Trondheim (continued)
The ferry from Trondheim to Kristainsund was 3.5 hours. The boat navigated through fjords and stopped at several other small islands before it reached its final destination, Kristainsund. The sea was absolutely calm; its surface looked like a blue-tinted mirror.
From the harbor, I walked uphill to Hoems hotel where I was going to stay 3 nights. The hotel turned out to be a regular residential house whose owners converted a few rooms in the basement into guest rooms.
My host, a big burly man, had a deafening voice loud enough to be heard in an ocean storm. He could not cease talking about the town where he lived and which he loved. The volume of information about the area that he dumped on me within minutes caused my brain’s overload. I begged for his understanding and for advice where to have dinner that night because I did not see any open restaurants on the way to Hoems.
He fell silent for a moment, and then admitted that on weekends, the islanders prefer not to eat out but one place down the street should still be open if I was quick. My host also asked me questions and remarked that I must be “a tough woman” since I traveled solo.
Among other things that he boasted about was the latest James Bond movie (Bond 25) shot in Kristiansund. The city center was closed for days because of the filming. The movie is scheduled to be released in April 2020.
A lovely park across the road from Hoems looked like a good starting point to explore the surroundings. On the following morning, I took a long stroll around the park, climbed the hill in the middle of it and even walked through the cemetery.
The clean, simple lines of small houses that clustered around the rocks appealed to the eye and blended well with the landscape. Just one building looked totally out of place. This towering church stuck out like an enormous bleached grille that someone thrust vertically into the ground.
Apparently, the idea behind the church is “quartz in roses”, meaning that the church shines as a glowing quartz among the roses. I am well aware of my lack of imagination. Perhaps, others can perceive this as a glittering rock, and I did not spot any roses around.
But I did notice something else. Young people and children predominated on the streets. Small remote communities typically have one common problem. The youth tend to leave them and move to big cities. In Kristainsund, it was quite the opposite which was a good sign. I also saw a young woman who was pushing a stroller with a baby while having a conversation in Russian on the cell phone. She obviously lived on the island. It is inevitable to bump into my compatriots in any part of the world. Maybe, I should stop paying attention to that fact.
One of the places recommended by my kind host was the local shipyard. It is a working ship museum where they build and repair wooden boats using old techniques and tools. The place was not busy when I came to look at it. Only one man was working on a boat, others enjoyed a coffee break.
Hoems did not serve any meals. My host arranged for me to have buffet breakfast at Comfort hotel nearby. Lunch and dinner were always in a new place.
One night, I had a whale stew for dinner. I thought that whaling is prohibited and could not believe my eyes when I saw whale on the menu. As I learned later, Norway considers itself exempt from an international moratorium on whale hunting. The moratorium is not binding and it does not make whaling illegal although almost all countries joined it except for Norway and Japan.
The local specialty is klipfish which is sun-dried salted cod. Kristiansund is the klipfish capital of Norway. They even have a statue of the klipfish woman that became the town’s symbol.
Wow, Russian is really getting popular! In Cairo, all guides are required to speak 2 foreign languages. They choose Russian as one of these languages because of a huge number of Russian tourists in Egypt.
Hahaha, that’s right that one also bumps into someone who speaks Russian. Illia’s German colleage has told him that she learns Russian because it does not make sense to learn English here, in this German province. She said: “Why should I learn English when no one speaks it here? I learn Russian because you always meet Russian speaking people”:)