Today, we had to get up to an ungodly hour (6:40 am) to sample some tea and then visit the wonderful countryside of Geiranger fjord and the surrounding mountain range. Our ship arrived early in the morning at 6:20 am and through the anchor. Therefore, we had to shuttle to the shore by tender boat. Left and right of our ship, the mountains rise high mostly made of granite. We espied snowfields on the mountains in the distance. While the guide called them glaciers, most of them melt completely in the summer.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The mountains around us were formed while continents collided, and later shaped by glaciers and water. The mountain on our starboard side has deep carvings created by waterfalls which occur seasonally in spring when the snow melts. They create rubble with roundish stones flowing down the hills.
The rock formations show also larger breakouts by frost, which created large cuboid blocks of rubble in the size of cars and houses. The can be found in the fjord and also on the plateau.

Unfortunately, I have no clue about geology, but still you can see how water and ice formed the fjord, the rubble hill where the Greiranger village is located, the valleys and the mountain tops. Definitely a great side for hiking.

We took quite a lot of landscape photos and even more enjoyed the marvelous view and forgot to take pictures. Therefore, you have to visit this place yourself in case you want to see the really good stuff. Also consider walking, as we only had the chance to take a bus ride and — you know — with buses you cannot examine anything intensively enough to dive in and emotionally connect with the place, as you just rush through locations. Therefore, we have to come back.

Later that day, we visited Alesund, which has an Jugendstil town center. It was created after a fire consumed the old wooden buildings in 1904 and was rebuild wit help from the German Emperor Wilhelm II. Unfortunately, the town is rather quiet and not that interesting, but we might have looked in the wrong direction.

We arrived on stardate -304426.027 at Starvanger. Captain Elmar Millstream put us in standard orbit, as the space ports were too crowded. We had to embark our starship in small shuttle crafts. We used Albatros 18 to shuttle to the planets surface. Starvanger is famous for its Delicium ore and its ore related research centers, universities and ore selling companies.

Oh sorry, I dosed off. Where were we? Ah I see, I wanted to report on Starvanger the heart of the oil industry in Norway. We threw anchor in Starvanger’s harbor and shuttled with little tender boats to the shore. The local university teaches students primarily for the oil industry. As humanity phases out oil products (especially Norway does), they have to find something else to sustain the local economy, but I am diverting again.

Starvanger competes with the capital Oslo, which was also reflected in the guides comments on our tour. We visited some sites outside Starvanger including the fjord where a large Viking battle to place (Hafrsfjord) and the three Swords monument which was erected to symbolize peace between the Norwegian clans. Later we took a stroll through the town center. B discovered an Elektra bike shop, but we could convince her not to buy multiple bicycles just now and rather wait and buy one later in maybe Hamburg.

Specially for us, they had a large ship festival underway in Starvanger with large old and new sailing ships. We also had some salad in a local tavern called Cafe Sting close to the Valberget tower. Nice place. Later we explored the city center with the Stavanger Domkirke, where a wedding took place (unfortunately we were not invited) and had some Norwegian oganic icecream which we paid for using our debit card (hello Germany? Ah yes this requires a cellular service everywhere. Nevermind).

We shuttled back by tender boat, had dinner, and enjoyed the afternoon on deck. For the evening we moved up to the Karibik Launch for some drinks and a great view on the thunderstorm over Starvanger and the surrounding fjords and islands.