Letter from a fjord approaching Bergen

Friday 24 May:

We are passing up the delightfully calm waters of a broad fjord after another topsy-turvy night. We really rolled around. Now, as we look out through the porthole, we can see individual houses and occasional villages are dotted along the shores; in the distance the mountain summits are still white.

THE THOMSON SPIRIT
The news is that last night we slept. And here’s a tale to tell. That intermittent clanking noise that I mentioned earlier nearly drove us mad in rough weather. We couldn’t believe that previous passengers had put up with it. After the first night I reported it to reception, who said there were no spare cabins. On the second night we hardly slept.

PASSAGE IN OLD BERGEN
We complained again, this time insisting that an officer come down to listen for himself,which he did. He agreed that it was bad. Reception meanwhile found us another cabin and we made a late night transfer. As we were completing it, two engineers arrived to suss out the noise. They scratched their heads over the cause. It wasn’t the stabiliser mechanism they said; it might be something loose between the hull and the cabin panelling, which they planned to dismantle the following day.


That drama apart, Thursday was brilliant. That’s to say Bergen was brilliant. It’s one of the loveliest cities I’ve come across, spread low-rise for miles around a series of bays and lakes, with long bridges spanning the waters.

VIEW OF BERGEN FROM FUNICULAR SUMMIT
We made our way into town, took the funicular to the top of a hill overlooking the city, walked down again, visited the Hanseatic museum and generally just ambled around. A group of schoolchildren cornerned us for a school exercise to inquire about our origins and test our knowledge of Norway. We did pretty well, even if we forgot one of the colours in the Norwegian flag.


We had two minor setbacks. Barclays declined to give me any money on my Visa debit card; that wasn’t serious, just bloody annoying, especially as it’s the card that the ship has taken as warranty for our expenses. And secondly, the simcard that I went to much trouble to find in Bergen refused to function in my old smartphone – seemingly because the phone was still locked to the Vodafone network.

STATUE OF PEER GYNT
My idea had been to use a local card to access emails and the internet, vastly cheaper than either the ship’s online facilities or using roaming on my new smartphone to download data.

TROLLS ARE EVERYWHERE
In the end, much to Jones’s disapproval, I bought the cheapest local smartphone that I could find. The salesman set it up for me in English but I still had to wrestle my way through a gauntlet of Norwegian instructions. The bottom line is that it’s now working. I'm sorry but being separated from one's emails for a fortnight is a cruel and inhuman punishment.