to us was a spot just out of town where "there is a hill"...really I think Goteburg has a little more to offer even if only in charm!

A Goteburg tram

The first real river lock Adrian has ever seen

Now the important part - Norway. For our Swedish readers, do not take offence, we will get to Stockholm in the next post.  We are in fact on the train travelling from Stockholm to Karlskrona as we write this post.

For our skydiving friends - no we did not go to Norway to BASE jump.

First stop Oslo where we initially spent just one day; but our plan would find us back here again at the end of our stay in Norway. This first day we more or less just spent wondering the streets.

Cathy out front of the Royal Palace. We were actually staying just behind the palace in an old manor house converted to apartments

Pretty much everywhere we go in Europe on our travels some of the key sights (St Peter's in Rome, St Mark's in Venice, the cathedrals in Barcelona and Cologne, to name just a few) have scaffolding but this is just taking the piss!

The view from the palace toward the CBD

The Norwegian parliament building

As you can see things are starting to get a little cooler up here. The building in the background is the Oslo Opera House. In the mist it sort of resembles an iceberg - perhaps that was the architectural inspiration.

It's the only opera house in the world where you can walk on the roof

Then it was on the train again to make our way to a scenic railway called the Flamsbana. To quote the Flamsbana website: "The train journey provides some of Norway's wildest and most magnificent scenery. On the 20 km-long train ride you can see rivers that cut through deep ravines, waterfalls cascade down the side of steep, snow-capped mountains and mountain farms cling dizzily to sheer slopes.

The Flåm Railway is one of the worlds steepest railway lines on normal gauge. The gradient is 55/1000 on almost 80% of the line, i.e. a gradient of one in eighteen. The twisting tunnels that spiral in and out of the mountain are manifestations of the most daring and skilful engineering in Norwegian railway history."

The train starts at the top at a town / station called Myrdal, on the Bergan Railway, at 865m above sea level and ends in Flam at 2m above sea level. The Bergen Railway itself is quite interesting, some say the most beautiful train journey in the world. It is the highest mainline railway in Europe - the stop / station and Finse is at 1,222 metres above sea level - we saw our first snow of the season in Finse on the way back from Bergen to Oslo.

Cathy at Finse station on the way back from Bergen to Oslo

The waterfalls along the way on the Flamsbana. Unfortunately it was a bit foggy up top when we were there

A shot from the window of the train - it's a very twisty route

We don't want to bore you but this is just an example of the scenery from the train

We stayed overnight in Flam if nothing else than to get away from the hustle & bustle of city touring that's been our life for a few weeks now. There could be worse places to get away from it - check out the view from our accommodation window below. We also had some nice neighbours at our accommodation; Dennis & Laurie from California - breaking the ice was easy after Adrian fell into the fjord when they were on their front deck watching!! He was in fact scoping out possible launch spots for the obligatory fjord swim that was planned for the following morning but managed to slip on the steps and land on his arse on the bottom step in the water - no photos unfortunately (after a quick check to make sure he was ok, Cathy was laughing too much to take any photos).

Flam

This is where we stayed in Flam

This was more or less the view from our window / deck

Just before we got thrown out of the souvenir shop...Cathy now better known in Scandinavia as Helga!!

More wine......

Cows in Flam...Flamish cows...?

From Flam we caught a boat to get a better view of the fjords. Flam itself is in fact situated on the innermost part of the Aurlandsfjord, a tributary of the 204 kilometres long and 1308 metres deep Sognefjord. The boat trip took two hours or so and then it was onto a bus up to Voss train station to complete the journey to Bergen.

Bergen was, well...wet, very wet! At least it lived up to its reputation as one of the wettest cities in Europe. It has an average annual rainfall of 2,250mm and in 2006 it rained for 85 consecutive days. We had enough after two (let alone another 83!!) and decided to cut short our stay there by one day. Despite the weather it is a quaint little town (albeit the second largest city in Norway), its main attraction being a collection of old timber merchant houses from the 14th to 16th centuries and the associated port. So we managed to get out between downpours and have a quick wander around the old town and port before packing up our things and heading back to the big smoke - Oslo.

Cathy at Bergen train station - at least it was dry in here so we could take a photo

The "pond' in Bergen

Some more builders who didn't know about levels and plumb-bobs

Oslo revisited saw much nicer weather than the first stop we made there. We took advantage of this and headed out to a place called Holmenkollen. There has been a ski jump at Holmenkollen in various forms since 1892 and has been used for various local, national & world championships as well as Winter Olympics and more recently the Nordic World Ski Championships in early 2011. It was worth the visit from an architectural perspective but also to see what it looks like at the top of one of these things, albeit without snow. There is also a ski museum and a ski simulator where you sit in a little booth with video of a couple of runs down the ski jump and a high speed Olympic run all the while with the booth moving to "simulate" the turns - a gimmick but it only cost about 5 bucks each.

The view from the top of the ski jump

Unfortunately there was no snow or we would have had a go.........

We also took in another Viking boat museum. Compared to the ones we saw in Roskilde, however, these were much better preserved. The boats in the Olso museum were found in burial mounds around the city during the 19th & 20th centuries so were not attacked by water & sea worms, etc as the ones found in Roskilde. They also had a great collection of Viking period artefacts that were found in the boats / graves themselves which shed little more light on the life and times of the Vikings - they weren't just savages after all!

And finally we visited the Fram Museum - no that was Flam that we visited on the fjords, this is a purpose built museum holding the boat Fram. This boat was used by Roald Admunsen when he discovered the South Pole in 1911. The best bit about this museum was that visitors can actually walk on and in the real boat.

Souvenir shop has hats, must try them on...Cathy's 'hat thing' is getting a little out of control.....although she thankfully didn't buy any of these she has already bought 2 this trip and is looking out for a new one for winter!

Norway - been there, done that, it gets a great big tick for some of the most beautiful scenery we've witnessed! One point to note is that Norway does live up to its reputation as being an expensive country. Accommodation costs were at least three times as much as we've paid elsewhere, you won't buy a small beer for much less than 7 euros and even McDonalds is expensive - we got lunch there one day (thinking it would be cheap) and paid nearly 30 euros for a burger meal, salad, six nuggets and a diet Coke!! 

As mentioned above we are currently in Sweden and have spent a lovely three days in Stockholm and are heading towards Poland via Karlskrona, Sweden. So we'll give you all the news from Sweden in the next post.  

AT & CM over and out.