Experiencing Norway

Time flies so quickly on the ship. We left Norway at 9 p.m. on Friday. We had 2 days of class and tomorrow we will already be in Russia!! It can be really overwhelming at times. We barely have enough time to recover from one country before heading to the next and it will be like this all summer!! I don't want to sound too narrative but in the interest of not leaving anything important out, here's what happened each day in Norway:

Day 1:

A lot of students, myself included, woke up at 5 a.m. to watch the ship enter Norway. Bergen is a coastal town but to get there we passed several islands. After being at sea for nine days, you could feel the energy and excitement just for finally seeing land.

Before disembarking, we had a port debriefing lecture where we learned some basic information about Norway, such as how their welfare system works and that marriage is not as common as domestic partnerships since there is no financial incentive for marriage. The ship's doctor told us that healthcare in Norway is at least as good as, if not better than healthcare in the U.S., which was reassuring. After the port debriefing, at around 9, we were allowed to disembark. My first stop was the ATM to get some kroner, and I was very glad that the ATM's also had an "English" language option.

I spent a while wandering around with 2 other SAS girls, Kelsey and Shirley, who are friends from college and came on SAS together. The first thing I noticed is how touristy Bergen was. I know that Semester at Sea tries to take students to less-visited places to get a feel for what "real life" is like in those countries, so I had expected Bergen would not be so tourism-friendly. At first I was almost a little disappointed, but in retrospect it was nice to have our first port in a country that was not only English-speaking but also warmly receptive to us. As it turns out, Bergen hosts some 300+ cruise ships per year in port.

I headed back to the ship around 12 to meet for my city orientation tour. There were four different buses right on the pier which drove us around Bergen, with a tour guide, and made a few stops. Lastly, the tour stopped at the funicular station to board a little train that goes up to the top of Mt. Floyen, which overlooks Bergen. By the time we got there it was 3:30 and I was exhausted, so I just took my ticket and checked out from the SAS trip. The ticket was good any day during our port stay, so it was nice to have some flexibility. It is convenient that SAS lets you leave a field trip whenever, you just have to check out with whoever is supervising the trip. I was so tired, I went back to the ship which was maybe a ¾ mile walk and slept for a while. All in all, I didn't think the orientation field trip was worth the $40 something it cost through SAS. It was nice to get an overview of the town, but Bergen is SO tourist-friendly and easily navigable on foot I didn't really get much out of the orientation. I could see, though, how an orientation would be worthwhile in a much bigger city.

Later Monday night, a group of 18 students went out for my friend Kevin's 21st birthday. We had quite an experience trying to find a restaurant that was not only reasonably priced but could also accommodate such a large group. We ended up just going to a pizza place. I was surprised to find that Bergen had so many different types of restaurants- everything you would find in the U.S. was there- Thai, Indian, Chinese, even Tex-mex. Despite being warned in our port debriefing, everyone still had sticker shock from the high prices in Norway. Anyways, we met up later with some more SAS students and then headed back to the ship. For all of the parents who read this, rest assured that the ship is an extremely safe place- we had to show our SAS I.D. card just to get onto the dock, and the security process is to get onto the Explorer is extremely rigorous- including a metal detector, pat-down and bag inspection- every single time a student re-enters the ship.


Day 2: The second day in Norway was one of the best days of my life. I slept in late, but everyone was still recovering from the 5 on-ship time zone changes, not to mention getting up so early the day before. Zach and Marlee, two of my neighbors and I, spent the whole day exploring. First we walked to the Bergen aquarium but when we got there decided not to go since we have all been to aquariums before and looking at fish didn't seem particularly exciting at the time. We decided to head over the hill into the less-touristy part of town. After taking what seemed like one -hundred pictures of the streets and houses and everything you could imagine, we stopped in a little store and talked to the owner about life in Bergen. Although Norwegian culture often disagrees with the American political system because it so extremely opposite from their own, they were extremely receptive to SAS students and even excited that we were interested in talking to them, at least from what I experienced. Eventually, the three of us ended up at Bon Appetit, a little ice cream place which is a local chain and was recommended to us before disembarking. We spent about an hour talking with the boy who was working there. He was 19 and had just graduated high school. Soon he is going to the military, as it is required that all males join for 16 months upon high school graduation- and evading this is punishable by imprisonment. He has lived in Bergen his entire life and although he has never been to America, he has traveled extensively throughout Europe- and even gave us some travel advice for when we are in Naples! After the military he wants to go to college in Oslo, be an exchange student for a year in Paris, and eventually study law.

Zach, Marlee and I learned a lot just from talking to him and it was probably the most memorable experience in Norway for me.

For my Business and Politics of the European Union class, we are supposed to compare the price of a single item throughout each country that we go to. However, I don't think this says much about the country's economy since it's all viewed from an American perspective. For example, Americans might think that a 70 kroner (about $14) big mac is ridiculously expensive, but we come from a country where minimum wage is something around $7.15 per hour. So, instead of going around comparing prices, I decided I am going to compare wages- that way I can get a feel for what the cost of living is like for residents of the country as opposed to what the cost of being an American tourist is. As it turns out, a high-school graduate who works at Bon Appetit makes the equivalent of a whopping $24 per hour. This is almost four times what someone would get paid in the U.S.A.!!! Now I know why Norwegians don't seem to be too upset by the high prices of everything.

Okay, back to the rest of the day- after getting dinner back on the ship, a group of 7 SASers headed up Mt. Floyen on the funicular at about 8:30. One student, Jeff, is also from Rochester so I was excited to meet someone else from "back home". We continued hiking further up the hill and found an amazing spot with a breathtaking view and sat there and talked for hours. It never got dark though- Norway isn't kidding about being the land of the midnight sun. We decided to hike all the way back down the mountain and got back to the ship around 1 a.m. right as the sun was setting.

Day 3: I had previously signed up for the SAS field trip called "Norway in a Nutshell". We left the pier at 8 a.m. and it was pretty disorganized. Students were under the impression that we were taking a bus somewhere but we all just started walking and nobody told us where we were going, so it was kind of chaotic. We ended up about 20 minutes later at the Bergen train station where we got on the train. Originally, 90 students were signed up for this trip but there were only maybe 80 that showed. If students don't show up when a trip leaves, SAS lets students "walk-on" even if they didn't pay. Despite it being awful to miss a trip, especially since a lot of SAS trips are quite pricey, it's nice that SAS at least gives someone the opportunity to fill up a spot as opposed to just wasting it because someone forgot to set their alarm clock. My friend Marlee as able to go on the trip for free, so we were both excited about that. Everyone slept on the train which went through Voss up to a town called Myrdal where we got off the train. From there, we hiked 7.5 kilometers all downhill past waterfalls, little houses, and even a field of goats. I would say more about it but it's the kind of experience where pictures are truly worth a thousand words, so if I ever find a way to coordinate my blog with my pictures, you can see what I mean.

To make a long description short, it was pretty amazing. I go to school at a beautiful campus and walk over 2 waterfalls every day so I wasn't stunned, but I still appreciated the natural beauty of the hike. What I appreciated even more is how absolutely thrilled the students from Arizona and California were. My friend Jason who goes to University of Arizona accurately said "I never get to see this kind of stuff, so whenever I see green, I take a picture." We hiked at a pretty slow pace for two hours and boarded another train which took us to a very small, rural town called Flam where we got a buffet lunch at a hotel. I'm all up for trying new things but the buffet didn't have labels! So, nobody really had any clue what they were eating- some were able to figure it out by guessing. Norwegians really love mayonnaise- I have never seen so many different foods served in mayonnaise. There were like 8 dishes of potato salad, shrimp salad, etc. Also, I'm pretty sure I saw a tray of reindeer burgers... which I avoided. I guess the little kid in me didn't want to disappoint Santa Claus. We were given 20 minutes after lunch to check out the gift shop where I shamelessly bought a plastic Viking hat. We had buses pick us up in Flam and rode about an hour to Voss, and had a half-hour to explore there. It is way smaller than I thought it would be, just a scenic little town on a lake. Extreme sport week happened to be there that week so there were a ton of tourists at the time. It was another hour bus ride to get back to Bergen, and we got back to the ship around 5:30. I definitely thought the Norway in a Nutshell trip was worth the $174 price tag, although I don't know if I'll ever be able to look at mayonnaise again.


Day 4: For Friday, I had made independent (which means not through SAS) plans to see the fjords. Chris, a UVA student who lives down the hall from me, was also interested in doing this so we were able to find a 4-hour fjord cruise tour for about $80. It went from 10 a.m. til about 2 p.m. and we got a ton of amazing pictures. It was nice to branch out from the group of kids I usually hang out with and really get to know someone new. If you are a future SASer reading this, I strongly suggest you do the same at every opportunity you get. I would much rather leave this trip having met 300 people and knowing 50 very well than leaving here only knowing 6 or 7 people well. I met up with Alison after my tour- not many people are using cell phones on SAS so you have to plan a lot of things in advance. We walked around Bergen a bit more before writing some postcards and heading back to the ship. With the exception of my obnoxious Viking hat, I'm proud of myself for not going overboard and buying a million souvenir items. All in all, Norway was a lot of fun but part of that came from it being so easily accessible to Americans. Russia will certainly be a change of pace, and we'll be there in 12 hours. I don't know how I'm going to manage to keep up with blogging in every port!!


I have an intramural basketball game soon so I have to get going but you'll hear from me after Russia!! Let's keep our fingers crossed that everyone has a safe and enjoyable experience.