HC Travels to Norway
During my first year of university I lived in Hillhead Halls, where I was lucky to have flatmates from different countries. One of them was a girl from Norway named Ida, who quickly became one of my closest friends. Now after two years of university, I’ve made it a point to take mountain climbing excursions to Norway every summer. I would like to share the beauty of Norway with you HC readers and hope that it motivates at least one of you to visit this awesome place!
Bergen is a city a tad larger in population than Aberdeen. It is called the city between the seven mountains as it is completely surrounded by mountains. This was the first thing I was amazed by when I arrived, especially coming from Finland, which is mostly flat! The city centre is beautiful too with its colourful houses in neat rows, but the mountains really are the main attractions, so the main focus of my visits has always been climbing them.
The most popular mountains among tourists are Ulriken and Fløyen. You can take a cable car up to these two so no climbing is necessary. Ida is not one to take the easy route though, so we climbed both! We climbed Ulriken in 30 degree heat and I was sure I would never make it to the top, but in the end I powered through, and it was well worth it for the view! I guess Fløyen felt bad for me by the time I came to climb it, as there was no sun to add to the struggle that time.
During my first time visiting Norway we also went on a three-hour car ride to try out one of the top train rides of Europe. This was on the Flam Railway. The train goes through mountains, waterfalls and fjords making it something well worth visiting. Just the car ride up there was a sight, because I’ve never seen so many tunnels or waterfalls in my life!
My second trip to Norway included some different mountains. This year I also invested in hiking shoes, because running shoes and mountain climbing don’t really go hand in hand! The first mountain we climbed was called Totland, and yet again we climbed it in 30 degree heat! The previous excursion had taught be how to pace myself though, so it wasn’t as hard as my first experience. I thought I was a natural at this point (obviously!) but the Stolzen way up to Fløyen took the best of me. It was 45 minutes purely of stairs and I may or may not have ended my friendship with Ida a few times during this climb. But apparently if you climbed it every day for a year you would be in excellent shape! Once we made it to the top, the view outdid the pain I had just experienced and made me rekindle my friendship with Ida. There’s also ice cream at the top, and who doesn’t love ice cream?!
Ida’s uncle owned a cabin up in the mountains of Filefjell in Lærdal which we also drove out to see. These mountains were so high up that even in the sunny warm weather, snow was still visible in places! I probably sound like a broken record by now but – the VIEWS. I feel like Norway is one of those places where you just gawk with your mouth open at the sights because they’re so amazing. Of course I’m not used to a place like this, as my home country is so flat, so I am obviously going to be amazed, but even Ida admits that the views are extremely pretty.
The moral of this article is: invest in some hiking shoes and take a trip to Norway! Spend hours climbing those mountains because I promise you pictures don’t do the views justice. It is something you have to experience yourself. Obviously there are plenty of shopping opportunities and city sights to see too, but I would still keep my focus on the mountains – they are definitely not something you see every day!