Every day, they provided us with a detailed day plan in four languages, which I'm following in this blog. Text in red is from the day plan, text in black is mine.
We were slightly concerned that the days would be short and there won't be much light - but light was plentiful and the twilight lasted for hours after sunset. Hurtigruten runs a photographic trip in January, when the light is "strange" (as there's no natural light as such). So maybe next time.
http://hurtigruten.co.uk/norway/Voyages/Discovery/Winter-Digital-Photography-Voyage/
And this is our ship: http://www.hurtigruten.co.uk/norway/Ships/Hurtigrutens-fleet/MS-Nordkapp/
I bought some snow boots - they only had one pair on the entire High Street Kensington and that pair happened to be pink! (I do not wear pink!) There was snow in London for 3 days this winter and all shops are out of stock. (I may need to make a compromise this time.)
And now I'm looking at some tips how to manage sea sickness. (So far, I have been sick on all boats I've ever put my foot on - so don't ask me why I agreed to a cruise along the Norwegian coast.)
Advice from a charter captain of an unspecified ship:
- when you start getting sick, eat lots of chocolate and drink mint tea
- does it really help?
- no but your vomit then tastes like After Eight
I put a rather long article on sea sickness here (it's in Czech, the international language of yachting, sorry.) They key apparently is to convince your brain that it's the ship that's moving, the world's OK so there's no need to be sick. Needless to say, I didn't believe that my brain could be so easily convinced and bought two sets of sea sickness tablets and some ginger to calm my stomach when the worst comes to worst.
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Few words before we go.
On Norway
Norway is one of the five Nordic countries (along with Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Iceland). Long and thin, it has a surface area of 386 000 km2 of which half is mountain and a further third forest, lake and river.
The population numbers around 4.5mil Norwegians, of which about 10% live in the capital (Oslo). Around 40 000 indigenous Sami live in the country (more on the Sami below). Norway is a constitutional monarchy and the present king, Harald V, came to throne in 1991. The parliament sits in Oslo but many functions are devolved to a complex network of local authorities.
The Lutheran Church of Norway is the official state church. Norway is not a member of the EU (because of the fishermen and fishing rules, not because of the oil) but has signed up to the EEA free-trade deal.
The economy is buoyed up by the oil and gas industries, which account for 80% of the country's total exports. Machinery, metals and fish products come a distant second, third and fourth respectively.
[The Rough Guide to Norway]
We experimented with infrared photography a little. Norwegian flag in infrared on the left.(The picture of the photographer above is also infrared).
The voyage will take us on a tour along the Norwegian coast, in the waters of the Gulf stream. Without it, the Norwegian coast would not have developed and would have been underpopulated just as Greenland, Labrador and Arctic Canada are. The fjords would be blocked by ice for several months in the winter.
The Gulf Stream arises at the point where the Equatorial Stream presses its warm waters into the Caribbean, moving north into the Gulf of Mexico and then south past the southern tip of Florida. At this point it is 100km wide and transports 25 million cubic meters of warm water eastwards across the Atlantic ocean every second. Part of the stream continues north of the British Isles and some (4 mil. m3 per second) to Norway, flowing along the entire coastline past the North Cape. It also flows into the fjords, ensuring that ports as far as Murmansk in Russia remain ice free all year round.
On the Fjords
What is a fjord? When the glaciers receded from the landmass towards the coast, they carved great valleys through the mountain ranges. The ice deposited vast thresholds of rocks at the coast, which formed barriers against the cold waters of the deep outside and allowed the warmer surface waters to pass over to the fjords. The fjords are normally free of ice during the winter.
The marine environment meets soaring mountains with fertile valleys and vegetation. There are few places around the globe where this combination of mild marine climate, severe mountains terrain and mainland culture meets so uniquely. The Fjords became the trademark of Norway. Royal personages from Great Britain and The Netherlands - and not least the German Kaiser - were regular visitors and had personal acquaintances amongst the local inhabitants.
On the Norwegian customs
Not those customs but these customs. The airport customs. We flew from London to Stavanger and then further up to Bergen. We checked in our luggage at Heathrow "all the way to Bergen". Or so we thought. The Norwegians, however, want you to do the custom check at the first point of arrival to Norway. Don't ask me why, it still makes no sense to me.
There was no transfer desk at Stavanger so we were told by a lady in the Duty Free shop (!) that we need to pick up our bags, go through customs (declare that we have nothing to declare) and re-check the bags in.
My father-in-law is disabled. He can't walk very well. We had an hour before the flight to Bergen was due. So we let him sitting where he was, went out there, waited for our luggage to arrive, queued at the check-in, then queued again at the security check, took off the clothes, belts, shoes, ear rings, emptied the entire content of the hand luggage to a tray - all that usual hassle you get at airports these days. We lost all liquids that we bought at Heathrow, obviously, because "that's the law" (now we can buy the same stuff here for the astronomical Norwegian prices). Little we knew that this is not the end. That we're now at a different terminal than my father-in-law so we can't just go round and pick him up. After some sharp talk with the security lady and her boss at the airport, my mother-in-law was escorted to the other terminal, had to pick up my father-in-law and go through the whole ordeal again!
All this despite the fact that Bergen is an international airport and has customs department also. I felt like I didn't just arrive to a Scandinavian country where I'm going to spend a relaxing 7 days on holiday. Instead, it felt like I'm now finding myself in a novel by Franz Kafka ..... Welcome to Norway .. eh, the Castle ...
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