Kristiansand, Oslo, Rånåsfoss & Flåm

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Hello from Copenhagen!

We last wrote from Kristiansand, Norway after cycling for many days. We had gone into a photo shop to transfer our photos to CD and we met a wonderful gentleman named Johanas who offered to take us out on his boat the next evening to see the area called Blind-leia. We met him and his daughter the next evening near the old town fortress in Kristiansand and went for a cruise around what must be the most expensive real estate in Norway. We had a wonderful time seeing all of the old houses and learning about the history of the area. Heather enjoyed playing with his daughter while Johanas and I talked about all sorts of things.

Heather & Johanas


A typical area of summer cottages in the Blind-leia


The next morning we checked out a few more sights around Kristiansand before catching an afternoon train to Olso. The train ride to Oslo was nice. The land looks very much like the Cle Elum/Alpine Lakes/North Bend area. We arrived in Olso around 22:00 that evening and decided to cycle to our home for the evening with Anthony (a hospitality club connection) just south of the city center. Anthony was very kind and told of us his experiences in Norway over the past few years. Anthony moved to Norway from England and is currently teaching English so it was interesting to get his perspectves on the country.

In the morning we caught a 9:00 train for a 45 minute ride to Rånåsfoss to meet some of my extended family. We were the only ones to get off the train in Rånåsfoss and were met by Per Wien. Per is married to Anne who is my second cousin, one generation removed. We started the day in Rånåsfoss with a nice (and I think typical Norweigan breakfast) and talked about Norway, Seattle and our two families. It was quite nice.

Typical breakfast in Norway: brown bread, cheese, caviar paste, soft-boiled eggs, cold cuts, tea, coffee, jelly and maybe a few other things


After breakfast we headed down to the Rånåsfoss power plant where my grandfater's cousin Gudrun's husband worked for many years. Knut showed us around the power plant which was fascinating. It has been in operation since 1921 and generates 6% of Norway's electricity. Almost all of the equipment including the generators are original equipment from the early 1900's. Amazing.

Touring the power plant with Knut and Knut Jr.


Guess who made the generators in 1921


The Rånåsfoss Dam


After touring the dam we headed to Knut and Gudrun's home for some tea, coffee and waffles with jam. Most of the family that lives in Rånåsfoss came over including Gudrun & Knut and two of their daughter's families, Anne and Liv.

Some of the family


We spent the rest of the day just hanging out in Rånåsfoss and even went to the local community pool for a swim. The pool appeared to be the social hub of Rånåsfoss since there are only about 300 people living there. Beautiful small town with trains every hour to Olso. Great place to live. We had planned on heading back to Oslo that evening but the family invited us to stay at Liv's home since they were heading to their summer cottage that evening anyhow. On top of that, if we stayed, they would drive us into Oslo the following day (Sunday) and show us around. So we stayed the night in Rånåsfoss in a very nice house.

The next morning after a nice Norweigan breakfast we drove into Olso with Per and Anne. They showed us where all the interesting museums were and took us up to the Holmenkollen Ski Jump. We were actually able to to the top of it and look down the ramp. I have no idea how anyone learns to ski jump because it is a long ass way down those things, and then you have to launch off the end of it and fly for another long ass way. Crazy. You can't even see where you are going to land when you head down the ramp.

Looking over Oslo from near the Holmenkollen Ski Jump. Notice the grass roofs


Oh yeah, and the other thing was the Liv and Tony's son Fredrik had a student flat in Oslo that he would not be using until August that we were welcome to use! So we moved in. We spent the next few days touring around Oslo seeing the Fram polar expedition ship, the Olso Maritime Museum, the Kon-Tiki, some Viking ships, traditional homes from around the countryside at the Folk Museum, the Norweigan Resistance Museum, the Akershus Castle and Vigelands Park. Oslo is quite a nice city and I think has about half of Norway's population. We really liked it, but it was expensive.

The Kon-Tiki raft from Heyerdahl's famous expedition


A viking ship from around 815 A.D. that was uncovered near Oslo in a burial mound


Stave church at the Folk Museum


Before leaving Norway Heather really wanted to see some fjords. We had bought this railway pass in Kristiansand because it was going to save us some money on our Kristiansand-Oslo, Oslo-Stockholm, Stockholm-Copenhagen trips. This essentially bought us 2 free trips since we could use the pass 5 days out of 15. So we caught a train (leaving bikes in our Oslo flat) to Myrdal which is about 5 hours from Oslo towards Bergen. In Myrdal we caught another train that runs at a 1 in 18 grade (this is steep for standard trains) down to Flåm.

On the train to Myrdal


We arrived in Flåm with about 1000 other tourists that had come on the train and on a huge cruise ship. We ate dinner at a park on the water of this very small town and then went in search of a campsite. There was a campground in the town but they charged like $40 for a piece of grass. So we walked around the end of the fjord to the opposite side from the town and found a nice peice of mossy ground just next to the water. Perfect, our best campsite yet.

Our campsite in Flåm


Sunset in Flåm


We slept great and got up the next morning to catch a boat and see the fjord...