Sunday, April 22 2018

Last day in Bergen. After a good breakfast we pack our bags and check out of the hotel. The luggage is put into the store room (we don’t want to carry the bags around). And we leave for our morning activity.

We have some time so Simon leads the way up the steep hills to the old Skansen firehouse. After we found the geocache there we make our way down through the small streets we haven’t been to before towards Bryggen.

We booked the Escape Bryggen room and chose the room “Hanseaticus”. We don’t know if we are alone or others will join us. We were open for that option in our booking. As we are a little bit early, we get a quick coffee at a bakery close. When it is time to get to the place (which is situated inside one of the old warehouses there) we ring a bell and are  led up to the office, where we get information about what will happen and the rules.

We also have to sign some papers (we are observed by video, possible accidents etc.) and then go to our room. Neither of us has done this before. The goal is to solve a lot of riddles and find stuff to get to a key which opens the door out of the room. For that we have 60 minutes. We can call for hints and will be called after 30 minutes. As soon as the door is locked we start.

There will be no spoilers here, but it was a lot of fun. Some tasks were very easy, others tricky. We worked perfect together both verbal and non-verbal. A good thing we were alone and didn’t have others with us. At the half hour call we get one small hint (I was standing in front of the solution, just never looked down) and one stupid hint (we just didn’t check enough) at the very end before we found the key in a chest full of silver and left the room. (no pictures from inside the room are allowed – it would ruin the fun for others).

The employee for the Escape Bryggen was impressed with our performance (she said that!). We managed to get out of the room in 37 minutes. As I found out later, the room has an escape rate of around 20 %. There were faster ones, but that were normally larger groups (the room is for 2-7 people). And normally two persons would call for hints much more often – we didn’t. So I claim that we set quiet a new benchmark here. We were very pleased and loved the experience.

Unfortunately the weekend is coming to an end and after we got our luggage we took the Bybane back to the airport. There we have enough time to take a round to find most of the geocaches close to the airport. I found some swamp area, too. Of course I had to endure some friendly bullying for not watching where I step (and I saw the plants that indicate that there is water) and my wet feet.

At the airport we tried to find some food. The choices are not that big and we end up eating a burger before going to our plan back to Ålesund. The flight only takes 35 minutes, so we didn’t get any coffee this time. Our car and driver is waiting in Ålesund and after an hour I am back at the ferry to Molde.

Thanks to Simon for giving me no choice but to go on this trip. 😛 No better company I could think about on this weekend. Looking very much forward to our next trip to Kiev and Chernobyl in May. Thanks a lot! 🙂