Arrival

            Our journey started off with some nice surprises. For one, all of our flights were on time or early, which has never happened before with so many flights. We actually had to wait on the taxi way in New York because we landed so early that the gate wasn’t ready. We were a little worried about short time we had to change gates but it turned out the other gate was literally a hundred feet if that from the gate we arrived at in NY. The flight to London left the gate on time and we had to sit some more because of the strict landing times in London and we were going to be twenty minutes early. Finally, we took off and had some dinner and were about to fall asleep when the drama came out.

            First, we had a girl who was scared to death of flying so she decided to cope with it by standing in the back of the plane huddled up near the bathroom. As the flight attendants explained to her, its not the best part of the plane to be in if you want to feel less turbulence. They eventually talked her back to her seat and checked on her frequently to make sure she was doing okay. In the meantime, the lights went out and it was time to nap. Except, someone else had an anxiety attack so they had to flip on the lights, call for a doctor, and the girl was sitting just a few rows in front of us. As this was happening, the man two rows in front of us decided he’d had enough of the four year old kicking and screaming so he turned around and gave the father of the child a piece of his mind. This turned into a heated discussion with the kids father basically admitting he had no control of his four year old child. I feel like nominating him for father of the year. After everything settled down, we took an hour nap before we landed.

            After all of that, we slept like babies on the flight to Oslo and the train ride to Bergen(another 8 hours) and finally, at 1030 pm, we got to Bergen. We walked out of the train station and realized we had no clue where we were going. I walked back in to the train station convenience store and asked the girl where our street was. This was when we learned that Norwegians and giving precise directions don’t go well together. We had already looked outside the station so we knew there were three streets heading out. She told me to just walk straight out and take that street up and I’d see our street. I verified that she meant the middle street and she agreed. We left and after walking for some time, we decided to go into another store and ask the guy behind the counter. He told us to back to the police station we’d passed and turn left and we’d see it. So we did and eventually we came to the street. We found out later that the girl in the train station should have told us to take the street to the right and that was our street.

After we checked in, we headed out to meet some friends who were in Bergen as well. After meeting up and walking around a bit, we decided to grab a bite to eat at the local sausage stand. While getting out some money, we started discussing the etiquette of simply talking to someone in English or asking if they speak it first. So to settle our debate, we turned to the guy standing near us and asked him about it and he told us to just speak in English because most Norwegians speak some and that they might be hesitant to speak due to their perfectionism and fear and messing up the language. We ended up talking to him a few minutes about how expensive the country is and other parts of Norwegian culture. He was surprised foreigners wanted to visit Norway and recommended we try the reindeer sausage since it was a local specialty. Indeed, it was tasty. After a bit of socializing, we all decided it was time for bed. We're going to try a different layout this time around and hopefully it makes the blog more readable. 

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