The Road to Murmansk

We passed the turnoff for Murmansk, about 160 miles away, on our bus from the Kirkenes Airport to downtown Kirkenes. Tempting though it may be to visit the home of the old Soviet submarine fleet where derelict nukes go to irradiate their life away, we'll stay here in Kirkenes where the street signs are in Norwegian and Russia.

We'll be here overnight until our noontime sailing on the MS Trollfjord, our Hurtigruten steamer for the five-night trip south to Bergen. It took us three flights to get here -- Svolvaer-Bodø on Widerøe, Bodø-Tromsø on SAS, then Tromsø-Kirkenes back on Widerøe (which is an SAS subsidiary) -- but with plenty of time between connections (an hour and a half at Bodø, more than two and a half at Tromsø) we're not too worn out, i.e., Jean Sue did not immediately collapse into bed upon arrival.

There are worse places in the word for a layover than Tromsø; the airport is small, with about half a dozen jetways and about as many places for commuter turboprops, but it's busy with flights to Oslo every couple of hours, serving as an air hub for the most northern reaches of Norway. We watched the England-Germany World Cup match in the bar with about 50 other travelers. Bob continued his quest for tasting new aquavits: today it was  a Nord Norsk aquavit.

After the short bus ride to our hotel we took a two-block walk on the deserted, windy streets for a pizza and beer dinner (one small pizza, one beer = $40) at the Cafe Ritz, dead today but, according to the barmaid, a hot spot on Saturday night when exotic Russian dancers hold court in the second floor disco. Sorry we missed that! Oh, well, we can always head to Brooklyn's Brighton Beach section for some Russian nightlife, or even parts of Philadelphia's Northeast.

Quick impression of Kirkenes: it's an iron ore town, not unlike those around Lake Superior. An island railroad line shuttles ore to a huge plant, built just a couple years ago, overlooking the town square. It's a Sunday so maybe they're shut today. But it looks like the lifeblood of the town, processing ore for shipment to Norway and international markets. Although the history of industrial ore mining goes back more than 100 years, it briefly stopped because of market conditions in the 1990, but the government, wanting to maintain the community took over a majority of the ore company and reactivated operations.

I've got an internet connection tonight, slow but working, but am too tired to write much more. Because I'm not likely to have regular access to the 'net while aboard the Trollfjord (or have it at exorbitant cost), I may keep my jottings offline until I reach better/cheaper internet access.

See you then!