Any day in Bergen on which it isn’t chucking it down with rain is worth recording. After the end of my workshop today I walked out to the tip of the Nordnes peninsula, which splits the city harbour into two, and took this shot. I like it because of the odd configuration of his hands (he barely seems to be holding the rod), the hood, and the fact that for once, despite being taken right into the sun, there is no flare in the lens.
Travelled last night from Trondheim to Bergen. I do like Bergen, it is a fine city, but it’d be even better if it didn’t chuck it down with rain about 75% of the time.
‘Vilvite’ is Bergen’s kid-oriented science museum. Joe’s favourite exhibit – and, except perhaps for the big artificial stream in which one could play with sand dams and watch the formation of alluvial flows, probably mine – was this big marble run with about a hundred different little channels and toys and bells in it. Took me a few goes to get this shot, but I like it a lot.
So here we are with the first of the backlog of pictures from Norway. On this first evening I took Clare and Joe up Mount Fløyen to see the classic view of Bergen: but this blog has already featured that so to avoid cliché and repetition here’s a strange view from a bar down by the waterside. The ‘roof garden’ is just a floor of transparent perspex or glass, three stories up. Would you sit up there? I think it would be a rather nauseating experience, to be honest.
This is an artificial lake in the centre of Bergen, by the art museum. It’s actually not that cold here (although the weather was still revolting today), but there’s still this scrim of ice on the surface of the lake, enough to support these birds’ weight and provide a nice optical illusion effect to add to the other nice patterns and colours on this shot.
It’s not a bad place to come and work for a couple of days, is it.
The peninsula to left-centre of this photograph is the historic city centre of Bergen. Mount Fløyen, which you saw on 27th November, is the low-looking hill to the far left, below the snowline.
I know how you feel, love.
Although feeling sometimes like I do rather too much of this flying lark I do like looking at the departure boards in airports and thinking one day, I’ll just turn up and go somewhere random. I like the odd juxtaposition of destinations on this mural. Bangkok and Orkney in the same context – that won’t happen too often. Home tonight, though not until after midnight.
Those of you who are visiting regularly at the moment (and I know there are a few – for which, thank you) might be wondering where the fjord is. Well, it’s not that I didn’t get a good picture of one – I didn’t even see one. A landslide at Myrdal rail station last night, up in the mountains, led to the cancellation of my day trip. Oh, I get my money back but it’s still disappointing. Four trips to Norway have now passed and I’ve still yet to see the reason Slartibartfast got his award (and if that means nothing to you, you’ve not read The Hitch-Hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy).
So here’s a picture of a building site instead. However, there is a connection – this is the site of the new Høgskolen i Bergen (Bergen University College), due to open in 2013 (or is it 2014) and, indirectly, one of the reasons I am here: the work I am doing here, in part, is helping prepare the library to move from having five separate premises into one big new space. So there is a point to the picture. But a fjord would have been so much nicer. Not this time though… or the next two (January & February), come to that.
So here I am in Bergen again, and being a tourist for a couple of days – in all this run of visits to what I firmly believe is the most beautiful city I’ve ever visited, I have not had the chance before now to really look around (and see a fjord, particularly – which I will do tomorrow).
If anything I am slightly disappointed with the haul of pictures taken today (others can be seen in a Facebook album); none of them quite captured the glories of the view. This one is the best but there’s flare to the right of the image. But never mind, it was worth braving the freezing gale that was whipping in from the North Sea this afternoon. And it also becomes the first black & white shot on this blog, on its 94th day.
Being 42 