The man had been recovered from jet lag and went back to his early bird routine: it was only 5:00 in the morning when he opened his eyes. It was an ocean view room, so he was able to see through the window the waves rolling in North Sea . It was so quiet and peaceful because he couldn't hear the sound outside.
Turning his head to the woman who was still deeply in sleep, he started figuring out how much she had changed in the last almost a quarter century: color of hair became a little bit lighter and thinner; skin turned a bit sagging; obvious wrinkles were around eyes definitely. However, though he didn't need to close his eyes to imagine, she was still as young as in that morning of May when she stood by side of her Volvo watching him walking out of the door of the hotel in Goteborg. In his mind, the time might be fixed in that moment forever.
"Should we go to eat something?" She woke up possibly by his eyes' pressure. "They serve pretty good buffet as I heard."
"Sure, let's go and we can go onto deck to view North Sea later." He always enjoyed satisfying her desire whenever he was able to.
It was almost 7:00 am when they walked into Commander Buffet on Deck 7. They were seated at a small table by the big window where they could see the ocean. Foods on the counters looked so fresh, they went over to pick some up to pile on the plates, then came back to the table.
"Do you remember my comments on buffet back in that year we met?" He asked her.
"Oh, yes, you still considered buffet was pretty upscale, correct?" She recalled.
"Right, as I told you that I only ate buffet two or three times when I lived in Bahamas for a year, they were all served in luxury casino like Paradise Island Casino & Resorts and paid by others, so my first impression about it must be upscale. In China back then, buffet was only served in five stars hotels and were very expensive compared to income."He paused to taste a piece of salmon, then kept saying:"Once upon a time, I took one of my best friends who was working for a foreign company in Beijing and made decent money but never had buffet before to a five stars hotel to experience it. There weren't many choices but the dinner cost me a couple hundreds of Chinese yuan, which was awful a lot then."
"Yes, I recalled that conversation. Did we ever have buffet together back then? I don't think so."She tried to search in her memory but apparently didn't find it.
"No, I asked you once if we could have buffet because I thought that was pretty formal dinning with which I wanted to seriously invite you to have." He confirmed, "But you told me that you didn't have appetite of eating much at that moment, and later on, I figured that buffet wasn't very popular in Sweden during those years, so there weren't many restaurants serving it. Definitely it was a causal dining as well."
"It becomes more popular now, especially in big cities, such as Stockholm and Goteborg. The populations are much more diversified and visitors come from all over the world. Buffet actually provides a perfect option for different tastes." She updated the current situations for him.
"Even back in early 90s, I am not sure if I got the right information then, I was told immigrants were already 10% of the total population." He was a bit unsure," However, I already saw so many people with quite different appearance than what I had thought before I came to visit the first time."
"You had thought all Swedish were blonder and tall, correct?"She winked,"I am not sure either if we had 10% immigrants in early 90s but I can remember we started accepting more and more from then. You know, we are always very kind in terms of immigration policy, right"
"Definitely, I totally understand that."He did have a lot of knowledge in that subject when he was in 20s. "Another reason I got that impression was that the first city I landed was Malmo, which was with probably the most immigrants then."
"That is true." She agreed, "Oh, we are in Norway now, probably we should save this conversation until we drive across the border after leaving Oslo. See, there is another boat coming across over there."
Following her pointing figure, he did see a cruise ship possibly operated by the same company was passing almost exactly the same latitude at the far side away from the coast.
"Shall we go out to the deck?" He asked,"Hopefully it won't be too cold outside there."
"Why not?" She followed, "It should be warm enough now, with our sweatshirts and sports pants, I think we will be fine."
They got out ten minutes later, standing at the west side on the deck. Surface on North Sea was relatively flat in the morning in Summer, breeze blew smell of fresh water to their noses occasionally to make them be aware of being at sea.
Leaning to the handrails, they snuggled. He gently touched her long hair down to the shoulders, slightly towards her left ear murmuring: "I would like to hold you like this forever."
She accepted the flattering and sighed "Unfortunately, we have never had a chance to take cruise together. Did we talk about it in those days?"
"I remember we did, actually, I think I initiated it because I was exposed to cruise lines a lot when I lived in Caribbean but never had taken it as a tourist staying over night."He responded.
"Yes, you did, now, I recall that conversation." She was triggered to pull it from her memory. "I wasn't familiar with Cruise you referred to then. Though there were several cruise lines in Scandinavia, large and small, it wasn't very popular 20 years ago. So, I never suggested we go for it back then. Even today, as far as I know in my circle, it is still not very preferred by Scandinavians."
"Why? I considered it fits Scandinavians' life style very well: Taking time to relax." He understood it not popular back in the years he visited but was curious why it was still not being favored.
"I might be ignorant." She made fun of herself, "As I said, at least, in my circle, my friends are rarely fans of cruise, we hardly talked about it. I guess many Scandinavians consider traveling on water is sort of commute, whenever something becomes a routine activity, you may not be interested in taking it as leisure. Anyway, it is just my opinion and you should blame we have so much water."
"It makes sense." He started agreeing with her, "Just like us in old days, we rode bikes as a major transportation tool, so none of us treated biking as outdoor sporty activity. At the beginning of residing in States, I thought Americans were nuts to having so many biking enthusiasts."
"It is an very interesting comparison but makes sense too."She laughed, "But I need to clarify, taking cruse line seems drawing a lot of interests from the rest of the world nowadays. Southern Europeans, even North Americans have gained that sort of Scandinavian experiences through it. You know, not many people like you had the opportunity to travel through the peninsula to learn about it several times, and land tour operation is still not very mature. Taking cruise is probably the best option at this stage."
"Traveling on your own in the countries with different languages is very difficult." He said,"But most of Scandinavians can speak English very well, this is the advantage of attracting foreigners not only the tourists but investors or businessmen as well. Even in those years when Chinese was still the dominant language in my daily life, I was able to communicate with you guys in English without problems, though it was not native tongue for both of us."
"We are indeed proud of this." She agreed, "Communicating with the rest of the world is never a problem for us."
They chatted like this and time had gone through like an arrow leaving a bow. The sun had moved toward right over above the earth, and they heard captain of the ship was announcing through the speakers: "Damer og Herrer, Vi kommer til å ankomme i Bergen i en time..."
Before it was repeated in English, she had understood it because all Scandinavians could understand each other almost perfectly. They started walking to cabin to get stuff ready for disembarking.
The ship arrived at Bergen Port almost right on time: 12:30 pm local time. However, driving the car out of the area took them almost another half an hour due to the long lines. He booked a room at a four stars hotel - Radisson in the town center and knew they wouldn't be allowed to check in until 3:00 pm. Since they didn't have lunch on board, they would need to have it in the next half an hour. The best option was to park the car at the hotel, then walk to Bryggen where there were several great restaurants.
It only took them 10 minutes to drive to Radisson. After self parking in the parking lot, he suggested they try to check at front desk to see if they were fortunate enough to get a room though it was only 1:20 pm.
The young man at front desk asked them to wait for a minute while he was checking in the system.
"Yes, sir, we do have a room available at this time but it was on the second floor facing the street, which might be a little bit noisy. If you want to come back after 3:00, we can upgrade your room to a superior room on fifth floor without extra charge, this was actually logged in the note attached to your reservation." The young man reported to them his findings after checking.
They discussed for a minute, and the man said to the young man at front desk:"It's a pleasant surprise and we really appreciate your hospitality. Ok, we will come back later."
They had decided on board to go for a late lunch at To Kokker, a local popular restaurant. It was really close to Radisson, only took them less than five minutes to walk there.
Sitting at the table by the window, they started learning the menu. Though she only came to Bergen twice briefly in her life and wasn't very familiar with local cuisines, she could understand the menu much better than he could.
"Do you want to have a glass of wine?" She asked him before waitress came over to take order.
"At least, I can understand this word: Champagne."He laughed, "Can we have a bottle of it for celebrating our reunion?"
"Sure, if you want, let's do it!" She was excited whenever he showed his enthusiasm of their past relationship.
She ordered a bottle of Mercier after raising her right hand to the lovely waitress.
"They also serve both hot starters and cold, which do you want?" She pointed to menu, though it had English version under the Norwegians, he was still confused.
"I prefer hot, how about you?" He cared about her taste too.
"Ok, let me order Jordskkokksuppe for you, it is soup. I will try this RØkt Ørret Salat, a pumpkin salad."
"Next must be Entree, correct?" He was pretty sure because everywhere should be the same in this regard.
"Yes, they call it 'Hoverretter'" She explained, "We must go for fishes in Bergen, right?"
Without his concurrence, she kept saying because she didn't see any doubt on this option: "They only serve two dishes of fishes, so we can take them all."
"What are those?" He was interested.
"Both are fried, Stekt Piggvar, it is fried turbot; Pannestekt Torskefilet, fried fillet of Cod." She interpreted.
"Yes, I can read this English version more clearly." He focused his eyes on the menu eventually.
Waitress brought Champagne over, to avoid the drama to bother others, they had asked her to open it at the back.
"Cheers, for us." He made the toast.
The appetizers and fishes were pretty delicious, though they wish fresh marinated fishes could have been served instead of fried ones.
At the end, they both ordered Kaffe Panna Cotta and sat at the table for another fifteen minutes before going out of the door of To Kokker.
"I couldn't recall the most of Swedish dishes I had back in 90s. My impression was more meats than fishes." He tried to recall.
"Compared to Norwegians, we do eat more meats than fishes. I actually ordered more seafood than meat for you then, but you probably didn't understand what those were in those days, so they were never in you memory in the first place, even you bragged you had photographic memory." She made fun of him, but remedied immediately: "Yes, you do."
In the next two hours ,they walked through Bryggen, which features on UNESCO's World Heritage List. They even stopped over Bryggens Museum for almost an hour before going back to Radisson. It was already almost 5:30 pm.
The young man at front desk didn't lie to them, they checked in a much larger room than what he booked a month ago online. Instead of two small bed, a queen size bed was placed in the middle of the room. The city and lake views might be much better than in the one he booked as well.
Though they had traveled in the last 36 hours, most of the time in the last 24 hours were in the cabin on board the ferry and in the restaurants, they didn't feel really tired, actually, they were still very energetic.
"I heard if you want to have a marvelous overview of Bergen, you should go to the top of Mount Floyen. Is it true?" He actually had searched online to find this.
"Yes, I had known it long ago. Tell you the truth, I had come here twice but never went there before because those trips were very short." She implicitly concurred.
"Do you want to go?" He asked but wasn't sure if she was exhausted, "I found that we could take funicular to climb onto the top within 10 minutes."
"Why not?" She of course wanted to go, it actually was one of the must-sees in Bergen, she had been sorry that she'd never done it before. "Let me take a ten minutes break and we can walk to Floibanen, it should be within 10 minutes walk."
After 20 minutes, they had been in one of funiculars carrying them climbing the Mount Floyen. Even it was already 6:30 pm, they still saw many tourists coming up. When reaching the top of 320 meters high mountain, they found many people being around as well. It was summer in Scandinavia, sun was still hanging in the sky, it might be staying there for another 3 or 4 hours.
They moved across the crowds to locate a spot where they were able to view the entire city, the harbor and even North Sea distantly. They stopped talking even breathing for a while because the scene was so spectacular.
"Do you remember I liked devoting poems to you sometimes in those days?" He was trying to impress her again.
"Certainly, I remember by Malaren at that night, you chanted a Chinese ancient poem to me, I was totally lost but could sense it very touching." She referred to a poem written by a very famous poet in Song Dynasty.
"Yes, it was 'Angel on Magpie Bridge' with rhyme scheme defined in Chinese Middle Ages." He continued, "I actually wrote several for you by myself after leaving Sweden but never had a chance to chant for you later."
"Can you do it now?" She was anxious to listen to them.
"I can't recall exactly now" He sighed, "But I do have taste of writing a sonnet for you now of which you will be able to understand much easier."
"How can you write it here now?" She became very interested and curious.
"Enjoy the view by yourself for 20 minutes, let me type on my cell phone while imaging." He kissed on her cheek slightly, then started sliding into his own world...
After 25 minutes, he patted her shoulder and "singing" to her:
"From the foot of Norwegian Mountain to his top,
The trip slightly took them a couple of minutes.
Up the start on American Flight down her stop,
The journey massively cost us two dozens of years.
I can view Nordic Sun remotely smiles,
He may be happy with our lovely drama.
You can hear North Sea distantly groans,
She may be sad about our painfully trauma.
Are you my pleasant dilemma?
One can be only another's dream.
Am I your honorable stigma?
Another may be still one's problem.
I am on your mind always that handsome Chinese boy,
You are in my eyes forever this beautiful Swedish joy."
His last word wasn't released from his mouth completely, her lips had already covered his...
Following her pointing figure, he did see a cruise ship possibly operated by the same company was passing almost exactly the same latitude at the far side away from the coast.
"Shall we go out to the deck?" He asked,"Hopefully it won't be too cold outside there."
"Why not?" She followed, "It should be warm enough now, with our sweatshirts and sports pants, I think we will be fine."
They got out ten minutes later, standing at the west side on the deck. Surface on North Sea was relatively flat in the morning in Summer, breeze blew smell of fresh water to their noses occasionally to make them be aware of being at sea.
Leaning to the handrails, they snuggled. He gently touched her long hair down to the shoulders, slightly towards her left ear murmuring: "I would like to hold you like this forever."
She accepted the flattering and sighed "Unfortunately, we have never had a chance to take cruise together. Did we talk about it in those days?"
"I remember we did, actually, I think I initiated it because I was exposed to cruise lines a lot when I lived in Caribbean but never had taken it as a tourist staying over night."He responded.
"Yes, you did, now, I recall that conversation." She was triggered to pull it from her memory. "I wasn't familiar with Cruise you referred to then. Though there were several cruise lines in Scandinavia, large and small, it wasn't very popular 20 years ago. So, I never suggested we go for it back then. Even today, as far as I know in my circle, it is still not very preferred by Scandinavians."
"Why? I considered it fits Scandinavians' life style very well: Taking time to relax." He understood it not popular back in the years he visited but was curious why it was still not being favored.
"I might be ignorant." She made fun of herself, "As I said, at least, in my circle, my friends are rarely fans of cruise, we hardly talked about it. I guess many Scandinavians consider traveling on water is sort of commute, whenever something becomes a routine activity, you may not be interested in taking it as leisure. Anyway, it is just my opinion and you should blame we have so much water."
"It makes sense." He started agreeing with her, "Just like us in old days, we rode bikes as a major transportation tool, so none of us treated biking as outdoor sporty activity. At the beginning of residing in States, I thought Americans were nuts to having so many biking enthusiasts."
"It is an very interesting comparison but makes sense too."She laughed, "But I need to clarify, taking cruse line seems drawing a lot of interests from the rest of the world nowadays. Southern Europeans, even North Americans have gained that sort of Scandinavian experiences through it. You know, not many people like you had the opportunity to travel through the peninsula to learn about it several times, and land tour operation is still not very mature. Taking cruise is probably the best option at this stage."
"Traveling on your own in the countries with different languages is very difficult." He said,"But most of Scandinavians can speak English very well, this is the advantage of attracting foreigners not only the tourists but investors or businessmen as well. Even in those years when Chinese was still the dominant language in my daily life, I was able to communicate with you guys in English without problems, though it was not native tongue for both of us."
"We are indeed proud of this." She agreed, "Communicating with the rest of the world is never a problem for us."
They chatted like this and time had gone through like an arrow leaving a bow. The sun had moved toward right over above the earth, and they heard captain of the ship was announcing through the speakers: "Damer og Herrer, Vi kommer til å ankomme i Bergen i en time..."
Before it was repeated in English, she had understood it because all Scandinavians could understand each other almost perfectly. They started walking to cabin to get stuff ready for disembarking.
The ship arrived at Bergen Port almost right on time: 12:30 pm local time. However, driving the car out of the area took them almost another half an hour due to the long lines. He booked a room at a four stars hotel - Radisson in the town center and knew they wouldn't be allowed to check in until 3:00 pm. Since they didn't have lunch on board, they would need to have it in the next half an hour. The best option was to park the car at the hotel, then walk to Bryggen where there were several great restaurants.
It only took them 10 minutes to drive to Radisson. After self parking in the parking lot, he suggested they try to check at front desk to see if they were fortunate enough to get a room though it was only 1:20 pm.
The young man at front desk asked them to wait for a minute while he was checking in the system.
"Yes, sir, we do have a room available at this time but it was on the second floor facing the street, which might be a little bit noisy. If you want to come back after 3:00, we can upgrade your room to a superior room on fifth floor without extra charge, this was actually logged in the note attached to your reservation." The young man reported to them his findings after checking.
They discussed for a minute, and the man said to the young man at front desk:"It's a pleasant surprise and we really appreciate your hospitality. Ok, we will come back later."
They had decided on board to go for a late lunch at To Kokker, a local popular restaurant. It was really close to Radisson, only took them less than five minutes to walk there.
Sitting at the table by the window, they started learning the menu. Though she only came to Bergen twice briefly in her life and wasn't very familiar with local cuisines, she could understand the menu much better than he could.
"Do you want to have a glass of wine?" She asked him before waitress came over to take order.
"At least, I can understand this word: Champagne."He laughed, "Can we have a bottle of it for celebrating our reunion?"
"Sure, if you want, let's do it!" She was excited whenever he showed his enthusiasm of their past relationship.
She ordered a bottle of Mercier after raising her right hand to the lovely waitress.
"They also serve both hot starters and cold, which do you want?" She pointed to menu, though it had English version under the Norwegians, he was still confused.
"I prefer hot, how about you?" He cared about her taste too.
"Ok, let me order Jordskkokksuppe for you, it is soup. I will try this RØkt Ørret Salat, a pumpkin salad."
"Next must be Entree, correct?" He was pretty sure because everywhere should be the same in this regard.
"Yes, they call it 'Hoverretter'" She explained, "We must go for fishes in Bergen, right?"
Without his concurrence, she kept saying because she didn't see any doubt on this option: "They only serve two dishes of fishes, so we can take them all."
"What are those?" He was interested.
"Both are fried, Stekt Piggvar, it is fried turbot; Pannestekt Torskefilet, fried fillet of Cod." She interpreted.
"Yes, I can read this English version more clearly." He focused his eyes on the menu eventually.
Waitress brought Champagne over, to avoid the drama to bother others, they had asked her to open it at the back.
"Cheers, for us." He made the toast.
The appetizers and fishes were pretty delicious, though they wish fresh marinated fishes could have been served instead of fried ones.
At the end, they both ordered Kaffe Panna Cotta and sat at the table for another fifteen minutes before going out of the door of To Kokker.
"I couldn't recall the most of Swedish dishes I had back in 90s. My impression was more meats than fishes." He tried to recall.
"Compared to Norwegians, we do eat more meats than fishes. I actually ordered more seafood than meat for you then, but you probably didn't understand what those were in those days, so they were never in you memory in the first place, even you bragged you had photographic memory." She made fun of him, but remedied immediately: "Yes, you do."
In the next two hours ,they walked through Bryggen, which features on UNESCO's World Heritage List. They even stopped over Bryggens Museum for almost an hour before going back to Radisson. It was already almost 5:30 pm.
The young man at front desk didn't lie to them, they checked in a much larger room than what he booked a month ago online. Instead of two small bed, a queen size bed was placed in the middle of the room. The city and lake views might be much better than in the one he booked as well.
Though they had traveled in the last 36 hours, most of the time in the last 24 hours were in the cabin on board the ferry and in the restaurants, they didn't feel really tired, actually, they were still very energetic.
"I heard if you want to have a marvelous overview of Bergen, you should go to the top of Mount Floyen. Is it true?" He actually had searched online to find this.
"Yes, I had known it long ago. Tell you the truth, I had come here twice but never went there before because those trips were very short." She implicitly concurred.
"Do you want to go?" He asked but wasn't sure if she was exhausted, "I found that we could take funicular to climb onto the top within 10 minutes."
"Why not?" She of course wanted to go, it actually was one of the must-sees in Bergen, she had been sorry that she'd never done it before. "Let me take a ten minutes break and we can walk to Floibanen, it should be within 10 minutes walk."
They moved across the crowds to locate a spot where they were able to view the entire city, the harbor and even North Sea distantly. They stopped talking even breathing for a while because the scene was so spectacular.
"Do you remember I liked devoting poems to you sometimes in those days?" He was trying to impress her again.
"Certainly, I remember by Malaren at that night, you chanted a Chinese ancient poem to me, I was totally lost but could sense it very touching." She referred to a poem written by a very famous poet in Song Dynasty.
"Yes, it was 'Angel on Magpie Bridge' with rhyme scheme defined in Chinese Middle Ages." He continued, "I actually wrote several for you by myself after leaving Sweden but never had a chance to chant for you later."
"Can you do it now?" She was anxious to listen to them.
"I can't recall exactly now" He sighed, "But I do have taste of writing a sonnet for you now of which you will be able to understand much easier."
"How can you write it here now?" She became very interested and curious.
"Enjoy the view by yourself for 20 minutes, let me type on my cell phone while imaging." He kissed on her cheek slightly, then started sliding into his own world...
After 25 minutes, he patted her shoulder and "singing" to her:
"From the foot of Norwegian Mountain to his top,
The trip slightly took them a couple of minutes.
Up the start on American Flight down her stop,
The journey massively cost us two dozens of years.
I can view Nordic Sun remotely smiles,
He may be happy with our lovely drama.
You can hear North Sea distantly groans,
She may be sad about our painfully trauma.
Are you my pleasant dilemma?
One can be only another's dream.
Am I your honorable stigma?
Another may be still one's problem.
I am on your mind always that handsome Chinese boy,
You are in my eyes forever this beautiful Swedish joy."
His last word wasn't released from his mouth completely, her lips had already covered his...
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