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Tuesday Aug 30th, 2011: A Short Stop in Bergen, Norway

Bob:

We both had had trouble sleeping during the night. In aircraft I've encountered all levels of turbulence and have a private scale for how severe it is. On my scale "severe" turbulence means the airplane descends so abruptly that if your seatbelt is not fastened, you would float up and hit your head on the ceiling. The turbulence that night on the Crown Princess came very close to being severe at several points. I felt almost weightless on the bed as we descended the wave and then pressed into the mattress at nearly double my normal weight, a truly odd feeling. I did not, however, actually float up off of the bed, so it was not quite "severe" turbulence in my book, but it was nevertheless doggone disconcerting and interfered with sleeping soundly. As a result, I was a bit groggy in the morning.

As it turned out, since we were delayed getting in to Bergen until 5:20 p.m., we had the whole day at sea. During the afternoon we pretty much just relaxed and rested although we took time to spend an hour practicing with the Pop Choir. Val, our director, added in some serious choreography, which I duly noted on my copy of the song lyrics. Actual sheet music for the songs was not available, so I was still trying to learn the basic melody line for all but two of them. I gave Val the key drive for our laptop, however, and she promised to put cuts of the 6 songs on the disk so that I could use my laptop to review those performances enough to train my ear to the tune. I found it surprisingly discomfitting to try to sing solely by ear even though that is how I learned most songs until Laurie trained me to read sheet music correctly. [Thank you, Laurie!]

Monika:

Our day in Bergen turned mainly into a day at sea. But that gave us a chance for an extra rehearsal with the Pop Choir, and we needed all the rehearsals we could get. This time Val put choreography to all the songs and it was easier for us to pick up the melodies when she just sang the songs, rather having the background vocals and instrumentals.

But finally we watched as we sailed through the fjord that was spanned by a futuristic looking bridge, past a drydock, toward the Bergen harbor.

Bob:

Our other big activity was planning what to do in Bergen since we knew we would only have 3 or 4 hours maximum in the city. We decided on focusing on revisiting the Brygge section that contained the fish-trading houses established by Hanseatic merchants in Bergen in the 1600s. But when we went down to disembark shortly after our ship docked, we were astonished to see the queue of people already waiting winding round and round deck 5. What's worse, the queue was not moving, so we decided to return to our stateroom, read for an hour, and try again.

By the time we returned the line had dramatically shortened and we were able to go ashore after waiting only about 20 minutes or so. But that only gave us a little over 2 hours to walk over and see the old Hanseatic section, which was cutting it a bit fine at night in a foreign city. One further complication was that it was raining quite hard, which in turn made it difficult to read maps, consult compasses or my GPS, or take any pictures as we headed off in what we hoped was the right direction. Many other folks, in fact, were so discouraged that they turned around and took the bus right back to the ship without ever actually setting foot in the city!

Monika:

We had an early dinner up at the buffet, since we wanted to have as much time in Bergen as possible. But when we came down to get of the ship when the announcement was made that it was time around 5:30, there was a long, long line waiting to disembark with no descernable movement. The Norwegian authorities did not allow us to wander through the port to the city, since it was an industrial harbor, instead they had provided busses. But it seems there were not nearly enough busses for all the people that wanted to get off at one time.

We decided to wait in the comfort of our stateroom for an hour and then try again. By about 6:30 the line had shrunk considerably and was actually moving. Outside it was raining cats and dogs (and whatever other animals happened to be in the atmosphere). The Crown Princess was considerate enough to provide us with umbrellas from the ship to the bus, but unfortunately collected them again so we could not take them into the city.

We were let off at a nice little lake across from the railroad station. We had a map and our GPS and had decided to go to the old part of town. First we came to a nice little gazebo. The good part about it was that it had a roof and we could take pictures without worrying about the lens getting rain drops.

Bob:

Cold, damp, and soggy as we were, we persevered and did find the old Hanseatic houses. I enjoyed the opportunity to see them up close and walk around in back and see them also from that angle.

Monika:

Then we headed on towards the old town. That was the part of town I remembered, since we had visited it when we did our Nordkap (English: North Cape of Norway) trek with the boys in 1985. The old houses had not changed, only the Hansa museum was partially covered with construction sheathing as it was undergoing renovations. We enjoyed taking the pictures along the main street right by the water.

Bob:

Out in back is where I discovered the most surprising thing: not only did the joists for the floor of the second story look like deck beams, but the upside-down L-shaped supports for that second floor were clearly the knees used in old sailing ships! Knees are sections of trees grown specifically to have an L-shape, and because there are no joints and the grain runs smoothly along the right-angle bend in the L, the knees will support a great deal without cracking or failing.

I could tell these timbers were from old sailing ships because I could clearly see that they had the worm holes from the toredo worm that used to be the bane of the wooden ships before copper sheathing for the hull was invented. Furthermore, I even found some spots where the original wooden dowels or pegs were used to fasten the knees to the walls behind them and the floor above them, and that was the method used before iron spikes became popular. I wish I had carbon 14 data, but I would guess those knees and deck beams were roughly from the 1600s and therefore part of the original construction of the houses.

But where did they get those ship pieces from? My best guess was that the pieces were obtained from sailing ships that had been wrecked in the harbor or blown ashore by contrary winds, a quite common occurrence before the development of auxiliary engines. The photography, by the way, was abominably difficult as those houses were poorly illuminated and it was dusk and raining steadily to boot. Exposure times were as slow as half a second, but I took enough pictures that some of them came out correctly.

Monika:

We decided to walk up to the next street and walk back that way. There we found we could get into the backyards and alleys, and here you could really see how those old houses were constructed. Bob especially enjoyed that it seemed that they used the timber from old ships and carefully inspected the overhanging roofs and, of course, enjoyed taking lots of pictures.


 


 

Bob:

We ran out of time rather quickly, of course, and hustled back to the shuttle bus stop, where fortunately a bus was waiting for us. Returning to the ship soaked, cold, and tired, we hung up our clothes to dry and Monika even took a shower to warm up. As it was already late by then, we just turned in for the night.

Monika:

Since we got off the ship late, we only had a couple of hours in Bergen. The last shuttle bus left at 9PM, so we slowly walked back to the ship. A passing Hop-on Hop-off bus with prices posted in Norwegian Kroner and US Dollars had given us a basic exchange rate of 1:5, so we started looking at the food prices and were really surprised: a basic deluxe chicken sandwich was 79 Krone, that would be about 16 dollars. We talked to people who had stopped at a pub for a beer, at 125 Krone (25 dollars). Even the cruise ship is a lot cheaper than that!

We slowly walked back, the rain had slowed so we felt free to take a few more pictures. But we were wet and cold, again my raincoat had kept the water rather than shedding it and my feet once again were soaked. I should be used to it by now! So we were glad when the bus left quite quickly. Back at the pier we again were handed umbrellas and were glad when we were back on the ship. Actually, I decided to take a hot shower to warm up and it took a while for my toes to get warm.


 



Copyright 2012 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt


 

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