Bergensbanen

When to purchase tickets.

You may want to purchase your train tickets at least a week in advance, especially during peak season. I purchased our seats a week before we left. All the early departures were already sold out.

Porter Service for Luggage

Train personnel will not assist with your luggage. It’s up to you to haul it onboard and secure it in the luggage area. If you have several heavy pieces of baggage, I recommend using a porter service such as Porter Service AS. Someone from the porter service met me in the hotel lobby in Oslo at 7:30 AM to retrieve our luggage. At that time, I verified with the porter our destination hotel for that night, paid the nominal fee, and received the receipt. Truth be told, we did arrive about 90 minutes before the luggage. But that was a very small inconvenience and tradeoff for not having to roll our bags through the streets of Bergen on the way to our hotel.

According to the web site Norwegian Routes, the train ride “is considered to be one of the most beautiful train journeys in the world”. The online travel brochure didn’t let us down. Though, the passing scenery the first two hours or so outside of Oslo was mostly suburban and some light industrial centers. By the third hour we began passing through farmland, rivers, streams and some forest. We travelled in early June and by the fourth hour we began seeing patches of snow in shady areas. This indicated we were rising in elevation. Within an hour everything from hills and mountains to streams and lakes were covered in snow and ice.