heavy metal in bergen

Last night after we ate our dinner at the Ship Inn we came out to this sight.

The tide had gone out and left all of the boats stranded on the sand.







This morning we flew from Aberdeen Scotland to Bergen Norway, the landing was absolutely spectacular. I've never seen so many small islands in my life. Plus, the sky was perfectly blue for the first time in many days, and so the whole scene was amazing. Getting through customs and the rest of the airport went just as smoothly as you would expect from a scandinavian country.

We immediately found our SAS Airbus to take us downtown to our hotel. We are at the Hotel Thon, it is on the end of Byrggen Street, right across the road from the harbor. Its a very nice location, except that it is next to a huge city park. What is wrong with that you may ask. Well, it turns out that we picked the wrong night to stay at the Thon hotel next to the park, as tonight is the night of the Rammstein concert. Who are Rammstein you may ask? After a little internet searching I quickly learned that Rammstein are a German industrial metal band.

We are actually on the opposite side of the hotel from the concert but at the moment it is making no difference. We are trying to watch the world cup, but the sound from the concert is so loud it is drowning out the Brazilian national anthem. I would much prefer the sounds of those dumb world cup horns to the sound of a german industrial metal band. We can only hope that the concert will wrap up at a respectable time. Josh just found a view of the concert and said it looks like a bunch of black ants (yes all the concert goers are dressed in black T-shirts) streaming toward a rotting apple.

OK, enough grousing, Bergen really is a nice city. We started our tour of Bergen by meeting one of Kaia's facebook friends named Thomas at our hotel. Thomas had visited Decorah with a group of Norwegian students a couple of years ago, and volunteered to get us oriented to the city when he saw Kaia's Facebook status. He showed us around the area including the wharf and the fish market and the central park of Bergen.

Jane and Kaia spent some time shopping around the city for a sweater for Kaia. They were successful, and so Kaia can proudly celebrate her heritage at concord, and at Christmas time.

We took the Funicular up high above the city this afternoon and the view is amazing. We took Thomas' recommendation for a restaurant for supper tonight and went to Egon's. It is a Norwegian chain restaurant and the food was OK. I think we have officially reached the point of vacation where choosing a place to eat for supper and dinner in a new strange city has become somewhat of a chore. We miss the home cooking.





Tomorrow morning we have another fairly early morning, as we must be on board our ferry boat at 8 AM for the trip to Balestrand, of course early morning takes on a whole new connotation at this time of the year at this latitude. We are now far enough north that there is only a couple hours of darkness at this time of the year. Darkness is only from midnight until a little after 2 AM. The Ferry trip tomorrow promises to be a beautiful trip through the fjords, we are all looking forward to it very much.

For now we are resting and watching Brazil and the People's Republic of Korea play some football.

Location:Bergen, Norway