avsporing

One of the parts of my trip I was most looking forward to was the train ride from Bergen to Oslo. It's supposed to be one of the world's most scenic train routes. Well, a train freaking *derailed* on the line three days before I was supposed to take it. (Too much snow. Yeah. In Norway, a train derails because there's too much snow. Don't you think they would have worked this out?) When I got to the train station Saturday morning, the sign (below) said we'd be on a bus from Voss to Ål. I looked at the timetable, and that wasn't so bad - it's only an hour on the train to Voss, but Ål is three and a half hours before Oslo, so hey, that's still some quality train time.

Only it turned out the plan had changed. We did an hour on the train to Voss, much of it in tunnels, then a seven. anda. half. hour. bus ride to Oslo. Ugh. It's probably one of the world's most scenic bus rides, too, but it was considerably lacking in comfort. I did get to go through the world's longest road tunnel, but I didn't know it at the time. (I was just thinking, wow, we've been in this tunnel for a really long time.)

This is the bus at our second rest stop of the day, in Gol.

"Norway in a Nutshell" is the name of a really lovely tour that the rail company will set up for you - it's scenic and beautiful and involves mostly trains. Whenever I saw the bus, though, I thought that really, a day on a full bus with no toilets and lots of small children is *not* the Norway experience in a nutshell. Norway has bathrooms. And quiet. (To be fair, the kids were all very well-behaved.)

So, I guess I have to go back and try to take the train again.