Before coming to Europe, Norway had been my number one place to visit. I’ve always been interested in Norway, probably because of my previous trips to Alaska and Iceland. My original goal was to make it there to see the Northern Lights, but that was too difficult to pull off so I’m saving that bucket list item for later in my life. Instead, Griffin and I planned a five-day road trip.

The planning stage of the trip required much adulting, as we needed to book a rental car, flights, five Airbnbs and map out a route with activities along the way. If not clear from my other trips, I’m not the best planner, but at that stage in the semester I had become more comfortable, so we were able to pull it off.

My trip started with a quick flight from Copenhagen to Bergen. Griffin had arrived a couple hours before me, so he was conveniently able to set up the rental car and first Air BnB by the time I had arrived.

Our rental car was upgraded for free, so we had a pretty sweet ride to use for the week. It had Bluetooth, touchscreen navigation, and was automatic which was the most important thing.

Our first night in Bergen was spent wondering the town, which was much bigger than the fishing village we were expecting. I noticed people looked similar to Copenhageners but a touch more Scandinavian. The most amusing thing was their obsession with Pit Vipers. Everybody had them on- even the babies and elderly people. We had tacos, ice cream on the pier, then stumbled upon a hill with a beautiful overlook of the entire city as the sun was setting.

On day 2 we embarked on our road trip. We initially found the driving to be quite stressful, as we were overly paranoid about the speed limit. We read online that the speed limit was extremely strict and large fines could be handed out for going just a few km/hr over the speed limit. Since $1,000 fines were not part of our budget, we were extremely cautious and always going a few km/hr under the limit. However, the roads are all single lane roads which caused consistent build ups behind us of frustrated locals.

Aside from the speed, the driving was amazing. It felt as if every turn in the road introduced us to a completely different landscape, all of which possessing the same wow factor. We had a running list of our favorite roads, but eventually lost track because every road had a case to be the coolest road.

Fjords, rivers, lakes, mountains, forests, tunnels, and waterfalls all appeared along our drive. The entire landscape is dramatic and felt like we were driving through a 4k National Geographic video. It really left us speechless for much of the time.

On top of the scenery, we were gifted with perfect sunny weather for 4/5 days. The fresh sunny air made our hikes all the better. The fifth day was cloudier and even a bit snowy, but this made the landscape even more dramatic. As we escalated through the elevation, we would go from light snowflakes to a foot of snow, back to now snow all within a few minutes. This gave us a window to listen to some Christmas music in the car for a little bit.

Turns out she did not stick us in her oven, but rather provided us a welcoming stay with a lovely homemade breakfast delivered to us in the morning. The best part of the stay was the convenient location next to the base of a hiking trail.

This trail provided us with an entire day of fun as we climbed through a winding wooded trail, up a stone creek, then scaled a series of builders with the intent of making it up on a glacier. The boulders started to feel a bit dangerous, so we had to retreat back down. We returned to Olaug’s then into the town of Stryn to find some food.

That night we had the adventurous idea of climbing back up the trail to lay on a cliff and see the stars. It was a wonderful idea and led to my favorite night of study abroad. On the hill we prepared peanut butter banana sandwiches and drank Somersby while sitting in two weathered lawn chairs. We were completely surrounded by mountains and glaciers while having an uninterrupted view of the stars above us and the subtle glow of the towns below us. I don’t think it can get more peaceful than that.

The walk back down was a little terrifying, as we had to walk through the woods in the pitch black for about 45 minutes, but we did make it home.

The rest of our road trip was spent in a stop-and-go fashion as we continuously pulled over in small towns and along the side of the highway to climb around and throw rocks.

During our last evening on the road, we stumbled upon a soccer pitch which had all the feeling of a small Norwegian town. We had a kick about then returned back.

The entire time in Norway felt like we were in a place beyond the scope of reality and was an experience vastly different than everything else from my semester. There is no question that I’ll try my best to make it back to Norway one day.

Advice to my future self: Go back to Norway.