We arrived in Sortland before the KONG HARALD. As usual, it was raining.
Every now and then the rain let up a little, but the sun did not appear.
At the quay we looked for a good place to watch the KONG HARALD coming in.
By now, a bunch of passengers had gathered and wanted to get on the ship.
I couldn’t believe my eyes, Uncle Heinz was actually standing there waving a Norwegian flag. All those who have travelled with the Hurtigruten and know him as a tour guide can understand my enthusiasm. I think he speaks 7 languages fluently, was born in Switzerland and came to Norway because of love. He is simply a cult figure on the Hurtigruten. 😊. Even German television once accompanied him on a trip with the KONG HARALD and made a nice documentary about it.
We both zoomed in as best we could with our cameras. I am very happy with Eva’s picture. 😊
Afterwards I took out my mobile phone and wrote to my Instagram friend that I was standing in front of the KONG HARALD and how cool it was that Uncle Heinz was waving a Norwegian flag. I don’t know if he understood everything, because I was so excited that I wrote German, English and Norwegian all mixed up and probably with typos. 😊
This was followed by detailed photos of the KONG HARALD.
“Who was the captain with you? Do you remember?” asked Eva.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Come on, let’s go and see who the captain is. There’s a photo wall at the bottom of the entrance. Maybe we’ll find your nice Instagram friend on it,” she said and grinned.
The nice lady at the gangway explained to us that there was no photo wall today, but told us the name of the captain. It wasn’t the same as mine. My Instagram friend was busy loading. We thanked him politely and went back to the entrance roof. By now it was raining more. We watched the loading and unloading and waited for the ship to leave.
As we walked to the car, we both agreed that it had been a shame that my Instagram friend hadn’t even waved. Sure, he had to work, but he should have been able to give a quick wave.
“Too bad you didn’t wave,” was my message to him.
We decided to go to the hotel and think about what we wanted to do on this rainy day.