Us 4 girls spent the weekend in Bergen, Norway and it was a blast! The Dr. Seuss quote was written on a wall in our hostel and I thought it was very fitting. We all got up early Saturday morning and took the fast boat to Bergen at 9 a.m. The boat stop is right in the center of Bergen, so that was convenient. The city was really cool and of course we took about a million pictures. When we got there, we immediately started looking in shops of course! One thing I found out in Bergen…apparently it costs money to use the restrooms in public places in big cities in Europe?? What?! This doesn’t work so well for people that have small bladders (me)…especially since it costs about $2 each time! After walking around for a little bit, we all had to go to the bathroom and didn’t want to carry our backpacks anymore, so we decided to check into our hostel. We got off to a bad start because apparently our hostel reservations were made for the wrong day…so we were a little worried. Turns out they had an opening for that night in an even cheaper room, so it all worked out! The hostel was really nice so we were happy about that. (but expensive…like everything in Norway) It was right downtown so that was nice because we could walk anywhere we wanted to.
After checking in, we decided to head to Fløibanen funicular which is a little train up Mount Fløyen. When we got to the top, we could see a great view of the entire city and suburbs…it was pretty cool! We took a bunch of pictures from up there and went in the gift shop.
For the rest of the afternoon, we spent our time walking through the huge city and going through shops. I was very happy to see that they had a McDonalds…and of course I got a happy meal for lunch! (only $8…but totally worth it! J ) I think we walked about 321310 miles total for the day, but it was great to see the whole city! There happened to be an outdoor concert in the middle of the city so we stopped to watch a little bit of that. For dinner, we got kebabs from a little shop. Many of my students told me I HAD to try one, so we decided to give it a shop. I thought they were pretty good, but kind of different. Jenni has had them in Germany and said they tasted a lot different..she liked the ones in Germany better.
At night, we were all pretty tired from a day of walking. A couple of us decided to go to a local pub to hang out for a little bit, and we found one near our hostel that had live music. Apparently it’s a really small world…we happened to be talking to someone at the pub who had a sister who studied abroad at Iowa State. We thought that was really random, but the even weirder thing was that his sister lived with a family in Ankeny while she was studying. How random!
On Sunday, we got to spend some time with Kristina’s distant relative. She has relatives that live in a couple places in Norway. (we don’t even know much about the guy or exactly how they’re related so we were a little worried…but he turned out to be a great guy and showed us a lot!) He picked us up from Bergen and then took us to see Radoy island to see the house where her great-great grandpa was born and lived…pretty cool for her! We got to go back to his house afterwards and have some delicious tacos and hear some stories about his life. He also took us to see Grieg’s house, the place he composed in, his grave, and a concert hall at the site that’s in his honor. (I don’t even know who he is, but he kinda looks like Einstein.) Ashley is a music major and was very excited to get to go there! (apparently he’s a big deal or something??) We could only see the home from the outside though because they don’t start tours til May.
That evening, we took the fast boat back to Bergen to get some rest for another school week. It was a great weekend and nice to get away and see some more of the country!
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