>From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul 5 08:36:59 1998 Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 21:57:15 +0200 From: Michael Israeli Subject: June 12: Norwegian Wood Ok, we made it to Norway!! Our plane from Copenhagen was a bit late, and very crowded, and when the pilot made some announcements in Norwegian and Danish as to the status of the flight (he said in English at one point that there were some problems loading it), some good-natured passengers started making jokes among each other in either Norwegian or Danish or possibly Swedish, we really can't tell any of these languages apart. It was a convivial crowd, though. The flight was short, only an hour, and the remarkable thing was that as we flew from Copenhagen (where it had been just starting to get dark at about 11 PM when we left) to Bergen, the sky got lighter and lighter! As we began our descent over Norway, we were above a very dense cloud cover - above it, it was quite light even though it was near midnight. As we dropped through the cloud cover, it became darker because it was so very overcast, and when we got beneath it, it was about what you would call twilight, or late twilight. There was still at midnight plenty of light for us to see the beautiful Norwegian coastline and the trees and homes we flew over. It's not a sight we are likely to forget anytime soon. We landed and our bags were three of the first 7 bags off the conveyor, so that was cool. We hopped on another of those nifty SAS airbuses which took us to the center of town, about 40 minutes away, for about $5 bucks - our guidebook informs us this would have been a $50 cab ride, so this was a great deal. We got off the bus about 3 blocks from our Guesteheusen. To get to the Guesteheusen we had to go up a hill which was sad for Michael who was schlepping a larger bag than I was. We finally got here at about 1 am - it was pretty dark by now although still not DARK dark. We checked into our room - although the propietors had lost the key, and had to get us in by using the master key, we figured who cares, we're just sleeping over here anyway. The place is nice, clean, and has everything we need - although, not only were there twin beds, but the beds fold longitudinally - so we were on a twin bed with a crack down the middle. We ameliorated this a bit by using one of the nice soft down comforters as a bottom sheet. The weather here was a slight bit drizzly on our way into town last night but again, we completely avoided being rained on, as by the time we got off the bus it wasn't raining, and it was warm enough for us to be wearing T shirts, windbreakers, and pants without freezing our butts off. It's looking kind of mostly cloudy with some blue sky present as of today. This message is being composed at about 9:45 am - we were awakened this morning at about 9 am by the Norwegian sanitation engineers who seem to go down the street very slowly in a big truck, doing something that makes a lot of noise. Oh, btw - in Copenhagen they had automatic trash cans on the street that kind of ate up your trash and compacted it on the spot!! Anyway, we're packing stuff up and getting ready to go for a day of sightseeing in Bergen. Cellphone afficionados among you - though Omnipoint claimed to have no roaming agreements in Denmark, they obviously did - we sent you email via cellular from the airport there. Here in Norway, they claim to have one roaming agreement only, but we are able to use either of two networks. Go figure. More later!! ------ Well, it's later :) We're sitting in Cafe Latino on the waterfront here in tropical Bergen, Norway. That's a joke because it isn't very tropical here today. Earlier we had a waffle at a stand run by a nice girl who told us that last week, it was so warm she was sunbathing in a bikini, but today it is "unseasonably" cold. Yeah, sure, whatever. It's cold here. We went and bought ourselves each a nice hand knitted wool Norwegian sweater, hat, and gloves - Hillary immediately put on the gloves and would have put on the rest of the stuff too but Michael would have laughed at her too much. We got a bargain on the woolens - the woman selling them gave us a bulk rate discount and remarked that she was very lucky we came by today because we bought so much! Michael even talked her down further from NOK 1056 to NOK 1000, because that was what we felt like spending, and that comes to about $130 or so - not bad for two really nice sweaters plus hats and gloves! We got email from Hillary's dad yesterday about a tram ride in Bergen that we should take. He will be pleased to hear that we rode the "Floibanen" from the city center near the fishmarket up to the top of Mount Floyen - 1050 feet up. This is an 8 minute ride that takes you to a nice plateau where you can look down on the city and take photos and stuff. Then we walked back down the mountain, through the Norwegian Forest - but we didn't see any cats in there. We did meet a nice older couple who offered to take a photo of the two of us together, though. The views from up there and on the way down were lovely. The bottom part of the mile long walk down the mountain (after we exited the forest) went through a quaint residential area where there were homes with yards and lovely gardens - lots of rhododendrons, huge lilac bushes/trees like in Maine, bleeding hearts (yet another poisonous plant...), and some unrecognizable yellow flowering trees/shrubs. We did see one cat wandering through this area but it wasn't a Fuzzy - it was short haired. We took a picture of it anyway. After that we went back to the Fish Market we'd been to already - Hillary's Uncle Sidney would probably love this place. Tons of fresh salmon, crab, shrimp, other things, and even fresh WHALE! We ate some smoked salmon and some gravlax. The coolest thing is you can go around and ask to try things and the people will let you taste anything you want. Everything was delicious :) Then, a real stroke of luck. We were walking past a pet store and they had a photo in the window of some Fuzzies (norwegian forest fuzzies!). We asked the store manager about them and she took us next door into the flower store and spoke in Norwegian to the guy there, who then took out a phone book and called up a friend of his who turned out to be a breeder of NFCs, and told him he had two americans here who had some Skaukatts (that's what they call the NFC here) and put Michael on the phone with him. We are going to visit the cattery in about half an hour or so - that's why we are sitting down here at this cafe now - it's too cold to sit outside, we don't want to walk too far from this place and get lost, and there isn't really much else to do while we wait for the guy to get home from work. -- Ok. Now we're on the boat!! Er, ship. Anyway, we did meet up with the Norwegian Forest Cat (hereinafter: "Fuzzy") breeder, a very nice German guy named Frank. He took us into his home (a third story walk up apartment that was quite nice) to meet his six fuzzies. They were sooooo cuuuuuute!!!! We played with some of them - one in particular was very friendly and reminded us a bit of Rufus because he rubbed up to us with his head. Also, there was a grey and white one who looked a little like Kanga. There was one great big red one but he was very shy and ended up jumping onto the top of the refrigerator. Frank talked with us a bit about Fuzzies in general and breeding them and showing them and he told us a bit about the breeder where he obtained his starter cats, and the stuff going on at that bigger cattery. He gave us a couple of photos of his kittens, and we took some of our own as well. He gave us his address so we can send him photos of our Fuzzies after we get back home. He invited us to come back for a visit anytime; we told him if he gets to Philadelphia he should come by and say hi. After that nice visit we returned to the Rosenberg Gjestehus, picked up our luggage which we'd stowed rather insecurely in a closet next to the coke machine, and schlepped it over a hill and along a bunch of cobblestoned streets to get to the dock. Several times along the way, passersby asked us in Norwegian-accented english if we were headed to the north-bound ship, and when we said yes, tried to give us directions. That was very helpful! When we were almost there one guy actually pointed out the boat to us, in the harbor, so then we were all set. We must have been a sight with our bags and everything. :) We got on the ship, checked in, had a nice dinner, and attended an informational meeting, where we overheard the middle-aged folks at the next table telling the other older people at the table after that that they were from South Jersey (the other people being from Rochester, NY). We didn't tell them we were almost neighbors. We also overheard some poor people trying to be polite in their dealings with the staff - apparently, they are on their honeymoon and have been booked into the same type of room that we have - two extremely narrow twin beds. These people are extremely upset and since the ship sails in about 10 minutes, we hope they get it dealt with soon. The ship, by the way, isn't a cruise ship per se. It is a working cargo ship, a ferry that takes residents between cities, and takes cars and stuff, as well as being a tourist/cruise type ship. So there is a lot going on here. So, we're all settled into our room, and we're looking forward to seeing some beautiful scenery, and going on an excursion either tomorrow or the next day (we have to check at the desk; we forget). Love, Hillary and Michael >From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul 5 08:36:59 1998 Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 22:33:51 +0200 From: Michael Israeli Subject: June 13: Climb every mountain; fjord every stream (ha ha) Hi again!! Last night we took the bottle of wine that our travel agent, Adele, arranged to have waiting in our cabin, and sat on the observation deck drinking it, until about 2 am. While we were sitting there we struck up some conversation with an older couple - they are Australian by origin but have been living in New Zealand for a number of years, and they take 3 months off to travel every year - must be nice. They are on this cruise because the man, Steve, is a skipper on a smaller boat in New Zealand, where they also have fjords, and he wanted to check out these fjords and compare them. We saw some very beautiful countryside while travelling north last night. We went up the coast past the Oygardan chain of islands to the west and a bunch of small villages on the coast to our right. Everything was beautiful but the views today were better so I won't go into detail just yet. I'll just mention this - as we sat on the deck in the rear of the boat and watched the sun moving closer to the horizon, it went behind some clouds and created a sort of a false sunset, it was still pretty light out but the sun was behind a bank of clouds, making the clouds appear to be on fire, with rays of sunlight coming out the top and making the other clouds to the side look pink in the blue sky. It was really lovely. Today we were awakened at about 7:30 am by a maid who entered our cabin without knocking. She scurried away when she heard Michael's cry of surprise. About half an hour later she came in *again*, this time to find Michael standing in his underwear in the middle of the room. She went away again and didn't come back til we left the cabin, at about 9:30. We sat on the deck again and watched some very very beautiful scenery go by. Today the ship went up around the West Cape, past the Hornelen mountain where a viking is said to have climbed to the peak. Then we passed Maloy, a big fishing community; we also stopped briefly at Alesund - a charming community nestled into the base of a huge mountain - this town burnt down in 1904 and was rebuilt in an Art Nouveau style. We saw an old fashioned wooden fishing boat here and took a photo of it. It's pointless to list all of the places we went passed as the names mean nothing to us. Suffice it to say that we traveled north on the ship to Garaingefjord. During the journey to this fjord we passed much amazing coastline. In some areas, there were vertically rising moutains, coming directly out of the water - much of it covered with many many trees, with some higher snow covered peaks producing snow-melt waterfalls - also in many places the fjords are so steep, that no trees can grow; in these areas the rock is sometimes dark brown, sometimes black from the water constantly dripping down. Michael says that much of the coast here reminded him of the fjords of Alaska. Of particular interest was the "Seven Sisters" waterfall at Garaingefjord. We wish we could think of a really good way to describe the scenery - it was really breathtaking - but it's pretty indescribable. The weather during this part of the trip was mostly overcast with some periods of sun - the low lying clouds covering parts of the steep mountains were part of the charm. It only adds to the beauty, so you can't really complain about rain here. Today did turn out to be the day of our excursion. We disembarked from the Richard With at Geirangerfjord, onto a smaller ferry which took us to the shore of Gerainger where we boarded a very nice tour bus. The bus took us along the "Eagle's Road," the only road out of Geiranger during the winter because all the other roads go up too high and become too dangerous during times of heavy snow. This road sort of wended its way up the mountain and gave an excellent view of the fjord, the waterfalls and mountains - we saw some truly amazing stuff. We saw some goats climbing up the mountain, some farms and stuff - the oldest farm houses are 350 yrs old, but the farms themselves are over 1000 yrs old. We noticed that some of the buildings have sod roofs, such as Hillary recalls reading about in the Little House on the Prairie books :) - apparently that is an old Scandinavian technique and the roofs can last for over 80 years if made well. We also drove along a lake to a town called Eidsal, and then the bus went on a ferryboat to a place called Linge. We drove through what they call "strawberry valley" because they grow a lot of strawberries there - which are not expected to ripen until next month, by the way - and Hillary remembers eating some strawberries out of her mom's garden shortly before we left Philly, so the growing season here is obviously behind what it is at home. This was also evidenced by the fact that the horse chestnut and locust trees we saw are in full bloom - the ones in Rittenhouse Square were done blooming in May. In this area we saw more beautiful countryside in the valley areas, and more moutain stuff too. Everything was very verdant and fertile looking, except for the frozen parts at the top. We saw many areas of sheep and goats in the mountains, and in the valley we saw some cows. Then we drove over what they call the Troll road, because it is very high up in a frozen rocky area (we were able to get out and be in the snow; we took a picture of Michael with a troll too!) - Mila would hate this road because it is very very narrow and has a series of 11 hairpin turns as it descends this very tall mountain, and it also goes over 2 seemingly sketchy bridges because of the huge, beautiful waterfalls in the way. When we got down from here we were again in a valley with cows and sheep and goats, the tour guide mentioned there is a dairy back in Alesund to which they ship the milk. We saw the cows actually coming home at one point - everyone always talks about that, but you never see it. These cows were obviously due to be milked and in a big hurry to get to the milking house. It was really spectacular, as we went up and down the mountains, the vegetation and the rock formations changed drastically. Up high there were areas of boulders and rocks which formed when the mountains froze during an ice age and shattered as the frozen water expanded. At the higher elevations also the trees were very small and in many areas they were growing horizontally as a result of being repeatedly covered with snow during avalanches. Also in some areas there are avalanches every year and the trees have given up entirely, so nothing grows there. As you get lower, the trees (which are mostly birch trees) get bigger and lusher. Ferns and mayapples begin to grow as groundcover, and along the side of the road in many many areas there was lupine growing - those are those tall spiky cones of flowers, with pretty lacy leaves - these were planted originally by Norway's version of Johnny Appleseed, an older man who didn't like the roadside after the road was built, so he planted some seeds along it, and they spread all over the place. The flowers are pink, purple, and white. Also when you get into the valleys where the farms are, there are lilac trees and shrubs, with regular lilac colored flowers as well as purple, indigo, and white. We saw some goats at one of these farms which were standing on the roof of their barn :) We drove past a big river which is the best salmon fishing river in Norway and which is also quite beautiful. We followed it along for quite some time. The water is clear and aquamarine colored and in some areas it has impressive rapids and waterfalls - the energy of this river is harnessed in a couple of areas and they are able to make enough electricity to power not only the entire region but some neighboring areas as well (they sell power). We saw a monument to King Olav, and we saw some towns where British soldiers landed in WWII - this resulted in the city being heavily bombed, of course. Another city was heavily bombed in WWII because the king and his son had fled to the region. We stopped at a train station, Jeff, because there was a girl who wanted to take a train to Oslo. We learned that this region is served by one railway line - they have both day and night trains to Oslo, that run on the original track laid in about 1925. Then we went through the Hannefjord tunnel - this is a big tunnel that goes 100 meters under the sea and is about 2800 meters long and has solid rock walls 30 meters thick. On the other side was Molde! This is the "city of roses" but sadly we arrived too early for the blooming season. There were plenty of other things blooming though, like tulips and the ubiquitous rhododendron. We saw the Molde cathedral which has a really interesting bell tower, and we were told about the world renowned view of 222 mountain peaks from here - but as we said, it was overcast, so we couldn't see all 222 peaks. We saw a few. We stopped and had dinner here and it rained while we were in the restaurant - when we went out, there was a rainbow at the harbor where we awaited our boat! We tried to take a photo of it but who knows if that will come out. We're back on the boat now, relaxing from our long day. It was good that we had a day of sitting around today because our legs are sore from climbing down the mountain in Bergen yesterday! We are sailing north of Molde now on the way to Kristiansund. Tomorrow we will be in Trondheim, where Hillary thinks is where Dr. Sorenmo (one of Wally's doctors) said she went to high school. We will be probably getting off the boat early tomorrow morning and walking around there a bit. We are also deciding if we want to do another excursion the day after tomorrow - they take you out onto a glacier, it's supposed to be pretty cool. We aren't sure yet, though. It's currently about 10:30pm and mostly sunny, so we have a beautiful view as our boat travels further up the coast. We see green mountains against a clear blue sky, and the sun is shining brightly in the west. The sun still is not very close to the horizon. Yesterday, the sun set after midnight, and now since we are further north, it probably won't set until closer to 1am. We were very impressed by the cellular phone coverage here in Norway. Even in the middle of nowhere, there is excellent signal. Even in that tunnel under the sea. Love, Michael and Hillary >From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul 5 08:36:59 1998 Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 12:26:06 +0200 From: Michael Israeli Subject: June 14: Trekking through Trondheim Here's a tidbit of news we forgot to mention in our last mail, but were reminded of when we got email from Hillary's Uncle Jeff describing his traffic nightmare of being trapped at O'Hare airport - right now the air traffic controllers in Norway are striking and as far as we can tell no planes are landing in Norway at all. Some people have missed this boat because of it, in fact - which allowed that honeymooning couple to end up getting a better cabin, by the way. Good for them, but bad for the travellers, and possibly bad for us. We will arrive in Kirkenes on the 18th and are supposed to travel from there by plane to Oslo. If the planes are not flying, we aren't sure what we will do. We may be able to get a train but then again, we may not. There is a boat related Kirkenes excursion which takes you to the Russian border and even in the river which IS the border, and to the other side of it. If we get stuck in Kirkenes perhaps we can do that - heck, that would kill two hours. If we end up REALLY stuck in Kirkenes we aren't sure what we'll do but we are sure it will be interesting in any case! If you hear any news about this, please let us know. Today we asked a newsstand manager about it and she said that she hadn't gotten any new newspapers for two days because of the pilot strike - nothing is being flown in! She said she hoped to have news of the strike by Monday. Some other stuff we forgot to mention is that when we were on that bus tour from Garaingefjord to Molde, while driving in the area approaching Molde but before the big undersea tunnel, we passed by some people walking along the road with one of those multiple leashes and it had about 10 to 15 dogs at the end of it!! They were long haired dachshunds and they were very very cute. Also on our drive we kept passing these vintage (1920s and up) Rolls Royces which are here in Norway for some kind of special gathering/race. We thought this road was not the best place for these cars. In addition to this gathering there was a sign for a gathering of motorcycle riders, and we saw some bikers heading toward that. Our tour guide also described for us two other races that occur in the area - one was a marathon up the Eagle whatever road that gave us the great view of the fjord, the other was a bicycle race up that Troll road we described before, which occurs during August in the warm weather. Both sounded extremely harrowing and unpleasant. -- Today, June 14/Sunday we woke up early for us at about 9 am, when the boat staff made some announcement about a bus that would be leaving at 9:15. Shortly after this our alarm clock went off so we really had to get up then. We prepared to spend a few hours wandering around today's first port of call, Trondheim, where Dr. Sorenmo went to high school. This is Norway's third largest city so we figured we should go check it out. First we had breakfast on the boat, then we set out with map in hand to look around this city. First we took the obligatory photo of a statue of Leiv Eriksson, and then we walked past the harbor area and some shipping areas until we got to one of the actual streets of Trondheim - this required going over a bridge and past a cute little marina. We walked toward the city center - past the Central train station and down a main road all the way through the heart of the city. We stopped to take a photo of the Trondheim Cathedral, built originally by King Olav Kyrre sometime between 1066 and 1093, and then later enlarged in 1151 when they established this city as a religious center for all of Norway. This church is supposed to be the most magnificent one in Scandinavia, and for the moment we're willing to go along with that although we did greatly appreciate the modern bell tower at the church in Molde the other day. Anyway, this cathedral is built in what the guidebook calls a "Late Romanesque transitional style, influenced by Norman architecture and Gothic style". The church is built of "klebersten," a blue-grey colored soapstone which they quarry here to the south and east of Trondheim. After checking out this area, we crossed the Elgesester bru (that's a bridge over the Nidelva river/canal that runs through Trondheim). From the bridge we had a great view of the Kristiansten fort, on a low hill to the east of the town, which is a 17th century fortress. Looking the other way (west? it's hard to tell around here since there is water everywhere) we saw some pretty green hills with some houses on them, which reminded Hillary of the Berkeley Hills area of Berkeley, CA. We headed for and found the student center, a big red round building which houses a guesthouse, a couple of restaurants, and some other stuff - but it, like everything else in Trondheim, was closed on Sunday morning. That was a bit of a disappointment but not too much, since the walk over was very pretty and the weather is sunny and about 55 degrees F. We decided to walk back along the river at first, through the Erkebispegarden park where there were many very pretty flowering horse chestnut trees, lilac trees, rhododendrons and tulips. We saw some people walking their dogs. Oh, they do not crop ears or dock tails here in Norway - it is against the law - so we've seen some very cute dobermans and spaniels with long ears and tails :). We then walked through the city up along Munkegata, the main road, all the way up to the Kanalhavn which separates Trondheim proper from the finger of land which houses the train station, the shipyards, and the railroad tracks. We stopped for a photo op in front of the Stiftsgarden, the royal residence, which is Scandinavia's second largest wooden building. Apparently Trondheim is known for being a town of wooden buildings. Trondheim also is the home of the largest research institute in Norway (SINTEF) and the University of Trondheim, which we passed as we walked back toward the boat. It says in our book that the University is known for educating civil engineers who then seduce the female population of the town.... hmmm. Sounds like someone we know! Trondheim was very pretty with very wide sidewalks and lots of trees, and on every other block it seemed there was a park with an open green space and a garden and some benches. It's too bad that everything was closed and everyone was either asleep or in church or something because we didn't really get a feel for what it was actually like when the people were around. We do think that David would like it here because the few people we did see walking around or biking around looked like Lori. We noticed there was a sushi bar here and we took a photo of it :) - it was across the street from a fishmarket, so we suspect the sushi would be pretty good, but we wouldn't know since it was closed. We've picked up some Norwegian while we've been here. "Til" means "to," "laks" means "salmon," and "smor" means "butter." We're way to mature to find any amusement in this but in case some of you less mature people find it humorous, we also learned that the Norwegian word for "speed" is "fart." Also, we keep hearing people who speak Norwegian using a word that sounds like "fuktis" pronounced "fuck dis"; we're not sure what it means but perhaps Hillary's mom wants to ask Dr. Sorenmo?? David, you will be happy to know that the lock on our cabin door uses a Ving card! Hillary would like to mention that they make the announcements over the PA here in Norwegian, English, and German, in no particular order. The other day she was listening and she heard the German announcment before the English one, and understood it! Regarding Norwegian food - it sure is odd and unusual seeming! At breakfast, they serve these little toothpaste tubes of kaviar. At lunch, they serve *seagull eggs* ! The seagulls here, by the way, are similar looking to our seagulls but they squawk with Norwegian accents. We were given a book about the coast when we got on the boat and it contains information about the various birds we may see on our trip. We are hoping to get a look at the puffins although they are greatly reduced in number lately. Also about the food - pancakes and waffles are popular snacks, served with coffee or tea, not as breakfast foods. Jams are served with nearly everything. Potatoes are popular, and cream sauces are nearly ubiquitious, on everything from beef to herring. We've been told that dill is used a lot, but actually we haven't really encountered much dill which is good because Michael dislikes it. On the boat, each meal includes an offering of assorted cheeses. There is a sweetish, very creamy blue cheese we've been greatly enjoying. Today at breakfast there were two sharper blue cheeses (one may have been a roquefort) and a really bizarre cheese that looked a bit like and tasted quite a bit like peanut butter! Nonetheless, we are looking forward to some home cooking upon our return to the states in July! Love, Hillary and Michael >From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul 5 08:36:59 1998 Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 19:17:57 +0200 From: Michael Israeli Subject: June 15: to the glacier Hey! Yesterday we finally met our dining partners - we've been assigned to sit for dinner on the ship with a couple from central NJ - two older folks who are vacationing on this cruise. They were pretty amusing. The man is a cross between Archie Bunker and Hillary's Uncle Helmut. He kept griping about the fact that "they spell things funny here" - he complained that "ol" is how they spell "beer" here, but that sometimes they also spell it "pils." We tried to tell him that "ol" was "ale" and "pils" was "pilsner" but he insisted that "ol" was no way for anyone to spell "beer," and that's what the bartender had told him it meant. But then again, he told us that whenever he travels, he always tries to find a beer that resembles his all time favorite beer, Bud Light....He also complained that they let the waffles and pancakes get cold (it is customary to serve cold waffles or pancakes with jam or sugared butter as a snack with coffee here). The woman was not so much of a complainer. Today we got up really really early so that we could get ready and have breakfast and leave the boat when we got into port at Gronoy at 8:20 AM. We disembarked onto a smaller ferryboat and were taken by ferry into Holandsfjord, where there are many islands and skerries, all the way inland to Svartisen National Park, where we got off the ferry. During the ferry-trip from Gronoy to Svartisen via Holandsfjord, we saw a lot of beautiful coast moderately similar to the coast we've already described, except that now that we are further north, not all of the leaves and stuff are out - the growing season is a bit behind - and also, during this small stretch, the land did not rise as steeply, but was more hilly than mountainous. We saw a sea eagle fly near to the boat, but we were unable to photograph him because he moved too quickly. When we got to Svartisen National Park, we walked up a trail through an area of birch woodland and some marshy area. About 1/3 of the way to the end of the trail we entered an area where there were some cows and sheep hanging around. We looked up to the side of the nearby mountain and saw that there were also some cows up there. As we walked up this trail, ahead of us we could see a piece of the Svartisen Glacier, which is what we were walking toward. On either side of that were very large snowcovered mountains. To our right was the tail end of Holandsfjord, in which the water is colored an unusual green color due to glacial silt that the water picks up as it flows out from beneath the glacier. We continued up the trail until we got to the little tourist area across the water from the glacier, were we had a snack and took some pictures of the beautiful scenery (and got someone to take a photo of the two of us in front of the Glacier). By the way, the weather today was again beautiful and very sunny and clear! Eventually we had to head out of the area. On the way back to the ferry we stopped on the trail at a pen someone had set up for their pet rabbits. This was a large penned in area with two little A frame houses in it and 5 or 6 rabbits hanging around in there. We took pictures of them too 'cause they were cute - mini-lops and angoras, we think. Also, on the way back, there were more cows and sheep. We got a picture of two sheep resting in the woods and a picture of Hillary standing a couple of feet in front of a large group of white and also some white and brown cows. The really cool thing here was that the animals all had big cow bells on them, and as they walked around they would ring, and also they were mooing and baaaing as we went by, so it sounded sort of like music :) The ferry then took us across Holandsfjord to the shore on the other side where we boarded a tour bus. Of note at this point was the fact that the tour people had prepared one tour guide to speak English and German, and another guide to speak Norwegian and French - but the German speaking people filled an entire bus, so the English, Norwegian, and French speaking people ended up on the other bus. Therefore, our guide had not prepped himself to give the tour in English and as a result, had some problems. He obviously could speak the language, but when giving a tour you probably use a lot of unusual words and this poor man kept having to stop and look things up - and also for the first half of the tour he spoke a LOT more in Norwegian and French than in English, until a kind Norwegian fellow behind us went up to him and told him that all the Americans kept asking "what is he saying?" and from that point on, the English portion of the tour improved. So, we drove on Norway's version of California's coastal highway 1 - Norway Coastal Road 17. We were driving through the borough of Moloy, along this road which they call the most picturesque of all roads in Norway. The first town we passed through was Glomfjord - an "industrial" city, according to the guide - and they do have a big power plant and chemical fertilizer plant there - but really a very small town, more rural/suburban than city like. The power plant here was built in 1920 and that is when the town really "took off." The harbour became one of Norway's busiest ports and in WWII, the Germans raided the harbor and bombed the plants and so forth. During the wintertime, people take ski lifts located here up to the top of the surrounding mountains, and go skiing. On our way through Glomfjord we were driving past some homes located on the edge of the woods, and we saw someone looking at us from the very edge of the woods - a black norwegian forest cat!! We drove through a tunnel out of Glomfjord (Rte 17 has many tunnels; these are required because many areas suffer repeated avalanches which would wipe out regular roads) and then we passed through Neverdal, at the base of the Spilderhesten mountain which rises 851 meters above sea level. We continued on through a very beautiful region of snow capped mountains and white sandy seashore (where swimming is of course out of the question due to the frigidity of the water, but fishing and boating remain popular) until we reached Ornes, the administrative center (county seat, we think) of Meloy. This is a beautiful city with a charming harbor, and it is very popular with Swedish tourists who come to go fishing for weeks at a time in the summer, so we are told. Again, many of the homes and other buildings are wooden, although not all are. Some are built log cabin style, even though they are obviously new. All throughout Norway, yellow and red are traditional and popular colors of houses and barns. We continued our drive through a lot of country which we really didn't catch much information about, but at one point a very exciting thing happened - we saw a small herd of reindeer! Yes, big brown animals with huge antlers - the guide claimed he saw 5 but Hillary thinks she saw at least 10 or more. These reindeer are not native to Norway. They are owned by a Swedish family and apparently in the summer these reindeer come into this area where there is better grazing for them, and they hang out here. They were down in a valley, some were lying down and some were standing and grazing. Our next point of interest was "Saltstraumen," which is the strongest "maelstrom," whatever that is, in the world. We believe from context that "maelstrom" means "current," for what is going on in this area is that two fjords are coming together and the water must pass at high speed through a very narrow area. This creates a very very strong current and a lot of whirlpools and stuff. We drove over a bridge to get a top view and then we pulled over to a fishing area where there were some fishermen catching lots of fish - apparently this place always has lots of fish in it, and we could tell that because there were many sea birds here, fishing themselves! We observed many Grey Gulls, with red spots under their beaks; we also saw and got a photo of some Eider ducks. Other birds we have seen along the way include Gannets and Guillemots, what looks like some kind of a tern (but not the one in our book), and some kind of grey crane or egret that isn't in our book. No puffins yet though. >From Saltstraumen we drove to Bodo, the administrative center of Nordland county. There are many universities here, an airport that handles over 1/2 million passengers yearly, and an engine factory in addition to a big fishing industry. Jeff will be interested to know that this city, Bodo, is the end of the line for the Norwegian rail system. Here, they make connections between the Coastal Express (which is the boat we're on) and the railroads, buses, ferries, and airplanes (which still aren't landing in Norway, by the way. We are awaiting word of the results of the meeting between the Air Traffic Controllers and the Norwegian Government, which was to happen some time today.) Of note regarding Bodo - prior to 1940 this was already a large city (which got its start as a big herring processing area). However, in 1940 sometime in May, the Germans bombed the hell out of the city, destroying over 400 out of 700 buildings in the center of town. They did this, we're told, because the Germans believed that the British soldiers who had come here were in the harbor at the time - but in fact, the soldiers had left to return to London two days before, or something, so the bombing did not accomplish whatever it was the Germans wanted to do, but it did result in the loss of the homes of 3,700 people - but as the Norwegians were able to implement an excellent evacuation plan, only 15 people were killed. The airport and north Norway rail line, by the way, were also built during the rebuilding of Bodo during WWII after the 1940 bombing. By 1956, the town was completely rebuilt into the huge modern communications/transportation hub it is today. In Bodo we got back on our ship and we are now continuing northwest across the wide Vestfjord - right now we are kind of in open water with distant land on either side, which is why we are able to spend so much time writing this up. Later today we will stop off at Stamsund and then still later in Svolvar. Our book says we will be able to see a lot of very nice fishing villages and fisherman's cabins lining the coast as we approach it later. After we stop at those two ports, we'll be continuing in a more north/northeasterly course. This was a great excursion today and we look forward to more wonderful scenery later today. You should realize that we crossed over into the Arctic circle at about 7:30 AM today, and we are now in the land of the midnight sun, so we can expect to be able to see everything out there for as long as we manage to stay awake! It is very strange how darkness never really comes. Last night the sun did set for a short time (again very beautifully through a cloud cover, giving the appearance of a bright orange fire burning through the clouds, which had holes between them) which resulted in a twilight/dusky period that lasted for about 2 1/2 hours according to a woman from California named Annette, with whom we spoke today, who told us that at 3 am she'd been awakened by bright sunlight streaming into her cabin. We'd gone to bed shortly past midnight and we suppose that one advantage of having one of the cabins in the middle of the boat with no window (which the travel agent told us was all that was available - she sounded apologetic about it) is that the sun being up at odd hours can't possibly bother you! We like this feature. Love, Michael and Hillary >From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul 5 08:36:59 1998 Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 01:05:11 +0200 From: Michael Israeli Subject: June 15/16: the sun also rises Hey there. We're still up at about 1 am on June 16th, preparing to go to bed but we wanted to write this down first! After Michael finished his nap, we had some dinner with Mr and Mrs Einstein from central NJ. Boy are they odd. The guy is just a couple slices short of a loaf or something. He thought the bowl of potatoes was a bowl of olives, he thought that the string beans were salad, and he thought that the windows, which were dirty, had some kind of special flocking on them. What a maroon. Good news! The norwegian air traffic controllers' strike is over! Woo hoo! They made an announcement about it as we were heading to dinner this evening. As we ate, the ship docked at Svolvaer, one of those fishing villages we had been told about. We were there for about an hour, so we got off the boat and walked around a bit. Not a lot to see there - we took a photo of some teepee like structures down by the dock - we have no idea what they were; we saw a nesting pair of Grey Gulls with two down-covered fledgelings up on a roof but we couldn't get a photo of them because our camera doesn't zoom in far enough. When we got back on the ship we sat out on the observation deck for a while - the ship took a short diversionary turn at about 11:30 PM into the Troll Fjord (we don't recall the Norwegian name for it) and while there the crew served everyone "Troll soup" which was a kind of a chicken based soup with veggies and stuff in it. This fjord was really awesome. We were in a very narrow channel with huge rock faces coming out of the water vertically on either side. There was a nice waterfall we tried to photograph; there were some trees but very few due to the angle. The U-turn maneuvering the ship did to get out of there was kinda scary. While we were sitting there we were chatting with some Norwegian 9th graders - one of whom aspires to be a veterinarian, another wants to be a Hollywood actress :) - and also with a 70 yr old couple from New Hampshire. The man of that couple has been teaching himself norwegian for the past three weeks and was practicing it on these 9th graders, who were very impressed (as were we.) It was fun chatting with them all. We also got visited by our New Zealand friends Jan and Steve who said they'd thought maybe we'd left the ship and they were glad to see us again. They got to go up into the area where they steer the ship and stuff, and show the captain pictures of the New Zealand fjord and the boat that Steve captains there. But they didn't get to see the glacier or the reindeer, so that kind of makes us even, right? As we were sitting there getting kind of tired, we realized that we were finally moving out of the area of very tall mountains and that we'd get a glimpse of the sun soon. We went out onto the outer deck and braved the chilling wind as the boat moved forward, under a bridge, to reveal the brightly shining one o'clock in the morning sun, about 20 degrees above the horizon. Overall, the impression is that it is early morning at about 7 am or perhaps late evening at about 8 pm, with plenty of light. It's really eerie. The thought of what it's like in winter when the sun doesn't rise is even worse, though. Tonight as we sleep we will pass Sortland and Harstad; tomorrow during the day we will get to see Finnsnes and we'll probably get off the ship and walk around for a few hours in Tromso. We'll let you know how it goes :) TTFN, Michael and Hillary >From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul 5 08:36:59 1998 Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 19:52:00 +0200 From: Michael Israeli Subject: June 16: Traipsing through Tromso This morning Hillary was awakened by an announcement over the boat PA system, so she got up while Michael was still sleeping and took a shower in the tiny little boat shower, which is really a whole experience in itself, but probably not something that translates well into words, sorry. When she emerged from the shower, the maid waltzed right into the room, again without knocking, this time completely ignoring the "do not disturb sign" which we *had* placed on the door. Hillary said "hello?" and the maid said "hello" and just stood there for a minute until Hillary said "please leave," and the maid left. This was rather annoying so we later asked the boat staff to please make sure not to ever enter our cabin before noon, no matter what. That should hopefully resolve the problem. After Michael got up we went into the "library," which is a quiet room with windows and games and books. We played scrabble with some people from California for a while as we watched the scenery go by. We'd slept through the stop in Harstad at 7 am, but we did get a good look at Finnsnes, another fishing village. As the ship pulled out of Finnsnes, we went through some narrow straits and passed Senja on our port side. Senja is the second largest island in Norway, but otherwise isn't really that much different from the rest of the coastal territory. We did delay our departure from Finnsnes because the ship had called a doctor for some woman who had been having chest pains, and they had to wait for him or her to show up and look at the woman. So we were in the harbor there all during lunch. We ate lunch again with Joe and Jane Genius from central NJ. We didn't make much conversation and when we were finished Michael went and asked the head waiter to please change us from the second seating to the first seating so we wouldn't have to be with them anymore. Therefore, we shouldn't be bothered again by the sheer idiocy of these people. (And in case anyone is getting any ideas to the contrary, Michael was bothered as much as Hillary was!) After lunch we went back to finish up our scrabble game. During the journey to Tromso we passed another island with a Musk Ox farm on it - but we didn't see the Musk Oxen. Oh well. When we got to Tromso, we disembarked for a look at the town. The harbor was nice; of note were two Russian ships, one cruise ship and one working ship of some kind, which were also in the harbor just behind our ship. There was a great view of some snow covered and non snow covered mountains, and a nice bridge. We took some photos of the harbor, and of a unique triangular church. We walked into town and found a memorial to people from Tromso who had been taken to concentration camps during WWII - at least, that was our best shot at the translation. It was a headstone type piece of granite with a metal plaque on it, and it contained a lot of Jewish names, and it had the word Konsentrasionkamp or something like that, and the word Tromso, and anyway, whatever it was, we photographed it. This was located across the street from a pretty yellow church built in the typical Norwegian style - wooden with a metal steeple directly over the entry. We photographed that as well. Also in Tromso we came across yet another church which had the word "Filadelfia" on it - that seemed to be the name of the church. We stopped in a small shopping mall area and bought Hillary some half price wool tights to wear under her pants on tomorrow's excursion to the North Cape Plateau. This promises to be a pretty exciting trip; we'll tell you about it after we do it. Tromso was very nice with wide sidewalks and lots of shops and parks, not quite as large or relaxing as Trondheim though. Tromso is on an island - Tromsoya, and is the capital of "North Norway," although we aren't sure what that means really. They call it "Arctic Ocean City" and it is well known for fishing, polar expeditions which began here, and the University of Tromso. We saw a memorial to one of the famous polar explorers, Roald Amundsen - but you know, after a while, bronze statues of strange men with funny names all start to look alike, and we didn't photograph that particular monument. :) While walking around Tromso we saw a guy riding a bike and holding a leash, attached to which was a dog who looked like Wally Gorman - which reminds us! The other day as we were riding the bus along the Troll Road and into Strawberry Valley, the tour guide kept referring to the many valleys we were passing through, and the pronunciation of the word "valley" with a Norwegian accent is very much like the Amercian pronunciation of the name "Wally," so we were very amused by this. While in Tromso today we also stopped and checked out one of the many electronics stores we have seen here in Norway. Michael of course wanted to check out the cellphone display - they did have some very cool stuff, but nothing cooler than that which we'd already seen. They were also selling satellite dishes there - we've noticed a lot of them on the buildings around here, and it is kind of funny to see them pointing down - because the elevation they get the signal from is just above the horizon, so it needs to point down to receive the signal. At home our dish points up a little bit, not down. Soon (after the ship gets it together and leaves the Tromso harbor, which it hasn't yet done) we'll be moving along further northward, and will get to the Lyngsalpene mountain range in about one and half hours. This is apparently a very well known mountain range, although we haven't heard of it before. We'll definitely attempt to get a good look at it though. BTW, today's weather was very overcast, but still bright and not raining at all. It was about 50 degrees or so, a bit cooler than yesterday. Tomorrow we have been told to bring warm clothes with us for our excursion to the North Cape, which is more arctic in character. Hence the wool stockings! After we pass the mountain range mentioned above, we'll start to cross a stretch of open sea called "Loppa." We're not sure if that's part of the Norwegian Sea or what. Anyway, as far as the ship goes after tomorrow we sail one more night and then we will arrive at Kirkenes, which is where we catch our plane to Oslo. We asked the ship people about transport to the airport and they told us about a bus to the city center and another bus to the airport...we're not sure how we're going to work it out exactly, as we arrive in Kirkenes at about 11:15 am, and our flight out isn't til 7:30 pm, but probably there will be a luggage locker area at the Kirkenes bus terminal or something, so we should be able to spend some time sightseeing there and perhaps even check out the Russian border. We'll let you know :) -- FYI, here it is about 8 pm, well after dinner now that we've switched to the first seating :) and we are STILL in port at Tromso. Apparently someone has been taken to the hospital and they are waiting to see if he/she comes back onto the ship or not before they go ahead and leave. That's good, we suppose - if one of us were sick, we would want the ship to wait...although, it means we'll travel faster to make up the time to the next port. Dinner was good tonight - salmon! Yum. We would like to thank Michael's Grandma Suzie for explaining that the word we kept hearing as "fuktis" in spoken Norwegian actually means something along the lines of "as a matter of fact." At least, that's what a similar word means in Swedish, so we believe it's probably the same thing in Norwegian. Hillary would like it if someone could please explain what on earth is going on in Kosovo with the NATO military exercises and all. The news clips we saw about it were in Russian with Norwegian subtitles and we're very unclear on what exactly the problem is. Love, Hillary and Michael >From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul 5 08:36:59 1998 Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 17:32:22 +0200 From: Michael Israeli Subject: June 17th: Floundering through Finnmark County Howdy, friends and neighbors! Last night as we cruised still further north, we noticed a couple of things. First of all, the landscape changed drastically during the journey on day 5 of this cruise as we went north from Stokmarknes-->Sortland-->Harstad-->Finnsnes-->Tromso-->Skjervoy and out into the part of the sea they call "Loppa." By the time we'd passed Skjervoy pretty much all there was to see was a bunch of humongous snow and ice covered mountains - very spiky, jagged peaks on these mountains! The other thing is that after leaving Tromso we moved into an area of kind of blechy weather - which we've been in ever since. It's as if we're inside a cloud - if you go out on deck, it is very wet and chilling, and from the observation rooms it looks very foggy outside. Also, the ocean is choppy, though the boat is large enough that it isn't making too much of a difference in the feel of the ride. Anyway, it is still beautiful, but last night we couldn't see the sun, per se - rather, it was very grey but bright outside, as on a winter day in Philadelphia, when it is very overcast, but the sun is still high in the sky behind the clouds. This was at 11 pm :) At 9 PM last night there was a special event for us - in the observation deck area where we were hanging around with our friends from New Zealand and their friends from California - King Neptune came out to "baptize" us and induct us into his Arctic Kingdom! This entailed getting handfuls of ice shoved down your shirt, and in some cases into your pants as well although we escaped that brutal fate :). Then we were given glasses of wine and lovely certificates which certify us as members of the elite few who have crossed into the Arctic Circle. It was quite amusing. You kind of had to be there, but we did take a photo of King Neptune to try to capture the moment - he was actually a nice Norwegian girl named Lina, who is kind of this ship's equivalent of Julie from The Love Boat, if any of you remember that TV show.... Today Hillary woke up early again and went out to sit on the observation deck, where she read up in the travel books about what to do and see in Oslo. She also checked with the ship people about whether or not we would be able to join the Kirkenes/Russian border excursion when the ship gets to Kirkenes, and still have time to come back to the ship, pick up our luggage, settle the bill, and check out before the ship departs the harbor. They said yes, so we got signed up for that, and if the ship stays on schedule we'll be able to do it. This morning the ship stopped in Hammerfest while we were asleep, and then in Havoysund for about half an hour. Havoysund appeared to be a very very small village, in a very desolate area - mostly a main road, a harbor with shipping activity, perhaps some fishing activity, and a few homes and maybe a hotel, all clustered down by the coast, and surrounded by huge empty stretches of snow covered mountain. In this weather today, it looked even more grim. The houses and other buildings are painted in bright red, yellow, and green colors, perhaps because the landscape is so bare. We took a photo of a few of the better looking buildings down on the coast. Other than that, all we've seen today is more of the same imposing mountains - we think that living in this area might make one feel very small in comparison! --- Brrrr! It sure is cold outside around here! We've just returned to the ship after today's excursion. Here's what went on: We got off the boat in the fishing village of Honningsvag, on the island of Mogeroya, in Finnmark County (which is larger than all of Denmark!) and stood around in a light drizzle for ten minutes until the tour buses arrived. We then boarded a tour bus with an English speaking guide (yay!) and began our 40 minute drive up to the North Cape (Nordkapp). Honningsvag is so small, with only 3000 inhabitants, that as the guide put it, "as we drive into the center of town, we're already driving out of it!" Once we left the town we were on a narrow road travelling through a very bleak area. Mogeroya is basically a really big rock with some limited amount of ground cover. Really, in many areas all you see when you look around is piles of rocks or exposed rock faces. There are also a lot of lakes in the inland areas, and much of the area even down at sea level still had snow on the ground - although the depth did increase as we increased our elevation. We were driving up to the peak of Nordkapp which is 307 meters above sea level. You must realize that it was VERY VERY overcast and grey outside and as we increased our elevation we became surrounded by a heavy cloudlike fog and had very limited ability to see anything at all. We did see a few things, though, and we'll tell you about them. We caught a glimpse of the fishing village Kamoyvaer. This we nicknamed "the invisible village" because we'd thought Honningsvag was small...this was just ridiculously small. Village? Hah! Well, maybe it was hidden by fog, or maybe it really was just a couple of buildings and a fishing boat. We then drove inland a bit and eventually stopped off at a Sami camp. The Sami are the people who used to be called Lapp or Lappish people (think of Lappland in Sweden...) - they are sort of the Eskimos of Scandinavia, if you will. The name "Lapp" has taken on sort of a negative connotation so now they are called Sami. In any case, most of these people have assimilated to Norwegian (or Russian for those on the other side of the border) culture, but the mountain Sami have not (Hillary kept thinking of those "mountain people" that Latka would talk about on the TV show Taxi, but these people are not like those people). The camp at which we stopped had a couple of teepees and a small herd of reindeer, and some structures used to cure hides and things, and a sled, and some other stuff. A nice Sami guy had one of his reindeer out to learn how to deal with tourists :). The reindeer, whose name was incomprehensible but sounded sort of like Harrykelekeskyoen, was happily munching away on a bucket of moss. Who knew reindeer like to eat moss? Well, it's a good thing they do because otherwise let us tell you these would be hungry reindeer! Their "pasture" was mostly bare rock, some moss covered rock, and very very rare patches of grassy stuff. We continued on and up, through some very bleak landscape - think grey, think wet, think rocks - there were occasionally small waterfalls present in areas where the snow was melting, which added a bit of excitement to the otherwise grim surroundings. We passed a couple of other herds of reindeer out there - many of the females had young calves with them, which were very cute :). We also saw a lot of birds - definitely at least one Cormorant, a number of Fulmars, at least one Gannet - beyond that it was very hard to make them out so we can't really say. We don't believe any of them were Puffins, though, unfortunately. Also in this region there are nesting colonies of Sea Eagles, Kittywakes, and Guillemots. As we got further up above sea level, our guide was telling us about the region - she mentioned that the Nordkapp is at an equal latitude with Siberia (71 degrees) but that due to the presence of the Gulf Stream bringing warm water from Mexico, it is about 20 degrees C warmer here. Thank goodness! The coastal water is about a constant 4 C and their harbors do not freeze over in the winter which is good news for the local inhabitants who really must be able to fish or they will be in big trouble. In this area they have some fish farms as well, which look like round wire pens out in the water - they grow salmon here. We saw one of these down by Svartisen as well, although we're told that the ones around here are better since the cold water reduces the need to medicate the fish in any way - pathogens don't like the cold, we suppose. When we finally got to the North Cape it was somewhat anticlimactic. We couldn't see a thing. We were completely enveloped in a white mist. Getting off the bus was sort of like stepping into a wind tunnel, too. The wind whipped around - it was shockingly strong - and we ran directly into the pavillion. There is a very nice tourist pavillion here. Obviously we couldn't take advantage of the panoramic viewing areas but we could and did see the panoramic video showing the island in different seasons. Apparently in the very short warm season it does get a little greener :) - although, our guide mentioned to us that the plant growing season here is so short that if you pick a flower, it will take 3 years for that flower to be replaced! The video was beautiful though. Also in the pavillion we checked out a champagne bar, which was built with rock walls to make you feel like you are in a cave in the side of the cliff, where you can buy really expensive beverages. There was also a number of displays where we could read about the history of the area and learn about some of the birds. Interestingly they have a Thai museum here as well, where they display gifts received by the Nordkapp government officials from the Thai/Siam government. In 1907, the King of (then) Siam came to the North Cape and carved his initials into a rock (of which we took a photo, of course), thus beginning a long tradition of friendship between the peoples of Finnmark and Thailand. In addition, there is a honeymoon suite somewhere in the building but we didn't get a look at it. Oh well. On our way back town to the harbor to meet the boat, the guide spoke of some of the history of Finnmark. About 3850 people live in Finnmark - and remember, about 3000 of them live in Honningsvag, so the rest of the population must be spread very thinly over this region, which covers 924 square kilometers! The most important occupations here are fishing, tourism, and public service (like medicine and such). When the undersea tunnels started construction in the past 20 or so years, they found proof that this area has been inhabited for at least 10,300 years. That is not a typo! They had thought previously that this would be impossible due to the snow and ice and stuff, but apparently the Gulf Stream warmth was even present during the ice age, creating a valley of green where people could hunt and fish even then. Unfortunately, this area was completely devastated by WWII. Realize that we are right near the Russian border. The Germans were using this area as work camps for Russian POWs. They needed to clear out the norwegians so they rounded up everyone and sent them to the south of Norway, and then they burned down every single building in Finnmark. The only thing left standing was a church in Honningsvag, and that was only because the German officer refused direct orders to burn it! It was good that it still stood, because it was shelter for the people when they returned from Oslo to rebuild their towns. Our guide told us a personal story about her family - apparently her grandparents would (prior to the evacuation of Finnmark described above) hide escaped Russian POWs in their home. One day a German soldier knocked on the door at night - apparently having seen light peeking through the blackout curtains. The quick-thinking lady of the house picked up her baby, pinched it to make it cry, and exposed her breast as if she were breast feeding, before going to answer the door. When the soldier saw her half naked with a crying baby, he was very embarrassed. He blushed and said "please ma'am, draw your curtains tighter," and fled from the porch. Our guide explained that years later, that baby grew to be her mother, and the 3 russian boys who had been hiding in the living room did come to visit her grandparents when she was a child. That's all for now. We're back on the boat, resting up, preparing to pack things up for our journey tomorrow from Kirkenes to Oslo by plane. We probably will not do the Kirkenes excursion to the border - unfortunately the weather will likely be similar to today's weather and we wouldn't be able to see anything across the water, so there is no point. But we'll be able to explore Kirkenes for a number of hours and we very much look forward to that. Love, Michael and Hillary >From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul 5 08:36:59 1998 Date: Fri, 19 Jun 1998 00:14:30 +0200 From: Michael Israeli Subject: June 18: Oslo or bust!! Hey there, ho there, friends and neighbors! Last night after we re-boarded the ship following our North Cape excursion, things were still ok. But when we pulled out of the harbor it became rapidly obvious that we'd moved into an area of very very choppy water, and Hillary was feeling pretty sick. Michael got her some seasickness tablet from the front desk and that made her feel a bit better, and then we pulled into another port and so she was feeling well enough to have dinner - but after dinner, things went rapidly downhill. We tried to sit in the observation deck and relax, but Hillary decided she'd better get to the cabin so she could throw up in private - but unfortunately, didn't make it, and instead gave some poor German guy in the 6th floor hallway quite a surprise. Oh well. It wasn't her fault. We found out today from our Californian friends that not only had their mom been sick too, but many other passengers had become ill, and in fact the ship's staff had brought buckets out to the public areas for passengers to throw up into. However, Michael obtained more anti-seasickness medicine for Hillary and it pretty much zonked her out, and she slept uneventfully through the VERY tumultuous night. Our friend Jan from New Zealand told us that she took two sleeping pills and laid there rocking back and forth thinking that she'd returned to the womb - and that otherwise it would have been a real white-knuckler of an evening! So, today, we pretty much stayed in our cabin as long as possible (and yes, the maid DID barge in again, at about 10:30 am, despite assurances that they wouldn't come in before noon...) When we docked at Kirkenes we were among the first folks off the ship! We boarded a bus to the city center and breathed a sigh of relief to be out of the choppy sea. Kirkenes seems to be a village playing dress up - it wants to be a city, but it really isn't. It's a village in despair, too - it reminded us of the song "Allentown" by Billy Joel - it has that air of decay. Apparently Kirkenes is another one of those towns that was devastated, demolished, destroyed, etc by the Germans in WWII. It shows. Today, Kirkenes industry centers around shipping, a giant mine of some sort, and tourism - they organize day trips into nearby Russia. The bus ride from the harbor to the bus terminal at the center of town was depressing. It was another overcast day plus it was very cold outside. Hillary is sure her parents remember the song about the houses that are "all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same." We went through an area like that...then we drove past Kirkenes' equivalent of the "HOLLYWOOD" sign (which we took a photo of) and then blammo, we were in the city center. The city consists of a couple of blocks lined by shops. We did check out the Monument to Mothers of the War, which was a nice statue, but the museum was closed and there really wasn't anything else to do. We did find the use of Russian along with Norwegian on the signs around town to be sort of jarring. We took a photo of a Russian ship docked in the harbor, too. We ate a meal in the nicest looking restaurant and hung out in the cafe of the hotel in town for a while, then we took a cab to the airport. The cab ride to the airport was slightly less depressing than the bus ride into town. Heading out of town we moved rapidly into an area of desolate landscape again. Pretty lakes full of fish set within areas of scrub brush, struggling birch trees, and such. There is some grass in this area, but it's straggly and browning. Soon we started to pass signs which warned in four languages (Norwegian, English, German, and Russian) that the area is under military restrictions, and no camping or photography is allowed. This was most likely the area closest to the border, as there was a nearby river and it is our understanding that the river is the border between Norway and Russia. There was one intersection too where there was a sign pointing in one direction some number of kilometers to Kirkenes, in another direction some number of kilometers to another Norwegian town, and then in another direction some number of kilometers to something we couldn't understand because it was written in Cyrillic, so we couldn't write it here anyway. The airport was small - 3 whole gates! We napped and sat quietly from about 4:30 PM til our plane came in at about 7. The plane had open seating and we managed to snag three seats for the two of us. Woo. The plane stopped twice on the way to Oslo - first at Alta, which was rather nondescript, and then at Tromso, which you may recall we described in an earlier email. We really lucked out with this landing - the weather in Tromso was sunny and beautiful, so the pilot decided to give us a scenic landing. We had a great view of the jewel-like city nestled into a green valley amidst majestic snow covered peaks. It was really great. The final approach to Oslo was less spectacular but nonetheless memorable. Oslo lies within an area of rolling green hills, and from above it appears that someone has broken a mirror over them, because there are many many large and small lakes in the area. We were flying in at about 11 pm, and above the cloud cover it was bright and sunny, though once we broke through the cloud cover it was more like twilight. It is now midnight here in Oslo and it's about as dark as it gets - still plenty of light to see by, the sky is a kind of cornflower blue and everything looks very pretty with the lights on. We took a cab to our hotel - the bus doesn't seem to stop anywhere near it. The hotel is wonderful, with a suit-press, a heated bathroom floor, an umbrella in case of rain, a TV that gets CNN, a *balcony* with a door that opens out onto it - we took a photo of Oslo by night from our balcony, btw. Oh, and in the shower, there is a note that says Norwegians sing in the shower and we should too, and it has some helpful Norwegian song lyrics to get us started!! Now we sleep after our busy travel day. We'll let you know what happens tomorrow! Love, Hillary (who is totally recovered) and Michael (an excellent healer) >From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul 5 08:36:59 1998 Date: Fri, 19 Jun 1998 18:29:05 +0200 From: Michael Israeli Subject: June 19th: overcome by Oslo Hello! We woke up early today to a beautiful sunny Norwegian sky! Even at about 7:30 when we got up, it was reasonably warm on our balcony, so we dressed appropriately, had breakfast in the hotel, and headed to the train station to make our reservations on tomorrow's train to Stockholm. We took the #19 trolley (they call it a tram) which was twice as expensive as a SEPTA trolley but was also much nicer, so there you go. This trolley went directly from half a block outside our hotel to the train station in 16 minutes, following a pretty scenic route, too. When we got to the station we were overwhelmed. Oslo's Sentralstasjon is a combination upscale mall/lowbrow food court/train station. It's bigger than the one in Copenhagen. We entered on the ground floor and took an inclined people-mover up to the second floor (not an escalator, not a flat conveyor belt, but a hybrid of the two - convenient way to get your luggage upstairs). We stopped at the information center there and were informed about where to go to make our reservations and when the trains were. So we headed over to the reservation area and took a number. It seems that all the European stations have a similar method of handling ticketing - you take a number for either international or domestic travel, and then a screen shows when it is your turn, and which window will take you. It is much better than being in a crowd of rude surly people at 30th St. You don't have to stand in line, you can walk around while you wait your turn. However, at 9 am it was uncrowded and it was our turn very quickly. We told the guy at the window we wanted a reservation on the first train to Stockholm tomorrow and he told us "yes, but Sweden is down right now. We called them, they are working on it." It turned out that the whole ticketing system for the trains destined to Sweden had been down for three hours. He said we should come back later. Hillary asked him, "at any particular time? Do you know when it might be working again?" and he said "who knows? it has already been 3 hours." So, we asked "Will there be any problem getting on the train?" and he said "oh, no, don't worry about it, we're open til 11 pm." So, we left to get over to the tourist information office where we hoped to purchase a sightseeing tour ticket. We left the train station and walked up one of the main streets, Karl Johans gate. This is part big street, part pedestrian walkway, and it sort of reminded us of Copenhagen (without the Shawarma). We took this road all the way to Munkedamsveien, on which we turned left. The walk up KJgate took us past a lot of interesting sights, including a beautiful park with flowers and fountains (Spikersuppa Park), the ornate Parliament building, of which we took a photo before we even knew what it was; the "Old University" which is now purely a law school, the beautiful neoclassical National Theater, and right up to the edge of the Royal Palace grounds. The walkway through the palace lawn is lined with Norwegian flags and today, also with German flags and special baskets of beautiful red and yellow roses and lilies and things, because a German VIP is visiting the Norwegian royal family. We walked down the Munkedamsveien past the Oslo Concert Hall, where the Oslo Philharmonic plays, and then we turned left on a small side street to get where we were going. The tourist information office here is wonderful, as it was in Bergen, with big helpful and interesting displays, and multilingual staff. We looked around a bit and Hillary picked up some articles about Women in Norway and the Sami People in Norway. Lisa might be interested in the article about women. Then we booked ourselves on a sightseeing tour bus which left at 11 AM, which gave us about 20 minutes to walk around the area we found ourselves in - Vestbaneplassen/Radhusplassen/Aker Brygge. First we walked over to the Radhusplassen - this is the little plaza in front of the City Hall (Radhus). The interior of the Radhus is painted with numerous frescoes, so we're told, though we didn't get a look inside - and the artists who painted them were rewarded for what was termed their defiance of the Nazi occupiers at the time the painting took place, and they ended up being deported to concentration camps. It really seems that Norway took a beating during WWII! Anyway, the Radhus is the building in which the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded every December 10. Then we walked over to the waterfront, from where we could get a very good view of the Akershus Castle and Fortress - built in 1299! - to the left as we faced out of the harbor. We walked along and looked at the boats and birds - there was one large grey gull totally dominating the area and kicking out the brown and white gulls which were trying to also get some of the shrimp tails some people were throwing down, and then crossed over to the right side of the harbor, Aker Brygge - this used to be a center for shipbuilding until 1980, but now it has all been converted into offices and shops and restaurants. When you walk down there, there are floating restaurants and cafes in the water, and nice shops and restaurants on the land. We passed a couple of friendly mounted policemen and petted their pretty chestnut horses. Finally it was time to go on our tour! The bus drove us to the fortress close up so we could get a good look at it, and then it drove us around the city center a bit - sort of where we had already walked - and then we went west to the Vigeland sculpture park in the larger Frognerparken. This is a very very big park in which the principal attraction is the amazing work done by Gustav Vigeland, who lived 1869-1943 and who gave all of his work to the city of Oslo in return for being given a studio and this park in which to do his work. There are about 650 sculptures here. They are bronze and granite sculptures of human beings - in particular we saw a bridge which had bronze people on both sides - men, women, children, young/old, etc - all together. Vigeland's work was imbued with the life cycle - he always sculpted people with other people, never alone, and his groups of statues always include infants, kids, adults, and old people, and sometimes even dead people or skeletons. We also saw the imposing 17 meter tall monolith, with 121 intertwined human bodies - dead/old on the bottom, infants on the top - except for Vigeland himself, who is up near the top with the children. Some say that this is how he represented his belief in the afterlife. Who knows. It is a very impressive piece of work. A nice guy took a photo of us standing next to a granite man and woman we particularly liked. When we left the sculpture park, we travelled by bus to the Holmenkollen ski jump. The thing about Oslo is - where Kirkenes was a village playing dressup, Oslo is a big city playing chameleon - or something. There's your big city part of Oslo, and there's your harbor, and then there are huge parks and stuff - but then, there are also big hills, where it gets quite suburban looking, and mountain lakes and so forth. You wouldn't think you were in a city if you didn't know it. As we drove up this hill we passed many very expensive homes in this exclusive hillside neighborhood. We also stopped at a turn-off so we could get off the bus and look down from the hilltop over the city. It gave a very good view of the Oslofjord, the city, the airport, and the wooded areas. Then we continued to the peninsula Bygdoy, where we visited the Viking Ship museum and the Kon-Tiki museum. The viking museum was of interest because it contains actual preserved ships and artifacts from the ships which were very well preserved because they had been buried in some special blue clay. It was amazing to realize how very far people were able to travel on these ships! The Kon-Tiki museum was also interesting for similar reasons. For those of you not familiar with the project, a Norwegian fellow Thor Somebody or other (couldn't spell it anyway, really...) back in 1947 set out to prove that it was possible for people to have drifted on a raft from Peru to the Polynesian islands (he believed that this is what had happened, due to similarities b/w the Incan and Polynesian cultures; prevailing thought at the time had been that Asians populated those islands). So, he built the Kon-Tiki raft, with a number of other Scandinavians, and they took the journey, and it worked! They then undertook a project in which they would drift from Africa to South America in a boat built of papyrus - anyway, we saw a bunch of exhibits about these excursions, and gained a lot of respect for ancient people who traveled in these ways (as well as the modern scientists/sociologists who replicated the journeys!) That was the end of the tour (of course, we gave it to you in highly condensed version :)). Then we were returned to the spot where we'd started. After we got off the bus we stopped for Whoppers at the local Burger King (we really needed that after all this Scandinavian food...and boy did they hit the spot!) and then we went back to the train station, where we ran into a bit of a snag. We took our number and then asked to ensure that the Swedish system was up again, and then wandered around a bit while waiting our turn. During this time we saw a very very cute Rottweiler puppy with a long tail. Hillary picked up some train related stuff for Jeff. Finally it was our turn and we went to window 15, noticing on the way that the same guy we'd spoken with this morning was still at window 16. We told the woman at the window that we wanted two reservations on the morning train to Stockholm, and she said "sorry, it's all booked." There was a moment of silence... Then, Hillary said, really quite calmly, "are you sure? We were here at 10 this morning and the system was down, but the gentleman we spoke with said there would be no problem getting a spot if we came back later." The woman did some clickety-clicking and said "I'm sorry, it's full, but I can put you on the 16:40 train." Now, the 16:40 train does not get into Stockholm until about 11:30 pm, and we are supposed to be meeting some ISP friends in Stockholm for an evening barbecue, so this was pretty upsetting. Hillary's eyes quietly started to overflow with tears and she sniffled as she said "well, it's really too bad we came all the way from the states and our friends are throwing a party for us and we won't even be there. I suppose you should book us on the 16:40 train. Someone should reprimand the gentleman at window 15, though." We believe that then the woman took pity on us, for she did some further clickety-clicking on her keyboard, and finally we were confirmed on the train to Stockholm! For one half of the ride we have to go 2nd class instead of first (although there is a chance of being able to switch on the train if there ends up being an empty first class spot) but at least we are on the train!! Thank goodness everyone here speaks English. We might not have managed so well if we had been trying to communicate in Norwegian. We thanked the ticketing agent most profusely (and she said she would in fact speak to the other guy for us and tell him to be more careful in the future). Then we decided to walk back to our hotel instead of taking yet more public transportation. We followed at first closely along the route used by the #19 trolley - as we walked up the Tollebugata, we passed the main Oslo post office which is situated right near a Postal Service museum. We looked in the window there and saw some old fashioned mail delivery trucks and stuff. Then we walked along the Stortingsgata, which parallels Karl Johans Gate and gives a nice view of the scenic park and the National Theater from the other side. Then we walked up the Drammensveien, passing along the edges of the Royal Gardens. Unfortunately, the growing season in Oslo is not on the greatest schedule for us. The spring flowers are just about done and the summer ones aren't quite out yet. Still, there are some parts of the gardens where there are nice flowers. We saw one large rock in the Royal gardens covered with some green leafy vines and big giant white flowers - very very similar to the vines on the Gormans' mailbox, what is it, clematis? But the flowers are bigger and white instead of purple. Anyway, we liked them. We passed the Henrik Ibsen museum and the Oslo Energy building (which has a nice garden planted with yellow and red flowers in the shape of their logo). We also snapped a photo of the unpretentious Nobel Institute, which is where the people who decide who is going to get the Nobel Peace prize do the actual deciding. The American Embassy was not far from here - Hillary stopped in there to see if she could use the rest room, and they apparently have some kind of arrangement with a nearby cafe for that purpose, so that worked out just fine. We also stopped in this general area at a bookstore that advertised "English books!" and got Hillary some reading material for tomorrow's six hour train ride. Books are expensive in Norway! We found one book on Norwegian Forest Cats, but it was very small, it was in Norwegian, and it cost a whopping 40 bucks!! (a regular novel costs about $12!! Must be the value added tax - they add 25% to everything to support their socialist stuff. Tourists get refunds IF they buy 300 NOK of stuff all at once, but we haven't been spending that much in one place.) We stopped and looked at the photos, though :) We then walked up "Inkognitogata," which is a small side road lined by residential buildings, almost all of which are the residences of Ambassadors from other countries - Italy, Korea, Indonesia, etc. Finally we got out onto Hedgehaugsveien (Hedge Hog way?) which is really an extension of the street our hotel is on (Bogstadveien). This street contains a number of trendy shops and restaurants. While we were walking today we noticed a shop advertising "we sell REAL Cuban cigars!" We briefly considered picking some up, but decided it wasn't worth potentially getting in big trouble on the way back into the country. Jason, is it really really worth it? Joan: Hillary wants to be reminded of the meaning of a kcal in relation to the use of the term "calorie" on american labels. We have in hand a beverage which says it contains 30 kcals. What does that mean? -- Love, Hillary and Michael