Next Stops – Germany and Norway

Date: June 18, 2018 – June 20, 2018
Location: Munich, Germany to Bergen, Norway

Munich, Germany

From Salzburg, Austria we took a train to Munich, Germany so that we could fly out of the Munich airport instead of the Salzburg airport. The Munich airport is much bigger and had flights with 1 stop in Oslo, Norway to Bergen, Norway.  We were in Munich just over two years ago and enjoyed it there, so we spent a night in Munich before going to the airport.

Munich looked as we remembered it. Here is the glockenspiel in Marienplatz.

Walking around Munich, we saw a sign that counts the number of bikes that have gone by that day and for the year. It was hard to get a photo of it because of the refresh rate of sign. The top line gave the time, it was around 4:30 pm and over 2,700 bikes had gone by that day and just over 600,000 in 2018.

We went to Kleines Brauhaus Dicker Mann for dinner. The menu was only in German but our food was really good.

We took the Munich S-Bahn to the airport. Both the Munich and Oslo airports were easy to get around. The planes also boarded quickly with turn styles, where we scanned our own tickets, to get to the jet bridge.

Bergen, Norway

From the Bergen airport we took a Flybussen bus to the center of Bergen. The bus was cheaper than a taxi and was really easy to take.

Restaurants in Bergen are extremely expensive, but we went out to dinner our first night here. On the way to dinner we went through the fish market.

For dinner, Brian had reindeer steak:

And I had a leg of deer:

We didn’t have any drinks and dinner cost $87. The food was good, though, and something that we would not cooked ourselves. Beer is expensive; it was $17 or more for a single 12 oz. beer at the restaurant. A glass of wine was around the same.

We went to 4 different grocery stores to look at prices on the way to dinner and then bought groceries on the way home. Prices in the stores are similar to the US for most items. Beer is expensive at around $5 a can/bottle in the grocery store, for something like a Budweiser; craft brews easily were $18 or more a bottle. The grocery stores here don’t sell wine. Wine and liquor are only sold at Vinmonopolete stores in Norway and they are open 10 – 6 pm Monday through Friday, and 10 – 3 pm on Saturdays. We went to a Vinmonopolete to check it out and the cheapest bottles of wine were around $11.

It rained a little on our first full day in Bergen. We went to the Cultural History Museum where Brian liked the mummy exhibit the best.

Here are some photos from around the town.

Overall, Bergen, Norway has been a great introduction to Scandinavia, and we’re looking forward to our coming weeks!