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Scandinavia 2019 Travel Blog – June 20

Scandinavia 2019 Travel Blog – June 20

By Kim Andersen

Homes in the Scandinavian countryside.
Bleak and overcast above the treeline. Pockets of snow left over from winter.

Today was a logistics day getting from Bergen to Oslo: 6 hours and 45 minutes, one of the most spectacular train journeys on the planet. The train slowly crawls up through rocky terrain, thick forest thinning and eventually giving way to a moonscape of intermittent snow-piles and icy streams cascading down west. From the village Finse at 1222 “m.o.h.” – as the digital information screen in the train told us: “1222 meter over havet” = meters above sea level (4,009 ft), the highest point in the entire Norwegian rail system. From there streams cascade down the other direction, towards east.

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Scandinavia 2019 Travel Blog – June 19

Group of students holding the Cougar flag in Bergen.

Scandinavia 2019 Travel Blog – June 19

By Kim Andersen

Bergen, day 3, Wednesday, June 19

Fun little things always happen. Last night sitting talking at the hotel a pair of elderly American travelers came over full of joy having recognized a group of Cougars in a foreign land. They had friends and family working and studying at WSU. Gave us that sense of pride we all know. Then this morning as we headed out a group of Norwegian high school students whose class assignment was to interview visitors to Bergen conducted a lengthy, fun interview with our group. They were in luck, of course, as our students know exactly how to handle such an interview. Such happenings, as benign as they are, make our students aware that they come from a special place, that they represent both themselves and our university which is such a great part of who they are now and will become.

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Scandinavia 2019 Travel Blog – June 18

Group shot

Scandinavia 2019 Travel Blog – June 18

By Kim Andersen

The weather-gods smiled at us today. Blue skies and mixed clouds, a brisk breeze but no rain as we headed to Haakon’s Hall and the Rosenkrantz Tower for our 10 a.m. hour-long, guided tour appointment. Before then the breakfast-gods had virtually cheered us. Nobody does buffet-breakfast like decent Norwegian hotels. Beyond numerous kinds of freshly baked breads, the hot sausages, meatballs, warm liver pate, the salmon and smoked mackerel, the marinated herring, the cheese, the cold cuts – – it feels embarrassingly crude to even mention the scrambled eggs, fried eggs topped with crispy bacon, hard and soft boiled eggs, and fried potatoes. Just load it up…

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Scandinavia 2019 Travel Blog – June 17

Students at the airport.

Scandinavia 2019 Travel Blog – June 17

By Kim Andersen

Scattered between 9:25 a.m. and 3:25 p.m. on Monday, June 17, 2019, all 18 participants in the Honors College faculty-led trip to Scandinavia arrived Flesland airport outside Bergen, Norway. Here we begin a 15 day travel adventure through Scandinavia: from Bergen to Copenhagen, Denmark, finishing in Stockholm, Sweden, on July 1. Much is planned during this time: visits to castles and museums, to city halls and cathedrals to get a grasp of those cultures as they are now and how they were in the past. Not least we will pursue the Vikings as we will investigate up close the Viking ships in Oslo and Roskilde and the exhibits in national museums. Tomorrow morning we start with a guided tour of Haakan’s Hall and the Rosenkrantz Tower built in the 1100s and still sitting prominently at the entrance to Bergen harbor. More on that in tomorrow’s report.

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