Day 2, Sunday, April 16 – Bergen, Norway

We started out on our first shore excursion, “Bergen at War” which covered the Nazi occupation of Norway during WWII. The first stop was to look at a statue of King Haagen, who refused to abdicate and rather ran a shadow government from England. As we drove on, we stopped near the site of the U-boat base. During the war, the British had tried to bomb it, but hit a school instead. Not the finest day for the RAF.

After that, we proceeded up to the Fjell Fortress, a giant underground facility which housed a giant cannon. We spent a few hours going through it and it is pretty impressive.

While on the bus to the next stop, the guide discussed the underground attempted to foil the Nazi attempts to make an atom bomb, the topic of “Heroes of Telemark” and other movies since.

We then came to the North Sea Traffic Museum, which told the story of the Televåg tragedy. During WWII, the Nazis were convinced that this small town was the center for the transport of people and goods across the North Sea to the Shetland Islands. In this case, they were probably right, but what the Nazis did was to send all the men to prison camps in Germany, burn all the village homes, and left the women and children in one building.

After returning to the ship, we had dinner and went to a “Welcome Presentation” which previewed the history and entertainment events we can’t expect on the cruise.