So, I'm on a tour bus in Bergen and our guide is prattling on about this or that. She has a peculiar way of saying OnTheLeftHandSide or OnTheRightHandSide all run together with perfect clarity - right before dropping her voice so she becomes unintelligible.
Then she'll surge back into my audible range with a painfully earnest IsItOkay? punctuated with a smile you can hear. We'd all given up on listening for detail - so a busload of tourists would nod in unison.
At some point her singsong voice skips out the words war and Germany - and there is mention of a building that is OnTheLeftHandSide. As her perspective shifts from her left to our left - I haven't the foggiest idea which direction I'm supposed to look.
Not that I know what she's even talking about.
I've been snapping pictures at random - so has Mom - and I figure we may have a picture that will make it make sense. She mentioned naval and symbol which ties with the fact that Bergen is a huge port. In any event, whatever it was is long behind us by the time we start to compare notes.
-------
One thing that struck me about Norway - at least in contrast to the UK or the US - there are no war memorials. Which of course is an exaggeration. Yes; surely there are some - somewhere. But wherever they are, they are certainly not front and center. All the statues you see are of musicians, poets, leaders of the fishing guild (seriously). No soliders, no plugged up cannons - not even a plaque. Compare this with a recent side jaunt we took into a town here in the US. A WWII tank displayed on the main road, a WWI cannon in the town square, and civil war monuments graven into the side of their courthouse. This was in a town of barely 10,000.
Bergen has over a quarter of a million people.
Admittedly, Norway was out of the fight pretty early in WWII. There are some truly amazing stories of the resistance - and the odd espionage adventure - but Norway has no Omaha beach. I read somewhere that after the war, the Norwegians located the German cruiser they sunk (the Blücher). They then salvaged the oil from its fuel tanks and cut up the ship for scrap - and sold it. Eminently practical these Norwegians - in contrast with how Americans reverentially allow the USS Arizona to leak oil into Pearl Harbor to this very day.
-------
In any event - up until that muted mention by our guide - there had been no signs of the war. And I was curious what she had meant.
When we stopped for some other photo op (digital cameras have turned tourists into snap happy maniacs - but the truth is volume pays off) I cornered the guide and asked about what she was trying to point out.
I showed her my photographic guess: a grey, ugly building with odd stone sculptures under each window that vaguely resembled eagles. "Is this what you meant?"
The guide shook her head. NoNoNo. The yellow building. It was built by the Germans... I hop through a few of my surrounding snaps - no yellow building.
German, AND yellow. Well, sorry I missed that.
Lots to see and do, that was the last I thought of it. Then after we get back, mom and I exchange pictures and I see this:
A yellow building in Bergen - was it the German one? Pastel yellow buildings in Bergen are like Starbucks in the US. Unless there's some plaque I can see in the picture...
I zoom in with photoshop. Nothing visible by the door - but with this resolution, it's not like I could read it.
I need a sign.
Then I zoom on the window balcony:
And there it is. German Naval Headquarters in Bergen, circa WWII.
The Norwegians will hoist a sunken battlecruiser off the bottom of their fjord for salvage - but the swastika-laced ironwork of their conquerors is preserved for all to see.
Lest anyone forget.
A very different kind of war memorial - and the only one I saw in Norway.
No comments:
Post a Comment