Norway's Flam: Mountains and Valleys by Train and Coach (Friday, July 1)

As we begin to make our way back along the Aurlandsfjord (a branch of the huge Sognefjord) toward the Norwegian Sea, we're tired, but grateful for the long hours of daylight. We can enjoy again the beauty of this place, its green waters tucked between steep wooded mountainsides. At times there are sheer rock faces that descend far below the water, plunging precipitously into this deepest of Norway's fjords. We have been anchored in the harbor at Flaam, a very small community of 380 or so people, including those who live up the valley from the village.

Our excursion took us from Flaam on the Flambahn railway up the very steep grade to Myrdal, then onto the public train to Voss where we had lunch at Fleischer's Hotel, then took a motor coach down through the truly frightening switchbacks of Stalheimskleivane, Norway's steepest road. Fortunately, it is now one-way. I'm not sure our nerves would have managed another coach coming at us on such a narrow road with a tiny little wall between us and the deep gorge below. We did, of course, make it safely back, thus we sit here now, wine at hand, to share our day.

I was up very early again, sometime around 3:30 AM, unable to get back to sleep and excited to see the views outside our window when daylight came around 4:30. The scenery along the Sognefjord reminds us very much of similar passages in Alaska. There are more homes and farms along the shore here almost all the 100 miles or so from the sea to the inner reaches of the fjord. It's been raining here a lot and waterfalls cascade down the hillsides from the tops of peaks, most of them in the 2500-foot range, we're told. Along the shores we saw vineyards, some with vines covered like we saw done in Australia for white wine grapes.  (We later learned that these are orchards, rather than vineyards, where they are growing apples, pears and other fruit.)

During our train adventure, we saw even more spectacular stretches of river, swollen and rushing violently down the hills, some waterfalls throwing up spray so thick it's hard to photograph for all the mist across the camera lens. We stopped specifically to photograph Kjosfossen Falls, a 300-foot cataract that bursts down a gorge overlooking the rail line. A platform has been built there to allow close-up views and photography. The challenge is to keep one's self and one's camera dry enough to succeed.

In addition to the construction marvel that is the rail line itself, the Norwegians cleverly created tunnels for the river that accumulates all the mountain runoff so that there are no bridges over the river here. Instead, the river runs through tunnels under the road. There are also tunnels through which the railway and roadways run, cutting into the rock faces of these mountains. We went through a couple of long tunnels, many miles of darkness that were actually welcome moments for napping as we continue to adjust to this time zone.

The hotel in Voss where we had lunch provided an amazing buffet, seating hundreds of tourists in a huge, wood-paneled room with a very high ceiling, decorated with painted tiles and old photographs. One wall of windows overlooks Voss Lake, beside which stands a statue of a man we never expected to see here. It's Knute Rockne, a native son of Voss, depicted life-size in bronze, football in his hands. Born here in 1888, Rockne moved to the USA with his family when he was about 4 years old. And the rest, as they say, is history.

While our guide for this tour showed us pictures of the wide variety of wildlife that lives around here--lynx, brown bears, wolverines, reindeer, etc.--we saw none of them outside our windows. They are, he says, "shy." Despite the presence of these predators (pronounced pre-day-tors by our guy), it's a popular area for hikers in summer and skiers in winter. Though the native population is small, thousands of tourists come here, providing an economy no longer dependent on just agriculture or the mining of stone he called anorthosite or "moon rock," a white stone used in everything from paving to tooth paste all over the world.

We heard a bit about Norway's public health and pension systems. They are funded through the wealth from offshore oil fields which also provide free education all the way through university studies for all. The reference for all of this was to Norway's orientation to societal values, rather than what some Americans might deride as socialism.

This beautiful combination of sea and mountains, valleys and villages, is charming. Despite the rain and fog that obscured our views, we've had a grand time, soaking it all up. Our fellow passengers have come here from all over the world and we delight in hearing so many languages, so many renditions of English, too, as we engage in the shared experience of this place. Many of those on our ship are regular travelers, so we recount our journeys to one another, collaborating on "best deals" and "most magical places."

With luck, we'll sleep a bit more soundly and, perhaps, a bit later tonight before we rise again to see what is around us, take our walk along the deck in early morning, and go ashore in Aalesund.

                                                                          All photos by Mike Lumpkin