As Far As You Know

I left my Bayswater hotel around 8:30 this morning, took the Tube to Liverpool Street Station and then the Stansted Express train to the airport. From there I flew to Haugesend, Norway. (RyanAir is an Irish carrier that caters to the budget airfare segment of the market; as long as one is willing to use out-of-the-way airports--like Stansted and Haugesend, for instance!--the fares can be incredibly cheap.) From Haugesend I traveled by bus and ferry through the fjords on the west Norway coast up to Bergen, the nation's second biggest city. It feels more like a town to me, albeit a charming one built around a harbor. The landscape here is spectacular. The last time I saw fjords like these was when I was on the south island of New Zealand in 1998.

David Pogue had a piece in today's International Herald Tribune about noise-canceling headphones. He reviewed the Bose Quiet Comfort 2--which I was wearing as I read the article--and its competitors. I picked up the QC2s on a whim (admittedly, an expensive one!) in Logan Airport in Boston before heading to Bermuda for a week in August 2005 and have worn them on nearly every flight since. As I've been on at least a half dozen 12+ hour flights in the last two years, they have been a godsend. The noise-cancelling properties really do make flying easier: less headache, less jet lag, an overall easier transition.

I wish I had headphones like this when I was in college: not because I flew much then (I took a 30-minute flight twice between Albany and Islip--my first and second times in an airplane) but because I routinely took the long bus ride between Williamstown and New York City, stopping in virtually every town along the way. The ongoing low rumble of the bus for hours invariably put me out of sorts and gave me a headache and a touch of nausea.

Nailing down accommodation in Bergen online a few weeks ago was tough. I ended up staying in a very expensive room here for the night in a Raddison hotel right in the heart of town, overlooking the harbor. My room is comfortable (if overpriced). Its best feature is clear: a bathroom with a gently heated tile floor. Why doesn't every bathroom in the world have this?

Composer Edvard Grieg was a local in Bergen, so here is his unforgettable "In The Hall Of The Mountain King" from the Peer Gynt suites.

This is the source.

This short film on YouTube is pretty amusing.

These shops are on the "bryggen," or waterfront, in the heart of Bergen. My hotel is behind these buildings at the far end, overlooking the harbor. The city is, like Rome, surrounded by seven hills (small mountains, really) on three sides; the fjord is on the fourth.

This is a quaint place. There was a free concert in the downtown shopping area this morning--mostly children's groups performing.

It does feel a bit cut off from the rest of the world. As in Buenos Aires, one can't get the day's edition of the International Herald Tribune from any of the local vendors until the afternoon.