Bergen: About vikings and flying ships...

The city of Bergen..
A city of rain...
A city like any other...

I will start introducing Bergens main attraction:

Rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...
Rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...
Rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...
Rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...
rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...
rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...
rain...rain...rain...rain...rain...
rain...rain...rain...
rain...rain...
rain
...

Don't know if they made it, but this year there was a chance they would brake a record about the highest amount of days with rain proing down...

Nevertheless, Over 4 days we had about 6 hours where it didn't rain. Me and an American pal took the train up the mountain to see the city from above...

Like it?

We decided to walk down, all of a sudden there was a large road going to the right.

"Could this be a shortcut?
Yeah, think so, let's take it."

About 300 meters down it started to narrow untill...
this:

At about 19h it's dark this time of the year. I can tell you it was dark when we came down.
But adventurous as we are, we didn't turn back.
It's slippery, it's steep, it's a little dangerous...
Probably faster just following the main road...

I think I mentioned the rain, didn't I?
So we got the Bergen card, allowing us to take free busses, and visit a lot of places for free...

So we visited about everything the card allowed us to.

Musea:
4 art musea:

Nothing interactive, just paintings on the wall...

This contemporary art was very intruiging:

A litle girl (4-5y?) was watching it with her dad. At some moments she looked up and started smiling. I captured some of the moments she did so.

Viewing this situation could have been a video-art project in itself. It was the most striking thing I saw during our stay.

A little art history:
An opportunity to learn norwegian :-) Enjoy!

They also displayed some photographs. I wonder wether to send in some of my own.
I did not quite understand why these are museum grade.
After all, this was an artmuseum, not one about industrial history :-)

These are 2 I made travelling the train down the mountian another day:

Ever been IN a clowd, in blistering wind?
Can tell you it's very wet, very cold and visibility is nearly zero.
These trees where probably 10 meters away...

Ok, I was talking musea:
Some bridal crowns on display;
Nice, very nice...

All of a sudden we stumbled upon this flying ship...
I know Norwegians are masters in seafaring, but I did not expect them to have flying ships around the 1700's.

Reading the information it became clear they used to donate ship replica's to church so their ship would be blessed on all it's journeys.

Oh, here's an image for a Dutch friend, yes, there are pinguins overhere...

Flying ships, and masts on roofs; very awkward. So after all, not a city like any other?

Clown was joking :-)
They have a tallship down the port, just behind the building...
Nice, but nothing I had not seen before :-(

Before they entered the modern ages, Bergen was built up with wooden houses, two of those old streets have remainded intact. They are now restaurants (that is a faulty term, it should be: very expensive places to have dinner) and musea...

Very handy if you want to borrow an egg or salt from your neighbour across the road, but I wonder about fires willing to visit the same neighbour...

And of course, some of the coloured houses. These days, every house is white.
Is it a law, do they like white, is white paint for free, don't they want their houses to be seen in the snow?
Leave a comment if you have a definite answer :-)

Oh, this image has been optimised to remove any lensdistortions. These old houses just aren't straight (anymore?). So forget about Pizza, Italy, they only have one tower leaning, here there's lots...

AHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Viking stuff:

Master seafarers.
Without GPS, they made all their travels mainly using the item to the lower left.

So, another been there, seen that :-)

As Luke, the American, does not have access to old buildings back home (heck, they don't even display art containing nudity, so he took more then 300 pics :-), we visited Häakons hall.

This building was blown apart during WOII:

But luckily restored to it's former glory...
Not carrying a tripod, this is another example about modern technology...iso 3200 on full frame...nice.

Yes,I am aware the image isn't straight. Just tilt your head and you'll be fine :-)

Near Bergen, they have an old stave church. Dating early 12th century.
That is one thing we do not have back home.

As it kept on raining (goretex is a great invention) we hopped indoors when we could.
In this church they happened to be recording a choir performance. So canon, a whisperingly quite shutter would be ever so nice, please, if you could be as kind...

And to close todays story, a meeting with Norwegian natives:

Ha det!