It rained last night in the Norwegian Rainforest (what the locals call Bergen). It actually sprinkled here and again today, but not so much that we got too wet. First stop this morning was the Leprosy Museum. Believe it or not, the walking tour woman told us it was her favorite thing to go see. Not my favorite, but it was another walking tour and the history of it is pretty interesting and maybe tells a little about the damage done by stereotyping and narrow minds. Leprosy is a bacterial disease that 95% of humans are genetically immune to, but for centuries was associated with "unclean" living (as per Moses in the Bible it seems). Priests were not allowed to touch lepers for religious reasons (the unclean thing), but the nuns could, so the hospital out back of the church started filling with more and more cases of leprosy until it was full (140 at its peak). It was not until the late 1800's that someone started looking at the patterns of infections and discovered that the vast population (95%) are genetically immune to it, and it was spread through the air (coughing). This part of Norway had a lot of lepers because of the damp conditions around here. This hospital was seeing lepers since the 1400's so it went on quite a while. These days it is curable but many still suffer because of the stigma attached (let's keep those minds more open going forward).
Next we caught the tram (oh man I wish we had one of these babies going from Bristol to Williston) which is the "light rail" transport that goes from downtown Bergen to the outskirts and feeds all the buses along the way. We walked 20 minutes from the rail stop to the Edvard Grieg home, museum and concert hall. I did not recognize his name (red neck) but when I heard the music, I knew who he was from Bugs Bunny and Bambi Vs Godzilla cartoons (who said I wasn't cultured) (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPFxBzlFe94&feature=related). Being a late 1800's forward thinker he also built a "composer's hut" where he went to write his masterpieces, which was the predecessor to our modern day "man cave". This is where men go to endeavor in lofty pursuits (and also avoid the dreaded "honey-do" list). Norway is very proud of their famous folks and once again, even at this museum the other very famous musician showed up, Ole Bull. Gotta look him up because his picture is everywhere, his statue is everywhere, he has bars named after him, etc, etc. Sorry Edvard, you got upstaged again. Anyway, nice museum, nice calming music.
We were going to go to Ole Bull's estate but ran out of time. It was a tram stop south of here, then a bus, then a ferry ride away and we would have arrived just about closing time. The museums here seem to only be open between 11am and 3 or 5pm, sometimes 6pm, so you gotta be quick.
We took the tram back into Bergen and hit the other 2 art museums we missed before, The Contemporary Art Museum (lots of Norwegians painting just like the French painters, but Norwegian landscapes and people) houses the "classic" paintings of Norway. A couple of great ones and some very dark ones.
The West Norway Museum of Decorative Art, which had a silver exhibit (spoons, dishes, tea warmers, snooze fest,..) and some of the really creative, simple, fresh "thing" designs like furniture, kitchenware, lamps, pottery, etc. I love this stuff because it is all about function and simplicity and somehow they make it look cool (think Swedish office chairs from the 60's) . They had a special collection of stuff built with recycled stuff (see attached cheese grader lamp). We rested our dogs at the museum cafe and then headed to find supper. We got sidetracked by a guy named Bob (www.bobatlarge.com) who was keeping the street crowd entertained. We chatted him up a bit after and learned he's travelling all over the world doing street performing. He had just came from a Street Performance Olympics in Dublin so he is pretty serious about this stuff. We found a great place that looked more like a bar than restaurant, but we had some amazing fish souffle and mackerel.
Then a stroll around town, watched a ferry come in with some locals on it (island?), checked out some rich person's boat (complete with helicopter on board, Cayman Islands tag), then back to the hotel. I think we hit everything there is to see in Bergen. Maybe a long drive tomorrow..
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