Hilsener fra Bergen! — Adventure Dinosaur

Comrades, Hilsener fra Bergen!

So, I’m out in Norway and just completed work out here, I was able to do a little sightseeing last weekend and now I’m out on a mini holiday. The people here are pretty friendly and there are spectacular views of the city from the piers and also after gaining a little be of elevation. It’s especially cold this time of year, cloudy for the most part, but the clouds are allowing for soft shadows which is great for photography. The streets are well lit when it gets dark (which makes sense since it stays dark for a good part of the day this time of the year) and it feels safe walking around. Right now the city is gearing up for Christmas with lots of holiday decorations going up everywhere and there's even a little Christmas village.

It was interesting driving around here, and it make me realize that I should learn the signage better. On that note, when the traffic signals are about to turn green, the yellow light also turns on (in addition to the red) like a count down before turning green giving drivers a little advance notice. I think it’s great and helps with paying attention to traffic a bit more. The mass transit system here works pretty well with a lot of options; many buses and routes with displays by the stops indicating the ETA of the buses and also easy to purchase tickets with the machines being right at the stop. Many of the roads in the city are stone and not asphalt and there are numerous one way streets.

Taking a page out of the American sales book, they have a Black Week and Black Friday with a lot of discounts going around the city and heavy advertisement about it. I was able to score a down jacket for cheap and the quality seems decent. While the dollar is pretty strong conversion rate is about 9.11 NOK to the dollar, the food seems a lot more expensive than I would expect. Where I would expect to get a decent meal at a Thai restaurant for maybe about $12 to $15 in the US, it is starting around $18 here. A trick I've learned for converting from NOK to the dollar is divide by ten and then add 10% which produces a decent estimate of how much items are going to cost. That being said, I learned the hard way that all the shops are closed on Sundays. It reminds me of Ushuaia down in South America where nothing but some restaurants are open on Sundays which caters more to the tourists. Speaking of, for posting business hours, most (if not all) stores and traffic signs use military time which helps eliminate a lot of ambiguity.

Of course my inner nerd came out and I’ve gotten a little bit of time in the evenings to play Pokémon GO, met few new people, and trade for a couple of regional Pokemon to fill my dex. I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do for the few days I'm here. I booked the Norway in a Nutshell tour, but a lot of the tours I wanted to do are off season and the literature that advertises them says they’re available during winter, but they’re really not. I was thinking of flying up north to see the Aurora Borealis; however, I don’t feel it is currently worth the expense to go up North just to potentially see the Aurora. Hopefully next time when I can when I have a longer time to spend up there to increase my odds of seeing it. I’ve gotten a lot of good ideas for what to do when I come out next; I feel a long trip out here is in my near future.

Cheers!

Garrett