Sunday, June 14, 2015

Travel Blogging IX

Svolvaer, Norway: We went ashore in this town, visited a private World War II museum. The old fellow who collected the stuff was there and showed us his prize possessions - a series of paintings by A. Hitler. If they are as attributed, ol' Adolph wasn't a bad artist. His watercolor landscape was quite nice and his renderings of the dwarves from Snow White were excellent. He should have stayed with art and illustration where he actually had talent.

The museum has a wealth of uniforms, weapons, maps, ancillary gear, and equipment, including several panzerfausts and an actual Enigma code machine. He had examples of Lugers and broomhandle Mausers but no Walther P-38s. 

On the outskirts of this town I saw a number of fish drying racks. I wonder how many of our number recognized them for what they are. That is very old tech, the Aleuts do it too. You'd think the gulls would swoop down and eat the fish, maybe they've been salted too heavily to be edible.

We sailed past some fantastic scenery today, too bad it was raining at the time making pix taken out the windows resemble watercolors. We haven't had a lot of rain but we have had a continuous overcast. We knew when we scheduled this trip in late spring that we might have "muddy" weather, but did it anyway.

We saw the supper menu and were so disinterested we blew off supper entirely. I swear the Norwegians eat as much fish as the Japanese.