Photojourney Across Norway

To celebrate the end of my A levels back in 2014, my second sister treated me to a backpacking trip to Norway. That was my first time in Europe (if you consider Norway to be part of Europe).

As per some of my friends’ requests, I decided to post the “best” photos from my photo reel about Norway. It has been a while, so I can’t remember how long the trip was. It happened in early December, which was winter.

My sister and I went to 5 cities in total – Oslo, Bergen, Älesund, Trondheim and Tromsø. We flew to Oslo, the capital, via Qatar Airways with a layover in Doha. My sister bought the tickets around SGD800/person at that time.

Oslo

I was my first time in a country with winter. Quite cold, but refreshing! All I knew about Norway back then was that it was a part of the Scandinavian countries and cost of living is pretty expensive.

Oslo has a lot of lights, so I played around with bokeh. Back then, I was using a mechanical camera – Nikon D200. Really heavy, but trained my eye for photography better than a mirrorless DSLR. I learned a lot about aperture, shutter speed and ISO during this trip on my own.

Winter in Norway (or in most European countries) means Christmas markets!

Bergen

We then took the train from Oslo Sentralstasjon to Bergen. I knew that food (and basically everything) was expensive, so I tried not to eat a lot between meals. However, the cold makes you a little delirious and my sugar level dropped (plus, I was more vulnerable to motion sickness on moving vehicles back then). So my sister got me a vegetarian panini from the restaurant carriage and thought, vegetarian food is delicious in Norway.

We arrived in Bergen not long after.

Snow!!

Bergen is known to be a city of music. I saw many buskers, but felt awkward to take photos of them (I was 18 and first time backpacker). The city is absolutely beautiful, plus it is by the port/sea.

Also, Bergen is known for their seafood – a regret that I have for not trying (my sister felt more regret though, she lovessss seafood). My fault for discouraging her – because cost was on my mind oops. Anyway, the prawns are super huge! As big as my face!

Voss (Myrkdalen Skiskule)

We wanted to try our hand at skiing. It was both our first time skiing, so… I tried to look up for skiing places near Bergen. As we were in Norway in early December, there wasn’t much snow yet so many ski resorts were not yet opened.

Finally found a place called Voss. We took the train from Bergen to Voss.

Being two ladies from the Tropics, it was hazardous for us to attempt skiing alone and for the first time. So we got ourselves an instructor. We were the only foreigners and students there so it was a private lesson, somewhat. (We paid for class prices though?)

Our instructor was really nice, but quite fierce. Remembered him getting annoyed when my sister kept falling over. Now when I think of it, skiing is such a fun activity but extremely tiring. I sometimes do think that Norwegians are born with skis on their feet.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

They had everything from gloves to the ski sticks, snowboards, skis, helmets… except for goggles. You can’t rent them due to hygiene issues. Well, it was for a day, so I didn’t bother buying one.

Älesund

We took the Hurtigruten (ship) from Bergen to Älesund. As it is winter, the prices were okay, and there weren’t many people on board. However, the sea was choppy and… I remembered that getting to the Bergen port was difficult due to the strong winds. We literally had to fight against the wind with our body weight, otherwise we would fly…

We stayed at an Airbnb hosted by a Chinese post-graduate. It was the cheapest accommodation, but the worst… I remembered his place was so dirty and we literally didn’t take a shower for the two nights we were there.

However, Älesund was pretty nice albeit quite hilly.

Buildings in Älesund seemed more colourful than those in other parts of Norway. Perhaps it was just me… Still, such a great contrast since the sky gets super dark really quick. Talk about 9am sunrises and 4pm sunsets – pretty gloomy.

But really, the most memorable part of Älesund was that the city was hilly and colourful.

Trondheim

We took the train from Älesund to Trondheim. In that city, we stayed with a lady through Airbnb, Karina. She was super nice, offering us her bed while she stayed on her sofa. For the first night we slept on the sofa, and on the second, we switched places.

She offered us everything she had in the pantry. Found a Norwegian variation of Nutella (with nuts). I really liked the taste and got one for myself to snack on.

TIP: Rema 1000 is one of the cheaper supermarkets in Norway. Visit in the evenings and most fresh food prices are slashed.

Karina even brought us out to search the Northern lights. I can’t remember where we went, but it was far away from the city and there was very little light pollution. At that time, I wished I had a tripod!

Trying to figure out the settings…

Soon, it was time to say goodbye to Trondheim.

I found that initially, Norwegians were rather cold. But hey, it must have been the weather. Even though we were visibly foreigners, and my sister is wearing a hijab so we were clearly Muslims, all the Norwegians we met were extremely friendly. But yeah, cold at first, but willing to help when we asked for directions. Takk Norge!

Tromsø

Can you see the pattern of our travel? We wanted to travel north… obviously to the Arctic Circle! We chose Tromsø and flew over from Trondheim.

Right upon arrival, we had to rush to check in our luggage, and literally run to one of the hotels for our dog sledding tour. Trust me – the roads were icy and we tried our very best not to fall. (I think we succeeded) Luckily, the man in charge waited for us! Well… us Tropical ladies truly underestimated the power of winter.

As we were dog sledding, the Northern Lights were literally dancing above us! It was too dangerous to take photos and control the sleds. Also, the huge huskies will look at you in annoyance if you (the one standing on the sled) don’t help to push… Yikes.

After that, we had some hot chocolate and cake made by the man’s wife (not pictured, the cake nor the wife) under a yurt with a hot fire. Ah, warmth!

It was too dark to do anything much by the time we got back to the city. What a ride. I would definitely want to do dog sledding again in the future. And skiing, of course.

Tromsø has very beautiful architecture and a hill with a cable car.

Then we decided to hunt for the Northern Lights on our own, to very little success. There wasn’t much activity that night. Well, except the cold trying to permeate through our skin and bones.

There were plentiful of stars though – which made me so fascinated with constellation. Sad that it’s very difficult to see them in Singapore due to light pollution and very cloudy skies.

Soon, it was time to head home.

We flew back to Oslo from Tromsø. There was literally a snowstorm cooking at the airport. Quite… mystifying.

I remembered that we had some flight delay, from Tromsø to Oslo, and were given a food voucher worth SGD20 (I think). We were super spoiled… But airport food is expensive anyway.

Flew to Qatar.

Had some food at Doha Airport. We were lucky that our layover was during the day so most of the food places were open. I remembered that we asked a stupid question, whether the food was halal. Like duh, it’s Qatar… Haha. The cashier was definitely dumbfounded at us.