Tahiti or Norway?

We're at sea today. This morning the view to the east appeared to be of Moorea or maybe Bora Bora in the Tahitian Islands. Actually it's mainland Norway just north of the Arctic Circle. Maybe it's time to think about coming home.

One more stop in Norway tomorrow, then a sea day to pack. 

The most northern of real towns

Tuesday – 2 July 2013 – Alta, Norway

Alta is the last Arctic stop of this cruise. At 70 degrees north latitude, this 170 year old town is remarkably vigorous. As usual in Norway, the town fathers gave high priority to building a ski jump. 

We were lucky to arrive in sunshine (more or less) and the rain held off (more or less) for our two shore side activities. Any weather that doesn't require foul weather gear is considered "summer" 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Alta is located at the end of the Alta Fjord. Go figure.

We opted for the morning "Rock Art of Alta" excursion, essentially a narrated transfer to the Alta Museum, the access to the nearby UNESCO World Heritage petroglyph site. A 3 mile boardwalk passes by thirteen petroglyphs said to be as old as 6000 years. These were discovered by a couple of teenagers—why is it that all caves and petroglyphs are discovered by adolescents—who ventured out during the week of summer in 1972 (more or less).

The petroglyphs are really remarkable. Although most were enhanced for tourists' viewing convenience by ocher, a few of the rock drawings were left as they were found. They depict the usual hunting and fishing activities of the prehistoric hunter gatherers and later herders as pens are visible. There are fishing nets shown, boats looking like Viking ships (hey?) and even some pregnant moose. They even depicted the moose becoming pregnant. Really pretty cool: petroglyph naughty pictures. But best of all for us was that the boardwalk extended for quite a distance affording a nice hour plus long brisk hike through the woods and along the fjord.

We returned to the ship and had a quick lunch as the sky opened up with warm rain and considerable wind (the lovely apple display at the gang way became dislodged amusing the ship's security officer not at all), but the weather cleared up shortly after enough for us to venture to the downtown area via the ship's half hourly shuttle bus. We found downtown Alta—there are three towns in the area combined recently into one administrative district, no doubt so that they could buy more street lights and snow plows—to be quite nice. A wide avenue leads to the brand new titanium clad cathedral, and there's a huge indoor mall with every kind of store that one can find anywhere in the world, all of which were doing a vigorous business. We even spotted an Indian and a Chinese Restaurant, named Taj Mahal and Wing Wah, respectively. These Norwegians never miss a trick.

We sail at 4 pm for Kristiansund in the deep south of Norway. (We later found out there's also a town of Kristrianson further south. So our Kristiansund is usually written with an "N" after its name.) There, I hope to see both twilight (for an hour or so) and where the timber line way be as high as 500 feet MSL instead of at sea level. We will deplete our on-board credit with yet another tour called, "Atlantic Ocean Road & Kvernes Stave Church." I wonder what we will see on that excursion.

So, where’s the money from?

Sunday – 30 June 2013 – Archangel, Russia

Things are not as they seem, or even what they tell you they are if they try to tell you at all. We tied up at the Archangelsk downtown passenger ship terminal shaped like a ship at 6:30 am this morning for a short morning only stay. This is the most southerly extent of the cruise, but we are still less than 150 miles or so south of the Arctic Circle. Since we are a three hour sail up river, south from the White Sea, the ocean's influence on the weather is much less than the other Russian ports we visited. It's now 11 am and it's already 75 degrees (F) out with a forecast high in the 80s. I just put on shorts. Finally! Back towards rainy and cold Norway when we sail soon enough.

The four hour "Archangel City Overview" excursion left promptly at 7:30 am this morning (and returned at 10:45 am. Time sometimes moved quickly on a ship's tour. Sometimes very slowly. Ya never know.) There has been no explanation either from the ship's staff so far as to why this Sunday morning stop and departure had to be so early as we were to sail at 1:30pm. My guesses were in less likely order: 1) tides in the river, 2) Russian authorities being what they are, and 3) the Captain of Silver Cloud trying to save a few hundred pounds of bunker fuel. It was hard getting up for the early tour as we had not quite gotten over the two hour time change of a few days ago. The life of the pilgrim is never easy, as I say to my fellow passengers when they gripe about anything, like the ship now charging for special orders of caviar.

The tour was the only one of three offered here that presented a good orientation to this surprising city. The others were specialized: one of an old White Russian family wood workshop and the other to a distant wood craft museum. I guess there are lots of forests around. But what Archangelsk (the preferred English spelling and pronunciation) had to show us was that this city of 350,000 has money. No, it ain't Paris, but neither is Paris anymore I suppose. Despite some Soviet era hammer and sickle buildings--note the "CCCP" on a building at the port--and the main street named for Lenin, this place had some ornate original wooden buildings, decent looking apartment structures that look nothing like the falling apart Soviet era blocks one sees in just about every other Russian city, and a bunch of public parks with well maintained cultivated flower beds. There was many architectural delights reflecting the ship building industry that was Peter the Great's motivation for funding the city in the 17^th Century. (See picture of the passenger ship terminal above.) 

Uniquely for Russia, there were a bunch of statues that were not just soldiers and war memorials, but seemingly unique whimsical public art of artists and poets and even a "mascot street person", as described by our guide. One guest told me he saw a bunch of automated street sweepers on this early Sunday morning. Of course, some of the infrastructure was less than perfect. This is Russia. The electric bus line catenaries had fallen apart and the electric city buses replaced with oil burning diesels. The guide said the electric buses were removed because, "The streets are so narrow." This is Russia, and straight answers are not always forthcoming.

I asked the ship's political destination lecturer, Mark, who had come along on our tour where this civic wealth came from. Just about every city I've been in Russia, including at St. Petersburg where even the Hermitage is in disrepair, are gray, dingy, dirty, and the best that they have to offer is either a separately run tourist attraction (e.g. the Summer Palace outside of St. Petersburg) or a sad but sincere effort like the "Oceanarium" trained seal show in Murmansk. Unlike Murmansk, however, Archangelsk's harbor is frozen for months each year and only usable when one of atomic powered ice breakers gets through, and the city is very isolated as it is surrounded by thousands of acres of dense forest. The rain line is more tenuous than that of Murmansk, and there is little manufacturing or even significant fisheries.

Mark said he honestly didn't know and went to our perky guide. (The female tour guides in Russia all seem to be perky as well as reciting a fixed kind of recorded like narration. More on this below.) She said that she didn't think that her city was well off, even when we told her how poor and dirty Murmansk seemed. She apparently didn't know the answer to my question either. Her only comment was that she agreed that Murmansk was awful but not as awful as her native  Archangelsk. Of course, feeling sorry for oneself is a Russian thing, but not exclusively a Russian trait nowadays.

Our sleepy Tour Bus #2 went immediately after leaving the port to the "War Memorial Cemetery" where stones commemorate Allied soldiers from WWI who are buried elsewhere in Russia. The adjacent Russian cemetery was much more interesting, but some of the ornate burial sites were decaying due to the practice of leaving the maintenance of the plots to the children of the dead. That tradition, of course, has an intrinsic flaw. The guide proceeded to point out various buildings, monuments, and cultural centers (I conjectured as to what goes on in the "Children's Cultural Center"), always drawing our attention to, say, the right side of the bus when another war memorial or hammer and sickle appeared on the left side. She even missed the nude beach, quite a remarkable sight at north 64d 31m latitude.

We enjoyed seeing some of the other touristic sights in the sleepy Sunday morning lack of traffic including a very well maintained museum built in a 1600s fortress merchant market warehouse(!) The museum was as well done as any in the Western world, but each sentence of the local docent had to be translated into English by our tour guide. Thus, the time in the museum was exactly twice as long, but it wasn't really enough time to check this place out and maybe get some insights. The museum was fascinating as it covered most of the history of deep Northern Russia.

Lecturer Mark and I never did figure out where all the wealth comes from in this major city almost 1000 miles north of Moscow and further north than Fairbanks. My guess is that Archangelsk has found the American secret to making money: shuffle paperwork—preferably paper money and equities—around and do lots of import and export trading. Manufacturing and agriculture now may not be the way to wealth, although someone somewhere has to do these things. Maybe in Murmansk with predictable results. But Archangelsk does have those millions of acres of forest to the south.*

*Later in the afternoon during my elegant al fresco lunch (where I turned down the fish cakes when told they were a commercially frozen product—frozen fishcakes on Silversea? Not a good sign) I asked the ship's destination lecturer, Corey, why only Archangelsk of the Russian cities I've visited appears to have a developed real middle class and some civic pride. There obviously was money being spent here, by citizens and government both. His answer was that unlike the less than 100 year old Murmansk (which was dictated to exist by the Soviets), Archangelsk was founded over 400 years (as dictated by Peter the Great). As far as it goes that doesn't really answer the question, but as we sailed out we saw dozens of huge, really huge, saw mills, endless piles of saw dust, and gigantic floats of logs. Clearly Archangelsk's lumber industry is one big part of the answer, but I will try to confirm my theory after we're home that the city's prosperity is because now it's the "business of business"—banking, inport/export, and investment--that funds the happy sail boaters and beach goers we saw along the river and the dozens of folks on the pier enjoying the one of three warm days of Summer, 2013.

A huge monastery and a huge mystery in a very far away place

Saturday – 29 June 2013 – Solovetsky Archipelago, Russia

At 65 degrees north latitude, Solovetski Island is a bit south of the Arctic Circle and thus actually will have a sunset tonight. My Garmin GPS/pedometer calculates only 21½ hours of "daylight", but of course there will be no darkness. There just isn't enough time for twilight to end. My Forerunner 305 says that sunrise is at 2:50am and sunset is at 12:31am. 

This is one of the most isolated places I've ever been but increasingly popular as a Russian tourist site, judging from the over packed local tour boats we passed later in the day. We never could figure out where these boats came from as Solovetski is far from any population center. The six large and a borscht of small islands lies in the northern part of the Gulf of Onega in the White Sea, itself a large indentation off the Barents Sea of the Arctic. Silver Cloud's stops today in the archipelago were to accommodate two half day tours, each on one of two of the islands.

We opted for this morning's "Solovetsky Monastery Tour" on the main island and were not disappointed. The monastery was founded in the early 1400s and grew to essentially a city state. It had as many as 1000 monks living here at one time. These guys built an extensive system of canals (the guide with her thick Russian accent called them, "camels", intriguing me more than I can explain), had the first electric generating plant in Russia in 1910, a huge mill, a big tailor shop, and a gigantic dining hall. At least if you can call one meal a day consisting of mushroom soup, raw mushrooms, and a bunch of salt cod a meal. For a treat, they ate dried barley imported "from the south", she told us.

There were prisons, "lesser monasteries" on the other islands, an extensive heating plant, a bathhouse, and a number of chapels including a "cathedral" for the monks and a smaller but no less ornate "prayer room" for the Father Superior so that he could "venerate the icons" in solitude. He probably meditated on violating the Commandment about idols, but the guide also told us about the splitting of the Russian Orthodox Church when it was ordered that members of the religion were to cross themselves with three fingers rather than the former method of two fingers. She said that a separate sect was formed by the "old followers" who objected to this change. See, I learned a lot about religious disputes.

The Monastery was fortified by Peter the Great when the monk lookouts saw the Swedes sail in and then out of the area, and the site was used as a gulag prison and also a naval training school (but not at the same time) by the Soviets. Most of the original icons—there are a bunch—were moved to a museum in Moscow, but identical copies have been made in the extensive icon copying shop (!) within the complex and reinstalled in the original locations.

All in all, this was a very worthwhile stop in a very unusual place. The photography opportunities—both for artsy and documentary snaps—abounded. Barbara and I agreed that this is one destination truly worthy of the World Heritage Site designation. Fortunately, the babushka docents will no doubt not allow the press of tourists to do any damage.

Upon returning to the ship for lunch (not consisting of mushrooms and dried barley I can assure you), the ship weighed anchor and sailed for about 20 minutes as the two tenders chased us. I was only a little alarmed about going to sea without our two big lifeboats, but I suppose I was not nearly as alarmed as the helmsmen of the tenders when they saw Silver Cloud leaving them in its wake.

The transit between islands was to make another stop in the Archipelago, at the much smaller Zayatsky Island, a wildlife and archaeological site. The big attractions, besides the "lesser monastery" there, are the 300 preserved Neolithic stone labyrinth structures scattered throughout the island. The printed tour description for the "Mysteries of Zayatsky Island" excursion said that the local tour guide will explain that "science does not know" what purpose of the labyrinths, stone serpents, and larger stone structures served nor for whom. We chose to wait for the afternoon tour's participants to return to the ship this evening and enlighten us since most of our fellow passengers are not scientists and might know.

Sail later today for Archangel, our last stop on this trip in Russia, and then begin our long return over the top of Europe. We will be making two additional port calls along the way in prosperous Norway before arriving in Copenhagen for the flights back to real summer and dark nights.

Arctic Circle in the Barents Sea, 5nm off the Kola Peninsula tundra this 44 degree F afternoon on board Silver Cloud

Additional Comments from the Murmansk tour guide

1.       Regarding what is taught to Russians about the last 50 years; "It is very difficult to predict Russian History."

2.       On public art; "We love to put up monuments, but we never take any down." There was a huge statue of Lenin, only one of three left in all of Russia. The guide said; "Old people come and put flowers around the monument to this killer. Old people are set in their ways." I have seen the other two in Petrapolov and St. Petersburg.

3.       Her personal story; "My dad was from a collective farm which they were not allowed to leave except when he joined the Russian Navy. However, he was permitted to marry his childhood girlfriend from the farm and settle in Murmansk. My son just graduated from the university where I teach. He is 23 years old and lives at home with us. He is also a teacher."

4.       "The Soviets were atheists. That's how I grew up. Some old people follow the Orthodox religion, but we all have civil holidays near the religious ones. Easter is determined by the Orthodox priests who move the date to the next full moon when it falls on the Jewish Easter."

Not how nice it is but that it exists at all

Thursday – 27 June 2013 – Murmansk, Russia

Waking up after the two hour time change yesterday gave us a serious case of ship lag, but we were anxious to visit Arctic Russia. Murmansk is the home of the Northern Fleet of the Russian Navy and the base for the atomic powered ice breakers. Of great historical significance during WWII was that the Allies supplied the USSR with essential supplies using convoys from North America to this most northern of ice-free ports, usually during the long dark winters to avoid detection by the German forces.

The Gulf Stream provides a quite mild climate for 120 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Temperatures usually don't drop below +10 F degrees in winter or exceed 75 F or so in summer. It rains a lot in summer, but of course it is light out for all of June and July. The population at just over 300,000 is essentially half of that during the cold war, and the extensive ship yard along the estuary was eerily quiet during our nine hour port call.

Without holding $500 per person Russian visas, we were obliged to venture off the ship only on organized tours. We chose "City Views and Oceanarium". The guide, a native born low paid instructor at the teachers' college, one of the two universities here, had good English for someone not taught by a native English speaker. (We did see the technical maritime university, the other college, as we left the port.) Fishing is now the big industry here, she explained. Just about everyone in Murmansk is involved in fishing, processing, packing, or repairing fishing vessels. She said that this is a male dominated, laboring city, where education is held in low esteem, and as a result even doctors as well as teachers are paid very poorly. This is not my kind of place.

The architecture reflects the different stages of modern Russian history as the Germans leveled the town during WWII, but they never succeeded in occupying it. The Stalinist Socialist style is reflected in the green gem of the railway station (note the faded red star above the roof), the terminus of the 26 hour journey south to St. Petersburg, but the Stalinist apartment buildings built after the war are in serious decay. Khrushchev and Brezhnev era apartment buildings, also in serious decay, are surrounded by thousands of square miles of tundra.

Our tour consisted of the best that Murmansk could offer the tourist.  We visited a bunch of monuments—the Soviets loved to build monuments including a gigantic WWII soldier with a little head but a really cool overcoat---and a little "Orthodox Cathedral". We discovered that the "Oceanarium" was not the research facility of Arctic wildlife we were led to believe but rather an endearing children's trained seal show. The creatures looked well fed and didn't appear abused, however, and the trainers seemed to really love their animals.  The room did smell awful from all the fish. Go figure.

We returned to the ship via the amazingly conventional downtown with its two department stores and the normal assortment of regional company headquarters, including that of one of the cell phone companies. We cast off at 6pm under the watchful eye of the, uh, "port agent". This gentleman appeared to be writing notes on every tourist that left the ship. This is Russia, after all.

My conclusion after this short (but long enough) visit to Murmansk was not how nice or not nice this place is, but rather that a full service functional city does exist in the Arctic.