Ha det, Stavanger!

One picture from "old Stavenger".

We spent our last day in Norway exploring Stavanger and its many museums - we went to an old canning factory, an archeology museum, and the Oil Museum. All were pretty fascinating, and I took zero pictures. But some cool facts:

- no one has ever invented a machine that can pack sardines/herring/small fish into tins as efficiently as people, so even today all tinned fish is packed by hand. Most other steps in the process have been mechanised. 

- the first potential evidence for human presence in Norway dates to about 12000 years ago - and is a single charred piece of birch wood found coincidentally near a well preserved polar bear skeleton. As it is inferred that natural wildfires were unlikely given the terrain (tundra grasslands with few trees), it may have been from people. It's a stretch!

- Norway's government had contacted a company to survey for oil, and the intial efforts to find petroleum deposits were unsuccessful. The company wanted to give up, but the government required them to complete the effort - and it was it the last survey that they struck black gold. 

- Norway's oil production funds most of the country's public works. The government nationalized oil production early on, and the tax proceeds have led to a 6 trillion kroner public trust that supports the nation's high standard of living - it is the largest sovereign wealth fund. 

- there is deep unease about how to balance the fact that oil and gas production accounts for about 20% of the nation's economy and that climate change must be addressed. It seems that the conversations are more frank here than at home in the states. 

We fly home tomorrow (yes, spending our anniversary in airports catching three connecting flights is very romantic). It's bet a great trip and we are both quite satisfied with it (and my legs are very tired from yesterday!) 

Until the next time we travel! And maybe we'll go somewhere outside of Europe! 

Kjerag: Climbing mountains high and valleys low

 Michael had to conference again today (gave his second talk), so I took myself off adventuring to Kjeragbolten, a popular hike destination about 2 hours southeast of Stavenger. I went with a guided group, mostly because they picked me up in the morning and dropped me back off this evening. 

The hike was spectacular - Norway really is stunningly beautiful. The area reminded me a lot of Yosemite... Except bigger. It's lots of enormous granite domes rising above deep fjords, with clear waterfalls and sheep. 

The hike went up (and down) over three big hills to reach a lookout point over the fjord. And it really was up - none of the pictures I took really do the vertical scale justice. But parts of the hike were much more like climbing.

From the carpark: first step is to summit that hill. It's steeper than it looks. 

And much of the trail was shear granite.

Made it to the top! Now it's time to go down into the valley, and then back up the next hill. 

Going up again!

I'm quite proud of myself, because I didn't find the hike too exhausting. Challenging, sure, but in a really good way. And it was pretty. 

Whoops, gotta go back down and then up some more. 

There are some very majestic sheep in this picture. 

The third hill was the most "up" of them all. 

But holy moly the view. 

After that it flattened out such that we walked along the top of the fjord cliff. 

Lots of rock. 

The destination was worth it, though, I think:

Standing on Kjeragbolten. It's a stupid far way down. 

From the back. Getting on the the boulder was a little scary. Very much a "don't look down" deal. I looked it up - no one has died here.  

The view from behind the boulder. I think this was more impressive than Preikestolen. 

The boulder is wedged in a crack that is also a very pretty stream bed with a waterfall. 

I feel like there are already a lot of pictures of me on this post, but here is another one. 

After, we hiked up to an overlook (as if we weren't high enough (about 1000m)

Pretty happy with it all. 

Flor and Fjaere

I'm not sure how to explain where we went to dinner on Thursday - I think a picture might start it off more easily:

We took a ferry out to an island off the coast of Stavenger, where one family has built an incredible garden estate and have turned this corner of Norway into a flower paradise. The island started out like most bits of Norway - windswept, rocky, and mostly inhabited by sheep. Now they have a palm garden, a Japanese inspired section with a big koi pond, color-specific garden beds, and a pseudo-tropical beach. So they boat people out, give a short tour of the gardens (we had an essentially private tour as the only English speakers!), feed everybody, and then let them wander around until the boat takes them away again. It seems a little crazy, since Norwegian winters aren't exactly garden friendly, so they move most things into their enormous greenhouse/restaurant every year, and also grow all their annuals (50,000 of them). But it reminded us of the Huntington Garden, which we really liked visiting in Pasadena, just in it's "early stages" instead of 150 years old. 

Michael lounging about 

Norwegians apparently like the beach (there were like 3 beach spots)

They have robot lawn mowers. 

Local halibut and fresh herbs and flowers.

There really were an incredible number of flowers.

The sunset put on a show for us, too

We had a great evening!

Hallo, Preikestolen!

 It's our first day in Stavenger, Norway, and we jumped in with both feet on a hike organized by the conference Michael is attending here. Our flight from Frankfurt was early but uneventful, and so we arrived with plenty of time to meet the buses taking us to the trailhead of Preikestolen, or Pulpit Rock. 

The hike was great, and also not what we expected. I thought we'd be told what time the buses were leaving and turned loose, since this is maybe the most popular hike in Norway and gets lots of traffic each day. Instead, it was a guided hike that took us up a back trail over the ridge, which was beautiful. You could tell the guided were very knowledgeable at leading groups of 5-10 and giving people a very private and personal experience of a major tourist attraction, as we hit several other gorgeous vistas not accessed by the main route. The only problem is that we were not a group of 10 hikers... We were close to 70 nuclear physicists, and the back trail was not technical, but definitely uneven and very wet. So unless you had good hiking shoes (me), your feet got real wet real fast (Michael). Since the trail wasn't as well marked, we also had to mostly stick together (there were just two guides, on at the front and one in the back), which meant we went really slowly and the hike took about 6 hours instead of 3, like we expected. The weather was also pretty variable - mostly lovely, but we got rained on a bit and it clouded over while we were at the top. Overall, this hike was what I was most looking forward to on this trip, and the views did not disappoint, but given that we were up at 4am for our flight, it turned into a very long day!

On a nice march with 70 stranger-nerds (we met several very nice dudes on the way)

Norway is spectacularly beautiful. 

Turns out this vista was only like the halfway point. Plenty of places it would have been the destination! This was also one of the spots we wouldn't have seen if we'd gone up the main route. 

Trying to maintain dry feet.

The trail took us up and around a ridge that is bordered by two fjords, so we had nice views on both sides, but also winds up around several alpine lakes. 

Seeing one of the fjords peeking into view.

Preikestolen, or Pulpit Rock: the ultimate goal. It's a 600m (1970 foot) vertical cliff that drops down to the fjord, and is famous because it's cool and because Tom Cruise climbed it in one of the mission impossibles. 

We could have instead been down on that boat looking up (that was the other conference outing option), but we already did boats this trip. 

It wasn't just the physicists up there - the top was very crowded. 

There was a huge queue to get a picture at the point of the rock, and neither of us really wanted to be that close to the edge, and then it clouded over, so we skipped the Instagram shot. It was still a very special summit.

Overall, Norway has welcomed us with a very memorable experience, and we'll both probably be hobbling a little bit tomorrow, but we'll sleep well tonight! 

Frankfurt

 Today Michael was preoccupied giving a lecture and doing science, so I was cut loose to explore the city a bit. I signed up for a walking tour of old Frankfurt, which ended up being pretty fantastic. The guide was an old US expat who had been an army special intelligence and communications expert for decades and ended up settling in Germany because his wife was here in the reserves. So he's been a local for the last 20 years, and led us on a four hour wander through both the historic and the mundane of the city (the tour included some free time in markets and breaks to sit by the river). 

Frankfurt is kind of a strange city, in my opinion. It's got a long history, of course, and on the surface looks like your classic European city with mixed era architecture and narrow streets, but it was more or less flattened in WWII and most of the buildings are from the 1970s and 80s... And most of the "classic old German" looking timberframe buildings in the old town square were reconstructed in the early 2000s. So it gives everything a slightly uncanny valley/dollhouse kind of vibe. That said, it also has the perks of a very cool aesthetic with like, modern bathrooms and regularly-sized steps. It's also makes for smartly designed urban neighborhoods, with retail spaces on the ground floor and apartments above, so overall there isn't a "super touristy" feel anywhere, since people live just about everywhere. It would probably be something of a lifestyle choice to live right above some of the busy plazas, though. 

The new "old" Frankfurt

The helpful thing about the tour was that it did point out the actually old bits and pieces that survived the war. Bartholomew Cathedral survived mostly in tact (the guide said it's a sweet myth that church spires tended to survive the war because bombers would try to save them as navigational markers - instead, they just have a small cross section for the poorly aimed bombs to hit directly) was beautiful and makes for a good landmark in the city skyline.

The City Hall and main square were reconstructed over a few decades between 1980 and the early 2000s, and make for a quaint city center and tourist area. I actually wandered through here yesterday, and stumbled on a rally/party thing for the German soccer team... Which had just lost the championship game in whatever tournament they were playing in to England, but I guess they called them the "vice-champions" and I guess that's nice. 

There were lots of German flags. City hall is in the left-center.

There actually is one original house from the late 1600s standing just near the square. It was saved when the rest of the city was leveled during a particularly thorough bombing raid during WWII because if it caught fire and fell down, it would have blocked one of the last evacuation routes to the river for the remaining citizens. So the fire department concentrated on the one building and let everything else go. 

The oldest house left standing in this part of Frankfurt. Apparently there is a 90something year old pensioner who was born in the house who still lives there and is known among the locals. 

Frankfurt is Germany's only city with enough skyscrapers to make anything like a skyline, and they're quite proud of it. Frankfurt is also the banking center of Germany, and home to the stock exchange. The City has been a financial hub since it's founding as a key trade location.

The stock exchange has a sculpture of both a bull and a bear - apt, and practical. (New York and Chicago only have bulls out front).

The most fascinating part of the tour to me was the history of the Jewish community in Frankfurt. Jews were some of the original settlers in the city, and have had a very fraught go of it since the beginning, despite being pretty central to the development of the region. After the tour I went back to the Jewish Museum, which was very interesting. 

The foundations of 5 buildings from the old ghetto was discovered in the 1970s during a development project, and after apparently a lot of arguing and protests, were preserved and turned into a museum, which is very cool. You can walk around in them and get a sense for just how packed the houses were. 

A map of the old Frankfurt - the Jewish Ghetto was a little lane just outside the original city walls, but the community was deeply integrated with the overall city. The ghetto is sort of central to this picture and is the little curve of super dense buildings. 

At it's height, something like 3000 people lived on this one teeny block in multistory houses.

Jews were banned from living in the city in the 1614, despite a thriving community since the 1300s. I guess Frankfurt has the ignoble honor of estabishing one of the first Jewish ghettos, as they forced 100 families into a walled off, 300m by 100m, alley, which then developed into a very crowded but vibrant community until Napoleon conquered the city in the 1800s and granted Jews citizenship (and allowed them to move out of the ghetto). Citizenship was then revoked when the Napoleon empire fell (Always an indication of just policy), but the ghetto had been bulldozed by that point and wasn't effectively reestablished.  

So the Jewish community had already survived several pogroms and a whole bunch of abuse by the time the Nazis got around to being very efficiently evil. Discussion of WwII is kind of interesting here - it's both very blunt about how horrible the regime was while at the same time sort of skating around it. As an example, the memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust in Frankfurt is very powerful - the wall of the old Jewish cemetery is lined with individual blocks naming all of the people murdered - but the wall plaster is also peeling and the there were trash heaps around. I found it unsettling. 

The memorial blocks stretch around the whole of the outer cemetery walls - which is a good half block or so. 

So many names. Frankfurt's Jewish population went from ~11000 to 600. 

Anne Frank and her family lived in Frankfurt and are commemorated here. 

The Jewish cemetery had been in use since the late 1200s. When the Nazis came to power, they systematically desecrated it by ripping up the headstones and breaking them up for construction material and then deliberately using the land as a garbage heap. About 100 headstones survived, though records of the grave locations were destroyed, so they have been symbolically placed back around the walls. 

Overall, I had a very interesting day! We have an early flight tomorrow to Stavenger, and then start our stay off there with a hike, so I'm excited!