Arrival: "Is this real life?"

[note: start with the post below this one: "Trip Overview"] On Wednesday morning at 6:15am, I met with a group of 24 other DIS students and two chaperones at the Copenhagen airport. I knew none of the other students who were on the trip with me, but we bonded pretty quickly, and on the whole, we made a very functional group throughout our 5 days together. During the plane ride I enjoyed looking out the window and saw a dramatic change in the landscape below. Denmark was completely flat, but as we flew north, the scene below included mountains and chunks of ice in the waters. 

Over Denmark

Over Norway

After only an hour and 20 minutes in the air, we landed at the Bergen airport in Norway, collected our baggage and headed out to the bus waiting to take us to Flam.

View out the bus window

Although it sounds silly to say, the 2 hour bus ride to our hostel was actually pretty incredible. I was not the only person who thought so. Every turn brought gasps and holy s***'s from my travel companions. The scenes that we passed were surreal. Tiny brightly colored cabins were nestled in the mountains, which rose so far above us that we felt like ants. The fog and cloud cover gave a dramatic effect and I would have sworn we’d found our way into a movie set. At some point I overheard one student say to another, "Is this real life?"

We drove through 12 or 13 tunnels carved right into the rocks of the mountains, and each time we emerged on the other side, we were often met with even more breath taking views than the ones we'd left behind.

The sun, making its best attempts to break through the clouds

We stopped the bus to stretch our legs and visit this HUGE waterfall

gorgeous

It was as if the sun was waiting to help make our arrival to Flam even more spectacular... it finally burst through the clouds with blue skies right when we pulled into the parking lot of our hostel. We had arrived! 

Outside our hostel under the blue skies, tucked away in the mountains