NORWAY III

Before starting my journey to Norway, everyone told me that it is pretty there but they call Bergen „The wettest city of Europe“. After all, I started researching and prepared myself with packing the right clothing. Bergen has around 195 rainy days. Which means it rains every second day. Furthermore, January is also a dark month. I bought almost everything you can get for cold and rainy days because I expected the weather to be freezing during the time I would spend there . Rain jacket, snow pants, hiking pants and ski underwear with merino wool and of course an umbrella. The day I arrived in Bergen will stay in my memories, forever. It was dark and raining heavily, never-ending and cold. But there was no snow. Was it exactly the way I imagined it? Of course, It was winter time and the second of January 2020. Why should it be different than everyone says? But first of all, why is Bergen so rainy? It is because of the geographical position. Bergen is surrounded by quite a lot of mountains which are responsible for stopping most of the air coming from the north Atlantic, causing heavy rains.
„The longest recorded period of  constantly rainy days was from October 2006 till January 2007 – the rain didn’t stop for 85 days!“ 
I. Kralj, 2019, 30.08.2020 under https://www.pipeaway.com/things-to-do-in-bergen-norway

At the beginning, I thought that it is really special living with so much rain and darkness. Moreover, all my new friends and the fun time there will make it easier to deal with it. BUT after a short time especially we exchange students recognized that it is not soo easy to get used to the weather conditions. Therefore, we all started to get tired and a bit sick. Locals told us that it is the lack of vitamin D. After we got vitamin D pills we felt much better and were able to adjust more and more to the weather situation. Usually, we would stay at home when there was a full day of bad weather. But in Bergen, you can‘t! Every day can be rainy and nevertheless, you don‘t want to miss discovering the beautiful surrounding landscape. In Norway, you just have to leave your house prepared with umbrella and raincoat for every situation. I never experienced a country with such a rapid weather change. It happened to us that we left the house for a hike in the mountains with a cloudy sky, after an hour we had sunshine, three hours later it started to drizzle and then rain and finally snow. Welcome to Bergen, welcome to Norway. Whenever you leave the house never leave it unprepared. It is unique. In addition to the rainy and unexpected weather situation, there was the extreme darkness, especially at the beginning of the year. It got bright between 9 and 10 am and dark between 3 and 4 pm. It was hard for me at the beginning to deal with the crazy darkness. But you start observing how valuable every day towards spring and summer is because the days are getting long. Unfortunately, the COVID situation made my whole experience in Norway short. But I appreciate this special experience with all the weather and darkness. It revealed how self-evident the weather and daytime  is at home. But it isn‘t and how different you can experience places which such short time spans of daylight. It influences how you are planning your day to you use it most efficiently. In addition, I discovered that I started to becoming more relaxed since we had long (dark) evenings together to just enjoy. Cheers. It was a pleasure.

Barbara Ruech, SS 20