How do you write about a train journey that really defies description – of both words and pictures?

Philip and I took the seven-hour train journey from Oslo which is on the eastern side of Norway – near the Swedish border – to Bergen which is on the western coast of Norway.

Not once was I tempted to pick up a book and read. Well…. maybe once or twice when we went through long, dark tunnels. There was always something new or jaw-dropping around each bend. No pictures will do it justice. I’ve deleted about 98% of my photos. Mind you, I took a lot. Sometimes just trying to capture glimpses of the grandeur and wonder of it. But I’m too slow and the train is too fast. Even if I did capture the scene – very occasionally – the picture fell disappointingly short. Most of the time I just looked out the wide windows, pointed out things to Philip in case I thought he missed it, gave a gasp or drew in my breath quickly.

It’s just one of the many, many things in life that we have to experience for ourselves. I will still post a few pictures about it here. I took so many photos my phone/camera battery nearly ran out! Philip had a cord handy, so I plugged that in for a while to recharge it enough to take a few photos more.

Oslo central bus station is very upmarket – more like a posh airport with hundreds of shops and eating places. After we boarded the Bergen train which was scheduled to leave at 12:03 (which I thought a strange time – why not 12:00 or 12:05?), the train pulled out of the station exactly at 12:03. No announcement or fanfare, it just glided smoothly out of the station very efficiently, right on time. We had wide windows to look out of and comfortable seats for our seven-hour journey. A train can be much more comfortable than a plane. You can get up and down as you please, stand up the back to stretch your legs, find a better spot while you take your photos, change your seat if you want to, and much more interesting to look out the window. The seats and leg room are more comfortable too.

We rolled through tall pine and birch forests with lots of calm, reflective lakes. Most of Norway’s forests are managed sustainably. The farmers leave some of the trees behind when they’re harvesting them, so that they can drop their seeds and start growing again. So many things are made of timber. I even saw a couple of station platforms made of them.

A station platform built of timber

Wildflowers everywhere – cream, white, purple, pink, golden-yellow. Peter told me yesterday that they’ll be finished in a week or so. The season is very short. I saw lots and lots of wild ripe redcurrant bushes dripping with their ripe, ruby fruit in the forest. I looked at them longingly! When we stopped at one station, I glanced down beside the track and saw tiny, ripe wild strawberries too.

So much water! Wide, dark, smooth, calm lakes – both small and large and stretching as far as you could see in both directions.

Lots of fast, rushing, clear brown river streams – until we got higher up when the fast river colour changed to icy blue-green. In one fast-flowing stream I saw a huge chunk of ice – almost like a mini-iceberg – that had broken off a huge snow patch and had fallen into the river to become part of the river. But I wasn’t quick enough to get a photo of it.

I was very surprised at how many houses there were on the trip. Red houses, ochre houses, dark grey or white houses. Very Norwegian looking houses. Lots of small settlements to bigger towns and we stopped at some to let passengers on and off. Lots and lots and lots of small cabins dotted everywhere, all over the hills and mountains. Auntie Mollie said yesterday that she thinks all Norwegians aspire to having a mountain cabin for the winter, and a beach or lake cabin for the summer.

As we went higher and higher up the mountains the trees became shorter until there were only small, stunted birch trees straggling along and it got stonier with big patches of snow and ice. Mid-way on the journey, there were no trees anywhere to be seen – just huge smooth boulders everywhere with green grass between and lots of ice. Many hikers and bikers got off at the station platforms up there. It was 12 degrees!

You can see several cabins on the right side of the photo

I hadn’t expected to see so much snow at this time of the year. Mainly in big white patches on the high, dark mountainsides. But sometimes the patches were right beside the railway tracks.

Then the trees start appearing again. First the birch getting taller and taller, then the pine trees join the birch trees. Sometimes the clouds were below us on the train.

Huge, high, deep, steep ravines cutting and dropping down to the frantic, white-water river rushing and gushing and hurling itself over boulders and rocks in its path. You could see white waterfalls of all sizes and widths rushing down the long black rock, dropping down into the lakes, the river or fjord.

Sometimes there were wide valleys with wheat fields and hay fields squeezed in beside their farmhouses. I noticed every now and then that there would be sod-roof houses and farm buildings and storehouses shaped like we saw at the Folk Museum. I guess they know that there’s values in the old ways.

The wide, deep, dark and mysterious fjords wound round the mountains and the railway line followed it.

Now here we are in Bergen. Velkommen til Bergen!

But you really have to experience this for yourself someday. And if you already have, you understand my inadequate explanations!