Bergen

So we’ve had three full days in Bergen and we’re leaving tomorrow on our driving trip around the fjords.

The first day we pretty much just walked around the city. It’s pretty hilly, and the old town part, Bryggen, is really interesting. It’s a line of old wooden buildings (not originals because apparently this city has some issues with fires, multiple fires) that the German traders used during the Hanseatic League. The league was a sort of economic alliance for the region and the cities that took part benefited enormously, and also have very similar characteristics – Bergen looks a lot like Tallinn and the buildings are very similar to Riga too.

This is Bryggen

We took a tour the first day through the old part – each long row of a wooden building was one trader, who lived there with boys who were his apprentices. They weren’t allowed to have fire in the buildings – even to make warm food (again – they have fire issues yet still managed to burn down like five times even when they were that careful) but had these communal buildings where there was a kitchen to get warm meals, and a sort of social drinking atmosphere, along with the enforcement of moral codes.

This is the passage way in between some of the old buildings.

After the tour, we tried to find a place to eat. Apparently you have to book far far ahead though, and at other restaurants they don’t have such a thing as a waiting list (or waiting – people just walk right in and sit at an open table!)

The second day we kind of just did nothing – I went shopping for some jeans since I’ve worn through them all with walking around and Mom did laundry. I think I got the better end of the deal.

Today, we walked down to the castle past Bryggen and toured the two older buildings there. Its interesting because in some places they are so keen on preserving the old that you can’t really tour it because it will either ruin it or it is in such bad condition that you just can’t. Ive noticed here though that they just rebuild/redo it to look like it once was, and then let you know what is the old and what isn’t, which is kind of cool because it means you can go through it and get a good picture for what it was like. (Again, fires destroyed these buildings, along with a German bomb at one point).

First, we went through an old hall that was built for a king’s wedding. Below the hall was a really cool network of rooms and multiple stories that was used for meetings and living. Then we went through a tower nearby, which was living quarters for the king later on, and that was so fun to walk through. It had narrow passageways and all kinds of crazy staircases to go through. And the design was so complicated that without the magic red arrows on the walls telling us where to go we would probably get lost. Oh, we also found out the hard way (and perhaps the blonde way) that people were shorter back then. I was walking up a staircase and at the end I hit my head really hard on an entryway and yelled out ouch, Mom follows me and asks why I said ouch, just as she hits her head on the same part. The people behind us managed to figure it out though.

Then we took the Floibana, a cable car, up a super steep mountain to an overlook of the city. We stayed there for about an hour until it rained (it rains here ALL the time!) and then came back down to have an early dinner at 2 since that seems to be the only time we can get in a restaurant here. I tried some reindeer filet, which was really good. Mom was not so adventurous, but the other day we did try some of the ground liver paste that they serve at all the Norwegian breakfasts. Not so good.