Hi All,
Kirkenes ??????
claim to fame. 7km from Russian border and 37km away from Finland border.
Needs the where the bloody hell are you? campaign...as far away from this place as I can get :-)).
Remember that crappy town in the middle of nowhere that you drove through and thought ´Man the best thing about this town is leaving´. Well we stayed. Only because we didn´t know any better and so did Judith who was stuck there with us for a couple of days.
Judith, another Australian, who also was on the voyage, was heading to Russia and needed to wait for the visa entry date.
We arrived at Kirkines, the ending point of our hurtigruten voyage and we were ready to leave the ship. It had been a wonderful voyage and the ship was brilliant, the staff were so nice and helpful, and aparently the food was good not that we got to eat any of it, but after a week on board we had had enough.
It was about -2 deg C outside. It was a relatively nice day, the puddles were frozen as were some of the larger lakes, and the streets were a little slippery. We got a map from the boat and walked into town and found our hotel.
Well I guess it was a hotel as that is what was written on it but there was no reception so we called on the intercom. A few minutes later the retired owner, not the manager, turned up and fished our keys out of a metal box outside the entrance.
Now this ´hotel´was easily the most expensive on our trip but it probably was only 2 star. It was warm, it had internet, a kitchen upstairs and even though we had booked a room without bathroom we were in a normal room. We didn´t pay any extra so that was good.
Norway and possibly the rest of scandinavia is ridiculously overpriced. The rule of thumb is that everything is twice the price of the rest.
All settled in now what to do for a couple of days. Cost aside we had another problem was that it was Sunday and nothing was open. If it was a wild west town there would have been tumble weed rolling down the main street but the best that Kirkenes could do was a cold breeze.
There seemed to be a few options for keeping ourselves amused. I thought we might be able to go crab fishing but with an asking price of about AUD$200 each it seemed a little expensive. Next option was to get a hire car and go for a drive. Hmmm. Hire car per day was AUD$240 to hire. Hmmm. So things to do in Kirkenes? Go for a walk, look at the museum and go to the reindeer park.
We met up with Judith for tea. She had offered to take us out for tea at the restuarant in her upmarket hotel but we had one look at the price and decided it was way to expendive. That and the ´strips of whale´as one of the choice. So it was our shout or perhaps a way to get rid of another can of our delicious Trondhjems brun lapskaus (we call it dogfood) left over from the voyage. There was an added bonus when we found enough rice in the cupboard in the kitchen for the three of us. Judith brought a bottle of red wine and a couple of beers. Must have been quite expensive as alcohol is heavily taxed in Norway and no doubt elevated in price further by the hotel from where it was purchased.
Was a nice evening and good to have the company. Judith had plenty of interesting stories and even told us how she had walked from one side of england to the other. Something that we wanted to try when in England but chickened out when we saw how often it rained.
The auroral activity was low so unfortunately no aurora to be seen. I kept on looking...
Next day. 30 percent chance of snow.
We three decided to head out to the deer park. Pretty cool at -6 deg C when we started. Got there and it look really crappy so we kept walking and had a nice walk around a couple of lakes into the hills and down again. Most of the trees had been helped by the wind to drop their leaves already but there were some sheltered areas still with the stong autumn colours of yellow, orange and red.
The small lakes were frozen with about an 3cm of ice thickness which we tested in a very unscientific manner with various size rocks.
It was pretty cold on the walk so it was nice to warm up in the museum, have a look around, then back to town. It started to snow later in the afternoon for a while.
Later Judith came around and cooked us a gluten free pasta dish and we provided four cans of flavoured cider to wash it down. Lemon, Lime, Apple and Pomegranate. Interesting.
We said our goodbyes and next day we headed off to the airport for our flight.
Glad to leave this place!!!!!
Bye,
David and Vanessa
