Early morning, we headed out with our future fellow shipmates across the street from the hotel to Oslo Sentralstasjon to hop aboard the train to Bergen.

The train journey is supposed to be one of the most beautiful and spectacular scenic train trips in the world. We even saw a documentary about it on the Travel Channel not long ago. However, as with most anything involving scenery, it’s a crap shoot of good or bad luck regarding the weather. It was also a bit early in the year for the lush green fields, flowering trees, and crystal blue and turquoise waters that you see in the brochures.

That’s also an understatement.

I have mixed feelings about the train trip. On the one hand, I wish we’d had good weather and blue skies and green grass like in all the brochures. The low cloud ceiling kept us from seeing the towering mountainscape and the grey skies sapped all the colour from the view. The water looked black, the snow blanketed everything in white, and the only colour we saw in many areas was the reflection of the red chequered shirt of our Philly seat mate’s shirt.
Having said that, I think that the bleak landscape was in its own way beautiful. It was a contrast of serenity and brutality that was a bit surreal.

As we climbed into the mountains, the snow got deeper and the landscape got whiter. Eventually, we had actual snowfall during the journey. Lots of skiers were on board the train, and by the midpoint of the journey, the train was much less crowded as the skiers had all gotten off. Another stop was the junction of the Oslo/Bergen line and the line to Flåm, another train trip that’s world-renowned for its beauty.

Remember the first third of The Empire Strikes Back which took place on the ice planet of Hoth? It included the iconic AT-AT Imperial Walkers attacking the rebel base.

Well, all of the scenes on Hoth were filmed in Norway, very near where our train went. Which exact plot of land on our journey was used to stand in for a remote ice planet isn’t known, but any number of places we passed would’ve worked. I mean, look at this.

After we crossed the highest points and started down the other side of the mountains, the clouds lifted a bit and there was a bit more to see.

Around 3pm, after just over seven hours on the train, we arrived in Bergen, the home port of Viking Cruise Lines. There, we checked in and got on board. Since Viking Ocean ships are all identical (save for some very minor cosmetic differences), it felt like home as soon as we were on board. We got to our cabin and started to unpack.

As usual, the cabin is very nice and our room steward, Manik, is absolutely charming. She’s been taking very good care of us already, stocking the minibar with gin and scotch and Coke Zero (and removing all the other stuff, so there’s more room for gin and scotch!) and having a fresh bucket of ice brought up twice a day. (Since the ships are identical, I won’t go into a great bit of detail about the rest of the ship. If you want to know more, you can read the post from our first Viking experience here.)

As soon as we got on board and got unpacked, we headed to our favourite spot at the front of the ship and discovered to our delight that the bartender at Pop’s Explorer Lounge makes quite an excellent martini. After a couple of those, it was off to dinner with friends and shipmates Linda and Hope. Dinner was excellent as always and then four very tired travellers headed off to bed. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this on previous travelogues, but the beds and linens on Viking Ocean ships are absolute perfection. Even though I usually only sleep around 5-6 hours per night, we both absolutely crashed right after dinner and didn’t wake up until after 9am(!) Whether that was residual jet lag or just good beds, I don’t know.
We headed up to the buffet for a quick breakfast, then disembarked for a bit of exploring in Bergen.

Bergen is a very old city, having been founded in 1070 by King Olav Kyrre. Many of the buildings from as early as the 1600s and 1700s are still in use today, such as Bryggen, a shopping area and UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Norway’s King Harald V was in Bergen while we were here, first to welcome home this tall ship from its around-the-world voyage…

…and at the Bergenhus Fortress, where he welcomed a new bishop. They fired the cannons in celebration, which got everyone’s attention!

Then it was back to the ship for a nice dinner (sushi buffet, crab cakes, marinated octopus, etc) and a glass of port while we watched the sun set over the ocean. It was a good day.

On to Shetland!

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