Oslo to Bergen: first-rate train ride in second class

This post continues my sharing the tale of a Norwegian trip that my wife Mary Pat Treuthart and I took last month that culminated with a cruise through the country’s famous fjords:

I’m a big fan of train travel. I’ve ridden on Amtrak from Seattle to San Diego and back, also from Seattle to Chicago and then on to rural Kentucky. And, of course, I’ve traveled any number of times up and down the East Coast, between Baltimore and New York’s Penn Station.

Internationally, I’ve traveled on trains in Japan, Spain, Poland, Germany, Italy and Morocco. In 1975, my first wife and I used the old version of a BritRail pass (costing a mere $110) to circumnavigate the United Kingdom (at least England, Scotland and Wales).

So it was only natural that instead of flying from Norway’s capital city of Oslo to the country’s second-largest city, Bergen, that we would take the train. Yeah, it was scheduled to take some seven hours, but it seemed like an adventure. And Mary Pat is always up for adventure (though, to be honest, I am less so).

Tuesday, May 6, 11:26 a.m. (Central European Summer Time): We’re sitting in the Oslo train station, waiting to board the 12:03 train to Bergen.

We took an Uber from our hotel, which was a good idea. It cost a third as much as a standard taxi fare would have been (the guy at our hotel said a taxi would have charged 300 Kroner (or about $30). The Uber driver didn’t help us with the bags, but he’s older and he explained that he’s nursing an injured arm.

He did direct us to the elevator that takes us to where we need to go, so there’s that in his favor. He also shared with us that he’s originally from Iraq, has lived in Norway for 27 years and has family in the U.S. (in Nashville).

It’s a bit brisk outside, so we’re waiting upstairs in a sushi place. I’m intrigued by the menu, which features something called a “crunchy sushi burrito.” I’ve heard of fusion cuisine, but this seems to be stretching things … especially so since we were in a Norwegian train station.

12:16 p.m.: With a few minutes to go, we headed on down and our train soon arrived. Since we bought first-class tickets, we figured we would be in a comfortable setting. But almost immediately we discovered two problems: One, our seats were facing to the rear of the train, and Mary Pat doesn’t care to travel backward; and two, once the train got underway – at precisely 12:05 – we felt the car we’re riding in rocking back and forth.

Now, clearly trains typically do have a sway to them. But this was far worse than anything either of us had ever experienced. Maybe it’s because our car was set right behind the engine. Whatever, Mary Pat went off to find the conductor. And that’s how we ended up in a second-class car, facing forward and feeling far less like we were aboard a Seattle ferry cruising through bad weather.

Lesson learned: Second-class doesn’t necessarily mean second-rate.

 14:51 p.m.: Heading through the mountains I can’t help but feel that everything looks, again, like the Pacific Northwest. That’s true even if the houses we pass look more like something that Heidi’s grandfather would own.

15:47 p.m.: Just out of the ski-resort town of Geilo, we begin to see patches of snow amid the dry and parched landscape, broken here and there by a few scraggly trees and splotches of dead grass. I check the elevation app on my iPhone and notice that we’re gaining altitude, so the snow is no real surprise.

16:31 p.m.: Just past our stop at Finse, we reach our highest altitude, which my phone puts at 4,020 feet. The whole world is covered in snow, even the frozen lake in the distance.

18:01 p.m.: Down from the mountains, everything again is green. If I had been dropped into this area with no idea of where I was, I’d swear I was someplace in Western Washington. Or maybe somewhere around Salmon, Idaho.

21:11 p.m.: We arrived in Bergen at precisely 19:08, almost seven hours to the minute from our Oslo departure. We took an Uber to our hotel, the historic Home Hotel Havnekontoret, which claims to have “the best location in town” and boasts “an elegance rooted in local history and Baroque Revival Architecture.”

That’s nice and all, but what’s more important to us is the friendliness of the staff, which is just as pleasant we’d hoped. Our experience with Norwegians so far has been that people generally are cordial but not overly friendly. To our surprise, the hotel offers three very cool things at no extra charge: a full breakfast, an afternoon “fika” or traditional Scandinavian tea and coffee break, and finally a “light” evening dinner that offers an array of food offerings that is anything but light.

After checking into our room, we ate dinner (we ordered beer and wine, which we were glad to pay for), and then took a short walk. The Hotel Home Havnekontoret is located right next to the historic Bryggen District, which has been deemed a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We’ll investigate more about what that actually means over the next couple of days when we get a chance to explore.

For the moment, though, we were just happy to walk along the waterfront, getting our land legs back after that train ride. We marveled at the mountains that sit so close to the city that they make everything feel almost miniature – the streets, the buildings, the boats along the wharf and most especially the people.

I felt the need for something sweet, so we stopped at a shop to get some ice cream. It proved to be tasty enough, but it was nowhere near as good as Italian gelato.

No surprise there. Nothing outside of Rome or Florence ever is.

Next up: An anniversary, a guided tour and a laundromat communion.