Around 1800 on Thursday me and Zeus, equipped with sunglasses and proper headgear, got on the bus up to one of the attractions still missing on the map of Norway: the Lofoten islands.
I am on a ship. Curious? With the MacBook on my lap and the sun in the neck, I am finding myself inside cabin 477 of the MS Midnatsol vessel on the way down to Bergen. How comes, you might ask? Two companions form the AROS open source project I have been working on are living in Stavanger, and as Bergen+Stavanger are the two Norwegian cities still being on my list it is a good accession to pay them a visit. I will stay only few hours in Bergen as I am arriving at 1430 and taking the bus at 1650 to Stavanger further south where m0ns00n will hopefully pick me up at 2200. After visiting these cities I want to close the circle of southern Norway by taking the train from Stavanger over Oslo back to Trondheim, in about 15 hours. Of course it wasn’t that easy to get here on board, it is never easy on some trips. After having everything planned already last semester and everything booked two weeks ago, I found myself today morning 0900 at the bus stop with a french guy just to realize that Norwegians are pretty serious about their Easter holidays with everything being -dead- already on Thursday. The first bus would come at 0954 and the vessel would leave at 1000. I was entirely clueless about that, of course. After waiting 5 minutes me and the Frenchman, who has been waiting for quarter an hours already, started to get curious. He, who happened to be -they-, were on the way to the airport, so in the same ticklish situation as I. Together we took a cab, first to the peer to drop me off and then to the airport. I arrived just in time twenty to 10 and found myself in the ship.
The cabin N2-477 “Exterior larger cabin with bed and sofa” I got, is on deck no.4 down the floor behind the reception. It is cosy and in fact more then what I have expected it to be for the 1195 kroner I paid for the trip (50% student offer). It has a bathroom including shower cabin, bad+sofa and a window with a fantastically moving background when you look out. MS Midnatsol (“midnight sun”) provides accommodation for 1000 passengers on 9 decks, several bars+launches and two jacuzzis on top. Lets see if we can take advantage of the latter one. I bought some postcards for my family as its Easter, had a walk on the ship and took a nap until 3 p.m. (I didn’t sleep much the night before) We already passed the first stop in Kristiansund at 1700, the following ones will be Molde 2130, Ålesund 2400 (with “aufenthalt” till 0045), Torvik 0215, Måløy 0545, Florø 0815 and finally Bergen at 1430. In meantime the view out of the window is truly fantastic. I could spend hours sitting here and watching the mountains and fjords passing by.
I just popped out from the jacuzzi upstairs at deck 9. I it was great, the whole boat is sleeping already and it was a nice relax to finish the day. We are just about to reach Torvik. Will get me some sleep now as I want to get up early to see the sunrise.
The vessel arrived few minutes before half past 2 and I got off the ship around 3 finding surprisingly good weather conditions in The City of Rain and after finding the bus station to Stavanger took a walk around the harbor to the Bergenhus Fortress. Really nice city as it seems, maybe even nicer then Trondheim to what I have seen, the harbor is very beautiful and the mountains surrounding the city too. The bus left Bergen at 16:50 and after passing passing several fjords and two more ferries arrived in Stavanger at 22:00 where m0ns00n would pick me up.
Hogne and his wife have recently bought a nice house in Tananger and would host me for the weekend. I know Hogne from the AROS project since for some time now, and as we never met in person it was a nice opportunity to meet him and Ola. On Saturday we took the car down to see Stavanger, the nice beaches surrounding it, as well as the Norwegian Petroleum Museum (where we grabbed a pair of polarized 3D glasses) and the Sverd i fjell monument raised in the memory of the Battle of Hafrsfjord where King Harald Fairhair for the first time gathered all of Norway under one crown.
After that Ola joined us and Hogne’s wife prepared a great meal for all of us, and we had some kind of a demoscene revival party drinking local beers, watching livestream of the Breakpoint party which took place during that weekend and had some fun coding. I would leave Stavanger the next day, taking the train to Oslo and then to Trondheim, closing the circle of southern Norway.