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挪威王国位于北欧斯堪的纳维亚半岛西北部,西濒挪威海。面积38.7万平方千米 ( 其中包括斯瓦尔巴群岛与其附近挪属岛屿) 。海岸线长近2 万千米。人口433 万,挪威人约占95 % ,北部还有萨米族人。居民多信基督教路德宗。
Setting to sea in a howling midnight blizzard may not have the same romantic resonance as sailing off into the sunset, but it does have a certain elegance all its own. Crossing the dimly lighted docks in Bergen, Norway, on a November night, head hunched into collar and squinting against the furious flakes, I was in a perfectly balanced state between alarm and excitement. Here was travel the way it was back when everyone didn't travel: brave and cool, vaguely suspect, bracing and healthful.
My ship, the Vesteraalen, was bound up the North Atlantic coast of Norway, with 34 stops to the tiptop of Europe on the Arctic Sea — a voyage that promised snowy fjords, towering mountains, northern lights and tiny fishing villages. From the final village, I had heard, a person can even see Russia, but I didn't feel like a vice president in the making; I felt like Zhivago embarking on one final glorious escape.
There's more than one cheap way to go on a cruise, particularly in these darkening economic days. Some check in daily with travel agents, or bottom fish at . But I, currently living in Florida and therefore in no need of sun, chose to sail north just as the days were growing noticeably short.
Every winter Hurtigruten, a Norwegian cruise fleet that is jammed to the gills with fjord frolickers in the summer, finds its ships undersubscribed. Since the line is under contract with the Norwegian government to deliver mail and cargo year round with its fleet — most of its ships follow the same route as the Vesteraalen — it cannot follow the other cruise lines to warmer waters and must cut its fares roughly by half. Periodically, it further offers a two-for-one ticket, promising room and board for two passengers for seven days (six nights) for about $1,500. And so it was that I found myself, with my sister, Bethany, in tow, stumbling through a snowstorm barely in time to make our 10:30 p.m. departure on the Vesteraalen.
We had skipped dinner aboard the ship to explore Bergen, a cheerful little city that wraps around both sides of a pair of fjords, in our last hours before sailing. We had feasted there at Beyer 'en, a warm and elegant restaurant that specializes in delicious local ingredients. It had given me inordinate pleasure to be able to look up from my menu and say to the waitress, "She'll start with the lamb from Hardinglam, and I'll have the lamb from Flaam." Bethany and I were still repeating this silly rhyme a couple of hours later as we stood out on the high aft deck of the Vesteraalen watching Bergen drop away, flakes swirling around us, and the twinkling lights of the city intermittently disappearing and reappearing behind gusts of snow. It was magical and epic to be sailing away in all that swirl. And really, really cold.