Hello from the North Sea

[Nellie]

As the Message suggests I'm in the middle of the North Sea on the way to Bergen. I'm still stupidly enthusiastic that I can do this.

Oh and I have a Norweigan keyboard so ø æ Æ Ø.

yay

The band on the boat was crap but the singer had amazing legs.

[Rimbo]

w00t!

[Raife]

Which other passenger do you have to kill?

[Ben Sones]

As the Message suggests I'm in the middle of the North Sea on the way to Bergen. I'm still stupidly enthusiastic that I can do this.

Oh and I have a Norweigan keyboard so ø æ Æ Ø.

I think something's wrong with it. It's posting made-up gibberish characters.

[JMR]

Be more aggressive!

[TomChick]

This thread is useless without pictures.

-Tom

[Charlatan]

Hey I once traveled on a boat from Glasgow to Bergen, only it was in October/November. I enjoyed Bergen, and taking the train to Oslo where I flew home. Took some awesome pics out the train window (when I wasn't going into tunnels that is).

[Tim Partlett]

As the Message suggests I'm in the middle of the North Sea on the way to Bergen. I'm still stupidly enthusiastic that I can do this.

Do what?

[Hanzii]

Do what?

Post on teh intarwebs from a boat in the middle of fucking nowhere surrounded by nothing but water as far as the eye can see, would be my guess.

[Nellie]

That would be it.

I've been amusing myself crashing the sat nav by asking it to plot a course back home from the middle of the sea. I'm disgusted with myself for being so childishly pleased at being able to use the net on a boat and with the sat nav that I justified buying because it included norweigan roads

Getting in a last minute web fix before we hit Bergen and I say goodbye to computers for a fortnight.

Totally recommend taking a ferry if you've got the chance and the time, the food is expensive and crap, even by English standards, but it's been a great start to the holiday in comparison to the nightmare that is a 6ft5" person taking a flight nowadays. I'm giving up smoking (again) once we hit land so I've been even more pleased with the one bar on the ship you can smoke in and have a beer.

[Midnight Son]

Real men go to Spitzbergen. Good times in Longyearbyen! Watch out for the 6000 polar bears, though.

[Tim Partlett]

Oh, sorry :). I didn't think that posting a message on a boat was all that unusual, so I thought that I must have missed the thread where you discussed going to Bergen to start a new life as a captain of a whaler or something.

What's the North Sea like at this time of year? Tempestuous? I've thought about taking a ferry to the Faroe Islands before now, but the thought of endless journeys on choppy arctic waters is less appealing than the North Sea/North Atlantic's infamous air turbulence.

[Hanzii]

Oh, sorry :). I didn't think that posting a message on a boat was all that unusual, so I thought that I must have missed the thread where you discussed going to Bergen to start a new life as a captain of a whaler or something.

What's the North Sea like at this time of year? Tempestuous? I've thought about taking a ferry to the Faroe Islands before now, but the thought of endless journeys on choppy arctic waters is less appealing than the North Sea/North Atlantic's infamous air turbulence.

I don't know which boats they use now, but when I went DFDS used the Winston Churchill to sail from Denmark to Faroe Island - a big oldfashioned ship (but not old - I sailed it on my first trip to England in '76) from the time when ferries still looked like boats and not hotels with a keel.
It took 32 hours and the weather was rough, so the second night I had the bar for myself almost.

[Bill Dungsroman]

As the Message suggests I'm in the middle of the North Sea on the way to Bergen. I'm still stupidly enthusiastic that I can do this.

Oh and I have a Norweigan keyboard so ø æ Æ Ø.

yay

The band on the boat was crap but the singer had amazing legs.
He must work out :(

[SlyFrog]

We've found Jason Bourne. Get on it.

[EvilIdler]

I'm in the middle of the North Sea on the way to Bergen. I'm still stupidly enthusiastic that I can do this.

I hope you're using some onboard facility for internet acess, not your own phone or PDA..
if you are using your own device, you are in for an interesting surprise when the roaming charges hit you ;)

[Kalle]

What's the North Sea like at this time of year? Tempestuous? I've thought about taking a ferry to the Faroe Islands before now, but the thought of endless journeys on choppy arctic waters is less appealing than the North Sea/North Atlantic's infamous air turbulence.

It's still warm and summer-y so I don't think the North Sea is gonna get any more pleasant.

[nordhus]

If you're heading to Bergen you may consider eating at Nama Sushi & Noodles. (http://www.namasushi.no/index.html) Yes sushi places are everywhere these day but, outside Japan, I bet very few of them serve whale meat.

[Nellie]

We didn't get to the Noodle bar though we did get some fantastic Fish and Chips in Bergen's fish market.

The crossing was basically a millpond in both directions.

For the first time since I was a kid I'm actually disappointed to be back again, I'm very much taken with Norway despite the prices and the food, I don't think I ever been to a place so universally beautiful, even if we did get snowed on at one point.

We basically came into Bergen, had a week at a cabin while we explored the area around Bergen and Bergen itself then camped our way down to Stavanger via Eidfjord, Folgefann Glacier, Hardangervidda park and an inevitable tramp up to Preikestolen.

I suspect we might find our way back sooner rather than later.

[Hanzii]

What's wrong with Norwegian food?
(can't ague about prices)

[nixon66]

What's wrong with Norwegian food?
(can't ague about prices)


Lutefisk.

Actually side note - I found it impossible to find any in Oslo when I was traveling. They all looked at me funny, and said we don't eat that. Maybe the people up North still did, but not them.

[Nellie]

No sign of any lutefisk round Bergen either though a few stalls were selling whale in the fish market.

I didn't actually mind the food too much, I'd prefer some cheese with some kind of flavour and sausage that isn't a frankfurter but the Missus found getting anything vegetarian a bit of a struggle and there is that whole "I'm not paying £15 for a hamburger" sense about the whole affair despite my best attempts not to convert Krone into Pounds in Cafes.