Eidfjord and Bergen

As I mentioned, we have relocated to Eidfjord, which is in the Southern Fjords, though not all the way in the south of Norway.

I have to say that after our beautiful spot at Melkevoll Bretun, this is a little bit of a let-down. We are right on the fjord here, which of course is beautiful, but I think it’s not quite what we were expecting.

In the guide book, Eidfjord is described as this beautiful town that is a major draw for cruise ships and 500,000 visitors a year. With that in mind, I think we were expecting a lively small town, with shops and cafes.

It is, however, absolutely dead here. There are two grocery stores, three or four hotels, a cafeteria-type store which sells hot dogs and hamburgers…and that’s it. Above all, there are no people around at all, so it’s a bit ghostly.

Today we drove to the city of Bergen. Bergen is only 95 miles from where we are, but the roads are all so winding and slow that it took us almost 3 hours to get there. And the tunnels…I have never been through so many tunnels in my life!

We actually counted them on the trip home, and in the 95 mile trip there were 46 tunnels! That gives you an idea I guess of just how mountainous the region is. After a while you can’t go around, or up and over anymore, you just have to go through.

Bergen was quite the opposite of Eidfjord-it was full of people, shops, restaurants and cafes. There is a great fish market there, with loads of stalls selling shrimp, crabs, lobster, and all varieties of smoked fishes.

We shared a fish & chips and it was heaven! Then we followed it with cappuccinos at a funky café.

We also visited a cool one-room museum, called The Theta Room. This room was the meeting place for a group of Norwegian men ages 19-22 who spied on the Germans during World War II and passed the information along to the British.

The woman who was telling us about the museum and Bergen during the war told us that she was living in Bergen with her family during the war, and she remembered Hitler’s birthday in 1944 when a ship full of explosives blew up in the harbor, shattering windows everywhere.

She remembered her mother brushing her hair just before the explosion, and then remembered standing in the midst of glass and ashes afterward.

This was a pretty amazing memory and would have been even more haunting were it not for the fact that she looked to be about 55 years old. Her face was almost unlined and her dark brown hair looked to be her natural color.

So either she is the youngest 70-year-old woman in the world, or she has a slight memory from when she was about four years old and remembers some of what she related to us, and had the rest filled in by her parents with such detail that the complete memory has become her own.

Either that or the next tour group, in addition to the ship-went-boom story was also going to get a very detailed account of how she was captured and held aboard The Death Star where she was forced to watch her home planet, Alderaan, be destroyed right before her very eyes.

As you can see, this part of Norway may not have the glaciers and waterfalls of our previous location, but it has other photo-worthy items to keep a very immature lady happy.

“Photo of the fjord? No thanks. Photo of the fart-sign? You betcha!!”

My parents must be so proud….