If I had to describe Bergen in one line, I would call it ‘The Florence of Norway’. A mix of art, nature, shopping, food and music, the city wins hands down as the best destination in Norway to enjoy a holiday that’s neither too fast-paced like Oslo nor too slow like Flam or Sandefjord. The tagline on the official guide to Bergen states, ‘Take good care of our city. The slogan is ‘A good city is good to live in and to visit.’ It’s obvious the citizens of Bergen live by these words.

We took a flight to Bergen from Sandefjord, where my sister and her husband met us. We rented a car at the airport (self-service counter),and drove to our B&B on Mount Floyen, of which I have written in an earlier post. The reason we rented a car was because we had planned to drive down to Flam and Oslo thereafter. It proved to be more convenient, flexible and more economical than a train ride to all these places.

There is a funicular which takes you up to the top of the mountain and down to the city. But if you can walk down the hill, I suggest you do. It’s a lovely walk ( there are wide steps provided with a railing) alongside colorful homes and fenced gardens with blooms in all hues.

Here are a few interesting door pictures I took on our walk down. These doors are for the Thursday Doors challenge hosted by Dan Antion.

So many lanes, so many doors, so little time and so little phone memory. Sigh!

We passed hundreds of houses which means hundreds of beautiful doors. However, with 2 and a half days in Bergen, a limited phone memory and loads to see, these were all I got.

When we reached the foot of the hill, we found a bus load of tourists waiting for the funicular to take them to the top of Mt. Floyen. It was a good thing we had walked down or we might be waiting on the top for the funicular to come up.

The funicular station opens to a cobblestone street lined with cafes and art galleries.

In the corner is a building with white trimmings that look like a gingerbread house. On the top floor is Starbucks. On the ground floor is Egon, a Norwegian restaurant, that serves pizzas, sandwiches, burgers and dessert. We stopped for breakfast at the restaurant before exploring the city.

The meat bazaar, was formerly called a food hall, and a center for trade in the city. It was built to control the market trade, and has been buzzing with life since 1877. The architect behind it is Conrad Fredrik von der Lippe, who is also behind Ole Bull’s Lysøen, and the style is often called Florentine Neo-Renaissance. ¹

Across Starbucks is the fish market bustling with activity at any time of the day ( it is one of the sites marked for tourists in the guide) . Under a canopy of red, there are wooden benches or chairs and tables where diners can sit and have a meal of freshly caught fish. You can choose from an array of seafood delicacies on display. But, it’s not just fish that you get here. There are stalls selling cured meat, kebabs, cheese, fruit, vegetables and ice-cream. You can’t miss it- you’ll find sea gulls circling around along the quay or perched on one of the wooden poles (used to moor the fishing trawlers), lying in wait to grab something off a plate after a diner has finished his meal and just before the busser clears the table. For lunch, I had the traditional Bergen fish soup with bread, hubby had mussels, brother-in-law had shrimps and sister had grilled cod. Freshly caught, a sprinkle of salt and pepper, a drizzle of lemon juice, and it’s ready to be devoured. Norway is a seafood lover’s paradise.

To the right of Starbucks are the colorful wooden buildings on the Vågen harbor’s eastern side that you most certainly would have seen in paintings and pictures of Bergen (also on the cover of the Bergen guide). It is the historic harbour district and the oldest port city on the west coast of Norway built as a centre for trade in the 12th century. These buildings are listed as a Unesco Heritage Site.

Once the trading area for merchants of the Hanseatic League, Bryggen now houses restaurants, pubs, museums and shops.

There are around 62 such buildings left and they show how bachelor German merchants lived and worked. It is characterized by the construction of buildings along the narrow passages running parallel to the docks. The urban units are rows of two- to three-storey buildings signified by the medieval name “gård”. They have gabled facades towards the harbour and lie on either one or both sides of the narrow passages that have the functions of a private courtyard. The houses are built in a combination of traditional timber log construction, and galleries with column and beam construction with horizontal wooden panel cladding. The roofs have original brick tiling or sheets, a result of fast repairs after an explosion during World War II. Towards the back of the gård, there are small fireproof warehouses or storerooms (kjellere) built of stone, for protection of special goods and valuables against fire. This repetitive structure was adapted to the living conditions of the Hanseatic trading post. The German merchants took up winter residence in the small individual wooden houses and the storerooms were used as individual or collective warehouses.²

If you take the road to the left of Starbucks, the city branches out into several parallel lanes. Buildings in peach, lemon green, aqua teal, yellow, white, pink and grey, not more than 3 or 4 floors high with differently shaped rooftops, make you feel like you’ve strolled right into a fairy tale. Only this one is real. The colors of the buildings go well together. It shows the amount of planning that must have gone into building these structures or making new ones because the colors and structure of each building is in perfect harmony with the others on the street.

Studying or  working in a place like Bergen must feel like a neverending holiday. Imagine waking up to the ocean, driving down a easy mountain road or taking the funicular and then going to work on an e-bike to one of the these colorful buildings, stepping out for a lunch of fish soup and bread with caviar or shrimps and watermelon,  then returning to work until 4.00 p.m. , meeting friends for a drink at one of the restaurants in the Hanseatic quarter, chatting under the open sky while music streams in from the square.

We walked towards the square. And, although it was a bright sunny day, the friendly clouds kept the sun at bay, making it easy to walk.

At the center of the square is the statue  of Ludvig Holberg, an essayist, writer, philosopher and playright, born in Bergen. He is considered the founder of modern Danish and Norwegian literature. 

We found an orchestra playing in the square when we reached. They had just finished playing a piece, and the people gathered were applauding. We stopped to listen to them play their next piece. The experience was dreamy, if you know what I mean. Like walking back in time into the era of the Sound of Music.
The air carried with it the musical notes, filling every nook and corner of the open space while the trees like sentinels watched from the mountains in admiration. The conductor raised the tempo as if to make it reach the highest peak.

Happier after having witnessed the musicians in action, we walked towards the Kode Museums. There are 4 museums dedicated to art, sculptures, music and design. We did not enter them as I was planning to visit the Munch Museum (which I have spoken of earlier). The ticket includes entry into Norwegian composer, Edvard Grieg’s home. There are a number of museums in Bergen. If you have the time, budget and the inclination then you can easily spend a day doing museum visits. Here are a few more pictures of doors on the way that I clicked.

The building behind is rikstelefon. It was once home to the National Telegraph and Telephone Service, Bergen. Now, the ground floor is a shopping mall and the top floors are office spaces

Here’s a video of festplassen.

On our way back another orchestra was playing in the square. We listened to them before heading for a three-course dinner at Bryggeriat restaurant that my sister had booked to celebrate my and my brother-in-law’s birthday. It’s hard to get a table without prior booking. So, be sure to book if you want to dine there.

In no position to walk up the mountain, we took the funicular back to our B& B after our meal.

If you’re in a rush or just want to say you’ve seen Bergen then you can complete touring the city in a day but to experience the place it’s best to spend at least two days. Walk around the colorful waterfront buildings, shop for curios in the stores there, have a drink or grab a bite watching the activity on the harbor, climb the mountain, relish the chill, crisp air and like they say, ‘stop to smell the roses.’

The challenge for this week’s Tanka Tuesday No 331, 1/8/23, is to write a syllabic poetry with the synonyms for the words, ‘Flow’ and ‘Wave’. I tried my hand at a Septex, a form created by Septex by Willow Willer: two seven-line stanzas of syllables: 7-7-7-7-7-7-7, The lines in the stanza do not rhyme, but the lines in the first stanza rhyme with the corresponding line in the second stanza e.g. The first-line stanza one rhymes with line one on stanza two, the second-line stanza one rhymes with second-line stanza two, and so on. (I highlighted a few end rhymes, so you get the idea).

*titfer- hat
*wave synonyms- swelling, quivering
*flow synonyms- drift, sway

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References:

1. https://www.bergensentrum.no/byliv_bergen/kultur-opplevelser/dagens-arkitektur-er-morgendagens-kulturminner/ ↩︎
2. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/59/ ↩︎

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