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.