The sun never sets on Norway

Date: June 22, 2008
Location: The North Atlantic, very near Scotland
Lat: 59° 16.38N Long: 006° 11.80W

It’s 0323 on June 23rd, but I’ve got some quick thoughts. Classes were classes, but nothing too bad. I’m up because I’m reading Boris Godunov, which is a play about a fake tsar and Russian succession. It might be interesting, but it’s written in kind of an old style which makes it sort of hard to follow. That’s my last class of the day, so I’ll read the rest tomorrow.

A few interesting things happened today, well actually yesterday. I met up with my intramural volleyball and basketball teammates. It should be fun, and at least it’s a way to meet more people, that is always good. It will definitely be nice to get out of the books for a few hours. The sports are co-ed; basketball is teams of 4 with two boys and two girls. The other guy on the team’s pretty tall, so hopefully that will help. Either way, it’s intramurals so it should be fun even if we’re terrible.

It was said the sun never set on the British Empire, it seems like it’s that way with Norway too, at least in the summer. At 0329 the sun still hangs out in the sky. You can’t get a good view of it, but the light doesn’t go away. It is certainly an interesting feeling to be able to walk out on deck and see the sun even when it’s 0-dark-30.

We also had our first cultural pre-port meeting. These meetings are given before we reach port. The pre-port is pretty much designed to give us some cultural background in the country we will be visiting. We learned some real interesting things about the Norwegians.

Apparently Norway is the top of the charts on the World Peace Index, I am not sure what it entails, but Archbishop Desmond Tutu and some others thought it up, so I’ll take their word for it. Also Norway is extremely rich. They have no desire to join the EU because of their vast reserves of oil wealth. Norway has a very good infrastructure because they can afford it. They have a 15 mile long tunnel through a mountain because they could afford it. Also apparently their roads are top notch.

Also their artists are a pretty motley bunch. Apparently Munch, who is best known for painting The Scream had quite the number of personal problems. Also, the Fiddle was almost removed from Norway as it was viewed as the devil’s instrument; I guess the Norwegian’s hadn’t heard that Satan liked the electric guitar.

I’m really excited about seeing Oslo and the Fjords. Bergen seems like a real pretty city as well, I’m sure I’ll be able to get some top-notch seafood there. At the least it has to be better than the boat food. I guess that’ll sound a bit harsh. The food on the ship’s not bad at all, I don’t mind it, but it does get a bit old.

A real nice thing about the ship community is you can have some real good conversations with people. I must’ve talked for a good hour and a half with a guy about this and that, trying to solve the world’s problems. It seems like a little bit of America is on this boat. My roommate’s a from Colorado, we’ve got people from Iowa, Chicago, Indiana, California, Maine, even Alaska. We have people from all sorts of backgrounds, Hungarians, Poles, Vietnamese, Italians, etc. There’s a lot that can be learned about the US from all of us.

Unfortunately, all these deep conversations have prevented me from reading about Boris Godunov, so I’ll read about him tomorrow, it’s 0342 now, it’s time to get some sleep.

Date: June 23, 2008
Location: The North Atlantic, right outside of Bergen
Lat: 59° 50.62N Long: 002° 17.05E

Well, we’ve crossed the Prime Meridian now and are east of Greenwich, England. We saw land for the first time since we left Halifax today. Apparently we passed right by the Orkney Islands which are right to the north of Scotland. We’ve also seen plenty of oil derricks out in the Barents Sea. I was able to snap some good photos of them.

We had a logistical pre-port meeting today. These are meetings where we go over the logistical elements of our landings. This entails things like numbers to call, where to get money exchanged, when groups are meeting up to leave, things like that. The program is well run and put together; I don’t foresee any problems on that front.

I did end up finishing Boris Godunov before class, which was good. I got a little notebook I can scratch my thoughts down on so hopefully I won’t forget too much when I transfer my thoughts from my notebook to the laptop. I’m real excited about getting to Norway, it seems like it should be real nice. Apparently trolls are a big part of Norwegian life. I figure there will plenty of opportunities to get photos of them.

Apparently the Bergen Fish Market is a bustling place of culture and economy, so that should be real neat to see. I have pretty much the full day tomorrow to check Bergen out before I have to head out to take the midnight train to Oslo. I think everything will go real well. I’m told that it’s real neat to get up to see the ship sail into port, so I’m calling it a night so I can get up at 5:30 or so to see the ship start making it into the harbor. Apparently Bergen is situated in a fjord so it will be cool to see the good ship M/V Explorer make landfall. Also the dock is apparently right in the middle of the city, downtown Bergen’s a ten minute walk from the ship.

I’m going to go topside again to see the sun shining bright at midnight, but after that, I’m going to call it a night.