Dec 28th evening – Bergen (B air – gen)

When I got to Bergen I realized that there was no readily accessible wooded area to setup a tent, the city was quite vast, and where it wasn’t, it was too steep to climb out of the city. I started to look for hotels. To start the search I went to 7-11 and asked for a map, which they did not have, and it turns out there were no gas stations for miles around the downtown area so couldn’t get directions there either. I found a lot of hotels but could not figure out where the front desks were to ask for prices. Funny enough, I my wandering I found where I am supposed to live in a SIB student hostel building. But there was no one there and I didn’t have a key yet, so on I marched. I walked into a burger joint / convenience store and found a pretty girl about my age named Morilyn working. We chatted for a bit about school and she moved from Olso to Bergen for a boy who just dumped her and how she lived in the same neighborhood that I will be living in and then she pointed by towards a hotel with a reasonable rate. I guess my smile wasn’t that good 
I went to the hotel to find they were closed, in fact according to the manager most hotels were closed for the holidays. He pointed me towards one that was open, of course it was the ritziest looking thing around, uhg. I walked in and found another pretty lady behind the desk, a little older than me, named Nina. I asked about prices and they were waaaaay outta my league, 1050 NOK per night (like $250 canadian). I said goodnight and turned to walk away when she stopped me and asked if I was Canadian, she had seen the Canadian flag luggage tags on my pack (thanks mom and dad!) turns out her fiancé is from Canada who she met while he was vacationing in Bergen. We talked for a bit, I made an impression and was on my way to check out a list of hotels she told me to try. After exhausting the list with no luck I decided to try the bus station, but it closed. I tried to go back and chat it up with Morilyn, but the store was closed. So I looked for the closest edge of the city (which happened to be a mountain) and started walking.
I found out that Bergen has very steep streets, which I could hardly climb as they reached angles of 30-40 degrees as I zig zagged though small cozy neighborhoods towards and up onto the mountain (yes the neighborhoods were built on the mountain). After about an hour I was dripping with sweat, smelled like a well used toalet (toilet), and could hardly walk, infact I was crawling on all fours for some of it. I started to regret bringing such a large pack. I finally made it to the forest, I turned around, look a big piss down the mountain like cityscape in pride and then snapped a few shots of the cityscape for my friends and family back home.
My climb was not over yet. I had to get out of sight in case I was on private property. This meant climbing up the mountain in 2ft of snow in rough terrain littered with trees rocks and logs at about a 45 degree angle. Lets be honest there was no walking, no snowshoeing, this was straight up crawling on all fours, at one point I tried to stand up only to fall backward rolling down the mountain under the weight of my pack. Luckily my fall path was all deep snow. I found a deer trail and followed it in hopes the deer would take the easiest and fastest route to cover and I was right. I found the first flat spot I had seen in a while, it was hidden by large trees and just large enough for my little tent.
After the tent was setup I rolled out my ground mats to find that they were 2 ft too short and that some part of my body was going to get wet and cold. I tried sleeping onto of other items but id wake up soon after closing my eyes with everything sliding out from under me from the incline of the mountain. Guess my perfect spot was not so perfect. I didn’t get much sleep at all and kept putting on more clothing throughout the night to stave off the cold. By morning I was wearing 3 layers and it looked like a hurricane had blown everything to one side of my tent, meaning I had a lot of packing to do and this would be 3 nights now with a total of about 5 hours of sleep and it wasn’t really affecting me (jetlag is weird).

checkout some pics at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonmader/sets/72157622977812437/detail/

thers not many as it was hail and rain and i was too busy to take them :p