Thursday, 1/17 -- Bodo, home of the U-2

We arrived in Bodo about 1PM, having sailed all day and all night and all morning.  Norway is LONG from south to north.

It's also far enough north that our town tour, starting at 4PM, was entirely in darkness.  The town was hard-hit as the Germans pulled back toward the end of WWII, emulating Sherman's march to the sea and burning everything in sight (except, usually, the churches).  There is quite a large section of town that was built after the war from lumber sent from Sweden, the homes look quite similar.  What a generous donation!

There's a cathedral and an ancient white church, and the remains of a fort on a high overlook.  (I lost my footing on the way down the steep snow-covered slope and wound up just pushing myself down to level ground, where anxious Viking staff were more than happy to help me to my feet.  In a weird way, kind of fun ... haven't sledded down a hill in a very long time!)

Did we mention it's DARK all the time??

The big deal story here, though, is military air presence.  This was the airport Gary Powers was returning to when he was shot down over Khrushchev's USSR.  For those too young to have read that in the newspaper, it was quite a showdown during the height of the "Cold War."  We are all lucky it never got hot; the threat was to vaporize Bodo with an atom bomb.  Things turned out better, happily, but the town remembers the threat vividly.  The U-2 plane itself (no, not the famous rock group) is displayed in the local Air Museum.

Back to the boat, we push off late in the evening.