On Friday me, Hans Olav, Frida and a interesting collection of other people took the M/S Color Festival to Denmark to celebrate Bente’s 30th birthday. To be technically correct, we never did get off the boat, it was merely somewhere out of the ordinary to party.

The ferries from Norway to Denmark are usually a place of gathering for drunk people in their late forties, spiced up with the odd family with young children who wonder how the hell they ended up on the boat. Our co-travelers on Friday were no exception. Some of them were fucked up beyond all repair even before they were allowed to enter the ferry and started to pull off each other’s pants. For a second it looked like we might have accidently bought tickets for a gay swingers cruise.

Thankfully, that was not the case. After boarding, we hit the buffet, which comes highly recommended, had a great dinner and went to the tax-free store for some refreshments. I ended up with some good old Elephant Beer. If you ever decide to try this beer, make sure that it’s served cool, preferably as close to ice as you can come without having to use an ice pick, and that you warm up with some other brand before you start drinking from the Elephant. Even though I’m familiar with the beer, I did neither, and ended up drinking temperate Elephant Beer and nothing else that night.

But apart from the minor beer disaster and some terrible sights on the dance floor - imagine your mother in a all-too-small mini skirt dancing to eighties covers performed by a Lithuanian band - I had a great time.

The vessel is operated by the Norwegian cruise ferry line Color Line. I’m pretty sure the people who came up with the name knew what it actually means:

Main Entry: color bar

Function: noun

a barrier preventing persons of color from participating with whites in various activities - called also color line

Interesting.