The Church of Prairie Home Companion

What is the lure that pulls people halfway across the globe to spend 10 days on a ship with a troupe of performers most have never met except through the medium of radio, a medium that is widely regarded by many as nothing more than the last refuge of holy rolling preachers, outdated old folks' rock album music and trash talking, hyperventilating shock jocks? How does a program that is to radio drama what The Daily Show is to broadcast journalism -- a clever, well-maintained satire that seems like the real thing but isn't -- inspire such loyalty among listeners that they weekly set aside other activities and obligations and tune into a public radio program sponsored by ersatz products like BeBop Areebop rhubarb pie, Powdermilk biscuits, duct tape and ketchup?

Being aboard this cruise is an immersion into the deeply loyal audience that Prairie Home Companion has created and nurtured for more than 30 years of regular weekly broadcasts from the make-believe town of Lake Woebegone. Garrison Keillor, 6'5", gawky, wearing trademark red sneakers and socks with suits, tuxedos and casual wear, sporting nerdy black eyeglasses and a soothing bass voice, presides over this enterprise. He's surrounded by a community of performers who appear on most, if not every show. He's funny, but not howlingly so, more wry than sharp. His observations are delivered in a mellow, almost hypnotic voice whose cadences have been carefully practiced in a finely honed storyteller's pace. The punchlines are rarely delivered with a punch, but instead seem to slip, slide, and ease their way out of the monologues and skits. It seems scripted and practiced, but when you see these shows live you realize how much improvisation goes on between the performers as they embellish this mythical prairie universe.

These are really talented people, musicians who shift effortlessly from one style to another, comedic actors who use voices alone to create enduring and memorable characters, and a man who does nothing but create sound effects, mostly with his mouth. They seem to genuinely enjoy working with each other, and they have worked really hard throughout this 10 day trip. Keillor is up most mornings at 7 to join passengers for coffee, or to preside over a writers' workshop where he listens to writers talk about their problems and commiserate or offer solutions. He's still up past midnight, singing with the performers and sometimes the audience, or presiding over a storytelling session with passengers, coaxing personal stories from them with a reassuring touch or comment, and then sending them back to their cabins. The musicians are in constant rotation among the ship's bars and lounges, or in larger performance venues, and often join one another as impromptu guests to improvise their way through songs they haven't rehearsed together. Throughout the day they are around the boat, in the cities, on the tours. Their patience with their fans and their engagement in conversations of adulation, commentary or simply curiosity would put many politicians to shame.

Most of the passengers I've talked to came on this cruise first because it was a PHC cruise with the cast, and only secondarily because it was a trip to Norway. In his final show Sunday night Keillor joked that next year's cruise would be on the upper Missouri River in North Dakota where instead of 10 days of luxury passengers will live in tents and spend 30 days working on a massive public works project to create a fjord that will be a tourist attraction. It's not hard to believe that many of the audience would sign up for that, too, if Sue Scott, Fred Newman, Tim Russell, the Shoe Band and Keillor would promise to be there, too.

As the cruise progressed, the seductive power of this culture grew. It felt more and more as if we were all part of some community of shared values, that we were all residents of Lake Woebegone, that the people on the stage weren't professional actors and musicians but friends, neighbors, people we knew and liked and who knew and liked us in return. It was like joining a church or a synagogue where you gain instant community, where shared values are assumed and reinforced by repetition and ritual.

In the end, are these cruises and the constant touring to cities around the country part of building and maintaining this community, or more a clever strategy to build and maintain the brand? Are Keillor and his crew nourished by this week of fan immersion, do they look forward to it as the chance to connect with their community the way so many of the passengers appear to do? Or is this how a performing troupe builds and keeps an audience so that the show and the gig go on? Are they working us, are we working them, or are we working one another in a communal and symbiotic relationship?

I can't answer these questions. I was surprised at how drawn to these performers I was, at how much it seemed they were part of my adventure, not props adorning it. Though I could feel myself consciously resisting it, I could feel the pull of saying "hi" to the performers and other staff, to begin calling them by their first names as if we were friends, to excuse the inevitable glitches in their performances and empathize with them even when the routines fell short or flat, as I thought they did in the final performance on Sunday night. Nearly everyone I asked said they would sign up for another of these cruises no matter where it was headed if another was put on. Most clearly will continue to make PHC a centerpiece of their weekend lives.

I won't be among them. But I can't avoid the fact that in some way I've become associated, if not fully invested, in this community. Like participation in any organized religious activity, I find it makes me uneasy but somehow included. And maybe this is the secret of PHC's longevity and startling fan loyalty. An ongoing set of stories about make believe people in a town that never existed , where people are flawed and quirky, but are familiar, archetypal and endure, and the future is assumed and assured, with familiar and reassuring rituals upon which we can depend...where the women are all strong, the men are all good looking, and the children are all above average...welcome to the Church of Prairie Home Companion.

A Summer Day in Kristiansand

Our Friday stop in Kristiansand seemed as much a delay in our steady march to Oslo as a necessary port of call on our tour. The city once was known for its pollution, but today has cleaned itself up and appears like nothing so much as a Norwegian version of Newport, RI or Nantucket. It is southerly enough that nice weather enhances its seaside ambiance. Its fishmarket is larger and more impressive than Bergen's.

Alan and I had signed up for our second and last organized tour off the boat, following the success of our kayaking adventure in Geiranger. We were given group stickers on the ship and then followed directions to a series of motorcoaches that would take us on our "typical Norwegian forest walk." While it was a pleasant stroll through a lovely park dating to the 1800's, this excursion reinforced my conviction that I'm not cut out for these large-scale organized explorations.

I got off the coach on the way back into town rather than go back to the ship and spent the rest of our time in town wandering around. I finished up back in the port/harbor area where my guidebook promised a lovely waterside bistro that served the best fish soup in Kristiansand. I was not disappointed. I sat on the deck in the wonderful warm sun and enjoyed a light but creamy collection of perfectly cooked salmon and whitefish, small shrimp, a few small mussels and clams, topped with an herbal garnish. The place was full of Norwegians who seemed to have taken off the day to enjoy the sun after so much bleak, cloudy and rainy weather. Across the small waterway were scores of other similarly laid back folks. Many were on board small pleasure craft while others just sprawled or lolled on the steps enjoying the afternoon. I wandered through the fish market and then joined the crowds across the way. Before heading back to the ship I indulged in another insanely rich cone of soft ice cream that tastes like real ice cream, coated with cocoa powder. Probably enough calories to power a small city, and enough milk fat to spike my cholesterol big time, but one of the best ice cream cones I've ever had.

Bergen

Bergen is Norway's third largest city, and judging by the traffic the day we stopped there, it is the biggest cruise ship destination in the country. No fewer than 6 ships were in port at the same time. This led to Times Square-like crowds as they arrived and passengers swarmed into the small inner harbor and downtown area.

I was lucky enough to get off the ship early in the morning and have the main downtown area mostly to myself. One of the big attractions of this area is the fish market. It's held out of doors in stalls under tents. The multi-lingual sellers tout their fresh salmon, roe, smoked whale meat (!) and other delicacies in most of the EU languages and in English. Nearby stalls sell reindeer and elk sausages, seal skins and wolf pelts, and more sedate souvenirs such as knitted sweaters and caps, along with the ubiquitous refrigerator magnets, stickers and shot glasses.

The town is dominated from above by Mt. Flojen. The old town crawls up its flanks surrounded by a park. I wandered up through the old town early in the morning and was enchanted by the small houses, the breathtaking views over the downtown and harbor, and the lovely touches in the way people had decorated their doors and windows.











The hills are so steep that there is a funicular travelling up and down constantly. Most people sensibly use it to get to the top of the hill, then walk down through the park and the old town. I missed finding the station and kept wandering further and further up the slope. By the time I found the tracks and a station, I was too stubborn to pay the tariff for just a partial trip and resolved to walk all the way up. It didn't seem like a long hike. It turned out to be a very cheap trip to the gym.

Once at the top, I enjoyed watching a group of young children on a field trip play on the climbing equipment in the park. I was less amused by the realization that while I'd been climbing, hundreds of tourists from our ship and others had ascended the funicular. The summit was a frenzy of multilingual, camera toting, tour-label wearing folks jostling for a shot at the panoramic view below. That is when they weren't lined up for the pay toilets, the souvenirs or a snack.

I got on line and rode the funicular down. The quiet little downtown corner where I'd started was now full of people. The line to go up the funicular ran out of the terminal and more than a city block down the street. Tour guides struggled like sheep dogs to keep their flocks in line and the funicular ran nonstop ferrying the next load up the mountain.

Down at the fish market the scene was even more of a contrast. Where the early morning had offered a calm dockside scene, midday produced a jampacked mass of people jostling past and among the stalls yammering in many languages. There's a kiosk offering fish and chips, calamari and chips and mixed seafood and chips. It looked so good I had to try it. After a 30 minute line, I grabbed my plate and found a seat with two folks from the UK who had travelled to Bergen via Sweden and the fjords by car. These are the folks who (it seemed to me) enjoyed pointing out to me that the dollar is sinking faster than a stone while the pound is doing just fine, thank you very much. Their smugness was tempered by their distress at having paid way more than they wanted to regardless for a plate of fish that the husband wouldn't eat after one taste. He ended the meal with an Alka Seltzer chaser before leaving. I followed my very mediocre calamari with a large plastic cup of fresh strawberries, which are very much in season here now. They were possibly the best, sweetest strawberries I've ever had.

Then it was hustling back to the ship for our mid-day departure.

The Jews of Trondheim

Trondheim plays a big role in Norwegian history. It was the civil capital before Oslo. It was the ecclesiastical capital as well, known then as Nidaros. The defining structure in the city is the cathedral, which was erected on the site of St. Olav's grave. Olav was the Norwegian king who brough Chrisianity to Norway back in the 11th century. He was martyred for his trouble by the Nordic chieftains who weren't quite ready to give up Odin and Thor. He got the last laugh, though -- his cathedral has burned several times and arisen even bigger and grander each time.

While the cathedral draws the attention and dominates the town, Alan and I spent our most interesting time in Trondheim at the synagogue. It's located across the street from the cathedral compound in what once was the train station.

We learned there that Trondheim is home now to a few hundred Jews. Their community came from the Baltic states, Latvia and Lithuania, in the late 1800s after the Norwegian constitution's prohibition against Jews entering Norway was repealed. They followed the traditional path of many Jewish immigrants. They were peddlars, merchants and as their community grew they became doctors and lawyers as well. The community grew to about 750 by the time of the Nazi occupation. Those who could fled to Sweden, whose neutrality gave them shelter. The rest were rounded up by the Norwegian police and shipped off to concentration camps. We were told that of those who were shipped off, only 4 returned after the war.

Norway today justifiably enjoys a reputation for liberal social democracy and progressive government. It is an active proponent of human rights around the world and does much good work through its foreign aid and liberal refugee policies. But for the Jews of Trondheim, all this came a little late. Our guide's dry comment on the occupation policies was "our police were very efficient and enthusiastic enforcers of the laws that the Nazis adopted."

The government did provide some reparations to returning families, some of which was used to restore and refurbish the synagogue. We were told that the government doesn't dwell on its treatment of the Jews during the occupation, but that it also has tried to acknowledge the past and provide some compensation as a result.

The synagogue today is both a community center and a museum. We spent about an hour with a young docent, a Jewish woman who grew up there. She was studying music in the UK and had just decided to switch over the medicine. She was a great guide to the history of the community as well as its current practices. We were joined later by another young woman who is studying medicine in the Czech Republic. They explained that the community today is mostly a cultural rather than a religious one. Services are held only every other week. More often, they said, and they don't get a minyan. It was built as an Orthodox sanctuary, and women still attend in the gallery. They described the community's approach as conservative. There is no rabbi in town, although there is a cantor. For the high holidays they "order out" to Oslo for a rabbi. Given the nature of the community and its small size, most young people marry non-Jewish Norwegians. Our guide had met "a nice Jewish boy" in the UK, but the young women both agreed that this is not a big issue for most of the families in the community.

Trondheim also has a lovely old city across the river from the Cathedral. There are old, old warehouses fronting the river and small, tidy homes on cobbled twisting streets. Cafes and trendy little boutiques have sprouted up there, but it still provided a calm and interesting stroll after the ponderous bulk of the cathedral and the somewhat melancholy story of Trondheim's Jews.

This marked the northernmost part of our trip. The sun had come out after days of low clouds and intermittent rain. That evening we were treated to the full Midnight Sun, with twilight enduring through the night as the Veendam departed late in the afternoon and steamed south for our next port of call.

Gerainger Fjord

Gerainger is a UN World Heritage Site, nestled at the very end of Gerainger Fjord between towering mountains. Cataracts pour off the walls surrounding the town and a torrential river pours out of the mountains into the fjord . Alan and I signed up for a kayaking trip in the fjord and disembarked early on Wednesday morning, July 18. A tender took us to the town dock where we were met by a guide who took us around the small harbor to the put in point.

Gerainger has a camping ground beside the small docking area and it was full of camping vehicles and tents. There is a toilet and wash room for the campers and it was full of folks washing up after breakfast. The camper vans ranged from small, primitive truck-bed style ones to larger and more sophisticated versions, complete with TV satellite dishes. Our guide wryly noted that the town had provided 2 or 3 toilet facilities and then promptly permitted upwards of 100 vehicles and campers to use the grounds.

Our crowd included experienced kayakers and total tyros, so the multinational group of guides spent a good deal of time explaining how kayaks work, how to paddle and how to avoid tipping over. We all donned skirts to keep the steady rain out of the boats and after much jostling we all managed to get our crafts into the water.

The perspective of a fjord from water level is completely different than from the deck of a large cruise ship. Alan and I found a rhythm, he in front and me in back steering as well as paddling. The guides took us out to the first turn in the fjord, and as we came around the point we caught ou first glimpse of the Seven Sisters waterfall. There has been a record amount of snow and rainfall in this are this year. The result is a spectacular display of waterfalls thundering down the fjord walls.

We lingered a little bit at the far end of our trip soaking in the view. As we did, a very large cruise ship from Genoa hove into sight and glided into its anchorage. We were forced to gather together and wait until it had settled. Our little kayaks bobbed in its wake. We could feel the rumble of its huge anchor as it slipped into the water and the chains rattled down. These fjords are hundreds of meters deep, although at this end it is probably much shallower. But it seemed like an awful lot of chain tumbled out of the big ship until it was steadied.

Two hours after we launced we were back at the landing. Alan went on back to the ship while I stayed behind to explore further on foot. I followed the footpath alongside a raging river swollen by the rain, then followed the switchback road up to the Fjord Museum and a hiking trail beyond. The museum is a striking, modern building nestled among small but very impressive homes with astounding views down the fjord.

The entire landscape of this region is very much like New Zealand's West Coast. I found that hiking in the steady rain also was very much like our tramping in NZ. The trail rapidly became too slippery to navigate alone, so after several slips and falls I perched on a bare outcropping, ate the food I'd slipped from the breakfast buffet on board, and soaked in the rain and the scenery. I had to scramble a bit back down. When I finally returned to the town it was overwhelmed with passengers from the newly arrived cruise ship, swarming with mostly Italian tourists.

Before returning to the ship I tried the soft ice cream I'd read about in my guide book. Wow! This is real ice cream, not the ersatz Dairy Queen chemical concoction. Coated with cocoa powder it made a wonderful treat for me as I sat on a cafe porch out of the rain and watched the fjord and the tenders chugging back and forth to the 2 ships anchored there. I waited until the very last tender for Veendam before heading back to the ship.

We left shortly after and it seemed as if every passenger on our ship was out on the various decks to watch our passage back out. We'd arrived in the middle of the night, so for most of us it was the first chance we'd had to see the cliffs and waterfalls. Cameras bloomed on deck as we swiveled from one astounding view to the next. The ship gracefully turned to follow the twisty fjord until it emerged into a much larger channel and headed back out to the ocean.

How much did you say?

I'm reeling from the prices here! There was an article in the NYTimes while I've been travelling with a headline like "Americans Touring in Europe Hammered by Falling Dollar." Hello, thanks for the news!!!

A British couple I shared a table with in the Bergen fishmarket responded smugly to my query whether they were finding the prices high, "not as high as you." Nyah, nyah, nyah. Then the husband allowed that they fish and chips he found inedible were also the most expensive he'd ever purchased....anywhere, any time.

I'm sure the falling dollar is increasing the shock value of Norwegian prices. But I suspect they would be high no matter what the exchange rate. A sampling from my shore excursions:

• A large pizza and Coke, advertised at $40
• A half pint of draft beer, $10
• A small bowl of admittedly delicious fish soup (voted best in Kristiansand, where fish soup is a speciality), with a glass of beer, with tip, nearly $50

I know that Scandinavia always has been expensive, absolutely and relatively. But this seems way more so than I remember from many years ago.

Cruising

There's something unreal about living aboard a large ship, going to bed while sailing and awakening in a new place every day. There probably are more luxurious ships sailing the world, but this one will do very nicely. The food is good, the accommodations comfortable, the service friendly. And with the cast of PHC and their guest artists performing throughout the day and night in addition to the other divertisements on board, there is an overload of stimulating activities.

But there is also something unsettling and unreal about arriving in a place, choosing to do the one main thing time allows, be it fishing or kayaking or hiking and then reboarding the ship to an entirely synthetic world created by the crew and passengers and then starting all over again the next day. There cannot be many easier or more efficient ways to visit the isolated, beautiful places at the ends of the fjords than this. Yet each visit seems to end before it begins. There is a constant sense of dislocation. And ours is but one of a fleet of cruise ships following the same itinerary, which means that in each port hundreds or even thousands of tourists are vomited out of tenders and gangplanks to swarm these scenic tresasures. You hear many different languages on the streets of each town. Yet Norwegian can be hard to find. Tourism is such a mainstay of these isolated places that everyone local that you meet speaks at least English and probably one or two other EU languages. It's a standing joke in Garrison Keillor's monologues along this trip that tourists are not allowed to try to speak Norwegian because the locals cannot spare the time and would prefer to serve you in English and move on to the next customer. It's not rude, it's just polite and efficient.

In Gerainger I was coming down the main road from the heights where the Fjord Museum is located among crowds of tourists from our ship as well as a real monster from Genoa full of Italians and other Europeans. Cars and tour busses were jockeying along this narrow switchbacking road while pedestrians like me were pressing up against the railings and marching down. Halfway down the road is an old stave church. As I'd passed on the way up I noticed a freshly dug hold in the graveyard. On the way down the courtyard was filled with men and women in black suits and dresses, wearing nice shoes and holding umbrellas against the light drizzle. They were emerging from a funeral service. In a small town like this, with only a few hundred year round residents, everyone must have known the deceased. They lingered in the courtyard, exchanging news of one another and memories of their departed friend, I imagined, while all around them people with backpacks and fleeces and umbrellas and overcoats and walking shoes and cameras milled along the road and peered into the graveyard and church.

I thought how odd it must be to live in one of these villages. Centuries of hardship and isolation have been traded for reasonable prosperity, full employment, and new access to all the things that in the past were available only to the prodigals who ventured out of these recessed valleys in ships or hiked out of the mountains and into the cities. When I worked on a Norwegian cargo ship before going to college many of the sailors had come from towns just like this. They shipped out as cabin boys at 13. They stayed at sea for years at a time. They could not speak to one another in the Norwegian of their home towns, even if separated only by one fjord, because the dialects were so different. They had shipped out to see the world, to sample adventure, and to find a way to earn a living that would free them from these small villages and the backbreaking labor of farming in such harsh climes. Now their towns have internet cafes and are swarmed with tourists from all over the world. My fishing guide in Flaam told me that in most families both adults work full time during the season both because it's profitable for the family and also because there is so much demand for workers.

This is a travel experience unlike any other I've ever had. There is no time to linger. There is no time to explore, to extemporize the day. You must choose what you plan to do, and then follow the plan. Many of the passengers participate in organized shore excursions, many involving motor coaches and rail trips. These are planned to leave as soon as we arrive and return in time for our departure. In most ports we can debark at 8 and must be back by 2:30. When we sail away there is a brief time to watch the fjord go by and our recent destination shrink in the distance. Then it is back to the world of the ship, which is entertaining and engaging, but has nothing to do with the place we just left, the place we are going to, or the places past which we are sailing.

It is a strange and disembodied passage. Some of this is a function of trying to visit a variety of ports in a short period of time. I suspect more has to do with the limits of each fjord to accommodate the demands of a growing fleet of large ships clamoring to deliver more tourists to these towns. I imagine docking times, fees and limits are strictly rationed and strictly enforced. These villages' desirability is the very thing that limits cruisers' ability to linger and enjoy them at greater leisure.

Midnight Sun

I suppose cruise ship life is 24/7 no matter where you go or what line you sail. But as we headed north, the days got longer and longer. At first it was extended twilight well past 10 pm. The heavy clouds that have accompanied us much of the trip would glow long after sunset. But on our way to Trondheim the clouds started to break up and we saw our first midnight sunset, pictured here. I remember from my year in Sweden that as the summer progressed people seemed to have more and more energy and stay up longer and longer every night. That is certainly true aboard the Veendam. It's wonderful to go out on a deck at midnight or later and stroll in the extended afterglow of the day.

All's Well in Alesund

We awoke Monday morning tied up at the dock in Alesund. This town is perched at the mouth of another of the largest fjords. The town burned down in the late 19th century. This was a very common problem in a land of wooden houses. So common, in fact, that many towns sooner or later adopted ordinances requiring stone building. Hence older wooden houses are sometimes hard to find in these cities. Alesund was rebuilt with help from German architects and became something of an Art Nouveau model town. Many of the buildings feature Art Nouveau details, and the many of the homes were decorated with furnishings from that period. There is a museum in an old apothecary right across from the docks where these have been preserved as the family that lived there had them. Cool if you're into Art Nouveau.

After a quick tour of this small museum I headed off to check out the largest aquarium in Scandinavia. It was only 3.5 km away, so I walked. The road wound through a light industrial area and over a bridge overlooking the commercial fishing port. Alesund is a major fishing town with large processing plants bellied up to the water in this part of town. The port was full of husky working boats with big cranes, their decks littered with traps, nets and other gear. The air smelled of diesel fuel and cable grease as big trucks rumbled across the bridge in both directions going to and from the boats and the plants.

The food on the ship is fine, and often better than that. But there is no attempt to feature Norwegian dishes or cuisine, and by this time I was hankering for a little "native" eats. My guidebook featured a place whose fish stew was recommended, so I took a bus back to town and walked across the main business area to find it. When I did, after struggling with an incorrect address in the book, I discovered they no longer serve the dish. Disappointed, I "settled" for an order of shrimp, served "natural" with bread and mayonnaise. I expected a few shelled shrimp on an open sandwich. What I got was a bowl of more than 4 dozen small shrimp steamed in the shell, which I ate on an outside plaza overlooking the inner harbor. Mission accomplished.

Stuffed from lunch I wandered across town and ended up hiking up the 418 steps (I didn't count, they are widely touted) to a cafe/observation deck high above the town with wonderful views on both sides of the town's location on a peninsula.

Once again our ship left midday, sailing further north to Trondheim.

Flaam Fishing, or Where Have All the Salmon Gone?

Sunday morning July 15 was rainy with low clouds. Tenders were idling in the water below our big ship. Passengers were lined up on a lower deck, sleepily waiting to disembark for the first time since we set sail from Copenhagen. It was just after 7 am. In the distance we could see a small dock, a few buildings, and a foaming spot where a river emptied into the fjord.

Flaam is a hamlet at the very end of a small arm of a larger arm of one of the largest fjords in Norway. About 200 or so folks live there year-round. But the town is visited by several hundred thousand tourists on cruise ships like ours every summer. The first ships started arriving here in the late 19th century, principally to carry English anglers to fish the river. And so there I was, clambering into the tender for the short ride to shore, to meet my guide, Dag, for a half-day of fishing for salmon and sea trout.

I met Dag at the one hotel in town. I'd arranged all this via internet with a guide service. I'd sent my money to this hotel and had been told to meet the guide there. This did seem a little sketchy, but Dag was there as promised with waders and gear. We started by deciding I should try manhandling a 2 handed "Spey" fly fishing rod. This mother was at least 12' long, and heavy. I was skeptical, but figured Dag was a guide for a good reason.

We fished for about 4 hours on 2 stretches of the river that I had rented for a half-day from the farmers who own the fishing rights. Dag explained that there are no public fishing rivers. Feuds have begun and raged for years over who in the family inherits the fishing rights to these rivers. You time on these "beats" is managed closely, and Dag made sure we were off as soon as our time had expired, although there were no other fisherpeople hanging about waiting for us to exit. Very orderly people, these Norwegians.

That's a picture of me, throwing a cast into the river. I did that a lot, and I'd like to say I caught a monster salmon that nearly pulled me into the river. But I didn't. I did catch three small fish, one about the size of a goldfish, the others about 3" and 6" respectively. The last one put up a bit of a fight, but with my enormous rod it wasn't much of a contest. We stood by various spots in the river, saw a large sea trout that disdained my lure as it floated by, watched a salmon lazily inspect it and then veer off, waved at the passengers in the tourist trains that were carrying them further up the valley, and spoke to other cruisers as they hiked by along the road. I guess I was the only one on the ship to look into this activity, since quite a few of the walkers inquired excitedly and talked to Dag. One woman asked me not to talk about the fishing back on the ship "or my husband will kill me, and then himself, for not planning to do this."

After fishing Dag drove me way up the mountain looming over the river. "I will give you some views that none of the other passengers will see." He was right. We twisted and turned on a dirt road, switchbacking every 100 yards or so. There was a farm at the top of the road, owned by a man with 6 daughters, none of whom wanted the farm when he was ready to retire. This is apparently a common dilemma, with daughters or sons. It is so hard to make a living from these farms and there are so many options now for people that hanging onto a small plot on the side of a forbidding mountain way up a small fjord holds little appeal. Dag pointed out a meadow visible across the valley. He said that a farmer on this side owned it and would cultivate the hay and bring it back across the river and up this road to provide fodder for his goats and sheep. He said that this has been the practice for generations in the fjords. Farmers need multiple plots and pastures in order to be able to cultivate enough hay and fodder to survive. In the old days they would haul it up from the valley on their backs, one load at a time.

We stood at the side of the road and watched the train chug into the valley and along the tracks before turning back to town. The ship cast off at around 2 pm heading back out the fjords in the rain for our next port of call.

It's a Small World After All

Wednesday evening there was a quiz show featuring teams from the audience answering trivia questions about Prairie Home Companion. One of the team members was introduced, and I started in my seat. After the show I approached the woman and introduced myself, and asked, since her name was Glysteen and she was from the Seattle area, whether she knew Dirk Glysteen. I explained that he and I overlapped at Grinnell. "Oh, yes, " she said, "and I'm Grinnell '69. Not only do I know Dirk, but he's my brother, and he's sitting in the last row of the theater. Rod (his brother, also at Grinnell the same time as I) is also here, along with their wives, kids and our mother." We had a nice little reunion.

I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise to find Grinnellians along on a Prairie Home Companion cruise.

It's a few days later and we are docked in Oslo. I took a harbor ferry over to Bygsoyn where there is a cluster of museums, including a folk life museum, a Viking ship museum and others. The ferry was crowded with many tourists and I squeezed myself into a spot along the starboard rail for the 10 minute trip across the harbor. As we motored away from the pier we passed the Veendam and some Americans in front of me were chatting about the cruise ships. I mentioned that I was travelling on this one. We struck up a conversation about travelling in Norway. One thing led to another, and I asked where they were from. One of the women spoke up for the group saying she was from Washington and her daughter and family who were alongside her were from California. As travellers do, we traded our vitals. I work in affordable housing, I said, and she said, "I chaired the new Mayor's task force on affordable housing this spring." A few more comments and I said, "You're Alice Rivlin." Yes, she said, I am. Her grandson groaned, as teenagers are wont to do when their older relatives are recognized.

Arrival and Sailing

Alan and I are now sailing up the western coast of Norway, having arrived on different itineraries on Friday afternoon. I flew through Brussels and had an easy flight from Dulles with, surprisingly, no delays on the ground. Brussels is a major hub for EU flights and the transfer area is an amazing modern shopping mall of duty free shopping. I passed on that and went up to the SAS lounge for my 4 hour layover. It was an ad for Scandinavian furniture and design, all blond wood and stainless steel and chrome. Unlike the Qantas lounge in Sydney, it doesn't have a shower for transiting passengers, but it was a very comfortable refuge for my layover.

As I waited in line for the flight to Copenhagen I began to hear Danish and Swedish spoken all around me. It's a thrill to be hearing Swedish again after all these years (I lived there for 13 months while in college and learned to speak it fluently). But it's also very frustrating to realize how much vocabulary and fluency I've lost in that time. I picked up a Swedish daily paper in the lounge. While I could follow the gist of most stories, each contained large blank spots where I couldn't follow the words or meaning. They were often just out of reach, but more often simply unfamiliar to me after so long. I hope that as I hear more of it as the trip goes on I'll become more and more comfortable and have more come back to me.

The cruise line provided transfers from the Copenhagen airport. Clearing customs was a breeze -- the EU now has no formal passport controls once you arrive within the EU, and customs is a self declaration (no paperwork) and a walk through a door. So much easier than coming back into the US, or even entering New Zealand or Australia. It went so fast that I was out the door before I thought to ask my escort where I could get my passport stamped!

We were bussed to the ship and processed on the quayside, then up to the rooms. By cruise ship standards this is a modest vessel, but it's still pretty impressive. There's a picture on the blog's homepage. There are 12 decks, 6 of which are for services and functions. The rest is cabins. Our first group activity was a life boat drill, complete with life vests. We didn't actually get in the boats, but they had us gather at our stations and checked we were all there. This was followed by an arrival party on the aft-deck led by Garrison Keillor leading singalongs of "Home on the Range," "America the Beautiful," and other standards. That's us on the right.

Not surprisingly, almost everything except the room and 3 meals a day is a la carte. Any alcohol, all internet time (via satellite, how amazing is that?), many extra sessions and all shore excursions. It's like a casino in that no real money is changing hands. Everything is charged to the room key and you settle up at the end. I suppose they have paramedics standing by with defibrillators at that point, because unless you're keeping close track it'll be easy to be unprepared for the bill!

Some early observations of the passengers on this cruise based on 24 hours with them:

1. Big Prairie Home Companion Fans. D-uh. Many have been on other cruises with PHC, to Alaska and the Canadian Maritimes. People refer to the PHC cast members by their first names -- Garrison, Sue, Linda, etc. There seems to be a collective consciousness shared by these regular PHC listeners and devotees that is a little beyond my reach.
   


2. Monochromatic. It's a homogenous group with very little racial diversity. The ship's crew, on the other hand, is very diverse. Many of the staff are Southeast Asian.
   
3. NPR and PHC must not be big among the Damyon Runyon crowd. There's a casino on board. The slots are 5 cents, and table stakes at blackjack are reported to be 2 and 4 dollars. The place is empty nearly all the time, and never crowded. Being a blackjack dealer with thi crowd must be the most boring way to spend 10 days there is!


4. Okay, I get it, I'm old now. It's a grey crowd. Alan claims I bring the average age down at least 10 years, but I think that's an exaggeration. There are a number of families with kids, ranging from tots to teens. But the big population bulge, let's just say, has many grandchildren to talk about.

The schedule remains jam packed. After we set sail on Friday night there was a PHC show featuring GK and the rest of the folks. That's them on the right. There were plenty of post-show opportunities for entertainment late into the night, but I was anxious to be up for the naturalist session Saturday morning and hit the sack early.

I was up at 5 am and on deck at 5:30 to look at seabirds and search in vain for whales or other marine mammals. That's the bird guy and some other early-risers on the right. Then I hit the gym (well equipped, with big windows looking out to sea), breakfast, and successive lecture sessions on natural history. Had lunch at the cafeteria buffet (nice but not over the top like I've read/seen/heard about on some cruises). Sampled a session on the social history of cod and salmon fishing in Norway, but bailed early to catch a different lecture on the history of the Vikings, which was very well done. Alan and I finished the day at a scotch tasting. Alan also attended Garrison Keillor's writer's workshop, which he said was great, and Fred Newman's show -- he's the guy who does all the "mouth parts," or sound effects, when PHC is on the road. He's a Harvard MBA, but according to Alan says he began collecting sounds as a child the way other kids collected baseball cards. Alan says he was very, very funny and entertaining. I'll try to catch another of his shows. Tonight also was the first of 2 semi-formal dinners, so we both dressed up in suits. I'm glad there are only 2 of these!

Tonight around midnight the Norwegian pilot will board the boat to guide it into our first fjord, and we dock at our first port of call, Flaam, early in the morning. I am scheduled to go salmon fishing with a guide in one of Norway's premier salmon fishing rivers. I arranged this myself through the Internet...I am totally psyched. I'll do a report as soon as feasible.

Getting Ready to Sail

Our friend Alan Berg was the initiator of this adventure. After being turned down by my son Caleb as a travelling companion, because Caleb had too much work (!), he turned to me. Alan and Caleb are pictured here when they both visited us in New Zealand in 2004. I, on the other hand, clearly don't have too much work!

Alan and I arrive in Copenhagen on July 12, where we embark on the M.S. Vandeem, a Holland-American cruiseship pictured on the title page of this blog. We set sail that evening and will be at sea all night and all the following day. Our first port of call is Flåm, where we dock Sunday morning.

I've never been on a cruise before, unless you count the 4 months I worked on a Norwegian tramp steamer (MS Belcargo) before college in 1968-69. I really didn't know what to expect when Alan invited me. Like most people, I suppose, my images of cruising were formed by black and white movies I saw as a child. People in white ties and tails, lounge chairs on the deck, laps covered with robes or blankets, and food....lots of food. More recently I've seen my share of TV advertisements for cruises. But I doubted that Garrison Keilor and his PHC compadres would be hosting either a Disney-esque family style adventure or a Carnival buff singles style cruise. So I had some things I could eliminate. But what to substitute for them? As the weeks have gone by, these questions are being slowly answered by a steady stream of emails from the cruise organizers. Just this week we got a day by day, hour by hour schedule. My God, there isn't enough time in the day! Performances, writing workshops, nature talks and outings, shore excursions, knitting circles, scotch tastings, history seminars, talent shows...there's not a spare minute! And, of course, the ship has a gym and other assorted diversions. I'm exhausted already! :)

The ship's itinerary is along Norway's west coast. We'll be cruising in and out of fjords, and docking in a number of ports like Trondheim, Bergen, Kristianstad, and Oslo. There are many shore excursions available, but Alan and I think we will explore indepedently. In Flåm I have made arrangements to go flyfishing for salmon with a local guide on the river that empties into the fjord, for example.

The trip ends in Copenhagen on July 23. Alan and I will fly to Stockholm and stay overnite with an old World Bank friend of his who lives on an island outside of Stockholm. The next day we'll separate as I go down "memory lane" to visit the school I attended in 1972-73. Through Google I've contacted the family with whom I stayed for 2 weeks before starting school, as well as a Swedish friend from that time. My school will be closed when I am there, but I will visit it anyway, and then go on to visit my family a bit further north. I'll finish up visiting Swedish friends we met through our mutual friend Stefan Harvey when they were here some years ago. They also have a summer house on a Stockholm-area island. You gotta love Scandinavia.

I fly home July 28, while Alan will stay till July 30. We leave for Copenhagen next Thursday.

Per directions from the PHC folks, I've been reading Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Unstedt. It's a 3-volume saga of life in medieval Norway. Unstedt is a Nobel prize winning author. This recommended reading is meant to put all of us in a "Norwegian frame of mind." I thought it would be a quick read...not! I'll keep updating this as I'm able during the trip.