NORWAY 2019 - Part 2: The Norway-In-A-Nutshell Tour

Today, I want to take my dear readers on an adventurous and exciting tour that will lead us to some of the most beautiful and typical places and landscapes in Norway.

We start in Bergen at 12:57 and take the famous Bergen Railway to Voss, where we take the bus towards Gudvangen. One of the first highlights is experienced during the bus ride, which takes us down the extremely narrow Stalheimskleiva Road with its 13 hairpin bends to the Naeroyfjord valley. The first, not very high-quality picture gives a small impression, or rather imprint, of this journey. Reflecting windows and the fact that you are tossed back and forth in the bus during the drive through the exceptionally tight curves - always with the uneasy feeling that the bus could tip over and plunge down the steep slope - did not allow for a better picture. However, this captures the experience of the bus ride.

In Gudvangen, we then board the ferry that will take us on a journey of about two hours, first through the Naeroyfjord and then over the Aurlandsfjord, both of which are among the most impressive in Norway due to their high cliffs, to the village of Flam. Exceptionally, I also include a picture of myself here, just to prove that it is really me who is on this journey and not someone else pretending to be me and posting these pictures under my name.

The subsequent journey with the Flam Railway from Flam to Myrdal is a truly heavenly ecstasy experience of the highest class for a passionate railway enthusiast like me. It is a lifelong dream come true: to have the unforgettable experience of riding the incomparably extraordinary Flam Railway, which winds its way up from sea level in Flam to an altitude of 866 meters with an incredible gradient of 55 per mille (for comparison, the Semmering Railway in Austria is 'only' 25 per mille steep). The train stops at Kjosfoss Waterfall, located half on a bridge and half in a tunnel. A picture taken from the moving train shows the Myrdal station high above, which the train, hauled by two high-performance locomotives from Swiss production, still has to struggle up to. The last picture clearly illustrates the considerable incline of this railway, with the train leaving Myrdal and heading towards Flam.

We have to wait for about three quarters of an hour at Myrdal station for our connecting train to Bergen. We finally reach Bergen around 22:30 with a small delay. And with indelibly impressive images in our minds, we go to sleep, deeply fulfilled.