The landscape is so wonderful, that it hurts from the inside - Liv Ullman
Once there was a tourist who visited Bergen. After three days of rain, the man asked the son of the inn keeper: “Does the rain ever stop?” “I don’t know sir”, the boy replied, “because I’m only six years old”.
With an average of 200 day of rain, Bergen is the most rainy city of Europe. As we cycle into the city, it is somewhat cloudy, dry and sometimes the sun comes through to take a peek.
The North Sea Cycle Route ends in Bergen. A cycle route around the North Sea, that - as it happens - also go past our home, and over which we cycle a part of it every day. While under way we found a lot more commonalities which our home. Wind! As at our home, sometimes it can’t blow hard enough. And for a moment we were upset: we thought we were far away from Westland, where we live. But no, even greenhouses are included here! (For those who don’t know us very well: we live in ‘Westland’, an area knows best for it’s green houses). We cycle on over the Vestlandske hovedveg and past a Vestlandsk museum (both sound similar in Dutch). And in the same way at home, we fall a sleep on the sound of the waves.
There are differences though: ‘Our’ North Sea route may be nice, but here in the north I am short on words to describe it! Remy summarized it with Marry Poppins “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. If you find this too hard to read: the pictures speak for themselves.
By the way, do you know that the real Statue of Liberty is in Norway? Tuesday morning we set out with Wenche Lindtner of Regionalt Pilegrimssenter Avaldsnes. We took a bicycle ride to the former mining village of Visnes on the island of Kamrøy. A beautiful place with a museum, pilgrim accommodation and the Statue of Liberty, which I always thought was in New York. The one in New York must be a replica of this one.
Bergen is a beautiful city. Yesterday we visited the pilgrim centre in the Bryggen district and today the art museum KODE. Bergen is also a fine cycling city. With a 3-kilometre-long tunnel, Bergen has the longest bicycle tunnel in the world. We just had to go through that, of course! Or actually twice. Because we entered a part of the city where we didn't need to be at all, and so we went back through the tunnel as well.
"Have you cycled through the tunnel yet?" the old lady asks. "Yes, we just did," I said in my best Norwegian. "I walked back and forth ten times yesterday!", and she raises ten fingers in the air. I doubt I understood her correctly. The tunnel is 3 km. Walked 30 kilometres? Through a tunnel? Well, whatever she did yesterday, she looked proud and beaming with our compliments. Either way, she did a mega achievement!
