The Week After Easter

It has now been almost a week since I returned from my trip on the Hurtigrute. Let me first say a few things concerning the trip itself; a detailed description would unfortunately take far too much time. We started in Bergen, as expected. The SAS strike ended one day before by a welcome stroke of luck, so the voyage to Bergen went off without a hitch. I spent some time looking around Bergen before boarding and meeting my parents there. Over the next ten days, we cruised up and down the norwegian coast, following a rather steady schedule. The trip was quiet and contemplative: Beautiful mountain ranges inviting long hours behind the lookout windows, the occasional prolonged stop allowing a walk on land and three square meals a day at high culinary level. The dishes were usually fish and potato-based, but meat was also common. There were also a few interesting excursions, most significantly the one to the glacier Svartisen. We saw an awful lot of norwegian cities and towns; especially north of Bodø, the Hurtigruta stops at even rather small towns, with no more than 1,000 inhabitants. The norwegian state spends a lot of cash in subsidies to keep the region populated; even so, the degree of inhabitation is “barely”, which emphasizes again the landscape as the prime attraction. I also put the time on board to good use taking pictures and reading books. The pictures have been culled, touched up and commented over the last few days and will be uploaded later today. Beyond that, I feel a more detailed recounting would not be useful. If you are thinking about taking the trip, make sure you have a lot of books and CDs along, or are over forty. I got a little bit impatient the last days.

After my return, my parents staid in Trondheim for two more days, so I got to show them around a little bit. We had dinner in the broadcast tower, looked at the industrial arts museum and they even got to go to the musical instruments museum in Ringve (I had a lecture at that time, so they went alone). On the last day, my mother actually abandoned her wheel chair in favor of a longer trip on crutches. Her foot is slowly getting sturdier again, but I feel that endurance is nevertheless a liberating thing to have. The wheel chair turned out to be rather limited when it comes to slopes and slightly more challenging terrain.

Over the weekend, the Aks choir has been quite active. We had a little gig on friday evening at the meeting of Lag, the christian student community (or rather a community – nice people). Saturday was free, then sunday brought the double whammy with church service in Strindheim church before noon and another service in the cathedral at six. Our songs had varying quality, but overall, I can’t really complain. I wasn’t quite as good as I would have liked, but that was more due to glitches than real lack of practice. Next weekend we’ll be going for a small tour to Levanger, with lots of practicing and two gigs going down. It’ll be fun!

I’m Leaving On A Jet Plane (hopefully…)

The last week of classes is gone and easter holidays await! Since christmas, my parents and I have been planning to go on a cruise with Hurtigruta along the norwegian coast. For those who don’t know, Hurtigruta is the line of mail ships that stretches from Bergen all the way to Kirkenes at the russian border, stopping at most of the cities in between (as well as some smaller harbors that I had never heard of before). Most tourists consider it the sine qua non of the Norway experience, and it is pretty much the ultimate way to view the beauty of the norwegian coast.

For my parents and me, it’s an unusual way of going on holidays. Usually our holidays lead us to the south, especially the mediterranean, on the search for a mix of hiking and cultural attractions. Norway was never a high culture (well, at least not on the same scale as Greece and Syria were) and hiking is restricted by the fact that the ship only stays in each harbor for a scant few hours at most. It is, however, uniquely fitting to the circumstances. You see, my mother broke her leg about a month ago (out walking, slipped on ice, you know the story) and is still not particularly mobile. In fact, we’ll be taking a wheel chair along on the cruise to guarantee mobility. Under these conditions, a nice cruise seems to be just the thing. I just hope we can deal with the decreased freedom of movement – we are rather used to taking walks, and without them I usually get cabin fever pretty quickly. We are going to have the opportunity to walk on land at every harbor and the ships are supposed to be extremely well equipped. They are not the swimming palace of decadence that the Color Fantasy was (I still cannot express how wasteful I thought that ship was), but they have nice facilities, excellent cuisine and if I remember correctly, two outdoors whirlpools from which to enjoy the scenery.

After Kirkenes, we will take the southbound route down to Trondheim again, where I’ll have two days to show my parents around town. The hotel is booked, everything is prepared. The only worry I have is that SAS Braathens, one of the two norwegian airlines, is on strike. Now guess which airline I booked my flight to Bergen tomorrow with. No, not Norwegian. So far it seems as if the flights Trondheim-Bergen are still operating normally, but that may change on a daily basis. If the flight does not leave as intended, I will not be able to get to Bergen in time and have to catch the ship the next day, either in Ålesund or in Molde, where I can get by bus. The Jugendstil downtown of Ålesund and the fjords between Bergen and Ålesund are something I have been wanting to see for a long time though, so I hope for the best. On the other hand, fretting will change nothing. I am sure that the SAS employees on strike have heard enough unpleasantries in the last couple days that mine would not particularly impress them.

The last couple of days have not been filled with any particular excitement. Lectures appearantly decided to give a last boost before easter and took place on time, which at least made for a productive week. On wednesday, I went out with Frank to check for northern lights, which are currently much more probable than usual due to favorable sun activity. I have also been keeping up an e-mail exchange with Astrid, who decided to do a bright thing and left for home early to dodge the strike. Oh, and lunch just finished warming up, so I’m calling this quits 🙂