Hei! from Norway...
Getting off the overnight ferry from Newcastle and arriving in pouring rain in Bergen (this is a city where it rains for 275 days per year), I found my hostel, dumped my stuff and hit the mean streets.
My first task was to buy some chewing gum, and investigate local prices. At 12 NOK (£1), 'Salty Licorice' flavour may not have been the most wise choice. That was confirmed after trying a couple of peices. It tasted like the middle bit of a sherbert dip that had been left to soak overnight in a warm bucket of seawater. After that, the Peanot Kubbe was a much better choice. But at least for lunch the next day I opted for a (very nice) haddockburger at the fishmarket, rather than the local whaleburger speciality (Minke I think).
I met some good fun people in my dorm in the Marken-Gjestehaus hostel, in particular Brian (Lee Hwan Gil) from South Korea, who's catchphrase 'Oh Ma Gaa' got a fair bit of use up at the top of the hill which looks down onto Bergen. I tried to explain 'The Life of Brian' to him, but (unsurprisingly) he hadn't heard of Monty Python. He was well aquainted with William Wallace of Braveheart fame though.
As well as going up to the peak a couple of times (once on the train and once walking while legions of super-fit Norweigans ran up), during the almost two and a half days of pretty much constant hard rain, Brian and I joined up with some others in our dorm to go to some of Bergen's indoor highlights, including the so-so aquarium, various eating/drinking/shopping establishments to 'Oh Ma Gaa' at the prices. Many things in Norway are not very affjordable (sorry). But when you pay six pounds for just 0.4 litres of basic lager, every sip tastes pretty good!
The leprosy museum is almost next door to the hostel, and ince it was the last day of opening before the winter, I headed there with an Argentinian doctor, Luciano - actually one of two doctors in the dorm of eight of us. The museum (a closed down wooden hospital) was excellent but also quite shocking. Sufferers were forcibly kept on the premises in creaky and tiny rectangular rooms that now contain the death masks and medical drawings showing the gruesome levels of their disfiguration. Did you know that the last leprosy sufferer in Norway only died in 1973? I didn't.
Not sure if these were turtles, terrapins or something in between
The most impressive thing about the aquarium was their Guiness World Record for the longest surviving penguin, a little two foot whiskered chap who's lived for twenty-something years. They'd proudly stuffed him and he's placed in a glass box along with a shiny copy of the Guiness Book of Records. Come on Edinburgh Zoo!
Anyway, the sun came out with perfect timing for a train, bus and boat trip around the Hardangerfjord, which was great. Although I think the temperature was around 13 or 14 deg C, when we were hooning along on the water it felt pretty freezing.
