Norway Part 3 - Fjord Explorer in Magical Realism

August 2021, we were on a ship in the middle of a Fjord in Norway. I had been pulled aside from the group and was standing outdoors on the front top deck, barefoot in a bathrobe, bathing suit, knitted cap, and a paper surgical mask. The producers told me I had tested positive for COVID and they were trying to figure out what to do.

I was completely flabbergasted…this was a year and a half ago and kind of a different time with things still not entirely re-opened and Norway still closed for tourism. I had no idea how I had managed to test positive twice in less than 30 days with 6+ negative tests of different types/labs in between. I didn’t feel sick and I wondered if it was somehow a residual positive from when I had COVID in Russia the month prior? I had no idea, and still don’t.

After 10 minutes or so A came out, asking what was happening. Production tried to stop him from coming out but he insisted and put on a mask too. They seemed to be at a loss for what to do next, since apparently we were not even supposed to be on the boat and now had been interacting with everyone at close range for 8+ hours. I reminded them I had had COVID a few weeks ago and had the certificate of recovery which I’d used to get out of Russia at the time, and the CDC, again at the time, said was valid for at least 90 days. They asked me to email my certificate of recovery along with my vaccination record and original positive test result. They seemed hopeful that the Norwegian government would accept this as proof it was not a new case and that I wasn’t contagious, but it was now after business hours so they couldn’t get ahold of anyone from the government to confirm for sure. The rest of the group was still in the “saloon” and I could hear them laughing and that same person screaming that she wanted to go swimming, why couldn’t they go swimming.

So we waited, barefoot, outdoors in bathrobes. It was around 8pm and the sun was still bright but the air was chilly. The captain came out and spoke with us some more but after a while it became clear that nothing was going to get approved after hours, so they said the new plan was that I would go back to the hotel and wait for direction. Once that was decided, the showrunner asked me to take off my mask and say that I wasn’t feeling well and wanted to get off the boat so the cameras could record it, but I refused, saying it wasn’t true. She then asked me to say I’d had a family emergency and needed to leave but I refused that too. At that point she got really nasty and manipulative trying to convince me to say different things that were not true but I didn’t feel comfortable lying on camera so didn’t budge.

They also didn’t want A to go with me, but he insisted, because he is an amazing human. We went back to our cabin, put on real clothes, repacked our cases and brought them up. The captain was afraid that his crew might somehow get COVID from touching our suitcases (strange since we had been interacting with them at close range for hours at that point) so we hauled our own stuff onto the tender and then onto the support boat, Fjord Explorer. (This name was possibly the best part of the whole day.) It was raining at this point but we had to stay outside on the deck so as not to infect the boat driver. I felt like Typhoid Mary.

Without any direction we were dropped off at the dock in the middle of Alesund. We had no idea if we were supposed to walk back to the hotel on our own, or what, especially since I was possibly contagious? We waited a while and then texted a few of the producers, who finally told us there was supposed to be a car waiting for us to take us to the hotel. We finally found a very pierced and tattooed lady smoking a cigarette outside a van, and asked her if she was there for us. She said: “No, I’m supposed to pick up some sick people” and we laughed and said “Yeah, I think that’s us.”

We were brought to a different hotel, not as nice, where the case and production team were also staying, because it was also a full quarantine hotel (apparently the one we’d been in before was just a “light” quarantine hotel.) The manager met us in the lobby, checked us in, took us to our room and brought us dinner. The rest of our group was WhatsApp’ing us asking what was happening but I was drained and didn’t feel like dealing with them so we just went to sleep.

Last updated February 08, 2023