A Norwegian Roadtrip - Day 14 - Discovering Bergen

In the morning we decided to take a ride down south of Bergen to check out the waterfront of the fjord south of town.

Tina and I both have been surprised that in all the driving we've done through large town, small towns, urban and rural areas, and we simply haven't seen any real poor area's.  Having a 2.5% unemployment rate and an economy made all the stronger from ongoing oil and gas discoveries in the north sea goes a long way in explaining that, but you'd still expect to stumble upon some of them given the amount of driving we've done.  We're simply not seeing them.

In the afternoon we'd decided to do hiking on Uriken which is the highest peak around Bergen.  There's a tram that takes you up the mountain where there's a number of trails for hiking.  So we struggled with the silly nav system trying to figure out where to pick up the tram, and finally asked one of the locals and got there. (Alright ... so I admit.  Tina nagged me into finally asking a local!  :) )

A bit of background here first to explain the story. All of Europe (and most of the world outside of the US right now) use credit cards with chips in them in addition to the magnetic strip.  Probably half the places you go won't take a credit card without a chip in it.  Having learned that last year during our Scandinavia cruise, we special ordered credit cards with chips this time.  That solved part of the problem.  The other key to getting by in the rest of the world is that you have to have a pin with that card.  We indeed have one, but it's sitting at home in an unopened letter from the credit card company.  Now, you can get by in general without the pin code as long as you sign a receipt.  That's fine as long as there's somebody there to give you a receipt and take a signature back.  For the cases like ATM's and self-serve gas you still have to have the pin. 

Furthermore, with Norway being at 2.5% unemployment, the take every step to eliminate a person doing a job if it's not necessary.  As such, everybody bags there own purchases (although the cashier will hand you the bag), garage checkouts are always automated (meaning you have to have a pin), and the tickets for riding the friggin' tram up the mountain was unstaffed.  No pin ... no tram ticket ... no taking a ride up the mountain.

...

So we decided to hike it.  No biggy.  4 km each way ... so no big deal.

...

Wrong ... ... ... no big deal to Norwegians who walk up 45 degree inclines every day.  Huge deal to Floridians who run out of breath walking up 2 degree inclines.  Anyway, we did make a good attempt at it.

The End Goal ... It's Really Not THAT Far Away... Is It???

Just a Few Rocks ... Shouldn't Be That Bad, Hey?

So Close ... and Yet Soooooo  Far

The View From Somewhere Near the Start

The View About 2 km Into It

Norwegians Don't Climb These Trails Like This

Not only do Norwegians not climb the trail like that, Norwegians in fact were running up this silly "trail".  Norwegians were running up this silly "trail" with baby's back strapped onto them.

Not only that, but Norwegians have far better ways of getting down the mountain than we had planned.  ;)

Anyway, long story short, with 1 km to go we finally agreed to stop this insanity.  It was just after we talked to a father who was heading down from the summit with his son and 4 other kids from his sons preschool class!!!  Yes indeed ... 5 Norwegian 5 year olds made it to the top that Tina and I weren't going to see ... ... ... but only because of a silly credit card pin number.  Mind you the father told us that there was a much easier path if we would have taken a right a 1 km into the hike rather than following everybody else going left.  Kind of too late for that.  Seriously though, the last 1 km above the treeline was far more steep than we'd already seen and had cables along the way to help pull yourself up.

Uhhhhhhhh ... NO!

So rather than heading back down over all those rocks, I convinced Tina that there was an alternative path through the woods.  You would think Tina would know better than to listen to me on such things by now, but off we went anyway.

After pulling my feet out of several muddy bog holes on the "trail" and winding around and around and around in the woods, we did finally hook up with the main trail again and made it down.  I think Tina only told me 50 times that it was a stupid idea to go off in the woods, so it certainly could have been much worse.

So we get back to the car, only to look longingly back up at the way we should have made it up the mountain.

So we made it back, had a good long nap, got cleaned up and had a wonderful dinner out in town.  Tina always cleans up pretty well, regardless of what we end up going through during the day.

Until next time ...