Øh sure, we’re all smiles and everything in this phøtø, nøt løøking cøld and wet at all, but little did we knøw that nøt løng after this picture was taken, Carølyn’s life wøuld gø spinning øut øf cøntrøl after catapulting herself acrøss the ice and intø a majør bøøbøø øøpsie.

Bodø is alsø where I learned that writing in Nørwegian is sø easy: yøu just crøss øut the o’s!

Løøk Ma! I’m writing in Nørwegian!

As far as prønunciatiøn gøes, my understanding is if the “ø” is at the end øf a wørd, yøu døn’t prønøunce it at all because, y’knøw, it’s an “o” that’s been øverlaid with the internatiønal symbøl for “Get øut of my face.” Thereføre, we wøuld prønøunce Bodø as “Bod,” and Tromsø as “Troms.” Accordingly, in Nørway when yøu want to startle someøne yøu shøut, “B!” because øf cøurse the twø ø’s in “bøø” wøuld be silent.

B!

Ha ha, sorry for the fright. I’ll go back to English to help slow down your rapidly beating heart.

This photo shows the last meal my honey bunny enjoyed before experiencing the mother of all disasters, complete with broken bones (well, one anyway). The four of us generally ate all of our meals on the ship because they were already paid for and we’re cheap-ass seniors on a budget, but we had heard that Bodø makes the best pizza in all of Bodø, so we had to try it out.

At the time, it was lost on us that the pizza looked like it was covered with the guts of an unfortunate soul who might’ve scattered her insides all over the ice fields of Norway as an eerie portent of the brutal calamities to follow.

I have to say that Bodø was fairly emblematic of the various Norwegian towns we saw along the way. Before the cruise, I had expected charming villages with quaint buildings perhaps covered in reindeer hides, polar bear skins, and used troll underwear, but I was quickly reminded that the allies bombed the hell out of most of the towns because the Germans decided to vacation in Norway and then waved their Lugers around so they wouldn’t have to pay for lodging. The only way the allies could figure out how to get them to hand over their credit cards was to blow everything up. Since most blown-up buildings have poor plumbing and lousy insulation, after the war they were replaced by buildings that were largely built via programs such as the famous reconstruction act entitled: Cheap Reconstruction & Area Planning, or CRAP.

(They aren’t actually all that crappy; sometimes I have to throw an entire civilization under the bus just to work a joke in.)

Carolyn’s slip and fall on the ice meant that we would have to substitute a visit with Santa’s eight tiny reindeer for a tour of a Norwegian hospital. So we left Tim and Susan in charge of letting us know how it all smelled. (Just scratch your screen on one of those pictures and then lean in and take a sniff to find out. If you don’t smell anything, call someone over to help you, their noses might be better.)

Unfortunately, their trip to the location was apparently interrupted by a huge herd of reindeer so they never got there and had to stop at some weird and fruity place with looms instead.

It looks to me as if they had some sort of mystical ceremony involving a longhouse and strange Norwegian plant matter. They must’ve sat around smoking it for a while because Tim and Susan were high as kites upon their return. I could tell because they actually laughed at one of my dad jokes. I thought to interrogate them about all this Russian spy business while they were impaired… but they’re either really well-trained or I simply couldn’t understand them what with their mouths stuffed with Norwegian butter cookies, so I got nowhere.

On the way to the reindeer penitentiary they were treated to some of the Norwegian scenery that the Norwegians borrowed from the Swedes. Before the Great Borrowing, Norway was mostly a brown and empty land filled with trolls, mutant reindeer, and women named Olga who could bench press three Svens.

The Captain was blackmailed convinced to make a stop in Tromsø so Carolyn and I could grab a cab and head to a hospital. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any photos of inside the hospital because if I had, I’d have had to publish this post only on the Dark Web, what with all the blood & entrails laying around and the sick reindeer throwing up on everything. I even saw a perfectly good spleen just sitting there in the waiting room, dripping its goo all over a copy of Highlights.

We sat cheek to jowl (mostly face cheeks) with hundreds of sick or injured Norwegians, some having lain on a gurney for weeks or even months, now looking rather pale and stiff. Pssh. Socialized medicine, am I right Americans? You’d never see that kind of stuff in an American hospital!

Of course, you do get to deal with all this instead. I actually grimace when an American argues that capitalism keeps prices down; something rarely uttered by a diabetic who needs insulin. Like the old saying goes, “If you wanna get diabetic, Turkey’s definitely the place to be!”

These are the best I could do photo-wise with Tromsø what with the taxi speeding through town like Rudolph being chased by a herd of ugly reindeerettes with bad lipstick. Drivers can speed in Norway because they got rid of all the police, apparently thinking that they already had plenty of ice, so why would they need any pol-ice? That may be why we never saw any cops at all during our time there, other than all the ones chasing us. Anyway, as everyone knows, the more police you have the more crime you have, so they eliminated the police and voila! No crime! They did end up with a lot of speeders, but we were grateful for that because we thought the broken bone in her hand might start hemorrhaging at any moment. Although we were a little discouraged when we arrived to see “61” up on the number screen while our newly printed ticket had 765 on it. Socialized medicine, am I right?

62? …… 62? ………………………. 63? (We look down at 765 for already the 8th time.)

(For the record, it actually was fast, professional, thorough, and it didn’t cost hardly anything. Socialized medicine, am I right?)

One of the many brief stops the ship made was in Sømna. If you’ve never heard of it, it may be because Sømna has a population of around 2,000 people and 25,000 reindeer (actually, 25,000 is about how many reindeer there are in all of Norway). I do think it may be where they invented the word “Insomnia;” I’d definitely be insomniated if I lived there. Note that it was mid afternoon and all the streetlights were on because the sun was hiding behind the horizon, giggling.

We managed to stay awake long enough for a quick meander into town and an ice cream. You’d think with all that snow we’d just lick the street or something (although I don’t like the lemon flavor), but oh no, my companions had to spend money just to help keep the ship’s stop beneficial to the town. With the invention of email, mail deliveries have shrunk to an average of three old Sears catalogs and a discount coupon for Swedish meatballs, so the need for help was understandable.

And with that, we leave you with nine more random photos from the ship.

Oh, and: B!

Ha ha!

(After the fright wears off, scroll down to see previous entries if you haven’t read them… and want to for some reason.)