Saturday 10 February 2024
An early walk to the station for the train to Flam. The train departed silently exactly on time. It’s full of Australians and they sound like farmers from Woomera, but not so much in our carriage. Their tour guide irritates Flashy from the start and he works out ways of tipping his backpack out of the train.
We finish the war chest of food, have a beer
and gin in the Kafe Car and then just out of Myrdal, at Fisa, we stop because
another train in front of us has derailed. We have to wait here until the track
is cleared.
Finally make Flam at the bottom of the valley
and head of the fjord. And the scenery is stunning with massive snow covered
mountains and the nearly freezing fjord. Photos turn out black and white as the
glacier carved its way through basalt.
Winter has stripped all the leaves from the
stunted trees and the snow is everywhere. Flashy explains the lateral morains formed
through metamorphosed
basaltic lavas is the exposed
black rocks on which the white snow sits, hence the black and white vista. I
think this goes mostly unnoticed by the unimpressed.
At the pub, connected conveniently at the rear
of our hotel, we notice the viking design or perhaps faux viking but it has a
fire pit which is alight and two spare seats which we snaffle, ignoring the ‘please
wait here to be seated’ sign.
Over a couple
of beers and GnT’s, we meet the two people sitting next to us, Thomas
and Fabienne and yes they actually said “we are Swiss.’ They turn out to be a wonderful
couple who are basically travelling the same route and bus/train we are
tomorrow. We adjourn to the dining room for a pretty good pub dinner and a
bottle of Italian red. Then so overwhelmed with our snappy repartee, or perhaps
the wine, Thomas insists on paying. So, we return the favour with cocktails
down by the fire before heading to our rooms.
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