Beautiful Norway!

The past two weeks we’ve had two 7-day cruises to Norway. These cruises have been almost full of Dutch people. It’s been a little different having guests that only speak Dutch and don’t understand English. It’s a lot of pointing at the buffet, and head nodding in confusion. Other than that, it’s been fun because with 7-day passengers, they go to the bar and they have more fun! The past week there was also a Dutch film crew and actresses on board. They were filming a video for some tour company, so if you ever see Dutch people in a promotional video, you might see me! This coming week another film crew will be filming people for a reality TV show in Holland. I haven’t seen them yet, but I’m sure we’ll see them.

As for Norway, it’s been beautiful!! Almost every port has huge snow-capped mountains surrounding our ship. I’ve been doing lots of hiking and exploring. Norway must be the capital of waterfalls, because there is one every 100 feet. But they’re massive, starting at the top of a mountain and falling into the fjord. When we sail out of these ports, we have some scenic cruising for a couple hours. We cruise out of the fjord to get back to the ocean, and it’s so beautiful! Towering mountains on both sides of you; random houses in the middle of nowhere that make us think who the hell lives there, what do they do with their lives, and how do they get anywhere else; the greenest grass and trees I’ve seen; huge slabs of rocks (most of the mountains are just flat or spiky rock). The scenery is gorgeous here. Norway is a must-see for anybody.

Most of the ports are small places, with one shop, one café, and a handful of houses. They’re nice and quiet and have great hiking, but besides that it’s a little boring. We’ve gone to some bigger towns, like Alesund, and Bergen. Those are fun because there’s shopping and younger people around. We were supposed to go to Oslo last week, but there was some big strike with the pilots who navigate us through the fjords and shallow water so we don’t hit any rocks or anything. So we had to cancel Oslo, which I was really bummed out about. (Luckily I’m going to Oslo this next cruise!) A bunch of our ports were up in the air too because we could barely dock anywhere, or even leave ports. We were afraid that this next cruise (with 7 Norway ports) was even going to happen, but luckily the strike ended and everything is back to normal. Some of the other Norway ports I went to were Kristiansand, Sondefjord, Flam, Stavanger, Eidfjord, Geiranger,

Also the big big news is I have switched from percussion to drum set! This is a big change for me, and definitely a promotion! They’re actually getting rid of the percussion position fleet-wide (we’re the only cruise line that hired a percussionist still) so I took the initiative and said I would replace the drummer when he left. It’s the perfect situation since I already know the band, and the bass player is a good friend of mine, so I can ease into the position and have some great guidance. I was already picking the previous drummers’ brain about the gig, since playing the songs as a drumset player is different than from a percussionist. It’s been going well so far, and I’ll only get better from here, but I’m really excited for the opportunity and the fact I get to rock out on the set!

I also forgot to mention one of the coolest things about Norway. The sun doesn’t set until about 10pm, and it doesn’t get dark until 1am, but it never even gets pitch black. We actually docked in Alesund early once and had an overnight. We all went out and watched the beautiful sunset that was still there at midnight. On our walk back to the ship at 2:30am, the sunset was still there but we had noticed it was definitely brighter. The coolest thing is getting a drink at the bar at night, which is in the very front of the ship full of windows so you can look outside. So you’re enjoying a drink at 11:30pm and it’s still bright outside. It’s really cool.