Confusion with Norwegians

Hello, dear readers of the Öckerö Seglande Gymnasieskolan blog. We are right now in the cloudy city of Lerwick, the capital city of the Shetland islands. That’s if you can call it a city. We have been here since Monday and I think I have been in every store in the entire town.

Today I woke up at 6:30 am because I had ship watch for an hour. After the morning assemble I went to bed again.

I got woken up at lunch time with a steaming hot chili con carne served at the table. That’s what I call luxury! 😋

On the agenda today we had planned to give the public pool a shot. It was very small but still very nice. It had two waterslides and we competed on who could get down the fastest. They also had saunas. We sat till the other men in there had left so we felt a bit superior to them. But they were actually very nice and we got to talk to them a little about Shetland. Though, they did confuse us with Norwegians because coincidentally the school ship Sørlandet is also in this harbor.

That leads me to my next activity of the day: we got to visit Sørlandet! We got a tour from one of the crew members. It was really interesting to see because it is similar but also very different from Gunilla. Obviously they have a lot more money then we do because the students pay up to 60 000 USD for ten months of sailing. But the ship does come with its disadvantages. Apparently they sleep in hammocks in one shared room, just a curtain that divides the boys from the girls. They also take their phones when out at sea and they don’t have any WiFi at all. So I think we all got a little reality check on how good we really have it on Gunilla, even though it’s a communal tall ship.

None of the 72 students were on Sørlandet when we visited. But that’s because basically all of them were on Gunilla. When we got back for dinner the whole of the downstairs floor was filled with strangers. They were really friendly and compared Gunilla with a cruise ship. Then we ate a wonderful dinner consisting of pork, mushroom sauce and potatoes. Now I’m sitting and eating snacks with my friends before we go to bed.

Thank you so much for reading my blog today! I hope you had a wonderful day in Sweden or wherever you are in the world!

Good night!

Lova A