GINGERsnaps: Exploring beautiful Norway comes with a hefty price tag

If Norway wasn't so expensive, it might have been my favourite country on my Spar world trip.

I nearly choked on my cappuccino of 38 Norwegian krone (more or less R50) when I saw the food prices at the airport in Oslo. Two slices of pizza and a beer at a restaurant: R130. A takeaway hamburger and chips: R110. A ready-made salad that would probably cost you about R35 at a South African supermarket: R100.

Nice meeting you Norway, but how on earth can anyone survive here on a backpacker’s budget? As I started writing this, I was looking at a poster advertising a bottle of mineral water and a nut-and-fruit bar for R63. Appetising, isn’t it?

It’s a pity that many travellers will probably never lay eyes on this beautiful country, simply because it’s too pricey. To share a dorm with seven other people in a lousy, loud, smelly backpackers in Oslo cost me R400 per night. On top of that I had to rent linen at an additional R80.

But what Norway lacks in affordability, it makes up for in picturesque scenery. Darren, Beja and Paulo, fellow Spar travel reporters, and I decided to stretch our budgets by travelling together while in Norway. We rented a car and headed to a village called Vossestrand, about 400 km northwest of Oslo.

We drove up and down mountain passes for hours: at first everything around us was green and luscious and then suddenly we found ourselves in a desolate landscape in different shades of burnt orange, brown and red, surrounded by mountains with patches of snow on top. We jumped out of the car like little children, shouting, laughing and running around, despite a sudden freezing wind cutting through our skins.

The next day we went on one of my most memorable train trips ever - from Flåm to Myrdal. Climbing almost 900 m over a distance of 20,2 km, the Flåm Railway is one of the world's steepest railway lines on normal gauge (www.visitflam.com/flam-railway/).

The train ride starts at the Aurlandsfjord at the foot of the mountains. Once the train starts climbing - with several twists and turns - the most dramatic scenery unfolds, with an "oh-my-word-I've-never-seen-something-like-this-before" moment every time it exits one of the 20 tunnels along the route.

A single trip takes 55 minutes and leads you through and over majestic mountains, past winding rivers, thundering waterfalls and through quaint little towns - definitely something to put on your bucket list.

On the roof of the Oslo opera house.