Bergen; Thursday, 26 October, 2006

After a massive breakfast (and a twenty-minute rest to allow some sort of digestion to start) I staggered out of the hotel and into the centre of town. First stop was the tourist information centre for a Bergen card, and as they were selling them some postcards and stamps (might as well get it all done at once).

I had a wander through the city centre and out to the station where I collected my tickets for my trip to Flåm on Saturday. I then wandered back into the centre and on to the most historic part of the city, Bryggen

This tight collection of buildings and small lanes was home to the Hanseatic (see Riga, Lübeck, Hanover, Bremen, Krakow...) merchants, who turned Bergen into the most important city in Norway, and one of the most important cities in Europe. All the buildings are timber and are literally floating on a timber raft anchored at the edge of the Fjord. They all have an olde worlde feel to them and a distinct lean. Sadly this final feature is a more modern problem. In 1944, whilst Norway was occupied, a German munitions boat exploded in the harbour destroying most of the castle area and severely damaging the Bryggen.

Wandering through the tiny alleyways you finally find yourself at a not particularly appealing concrete building. This is the Bryggen museum. It tells the history of the area, the Hanseatic traders, and has remains of several further buildings from the area, dating back to the 12th Century left in situ where they were discovered (the building was built around them, which partly excuses some of its less than brilliant architecture)

From the museum it's a short walk further down the harbour side to the Bergenhus, the side of the city castle. Only a few buildings remain now, and they all had to be rebuilt following the 1944 explosion. On a Thursday in October the only building that is open is the Håkonshallen, sadly this doesn't open until the late afternoon, so instead, given the weather had taken a short breather I walked back to the centre of town and caught the funicular railway up to Fløyen. The views from the top are spectacular, not only of the city laid out beneath you, but also across the fjords that stretch away from the city.

After about 20 minutes the weather started to close in again so I caught the train back down the hill and popped back to the hotel for a while to dry off.

A little later, and only once the Håkonshallen was actually open, I wandered back out from the hotel over to it. The hall is the main remnant of the old castle, and the top floor, a massive open space with a proper Norwegian hammer beam roof, is spectacular. By the time I left the castle the sun was (or at least would have been had it ever managed to break through the clouds) setting, so I decided to hop on the Fløibanen again and get some photos of Bergen in the dusk.

Once again, after about 20 minutes the weather started to close in, though this time accompanied by a wind that appeared to want to make me make the 320m descent faster than 8 minute train trip! I wandered back through the town, stopped for a Norwegian grilled sausage (I was still quite full from breakfast) and then headed back to the hotel, for a quiet evening and an early night.