Bergen – the beginning of a great journey

Norway has long lived in my head in the form of photographs with huge mountains, waterfalls and roads that seemed to have been specially laid between the fjords for the sake of beauty. Everything looked so perfect in the pictures that I even suspected a bit of a catch: well, the country can't really be so beautiful, and even in everyday life, without five filters and a special photographer from a helicopter. In the end, I decided to check everything out myself and went on a road trip, where the main plan was to see the fjords, and the backup plan was at least not to get lost on the way.

I decided to start the trip from Bergen. The city greeted me with colorful houses, narrow streets, mountains all around, and rain, which the locals seem to perceive about as calmly as we do with ordinary clouds.

I came hoping for beautiful sunny photos, but Norway quickly explained to me the local rules: if the sun is out now, it's better to take pictures right away, because in ten minutes everything can change.

Bergen Embankment

After Bergen, I picked up the car and drove on, towards the fjords, for which the whole trip was conceived. The further away I got from the city, the fewer houses there were and the more mountains, water, tunnels and waterfalls appeared around, and sometimes all this appeared so unexpectedly that I wanted to stop the car literally after every turn. 

I realized very quickly that in Norway, even an ordinary road can steal half an hour of your time, simply because there's a view nearby that makes it impossible to just say, "Well, we'll see later."