Is that the patter of rain upon our window as we stir awake? It was inevitable that we should have at least one day out of the seventeen in Scandinavia that the forecast would deliver its promise, and here is that day, our last day before flying back to Frankfurt in the earliest hours of the morning tomorrow. This won’t be the first time we’ve seen the weather change as a signal that our time in our current location is coming to a close and that we’ll be moving on. If the rain is especially hard, it would also then become the perfect excuse to have a down day where we would catch up on writing and knitting, enjoy a last fika or two, another hot dog, or even make a serious effort to try whale so we can feel guilty for years to come. Just writing that assures me that we’ll never find ourselves eating a whale steak.

After our languorous two-hour breakfast catching up on yesterday’s need for notes and in no hurry to rush into the rain, it felt like the time had arrived to move our numb butts away from the buffet and brave the wet outdoors. With umbrellas at the ready, we aimed for the hotel door only to see a respite from the rain. Oh, lucky day. Walking over to a church we hoped to visit first, we passed a comic bookshop with a cover in the window that caught Caroline’s eye. I thought the photo would suffice, but after a few steps and Caroline reading a bit about the artist, we agreed that we should take a second look. The proprietor showed us all the comic books he currently had in stock, which would have been lighter to pack, but we decided on the book in the window. [The cover might have had something to do with that. – Caroline] Fewer than 24 hours left in Scandinavia, and we’ve met the first person who only accepts cash.

We should be grateful to the man at Comics & Stories on Lodin Lepps Gate as after a very short walk around the corner to an ATM, we are seeing and holding Norwegian Kroners for the first time in our lives, which has us realizing that we never saw what the bills from Sweden or Denmark look like. With a copy of EON from Lars Lauvik now with us, we’ll have some translating to do once we get home and find the time to open the pages of Syvende Mor I Bedehuset, which Google translated to Seventh Mother In The Prayer House.

There will never be enough time to satisfy the curiosity of exploring anywhere I’ve ever been or will go to. I can’t speak about the exploration of death yet, but my experience from a limited view of places I’ve visited suggests that weeks would be required to begin feeling like I’d become familiar enough not to entertain a small amount of panic that it is already time to go. To call that a panic is probably hyperbolic, except that it fits my inclination to lean into drama when the opportunity arises. The truth is I’m able to contain the tensions/sadness when I look at all of these fortunate encounters with the idea that we’ve merely become acquainted with places that might summon us back due to too many unsatisfied curiosities left to discover. All the same, I feel a certain need to turn over the leaves that show the corners and details that make up the big picture, and so today, I’m sharing the odds and ends found on our walk through Bergen.

Did we really expect the doors of Mariakyrken (St. Mary’s Church) to be open for welcoming visitors? Of course, we did, and if had been raining, we could have sought refuge. Please, don’t remind me that we have umbrellas with us. I want my traveler trophies found in the photos of beautiful things I’m able to capture, but when I stop and think about it, these doors, the ironwork, and the heavy stones that support the church are spectacular in their own right. Trying to find out if and when the church is open, I came to learn that its limited hours (outside of summer) are Tuesdays and Fridays from noon until 2:00 p.m.

This is awesome, a statue honoring the chronicler Snorri Sturluson from Iceland, who was not only a historian, poet, and politician but was friends with a king who likely had him murdered. You may not know about the Prose Edda (most likely) penned by Sturluson, but you probably know J.R.R. Tolkien’s derivative works that were highly influenced by the Edda: The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, and Silmarillion. We first learned of Snorri Sturluson a decade ago when we dove into a book about the Vikings, and it turned out that this man of many hats was the primary source of most of what we know of that age.

We headed back to the Bergen Cathedral because somewhere had read that it was open. No, it wasn’t; its hours are more limited than St. Mary’s: it closed about a half-hour after we arrived on Friday afternoon, the only day it’s open for a mere two hours. Good thing wet cobblestones glisten under the sky, making up for whatever spectacular sights we might have otherwise seen in the cathedral.

Somewhere between 1,200 mm (47 inches) and 2,500 mm (98 inches – 8 feet!) of rainfall in this city per year. I almost forgot to mention that two weeks before we flew from Arizona to Germany, a heavy storm washed out roads in Norway and Sweden and derailed a train, which contributed to our need to take buses for part of our journey.

Striking out trying to visit two different churches, the only thing left to do was drop in on a Church of Bread, Godt Brød. Morning fika? Sure, but we’ll split this cardamom roll because lunch is just around the corner. I’ll use the time to write in my endeavor to stay as current as possible about the events of the day.

But I can’t find the urgency to write and feel that I’m mainly sitting here with pen in hand, waiting for inspiration to strike. Maybe I’ll find it in the toilet? I’ll be right back. Nope, nothing there; maybe the hot dog stand will deliver food for the imagination.

Meanwhile, the woman across from me, likely eyeballing the theft of at least a bite of my half of the Kardemummabullar, has armed herself with a needle to stab me should I make a move on her half of the roll. Either she’s thinking of stabbing me, or she could be knitting; I’m never really sure when I’m lost in trying to ignore her while I selfishly pay attention to my notebook and everything else around me. In her right ear, she’s listening to Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow, which, at nearly 1,000 pages, is quite the long listen and delves into granular details; ask me how I know.

It’s peculiar, having no urgency to race into the last moments of this vacation. To simply sit here with the knowledge that the journey is coming to a quick close, and that’s okay. Strangely, returning to Frankfurt tomorrow feels like going home, though we are still five days away from our return flight to Arizona.

We’d already snagged a couple of Pølse (hotdogs) from across the way at Treskroneren when the sky yawned and let off a torrent in which the hardy locals kept going like it didn’t matter while we desert dwellers cowered under an awning to munch on our cheesy-bacon wieners because who likes soggy buns. Ten minutes later, the rain faded, and we were once again underway. Our walk over to the Leprosy Museum was for naught as yesterday was the last day of the season it would be open. Come back in April 2024 for a visit, the sign suggested. Too bad on missing this one, as it was right here in Bergen back in 1873, one-hundred-fifty years ago, that a young doctor named Gerhard Armauer Hansen discovered the leprosy bacteria, which is why leprosy is also referred to as Hansen’s disease.

You’ll never believe what happened next. We revisited the Strikkelykke yarn store and left with one more locally dyed skein.

Yay, we will have our obligatory church visit today after the previous failures, but to be honest, the Nykyrka (New Church) was a dud.

Were I 25 again and on shrooms or even just high on weed, I might have better understood the psychedelic lighting, but today, it just felt gimmicky. It feels that this church from 1622 is being desecrated. Just be done with the god stuff and turn it into a full-fledged nightclub?

At least they have a crypt; that’ll be something, I was certain. More nope, a mishmash of rocks, dirt, some relics of unidentified things scattered willy-nilly. I’m unimpressed and ready to wash the disappointment from my expectations…

…and wash is exactly what we got as it started to rain again, pushing us to seek shelter under an arched passageway of the 18th-century customs house, a.k.a. Tollboden. Certain that this was the end and not just a lull, we pushed on.

Seriously, more rain? By this time, we were looking for enough of it to masquerade our pants if we needed to wet them due to the urgency we were both suffering while we desperately searched for somewhere to discreetly let it go. Whoa, a public toilet that was open and fully ripe here in Nordnes Park saving us from “dropping trou” to relieve ourselves in front of God, Byfjorden, the trees, and nobody else because who else would be out here in the rain? Well, there was that guy kayaking just offshore.

One of Bergen’s sister cities turns out to be Seattle, Washington, who gifted Bergen this totem pole made of Oregon Pine for its 900th anniversary. One should stop and consider that this wood carving has been sitting in public for 53 years since it was presented to Bergen back in 1970, and nothing has been cut off, graffitied, burned, or otherwise intentionally harmed: a certain sign of civility.

I’m feeling inspired and will consider offering Caroline a totem pole for our 900th anniversary, should we make it that far.

Is this the Fiskeridirektoratet (Directorate of Fisheries)? Because it certainly doesn’t look like government buildings to me. Image search suggests that it is, so I’ll just go with it.

If I lived in Bergen, I’d certainly be out every rainy day to capture different aspects of a city reflected in standing water. Desert water is typically turbid, not this black mirror stuff, reversing the view of what towers overhead.

Stenciled onto a wall in a narrow alley was this poem from Alfred Tennyson, written in 1889.

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face-to-face
When I have crost the bar.

The intrigue of passages that slice through blocks to shorten the route are romantic notions here in Europe, while in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, they are paths to likely horrors. Here, as it grows later in the day, we begin discussing our Torschlusspanik (door-closing panic – German). Compared to earlier, when I was content to take things casually, we grew ever more aware that our time in Scandinavia was quickly ending. Even in the rain, we are in love with being here and feel like we’ve not yet scratched the surface of what there is to find in this old city.

Stockfish (air-dried cod) was the lifeblood of Bergen for hundreds of years; just as salted cod drove maritime economies, this stuff was gold, while today, it’s nearly as rare as that gold, and at least in the U.S., nobody is going to the local grocery and picking up one of these shriveled fish. By the way, should you ever encounter a stockfish with its head attached and a bump on it, those are King Cod, and if you hang one in your home, it’ll bring you good luck.

Nothing says last-minute grasping at straws like finding indulgence in food, so how about we try to dry out a bit over our last Kardemummabullar?

That sounds and looks dandy, but is it Fika without coffee? Let’s throw caution to the wind even if we do have to wake at 4:00 a.m. to make our way to the airport because two Fika on the last day is obviously the right way to help bring closure to a great vacation.

Such an important part of every day, yet I rarely write about our toilet experiences. Stopping to consider what I just wrote, I realized I’ve written about toilets in the Grand Canyon while white water rafting, the same in Alaska, a disturbing stop on an Autobahn at the Krachgarten, and then there was that crass comment about peeing in Santa Claus, Indiana, I should stop here as I’ve likely written about the subject dozens of times.

We’ve returned to the Bryggen area for Caroline to check on some last-minute gift ideas while I take what will turn out to be one of my favorite photos in Bergen.

Rare is the day I post a second image of something I shared a couple of days earlier, but the different angle and the warm light make it look more appealing than the first image, and I’m not going to go back and remove the other one as it’s already a part of that day’s story.

Gifts were had for two of Caroline’s coworkers. I swear that shopping is some kind of therapy for my wife and a needed activity at the end of a trip for her to gain a sense that every angle of possibility was reached and that the vacation is now complete.

I suppose the same is true for me because we returned to Bien Basar for that one last tartar and my very own Persetorsk with the awesomest mashed peas I’ve ever had. The pressed cod and salty roe with a wedge of grilled cabbage also helped lend closure to me.

Back at the room, I wasn’t done taking photos, nor was I done packing, but by 10:00 p.m., we were done with everything except getting to sleep, which we needed to do quickly because our alarm was set to wake us in six hours.