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Gudvagen and Flaam - Part 13
Written by: Dominick A. Miserandino
Photography by: Margherita Miserandino
Good times in Gudvagen and the most scenic railway to nowhere in Norway.
Okay, I am the first to admit that the two town names even said together sound, shall we say, different. Flaam reminds me of the Spanish dessert and Gudvagen reminds me of a German trying to say that he’s having a "Good time."
The Silversea ship is small enough to get to Gudvagen so you can have a good time in the town. Most of the passengers were taking a train ride from Gudvagen to Flaam, but we follow the beat of a different troll?.
In Gudvagen we took the tender to town and walked around the town. In about six minutes we finished that completely. Gudvagen is small. It is however beautiful for the sake of the clouds that seem eternally stuck in the mountains.
I wish I could tell you more about Gudvagen but I’m stumped. It’s small and I started looking for things to look at, just to pass time before catching the next tender back in half an hour, and I still had 24 minutes to go.
Then came Flaam. I love Flaam. Do I love it as much as Bergen? Yes, but in a different way, like one loves one child differently than another.
Flaam is equally as small, perhaps a bit bigger, but we were in Flaam only for a little while. It’s beautiful, it’s located right along the fjord, and it is quite picturesque. However it is isolated. To get here you’d have to hike, and ride a car, and fly and beg and well, it’s a bit of a hassle. Or at least it was. Then they built a railroad.
It was a simple idea truly. The locals said, "Nobody can get here, especially when it snows and the road is blocked. It gets pretty lonely so lets build a railroad."
Simple? Ahhhh no. The town has to climb a ridiculously steep mountain or two just to get to the next stop. It practically has to travel up higher than it does long ways.
Hence the Flaam railway came to being... the steepest railway in Norway and the most architecturally unique. There are tunnels spiraling within the mountain, there are elevations, twists and turns, it’s a railroad hobbyists dream.
The people in town were quite happy and they now had the means of transporting people back and forth to their lovely town, all was good. But then the roads improved and ships improved, and they had this bigger and better dock made that could handle cruise ships. The train itself wasn’t as necessary. Logically speaking the passengers should decrease, but they increased. Everybody heard how beautiful the train ride was and they started taking the train left and right. It fills up nearly every ride. Over the summer, when we jumped on board it was like the running of the bulls just to get on the train. And where do they take the train? Nowhere in particular. They go up and come right back. Some people ride bikes back, but generally speaking most of the passengers are here to see the train and not go anywhere in particular.
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Zig-Zagging up the Mountain on the Flaam Railway | |
That’s the joy of the train. Thousands of people taking it for no other reason than to take the train. They ride up and come back home. Halfway up there is a surprise that happens, but I can’t tell you the surprise because it just wouldn’t be a surprise anymore. Okay, some residents still use the train to get around, but most are people like me who just went somewhere to go back.
We rode the train and we rode home. We ran into a souvenir shop and bought scarves because Margherita insisted I’d need one this winter and then we ran to the ship.
This was our last stop in Norway. We watched as the boat pulled out and felt a sense of longing and already started making plans for our return.
SilverSea Cruises - Part 1
Copenhagen - Part 2
SilverSea at Sea - Part 3
Alesund - Part 4
Geiranger - Part 5
Trondheim - Part 6
Traveling the Fjords - Part 7
The North Cape - Part 8
Hammerfest - Part 9
Cruising the Fjords - Part 10
Cruising the Fjords - Part 11
Bergen - Part 12
Gudvagen and Flaam - Part 13
Cruising - Part 14
Copenhagen and Departure - Part 15
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