My first trip to Scandinavia was a little different than most, I arrived on board a submarine back in 1979. The USS Finback SSN670 to be exact, we were there to do a port visit at Bergen, Norway. We had a great time the people were all so friendly. I visited Evard Grieg’s home, a Stave Church and the old water front.
Bergen is the cleanest city I have ever been too. One of the best meals I ever had was at a little place on the second floor near the water front-Veal Oscar and fresh asparagus. The evenings we spent at the junior officer club drinking beer with the local sailors. One of our guys had a guitar and some of us knew most of the words to a bunch of Roger Miller songs, we sang and they bought us beers.
We received a challenge to a basket ball game from the local naval sports group. It sounded like a lot of fun, so we got five guys together. Two had played junior varsity in high school, one had played at junior college, one on an intramural team at the Naval Academy, and I who had only played in gym class. We had all been at sea for over four months, but we figured we had an edge since basketball is an American game. We played, they won-easily. They could have run the score up, but they didn’t. After the game was over, we found out we were playing four of the Norwegian Olympic team and a coach. It’s been a great memory.
