December 14-29, 2025 December 27

After a hearty breakfast at Hotel Neptun, we will prepare to head to the train station, where we will board the Bergen Railway heading towards Myrdal, and there we will transfer to the Flåmsbana to Flåm, where we will spend the next night.

A trip on the Bergen Railway offers one of Europe's most spectacular natural experiences. The train travels through the Hardangervidda National Park and the Hardangervidda, Europe's largest plateau.

The Bergen Railway opened in 1909 and crosses the high mountain range between Norway's two largest cities, Oslo and Bergen. It is the highest railway line in Northern Europe, with the highest station on the route being Finse at 1,222 meters above sea level.

The Bergen Railway is 496 kilometers long and traverses some of Europe's most inhospitable areas in six and a half hours. It was built between 1875 and 1909, and, as one might expect from a railway line with an elevation of up to 1,200 meters, construction was anything but easy.

More than 180 tunnels had to be carved into the gneiss, winter storms had to be endured, and financing this seemingly impossible project proved challenging. However, the engineers and tunnel builders who worked on this project found a way, and we should be grateful to them.

The Flåm Railway is considered one of the most beautiful train journeys in the world and is one of Norway's main tourist attractions. Each year, this amazing railway line attracts visitors from all over the world, and in 2014 it was named the most beautiful train journey in the world by Lonely Planet. The journey goes through the steep and narrow Flåm Valley, past powerful waterfalls, picturesque mountain farms, and high peaks, taking about 60 minutes and connecting to most of the day trains of the Bergen Railway between Bergen and Oslo. The railway line is open daily year-round. The landscape changes throughout the year, but is breathtaking at any time you visit. You will see rivers winding through deep gorges, waterfalls cascading down steep mountain slopes crowned with snow-covered peaks, as well as mountain farms clinging stubbornly to steep hillsides.

Departing from the Flåm station, the beautiful Aurlandsfjord is just a few meters away.

The Flåm Railway was constructed between 1923 and 1940 to ensure a transport route to the fjord from Bergen and Oslo. As one of the steepest railway lines in the world on conventional tracks with a height difference of 864 meters and an average gradient of 1 in 18, it is a testament to the boldest and most skillful engineering feats in Norwegian history.

The 20 km long railway has a total of 20 tunnels, most of which were hand-dug. There is even a horseshoe-shaped tunnel that spirals into and out of the mountain. It was opened on August 1, 1940, with two steam trains in each direction connecting to the day trains of the Bergen Railway. Electrification was completed in 1944, making it one of the first electrified railway lines in Norway.