Wanderung 30

We were up early to watch our approach through the long fjord to Bergen. We barely made it under the bridge across the fjord just downstream from Bergen, and it was fun watching and taking pictures.

As we have wandered around Bergen on past visits, we wanted to see something new and thus took the ship's tour from Bergen out to a stave church and the summer home of Edvard Grieg, a romantic era composer. On our way out to the suburban era where those sites were both located, we passed through downtown Bergen and saw the familiar fish market down by the old Hanseatic section of the city, which we remembered fondly from our previous visits.

The stave church was actually a reconstruction of the centuries-old structure that had stood on the site, because a Satanist had killed a rabbit (poor rabbit!), put it on the altar, and then burned the church down back in 1992 (poor church!). Given Norway's lenient legal penalties, he was again a free man, but fortunately for the Norwegians he had relocated to France. I do hope the French keep him away from Notre Dame, though!

Be that as it may, the reconstructed church was beautifully situated in a small forested glen. The church is very small, so each tour group has to take turns going inside and seeing all the great wood carvings that adorn the interior. Although it is a Christian church, the interior carvings include dragons and other animalistic designs dating back to the days of the pagan Vikings, which I found quite interesting.

Since the church was a recent reconstruction, the wood,was all shiny and golden-toned, but of course it will darken with age so we saw what the folks back in the 1200s would have seen. The exterior was coated in tar for weather proofing, which was the same method as used on the wooden ships of that era, and that made the exterior look extremely dark, and almost ominous with the carved dragon heads adorning the peaks of the roof. A roofed walk surrounded the church for socializing in bad weather.

From the church we continued a short distance to Grieg's summer home, a pretty little Victorian style cottage set right above a brackish lake leading to the fjord that runs past Bergen. First we toured a small museum with exhibits about Grieg's life and times, and fortunately all the displays had signs in Norwegian and English. Grieg really was one of those "child prodigies" that you occasionally read about, and although his mother provided his initial instruction, his wealthy family sent him to a music conservatory in Leipzig at the age of 15. Since Leipzig is a large city in Germany, I kind of thought that shift would have been a psychological jolt for a teenager, but the family sent his older brother to help him learn to live in Germany. In any case, Grieg succeeded at the conservatory, graduating in 3 years, I think, and returned to Norway to write Norwegian-inspired compositions. Despite having lost a lung in his youth, Grieg and his wife Nina kept up a heavy performance schedule right up to the time of his death.

Each summer, however, the couple returned to the summer house he had built outside of Bergen. He even had a tiny room down at the lake shore where he actually composed his works, because he often had relatives or guests at the main cottage. The interior of the Victorian cottage was quite rustic as the walls were bare wood, but the overall impression I got was a very warm, homey place to relax from the rigors of concert tours.

The high point of the day was a 40-minute concert by an excellent pianist named Christian Hundsnes Grovlen who gave us short overviews and explanations of each piece he played. It was in a specially designed concert hall that overlooked the little cottage where Grieg went to compose and had a nice view of the lake beyond. The music was beautiful. I liked the "Nocturno" piece the best, and Monika liked the "Spring" piece best, but we both thought it was a great selection of Grieg's work played very well. His music is, for us at least, very emotionally moving.

The bus wouldn't start when it was time to return to the ship, so we waited about 45 minutes for guys to come out with 2 batteries (24-volt system) and jump start the bus. That made the rest of our tour a "drive by" rather than a "walk through" type of tour, but it was raining steadily so the walking would not have been much fun anyway. We did get back to the ship on time, but I wasn't really worried because this was an official Princess ship tour and the Captain would have waited for us. Everything considered, we still had a very nice day, particularly with the great piano music of the recital. Unfortunately, we waited on the bus next to a guy who was coughing and sneezing, and Monika ultimately caught his cold and then suffered some serious complications later on in our trip.

That evening, we steamed back down the fjord and under the suspension bridge into the North Sea. The next day was an "At Sea" day, but we came close enough to the coast of Scotland to effectively have some "Scenic Cruising" rolled into our "At Sea" day!