Travelling to Bergen can be arduous indeed

The first weekend of June we travelled to Bergen - primarily because I was to attend/organize a bachelor party. We went straight from work to the airport on Friday, and returned Sunday afternoon. Not everything went swimmingly according to our plan, though.

Seeing as how I brought my Ibanez S, I had some trepidations as to whether I'd be able to get through the airport security with no more than the accustomed feelings of oppression and abuse, but that actually went surprisingly well. Apparently it's no problem to bring an electric guitar in a gig bag onto the airplane. You can't bring a nail file, a pair of scissors or a small beverage past the security control, but the geniouses in charge of safety rules and regulations have no qualms about someone bringing what is essentially a baseball bat with strings. Good news for me, but that did absolutely nothing to reinforce my faith in airport security. Anyways; I made it through the security station with holding my belt, my jacket and my 'S, feeling violated and looking for somewhere to regroup, a support group or a shower to cry in, whichever was first available. Business as usual at airports. The first obstacle had been overcome.

As we were almost about to board the plane, our flight was delayed - of course. New estimated time of departure - ten minutes to whenever. This time we flew with Norwegian, an airline which has returned to being the bush-league, glorified charter airline staffed with SAS rejects it truly is. After the usual long wait at the baggage claims at Flesland, we were ready to get our rental car. We were given a choice between a Ford Focus C-Max and a Renault Megane. Being an idiot, I suggested the french car, since we hadn't tried one of those before. There are good and bad engineering solutions, and replacing a key + small remote with a humonguous block of plastic between the size of a cassette/8-track which accordingly does not fit in either wallet or pockets and which serves no extra functions compared to a standard key is undoubtedly a bad solution.


Since this occurred in the middle of the Bergen International Music Festival, getting a hotel room was no easy task. My wife spent a good couple of hours before finding an available room in downtown Bergen. The hotel looked cool on the internet, but it was located in the same building as Fotballpuben, Bergen's most famous watering hole for soccer fans in general and supporters of the local team - Brann - in particular. As we checked in around 9 PM, I optimistically inquired whether room service was still available. The clerk informed me that the hotel did not have a kitchen - so no. The included breakfast consisted of a baguette, a small carton of orange juice and a newspaper which was affixed to our doorknob in the morning. Also, we had requested a room on the top floor, but on account of old-fashioned incompetence, we got a room on the second floor. Oh well.

Now a bit disillusioned and quite hungry, we entered our room, which turned out to be directly above the smoking section/patio of Fotballpuben. There was no airconditioning and the weather was nice and warm, so we absolutely needed to keep the windows open. In the mother of all ironies, we had a non-smoking room, with "smoking prohibited" signs. Yet, being as how this was directly above the smoking section/patio of Fotballpuben, everything in the room smelled of cigarette smoke. Oh well. On to more pressing matters: grub. We were tired after a long day of work and travel, so we opted against going out to eat. Instead, we called for pizza using a flyer we found in our room. Dolly Dimple's had an arrangement with the hotel, where we could get pizza delivered to our room without any discount whatsoever, but no soda, as the rooms were not equipped with a minibar. Damn. Still; how this would affect us not getting cold sodas delivered is beyond me. Anyways; we made our order, and went to an open grocery store to stock up on soda before the food was delivered.

Back at our room, we rediscovered that soccer fans are loud yet inarticulate, and that they smoke a lot and spill plenty of beer on tables, floors, etc., as a result of which our room smelled of cigarettes and beer, and the noise level well past annoying. But that was ok, 'cause we had a TV in our room (presumably a color TV), so we could sit back, turn up the volume and vegetate while we waited for the pizza to be delivered, right? Not quite. After several failed attempts to turn the TV on, including cursing, we noticed a conspicuous absence of power cords between the TV and any socket and called the night manager. After discovering that the phone didn't work too well either, my wife walked down to get him while I waited for the Pizza delivery. The night manager came, and expressed his surprise that we didn't have a flat screen, because by now, all the rooms were supposed to have a new, wall-mounted flat screen instead of the old ones. Well; not our room, apparently. Still; despite having (presumably) the only room without a flatscreen we should still have one in working order, right? After some fumbling, the night manager discovered the lack of a power cable, and informed us that he'd call someone to fix it. Right.

Like two minutes before the pizza would have been free, I got a call from the delivery girl, who sat outside the hotel in her car wondering how she'd get into the hotel and up to our room. She actually asked me whether she was supposed to go out of the car and through the entrance door to the hotel. Uhhhh...yeah? Five minutes after she had embarked on the perilous journey from her car to our room, we finally got the food, and prepared to chow down. My wife opened the lid on the pizza box, and started laughing. The pizza was in a state somewhere between slightly burnt and full-on singed. After eating, we asked the night manager what's up with the guy who was supposed to come and fix the TV. Dude wrung his hands and indicated that he'd fix it tomorrow. Right.

Apparently, soccer fans get even louder when they're drunk. Who'd have thunk it, eh?

We never got the TV fixed - big surprise. I also discovered that the shower varied randomly between two settings; Arctic Discovery and Molten Lava.

Good thing the bachelor party went 67% according to plan.