| Journal: TWUK | Section: |
| Title: | Issue Date: 24/07/00 |
| Author: | Page Number: 51 |
| Copyright: Other |
agents on the spot: norway
Braathens Airline and Norwegian Coastal Cruises combined forces to take six agents to Norway last week. Filmed throughout their trip for a Norwegian training video, the agents travelled from Bergen to Oslo and either joined a coastal cruise or embarked on a series of adventure activities. We asked three for their impressions before and after the trip.
Braathens Airline and Norwegian Coastal Cruises combined forces to take six agents to Norway last week. Filmed throughout their trip for a Norwegian training video, the agents travelled from Bergen to Oslo and either joined a coastal cruise or embarked on a series of adventure activities. We asked three for their impressions before and after the trip.Before After
Sue Veal
Manager
Bath Travel
Ferndown, Dorset
Kate Sumner
Sales consultant
STA Travel
Liverpool
Andrew Handslip
Sales consultant
Thomas Cook
Nottingham
I had never been to Norway before and it wasn’t a place I thought to recommend to clients very often. I suppose I imagined it to be primarily a place for older people taking a coastal voyage and I certainly never recommended it to younger clients. Obviously I had seen the photos in the brochures and knew it was a very scenic place but I also knew it could be pretty expensive and I wasn’t entirely sure what clients got for their money. I knew of Bergen and Oslo but never thought of them as city-break destinations.
Norway was a wonderful surprise – a place of immense natural beauty and very atmospheric. Some parts are very dramatic, others very pastoral. Bergen is a lovely country town, ringed by mountains and full of colourful houses and a lot of history. Oslo is a bustling city, wonderful for shopping. There is much more to do than I had realised and a lot of adventure activities which would certainly appeal to young people. The coastal voyage is stunning and when you see the midnight sun, you lose all sense of time. It is a very memorable place to visit and is most certainly worth the money.
I had been to Sweden and I had been to Denmark for a day but I had never been to Norway. I thought it would be pretty similar to Denmark – which is very flat. We have quite a lot of Norwegian students at the university nearby so I had sold quite a lot of flights to Norway but not much else. Quite a lot of students buy rail passes and travel by train around Europe but they don’t often go into Scandinavia because they think it’s cold and expensive. I rarely recommended Norway because I wasn’t aware that there was that much there to appeal to young people.
Norway is certainly not flat. It is very mountainous and very beautiful. I travelled from Bergen to Oslo and you can do that route by bus, train and fjord ferry for about £70 on a pass valid for two months. I am really recommending it to students because there is so much to see and do. We went parasailing, water-skiing, mountain biking, horse riding and white-water rafting and they are all pretty easy to organise there. It isn’t cold at all in summer and the days are long. The only thing that is noticeably more expensive is alcohol but you can buy it duty-free so you don’t need to spend money in the bars.
Norway was not a place I would normally have thought of visiting. I didn’t know much about it and think the only place I could have named there would have been Oslo. I had never been to Scandinavia before but I had been to Switzerland and I suppose I thought it would be rather like that. We didn’t get many inquiries about Scandinavia but when we did, clients seemed quite keen for some guidance on what was worth seeing. I had noticed that you could get some fairly reasonably priced flights to Norway but I wasn’t sure what there was to do once you got there. I thought it would probably be pretty cold.
June, July and August are definitely the best time to go to Norway – it is light both day and night and it’s actually quite warm. I was impressed with the cities, especially Bergen which is just a very nice place to be. It’s not too busy but has a lovely harbour, colourful fish market and some great restaurants. There are lots of interesting ways to explore – by mountain railway, by coach through the mountain’s hairpin bends or by ferry boat via the fjords. Taking a helicopter ride gives you a totally different perspective – you fly off over the fjords and realise just how vast they are. I am definitely going back and can certainly recommend Norway now.