This is another one of those “Josh was grouchy so he made a place sound worse than it was” posts. Ignore that guy; Bergen and Oslo are both wonderful places.

I have not had a good few days.

Let’s begin at the end – I’ve just spent the last 26 hours hanging around Oslo train station. The reasoning behind this is that the night train I was supposed to get on Saturday night was cancelled, and this saturday night also happened to be the night that some football cup final fell upon, so all the city’s hostels and cheap hotels were full of beered up Norwegians. So I got to Oslo at 6pm, took about seven hours to come to the conclusion that I was not going to be spending my night comfortably, and took stock. My Game Boy and iPod had both run out of batteries on the seven-hour train journey from Bergen, I didn’t want to withdraw cash as this was supposed to be my last hurrah in Norway, and my only book was The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevski, which I’m really enjoying but can be kinda dense after midnight has been and long since gone. The internet cafes all closed at midnight; I made use of them as much as I could before they did, for warmth as much as entertainment.

For those who are interested, the blue team beat the yellow team by a conclusive margin. I know this because I had to sit in the drizzle watching them do what football fans do at 3am, as the train station itself was closed between 1am and 6am. Yeah, that was amusing. Feh – I’ve had to sleep rough before, but never in a city I didn’t know, much less a city in a foreign country miles away from anyone I knew, and never in anywhere quite so fucking cold.

Still, I suppose the situation had a certain gloomy inevitability about it. And at least I know what to do next time it happens (i.e. get a night train to anywhere then get another train back in the morning – that’s what the Interrail pass is for, dipstick). Tonight I get the sleeper back to Stockholm, and I’ll probably spend a day and a night in Stockholm recharging batteries – Game Boy, iPod, and me.

So, back slightly further, to Bergen, where I ostensiably celebrated my birthday. Bergen’s indescribably beautiful and utterly dull. It is a city that hasn’t quite gotten over being a fishing village, which is admittedly part of its charm, but it’s no good whatsoever for celebrating a birthday in. Still, we got some hiking in (despite almost constant rain – I managed to get through three pairs of trousers in one day, which I think is some kind of record) – on the day of my birthday we actually went up into the hills for a good seven or eight hours, which was a lot of fun, although my knees are really feeling the benefit just now.

It isn’t all doom and gloom, though. For the train journey from Oslo to Bergen, we were blessed with good weather, and were thus able to get a good look at what is undoubtedly the most beautiful chunk of landscape in God’s creation. The train track wends its way 1,222 meters above sea level, through the cloud cover and up into the mountain peaks; the entire route is dominated by perfectly still mountain lakes, fast river rapids, tiny villages and even, at one point, a glacier so close that you could wind down the window in the train and hit it with a rock. The one problem with the whole experience was that I could only experience it from behind a sheet of glass, in a train. I wanted nothing more than to get out and get my boots dirty; run my hand through the water, climb the ice-carved rock peaks, and see how deep the snow really was between the trees. Watching it all through the window of a train was maybe slightly better than looking at a photograph, but not by much. Perhaps someday I shall have to come back, during the summer maybe, with some decent hiking boots and a tent. That would be something.

The city of Bergen itself has everything and nothing. It has a leper museum, which I went to for the simple reason that I will almost certainly never find another leper museum anywhere, but it was quite dull. It had a lot of old churches and buildings that you couldn’t go inside. It had a fish market that sold fish, and I didn’t want any fish, so I saw it through and left. I’d love to live there – despite the 300 days of rain per year – but it’s not a great town for touristing.

Oh, and Norway is HELLA expensive. I can’t wait to get to Estonia, which is hopefully where I will be by next weekend, and where I can probably live comfortably for a day on the price of a Norwegian cup of coffee.

OK, that’s enough bellyaching for now. The next update will be less bellicose, I promise! I shall go to Helsinki with a soul full of optimisim and a song in my heart. The song will probably be something like Unwell by Matchbox Twenty but it is the thought that counts!

Hope you are all well and happy.