After a long period with cold weather and much rain the sun has found Bergen again. A few hours with sun and all the miserable weather is forgotten. People smile, go outside and enjoy.
I used the few sunny hours to climb another of Bergens mountains: Løvstakken. With 477 m Løvstakken is not the highest mountain but still very popular for hiking.
Some weeks ago I thought this is the last day of skiing before the summer. But it turned out I was wrong, because last week the summer ski center on the Folgafonna glacier opened. And there we went.
After driving through the beautiful Hardanger we arrived at the foot of the glacier. There is so much snow, that the road has at least 3m snow on each side. The weather was sunny, foggy and snowy and you could feel the cold icy air from the glacier when skiing down.
On the way home we missed the ferry by 2 minutes (despite the rally), and spent some time botanizing (got crash course in mosses) and had soft ice.
Takk for en kjempefin tur Mari!
A warm wind blew from the south today and there are flowers on every corner. It’s spring!
I got a camera today (from Japan), which I will install in the mountains this summer to record pollinators. Now I can start testing the thing in the rain! See how it likes Norwegian weather…
My mum and aunt have a few hobbies. One is collecting fire wood (nothing strange in Norway). Another hobby is to collect bottles with deposits along the road sides. They are saving the money for some bottles of wine.
Today, I went on a bottle collecting trip with my aunt. We walked about 500m along the main road and found bottles worth 48 NOK. It’s amazing what people throw away along the road. But imagine if we would walk all the thousands of kilometers of roads in the country, how rich would we get! The catch of the day was a coke can with an advertisement from the olympic games 1988 in Seoul.
Conclusions: Norwegians drink Hansa beer and cans don’t decay!
I am following the Norwegian tradition and went on „Påskeferie“. Mr. K has gone to the other end of the world for two weeks, so not Switzerland this time. But I went up north to Håvoll to visit my aunt, eat lot’s of good food and relax. It feels more like a winter holiday though… But the sun should come out anytime now!
I am learning about Norwegian traditions, that I was not aware of before. Easter holiday is very important in Norway. People go to their huts in the mountains for skiing trips. Another tradition for coffee roaster is to produce a special coffee for special occasions such as Easter and Christmas. I bought the „påske kaffe“ from Jacu and I’m very curious how it will taste.
On Saturday I made it to one of „The Seven“. The Seven are seven mountains surrounding Bergen. It is an ongoing discussion, which seven mountains that belong to The Seven, or are there five or nine? And depending on who you ask and where they live, you’ll get different answers. I don’t want to go into this discussion here, but I will hike some of the mountains surrounding Bergen. Also the numbers don’t mean anything other than the order that I’ll hike them;-)
Ulriken is the highest of the mountains (643m). A steep and rocky trail leads up to the top. From the top one can see the open ocean and snowy mountain tops towards the east.
It’s much warmer today, but now the rain has set in, again. Grey in grey, a day for Føniks.
I’m a few days in Håvoll. Working-holiday. It is cold here, with only 3.5°C in the morning. But the mountain tops are covered in white.
