Kirkenes Scavenger Hunt

Kirkenes is very close to the Russian border. Many of the street and shop signs are written in Norwegian and Russian.

We set off into town armed with what we thought was an adequate map. We wanted to visit the Borderlands Museum which appeared to be about a 20 minute walk. The first problem was that not all of the streets were labeled. The second problem was that many street names were similar, making it a little harder to distinguish one Norwegian road from another. 

We passed a taxi station, and it occurred to me that we should just get a taxi to the museum, but often when I consider something similar (like asking where a department is, and it’s right in front of me) it appears foolish later. So on we trudged. It was fun to see parts of the town despite the fact that nothing was open except for a gas station. 

We passed an interesting church and the high school but then soon realized we were actually quite far from the museum and since we had limited time, we’d better head back. Taking a different route than the one we took from the ship seemed like a good idea because the first one was a bit convoluted. But when we came upon a graveyard that we could not find on the map, I started to get worried. Still, we persevered and kept walking along the road we thought would take us to the ship. 

Finally in the distance, we saw the black Hurtigruten smokestack - quite a welcoming sight! We also successfully located the cemetery on the map. This better oriented us, and we realized we were a lot closer than we thought. 

Still, walking up the gangway to the toasty inside of the ship was a very happy moment. We had made our own excursion a scavenger hunt of types with difficult to decipher clues in the way of our map. The good part was we saw a lot of the town and that was interesting. Also, we gained many steps which could allow for an afternoon gelato...

Translation - “Speed Bumps”