A couple of weeks ago, Rachel and I made the horrible mistake of telling an Ole and Lina joke to the Norwegians here. And the worst part was they loved it! They thought it was so hilarious and thought that our Ole and Lina accents were even more hilarious. Needless to say, I ran out of Ole and Lina jokes almost instantly, so at my housemates' request, I am here to ask for any Ole and Lina jokes out there. I know that everyone knows a few so post them here so my housemates and anyone reading this blog can enjoy them. Takk!
One thing that I am constantly amazed by is the Norwegian law of taking off your shoes. Everywhere we go it seems that people are just in their socks indoors. At the elementary school in Alta, at my house, sometimes in class here at the University, at parties, and basically anywhere that is not a bar ellicts some natural instinct in Norwegians to take off their shoes. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with it always being wet and sloppy here in Tromsø, or maybe because of the fact they want to enjoy this "warm" weather while they have it, but it does make life difficult, I mean, it's hard enough to find cool shoes to wear to someone's house, but when you also have to have cool socks to go with it?! Very tough. Fortunately, I think I have found my people here in Norway because white socks are supposedly only worn by hicks in Norway...so my dark green and brown smartwool socks not only keep me warm but also help me fit it! Maybe this is where the tradition of taking off our shoes in our house comes from?
I braved the wind and rain this morning to take a stop at place called "Herre Frisør" basically, a man's haircutter. I saw the sign that said walk-in earlier this weekend and needed a cut so this morning I went right away at 9am and was the first (and only) one. I sat down and was able to maintain a 45 minuter session in Norwegian and haircutting. The only problem was when she asked me how many millimeters I wanted the razor to be...well, I took a guess at 8 mm and went with it. A little short, but it looks alright. I got the full treatment with shampoo and gel totalling out to 280 kroner...about 40 dollars! Well, it was fun and it's short enough now that I won't have to go again for a while.
Today we are studying international law and tonight I have my first Norwegian test in my Norwegian class. On top of that, I've started a Spanish-English class with two Spanish girls and one Peruvian girl. They all want to improve their English and I want to improve my Spanish so it's a good trade off. Language always excites me, so it's great to mix up Norwegian and Spanish in my head and try to sort them out in my mouth!
Hello!
Back from a few days away. I posted 4 new entries so don't be afraid to scroll down and read some older posts that I just got on-line along with a few new pics. Enjoy!
I’m chilling in Alta right now, and like the past couple entries I won’t be able to post this until Friday when I go back to Tromsø, but I thought it now none-the-less because I’m having fun in Alta. That’s right Alta. I thought I couldn’t go further north from Tromsø, but I can…and did. We had a couple of classes rescheduled from Monday and Tuesday so all of a sudden we had 5 days free. I was frantically trying to find somewhere to go, when Rachel, another master’s student from the US and Luther, suggested we go to Alta, which is where she was an exchange student 6 years ago. It was easy to get to and fairly cheap, so we did it! We took a 6 hour bus ride here on Sunday that took us widing around the mountains and on two boat trips through the fjords. We arrived late Sunday at Rachel’s host families’ house. It has been great! A beautiful city and very laid back so I’ve been able to do some reading for class and been able to sleep in and get off of Tromsø island for a bit.
We have had a lot of highlights from the trip and one is our trip to Kautokeino, a Sami town on the tundra of inner, northern Norway. It was a beautiful two hour drive that I got to do! Our host family lent us their car, a fun, zippy, red Toyota Crisas?We started on the road to Kautokeino and when we began it looked like a mini Black Hills. Lots of birch and evergreen covering small mountains with the Alta river following us the whole way. It is quite funny though because the trees this far north don’t very tall, maybe 15-20 feet at most, so when I say mini Black Hills, I mean it literally. As we continued inland, the evergreens gave way to birches as far as the eye could see…it was beautiful. The birches were turning colors so we had a fall drive on a beautifully sunny day. The yellow leaves lead us as the wind got colder and colder. Even though it’s tundra, or vidda as they call it in Norwegian and probably Sami too, there was actually a lot of life. I can’t imagine it in the winter though…just empty, white and dead looking I would guess. After two hours of driving, during which I was never quite sure of the speed limit, we reached Kautokeino, a small, quaint town with typical Norwegian houses clustered together in the midst of the birches. We stopped at Juhl’s Silver Gallery which is a stunning gallery literally in the middle of nowhere. The Juhls began it before there was even a road through the tundra, but now it is a tourist attraction of its own. The Sami, the indigienous people of Norway, have a long tradition of wearing extravegeant silver jewelry in weddings and traditional celebrations, so this gallery builds on that tradition. We spent the rest of the early afternoon poking around the city, and finally headed back after exhausting basically everything Kautokeino had to offer.
I also had a great time visiting some of Rachel’s host family’s relatives where I learned the true way to eat Norwegian waffles. Basically, you make a heap of heart shaped, thin, waffles, serve them cold with strong coffee and a whip cream type concaction called trollkrem (Troll Cream) made out of berries picked from the forests outside of the town. Then, you eat and eat and eat because they go down so easily you never feel full. Besides the grea food, they also had two kids that were in fourth and first grade and we played hard core chess. I learned the Norwegian words for all the chess pieces and also learned that the best way to beat a fourth grader is to lure them with the queen and then put them in check mate. Fun stuff.
Today was also a highlight. We went to the local school and taught the 4th grade English class. Quite exciting! We sang “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes,” and we helped them to learn their body parents in English. I felt like I was back in Tanzania teaching! After teaching we headed to the Alta museum which is home to 6,000 year old rock carvings from my ancestors I guess. It was interesting and gave a good depiction of Norway through the ages. Now I feel like we’ve done all Alta has to offer too, but instead of taking the bus back this time, we’re flying back. 30 minutes versus 6 hours and only 588 kroner, so not a bad deal at all.
Nature has been astounding me during the past 24 hours. Last night at the birthday party I was treated to the first of mother nature’s light shows: the Northern Lights. It was amazing. Green lights danced all around the sky as the crisp wind tried to force us inside. It was especially fun because some people from Oslo were at the party and they were even more ecstatic than we were. They had never seen the Northern Lights and felt that they had now had the true Northern Norwegian experience. I thought that it was a one time show, but today I was pleasantly surprised. It was of course, a rainy day in Tromsø, and during one of the breaks in the rain, I looked outside and there, only 200 meters away in the channel of water between Tromsø island and the mainland was a nearly full rainbow. It was bright, thick, and looked as if I could almost touch it. To top it off, (for better or worse), more snow has fallen on the crest of the mountains around tromsø. It seems apparent that the snow line will continue to creep towards us…at least our fate looks beautiful as it approaches.
Going to the Pool Hall After School and That's Trouble
0 comments Another adventure for Scott D. Meyer at 8:10 AMWent out tonight to the pool hall! Sounds like something out of The Music Man. There was bowling and pool tables and we paid 80 kroner for an hour of pool playing. And it was packed! Who would have thought that Saturday night was the big night for pool playing. The best part of the evening was learning that the bridge in pool is called a crab or shrimp in Norwegian. Funny stuff. Now we are back in the basement sitting around while Stien, Teresa, and Marjaana read my Norway and Scandinavian Europe Lonely Planet Guide books. They are having fun reading what others have to say about their homes and are amazed that their small home towns made the book. They are now laughing at how the Lonely Planet says that if Norway had a national drink it would be coffee and one must be astounded . Norway’s view of alcohol borders paranoia and is similar to prohibition in some cities. Nearly 70% of Norwegians have blue eyes. Some of the Norway’s cities do provide some semblance of nightlife. Fun to have a guide of the guide.
I’m in my pajamas and just enjoyed a TV show that typifies the Norway that I have experienced: 71 Degrees Nord. This is Norway’s most popular reality TV show and it is an interesting mix of Survivor and Amazing Race. There are 15 contestants and they start in the Southern tip of Norway and their goal is to go to the Northern most point of Norway: Hammerfest, which appropriately enough is located at 71 Degrees North. Today was the first episode when they start their adventure, and in line with the soscialist/help everyone nature of Norwegian culture, the contestants do not compete against each other. Instead, as a group, they must get to their destination in a certain amount in order to receive their food money. It makes it interesting as everyone is trying to hurry but has to wait for the slower people. Today they started by hiking 80 km and then rowing a boat around the Southeast of Norway towards Oslo. Then they took a train to a town a little bit South of Oslo, from which they had to kayak into the waterfront in Oslo. A very fitness oriented/outdoorsy show much like most Norwegians! When in Oslo, the show finally turned competitive when they did a small challenge to determine who had immunity. Maybe showing that deep down Norwegians too ultimately want to look out for themselves. Then, when it was time to vote, they did not have a vote like in most American reality shows when people had to choose one person to kick off; instead, they kept with the Norwegian way of voting by having a list of all 15 candidates. They then make a list with the people they want to keep most on top and the people they want to kick off the most on the bottom. Then the person with the least number of points is kicked off. It reminded me so much of the Norwegian way of voting for a party instead of a person during the elections and then every party getting the percentage of their votes in seats.
My girlfriend Alison (standing in front of my new house in this picture) came to visit me for 9 days, and we had a great time together! There are lots of pictures of our adventures (see link to the right), and she just forwarded me a copy of an e-mail she sent to my mom describing Tromsø. So, I thought it would be fun for you to hear about Tromsø from a different point of view. Here's Alison:
The first thing we did when Scott picked me up from the airport was drop off most of my stuff in his old room, where he had collected many many shells from the beaches near Tromso and used them to spell out the world "Vilkommen" on his desk, a gesture that really did make me feel so warm and welcomed there. As soon as I unpacked and repacked to head to Finnkroken, we took the bus down to the Sentrum of Tromso and picked up some groceries for the weekend... our big experiment was Norway's frozen pizza, "Grandiosa," which is only about 20 kroner for a large pizza, and according to Scott's housemate Teresa, is a major staple in the diets of college students in Norway. But when we got to Finnkroken, we discovered that we had a stove, but no oven in which to cook the pizza! So we ended up cutting the frozen pizza in quarters, folding the pieces, and then frying them on a burner to eat them panini-style! It actually was pretty good, I thought, if not a little bit silly.
I think Finnkroken has a lot of my favorite memories from the trip. It was just so peaceful, and we had so much time to talk and cook and sing together (Scott brought his guitar), and just enjoy each other's company. We took a walk on Saturday (the berry pictures on his blog site are from the walk), and found a swing back behind our cabin, which was really fun--I jumped on immediately and began to swing--there are pictures of that on his site too. You'll notice, however, that there aren't any pictures of Scott swinging--that's because when he tried to jump on he never quite made it, and ended up holding on to the rope and sliding to the ground with a yell instead! He was fine of course, but I was too busy chuckling with him at the mishap to snap a picture. :)
All of Scott's housemates are incredibly lively, fun, and interesting people. Teresa, who is Norwegian, but whose parents are from India, and whose English is very fast and British because she studied in England for three years, caught my attention very fast. She's incredibly funny with a quick tongue and opinionated political sentiments. She had a lot of questions about the United States and the Midwest in general, and it was fun for me and Scott to try to explain the differences between the states and regions of our country. Stian, another norwegian Scott is living with, is also very political oriented, and had a lot of questions too. He's kind of quiet, but has a pretty distinct quirkiness to his personality; has a pretty dry humor but is a warm and caring person. I don't know if he's Paul Myklebust material for Scott but they get along really well, and I think the house as a whole will be a great family-like community for Scott to spend his time with. I think it was a really good decision for him to move to the house. It's just such a warmer atmosphere. I think it will help him in stressful times, and when it gets so much darker there, too, to have people around all the time.
Wednesday night, since Scott wouldn't let me help to pay for our Finnkroken excursion, I insisted on treating him out to a meal at a fancy restaurant in downtown Tromso. We went to a biffhausen (Beef House) and the food was absolutely delicious (when you go back, I definitely recommend it). We both had steak and potatoes, but Scott had a kabob with a stuffed baked potato, and I had peppersteak with cheesy scalloped potatoes. We each also had a glass of wine, and the meal lasted a good two hours, with good conversation and a lovely atmosphere. It's definitely one of my favorite memories of the week.
In addition to having good meals out, we also cooked a lot in the house, and I taught Scott my big cooking "secret"--that I pretty much put garlic in onion in everything that it will taste good. So we had spaghetti with tomato sauce (which had garlic and onion in it), and when we made chicken curry for the rest of the house, we started by frying up some onions and garlic, of course! I also taught him how to make my favorite potato dish, which is just potatos fried in butter or oil with garlic and onion! *chuckle* It's really simple of course but Scott really liked them, and I was happy to pass on my "wisdom" and help him discover another easy meal to make for himself.
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Take care! All the best,
Alison
I'm sitting in class right now during a break...we are talking with Roy Bhaskar about critical realism, basically a lot of philosophy about how we can look at the social world and problems of peace, conflict, being, and other fun stuff.
I don't really know where to start. I don't have internet yet in my new house so the posts have been sporadic, but Alison left yesterday, the rain is coming down hard today, and I watched TV for four hours yesterday late morning which included, in this order: Bonanza, Will and Grace, Lassie, and the Bachelor. Wow, what a line up! I have to admit it's my first time actually watching an entire episode of Bonanza or Lassie. It's funny though because we just have the basic channels which is quite typical in Norway...so it is a new experience to just sit and watch one of four channels...and since our tv doesn't have a remote we pretty much keep it on one channel. A lot like prison actually!
The other funny phenomena is the varmeskap. It is literally translated as a warm closet and is a large closet where clothes are hung and when the door is shut, warm air is supposed to circulate in the oven-like closet and dry the clothes. Well, Alison and I tried this, but after 8 hours of waiting for the clothes to dry, we realized that the clothes just hanging on the drying rack in the middle of the basement were actually dryer. Good idea, bad performance.
Speaking of bad performance, Alison and I were all psyched to go on a brewery tour of the Mack brewery, the self-proclaimed "Northern Most Brewery in the World." But, as we found out, they must only have one guide because when we arrived, we were informed that the guide was sick and there wouldn't be any tours the rest of the week. So, instead we headed to Polaria, the polar museum where we saw bearded seals and got to dress up like arctic explorers. Exciting stuff.
Well, off now for a lecture from a professor from England named Rob Walker. We'll be learning about early modern state building. Good stuff. Seinere (later) fra Norge.
New pics are up! If you want to check them out click the link on the right. enjoy!
