Yesterday the entire world got a slap in the face.
I am staying an extra day here in Bodø, staying with my hosts Tommy and Annelize, who met each other in an online chatroom only a few years ago.
We spent most of the day watching CNN, I chatting with visitors of my website and stayed up to date with the latest news. I read so many different websites today, covering opinions of people all over the world.
This website is absolutely no place to state opinions about other people, other countries and other cultures. Not even by others on the Message board (archived here).
Let’s get ourselves again…
I spent most of the day in the house in Bodø, trying to work on my reports. But emails and very emotional conversations with people all over the world – made it impossible to concentrate on my writings.
Annelize watched CNN as her mother, who’s staying over from South Africa for nine months, made Christmas windows decorations for the Christmas market next month.
In Holland we celebrate Christmas too, on December 25 (first Christmas day) and 26 (second Christmas day), but it not about presents, but more about being together with family and friends during the dark days of December. We share the presents part on December 5, the eve of Saint Nicholas.
When Tommy came home from work, we had spaghetti with South African chutney for dinner.
After dinner Tommy took me out fishing, together with his father, at the famous Saltstraumen (Salt Streams).
Saltstraumen is the location for the world’s strongest tidal current that culminates every 6 hours with great quantities of salt seawater force their way through the 3km long and 150 metres wide strait between the Saltenfjorden, making speeds up to 20 knots.
In conjunction with this whirlpools are formed, reaching proportions of up to 10 metres in diameter and 4 to 5 metres in dept.
If you would swim in it, you would be sucked down all the way to the 40 metres bottom…
The first traces of mankind found here date about 10,000 years back in time, and the reason why these people settled near the Saltstraumen was the overflowing stock of fish and seabirds to be found here.
The burial mounds that have been discovered near Saltstraument emphasize the importance of traffic across the strait during the Iron Age.
For the same reason, many military installations were built along the streams during the World War II to block the Germans in the south and during the Cold War against the Russians from the North.
We were not that lucky with fishing, I only caught things that was not fish or even alive.
When the sun set down, Tommy’s father treated us a cup of coffee in a nearby restaurant, before we headed home.
They both run a family business in -there it is again- growing Christmas plants in greenhouses.
Every once in a while Tommy’s father goes to the world’s biggest auction of flowers and plants in Aalsmeer, the Netherlands, and buys or sells his stock.
The night ended with me communicating with the rest of the world, with CNN on the background as I would soon sleep on the mattress in the livingroom.
Good night Bodø!
Ramon.
