I mentioned in an earlier post that you go to Northern Europe for the scenery and Southern Europe for the culture (and the scenery as well to be honest). As we pulled in to Haugesund, in the rain and the ship moored outside a multi-storey car park I couldn’t see a lot of great scenery. The ‘herring town’ as it’s known to its friends and probably its enemies was the only stop on this holiday that I’ve not vaguely heard of.
I looked at the forecast and it was going to be rainy all day but as this was our last landfall we wanted to get a few bits and pieces and spend our krona that we'd changed up.
As it was raining we decided to splash the krona on a land train tour. To make the most of this you need to take a very full hip flask or just a large bottle of anything alcoholic and take a swig every time the word herring or 'the silver of the sea' is mentioned. By the end of the tour you’ll probably need to be carried off the train. Other non-herring highlights included the O.A.P day centre next to the park and the cinema that can seat 1000 people!
There was a bit of Norse history, something about a battle that united and created the country of Norway. There was a stop on the tour for a monument commemorating this and all 6 passengers got off to have a look and take some photos. Despite only being 6 of us and there not really being much to see 2 people were still late getting back on.
Once we got off the land train the amusement of how rubbish this stop was wore off a bit. There wasn’t really anything to see and the shops were not very interesting. To give you an idea of how bad this is in a desperate attempt to seem interesting the ‘city’ has a statue of Marilyn Monroe. The very strained connection is that her father MIGHT have been born SOMEWHERE near the city. And probably did something with herrings. I was going to try a find the statue but it would only have been for piss taking purposes and we were cold a wet by this point so just went back to the ship after buying a troll, some socks, a scarf and a hat.
At lunch we were sat between two tables that specialised in shared dining. These are for people who don't want to eat alone or be stuck with just their partner for the entire meal. There's an interesting dynamic that takes place on these tables. The first thing is an exchange of where people are from. To be fair this is the same in any conversation between strangers. Ideally you want to find some sort of connection no matter how strained, like the Marilyn Monroe staute. Next comes the fight for dominance. There seems to be one person who will monopolise the conversation. It gets a bit more interesting if 2 people want to take on this role as a series of one upmanship takes place. Eventually the pecking order is sorted by the time the starter comes but every now and then there is an attempt to topple the alpha.
Whilst sat observing this I did have a brilliant idea for a book where you spend a year sat at these tables trying to get some interesting stories from people. You could call it 'Conversations From The Captains Table'. I just need some sucker, I mean publishing house, to fund the research.
The rest of the day we just spent relaxing. It was a second black tie evening for some reason but I’m not sure what the point of that was. I suppose that if you went to the trouble of pacing a tux and a couple of frocks then you’d get more use out of it.
Normally I'd do seven of these but the last full day was also a sea day and we did nothing of interest so that's it. Norwegian Fjords done. I'll do a review at some point so look out for that and I hope you enjoyed reading The Simmons Saga.
Comments