Trondheim

So I keep exploring my own country, this time I went to Trondheim. I haven’t been to Trondheim since I was a kid and remember very little from that trip. And as I am still trying to challenge myself, and see more of my own country in 2020, I ended up booking a weekend trip to the city.

I packed my backpack, as I feel that is often the easiest way to travel, not having to push and carry a suitcase around, and I got on an overnight train going north. My train left Oslo just after 11pm Thursday night and I arrived in Trondheim around 6:30am Friday morning. I have to admit it wasn’t the most comfortable journey. Last time I took a night train I got a blanket, a pillow and a sleep mask, this time I heard nothing about anything like this. Luckily I had brought the pillow from last time with me (it’s a blow up pillow, quite smart), I didn’t have a blanket though and did get a bit cold during the night. And at about 1:30 am a couple got on the train and they were on the row in front of me (one on each side of the isle), they were quite loud when they got on, never really seemed to settle down for the night, and they reeked of smoke, which I am extremly sensitive to. As I got to the hotel I was in luck though, they had rooms that hadn’t been in use so I got to check in at 7am. Meaning I could freshen up and change and could come back to have a nap whenever I needed it, not having to wait for the normal 3pm check-in. So I was out of the room and started exploring, and geocaching, before 8am.

Trondheim really is a pretty city and the weather was really nice this Friday. I started with the famous church, Nidarosdomen, a nearly 1000 year old church often mentioned as the biggest and most beautiful church in Norway. As I’m not christian, and let's be honest, not that into churches, I decided not to go in this time (I do, however, vaguely remember being inside when I was a young). It is a beautiful building from the outside as well though.

After that I went to the old town bridge, the bridge was getting a facelift so the arches were unfortunately hidden under tarp, but the view from the bridge is still beautiful. After some time on the bridge and another geocache find close by I headed up to the fortress. Here you can see the whole city and I had some fun with a little photo shoot. I continued to geocache my way along the river and back towards the hotel. Around 1pm I was back in my room and in need of a nap. After the nap, I really didn’t sleep for long, I freshened up again and went back out to explore and find more geocaches. I was surprised to see so many people in groups sitting close to one another and drinking by the water, as the government has said the fines for this will be pretty big, but I guess the police still haven’t been that strict when it comes to this. I made sure to keep a distance to people I passed and used hand sanitiser whenever I had touched a cache.

When I started to get tired and hungry I started looking for a place to eat close to my hotel and ended up at Trondhjem microbrewery. They were just about filled up outside, but there were hardly anyone inside, it was still pretty warm outside. So I got a booth all to my self and ordered their chicken burger and one of their beers. The burger was a little too spicy for me, but still tasty, so I’m guessing the burgers there are good if that’s your thing. And the beer was a mild fruity one, quite nice. I decided to indulge myself and order dessert and a cocktail as well, both were really nice. After dinner I took a quick detour up to the fortress for sunset, it didn't produce the colours I'd hoped for though, before calling it a night. I was planning on getting up early the next day. Unfortunately I had a difficult time falling asleep as the walls in the hotel were paper thin and someone came and went by their room while making a lot of noise a little before midnight. I had planned on getting up early to get the sunrise, but as I struggled with falling asleep and the forcast for the morning had changed, there was no guarantee of a nice sunrise anymore, I thought I’d set the alarm but see how tired I was in the morning. But the same people who had kept me up before midnight came back a few minutes before my 4:30am alarm, and they weren’t quiet this time either. Since they’d woken me up to the point where I wouldn’t fall asleep again right away, I figured I might as well get up.

So I left the hotel round 5:15 and got the quiet city just about to my self for a

couple of hours. Not many people get up that early on a Saturday. I don’t feel the photos does the sunrise justice, and it wasn’t a spectacular one, but it was nice. I started with the old town bridge to see if that would get me the right angle for some photos and then I started walking, and geocaching my way, towards the area called Lade. My goal for the day was geocaching by the water and then shopping.

The first geocache location after the harbour area was a pretty cool one, and I was inspired by some photos other geocachers had posted. This meant I spent more than 30 minutes there playing with my camera. It was fun, and I really like the results. After this I had a few DNF’s, meaning I didn’t find the geocaches, which is really annoying. At least the view was nice though. After a while I found a couple of cool places to have some more fun with the camera before shopping. Somewhere aloong the way I had decided I wouldn't walk the whole round I had originally planned on.

I was getting thirsty and hungry, hadn’t had much of a breakfast really. So when I was getting tired of all the attempt at nice in air photos I started walking towards the mall. This mall houses a shop that we don’t have in my home town, and it’s not in Oslo either, meaning I was really happy when I found out they have it in Trondheim. So after a little bite to eat and a pop (fanta) I headed to New Yorker to try on half the shop. Honestly I spent so long in there and tried on so many things. I had such a hard time trying to limit what to buy. After New Yorker I went to H&M in search of something new to wear on the train back, and a blanket, as I did not want to be cold on the train again. And the clothes I was supposed to wear had now been worn because of the forcast before leaving home got it wrong for this Saturday. When I was done with the shopping I had about an hour long walk ahead of me, now with a heavy bag of clothes. And it started to rain a bit. It was not fun. When I finally got to an area with cafes I checked out a couple of pretty full ones before finding one I felt I could sit down in. I needed a propper meal and something to drink. The cafe seemed cozy enough, the bathroom was a bit of a mess though. And as I was eating my club sandwich I thought, why is there some sort of jam all over the plate? (That was not on the menu and it’s strange to use that as a garnish, also because people could be allergic to it.) And then it hit me, where is the bacon? I couldn’t be bothered to make a big deal about it, but it is a bit strange to forget the bacon on a club sandwich. At least i was fed and could make my way back to my hotel, only stopping for a couple of geocaches and a souvenir shop.

I walked through the street with all the umbrellas for a geocache, a street I've seen photos of before, it's pretty cool. And the geocache was pretty clever as well. When I got back I looked through my photos from my day, had a nap and showered.

Then it was time to check out what Saturday night in Trondheim looked like in the middle of a pandemic. I decided to go to an English pub, I wanted real pub food. Yup, that’s me. At least I did a local bar thing the night before. I ordered a red fruit cider and chicken with bacon, cheese and BBQ sauce. The meal was so good, and speaking English to the server was good, almost felt like I was in England for a hot second. After my meal they turned off the music and put on some sport on the tv, so I decided to move on. I ended up trying two other bars, I didn’t intend on doing a bar crawl, I ended up doing it because I wanted to have a couple of drinks but didn’t want to listen to sport, or feel like I was in a corner by my self, which is how I felt at the second bar. The last bar I went to had a strange form of «restriction»; they said they had to bring the drink to your table, which is fine, except you had to order at the bar. So instead of people having less contact with others they were lined up (with some distance but still) in the middle of the room and the bar staff were running along the line to the tables in the venue. Where I ended up sitting the bar staff kept running passed me with little distance, because they were trying to keep a distance from the line. I went back to my room well before midnight, with a slight buzz as I haven't had a lot of alcohol in 2020. I decided to not get up early the next day. I had to pack up in the morning and the forecast wasn’t looking too good. And I would spend the next night on the train so I better get some propper sleep.

I woke up at a normal time and checked out and left my backpack at the hotel around 10am. I went to the shop to get some cereal bars and then started to walk towards the forest. My plan was to geocache my way into the forest and turn around whenever I felt I’d had enough. I found quite a few geocaches, but there were unfortunately some I just couldn’t find, I suspect some of them might have been missing. It rained a little on my walk, not a whole lot though, so I kept walking for a few hours. I walked on wide paths with way too many people, and dogs, on them and on little muddy trails. And took photos of waterfalls, streams, lakes and mushrums. It's strange how it felt like it was still summer on the Friday but this Sunday felt a lot like autumn, even though it wasn't September yet. When my feet got soaking wet from walking in the grass for a cache and it started raining more I decided it was time to turn back, I just needed to find one last mystery cache first. I started walking fast back and decided to walk along the road back to town, there were caches along it and it would be the faster route so that worked out fine. When I got back to town I wanted to find a cafe to sit down at and was a little disappointed to find that all cafes except Starbucks were closed (at least from what I could find and what google was telling me). I got a sandwich and a hot cocoa and sat down there for a bit over an hour, this was not where I wanted to sit though. I’m not a big fan and would have rather sat at a cosy local place. When the rain let up a little I went back to the hotel to get changed and get my backback. I then went to Egon, a Norwegian chain pub-like restaurant. With the weather being what it was I figured this was an okay place to sit for a couple of hours and get dinner before my late night train back to Oslo. This last day really wasn’t ideal, being in a city with nothing open on a rainy day alone, I have to admit I felt really alone. The train ride back down to Oslo was better than going up, there were no noisy or stinky passenger close by and I now had a blanket. I was still a little tired going straight to work, but that’s to be expected.

So, conclusion time. Trondheim is a nice city, but going to a city like this alone, during a pandemic; not ideal. I don’t think I’ll travel to another city like this alone again. Cities with the mountain hikes close by are different and those I think I can still do on my own. My next trip will however not be alone and I’m looking forward to going further north with my cousin soon.