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.