Our food was excellent in Bergen. We enjoyed a lot of good meals here. One feature of a good meal is more than just the food. Immediately after arriving in Bergen, we had our first lunch at “Dr. Wiesener’s”, a local community owned and operated pub/restaurant. Dr. Wiesener was a doctor and champion of public health. He believed that cleanliness and walks in the fresh air were healthy and good. In the second half of the 19th century, cleanliness was not just a virtue but health-promoting. However, it was also hard to come by for people with low incomes. Dr. Wiesener had the cause of affordable public baths for people of low incomes for years but had few results before he died in 1888. The next year, Bergen citizens, in gratitude for Dr. Wiesener’s work as a physician and a citizen, opened Dr. Wieseners Folkebad, for cheap public baths. And yes, we ate our first lunch in Bergen in this same 1889 building. You can see a picture of Dr. Wiesener in the upper right of the first photo, above the bar. The pub specializes in traditional Scandinavian food. One of the owners talked to us and explained the town’s history to Dr. Wiesener to our food for lunch. We had ham and vegetable soup with fresh baked bread with dried tomatoes baked into the bread. Our main course was Pasta Calebrese – because they currently have an Italian chef. The whole experience was very good.

One evening we ate our dinner in one of the harbor side pubs. It was an old building and most of the clientele seemed to be locals. Seeing locals dining somewhere always gives me a good feeling about the place. At any rate, I must have had salmon for ten or twelve straight meals at one point, and while I can assure you that was not a problem for me, this night I chose to have a shrimp sandwich and a Carlsberg beer. You can see my sandwich in the second photo. Vicky was not quite as adventurous and went with the salmon sandwich, in the third photo. The bottom part of the sandwich bread is still there but Vicky is holding the top piece of bread. These were big sandwiches.

The fourth photo is out of order as it was actually before our dinner. It was really nice out in front of the pubs and right on the harbor with people walking about enjoying the great weather.

One interesting feature of this trip was that we ate three or four lunches in museums. These were not just grab some food from a line and take it to a table lunches. These were formal table service lunches. My guess is that the museums were looking to make additional income to keep themselves as going concerns. This was a small museum northwest of Bergen in a small fishing village. Lunch was salmon and cod chowder with fresh bread and fresh butter which you can see in the last photo. The chowder was excellent and it was loaded with salmon and cod chunks. Our dessert was pancakes with sour cream and berry jam.