Peace, Love, and Lutefisk: Adventures i Norge

Have you ever been in one of those, "I want to play pool, tan in the solarium, go bowling, throw darts, and shoot guns at a shooting range all while drinking beer and listening to Top 40 hits" type moods? Well today I was. Typical. Yes, today for the first time in Poland the six of us split up with the four girls going shopping and Stian and I left to our own devices. It took us only 15 minutes to find a pool hall...or what we thought was a pool hall. Really, it was a super-fun center with young attractive women welcoming tough looking men and random Norwegian and American tourists. It all started innocently enough with an hour of pool. but no sooner had we begun to play and drink a beer that we saw it...a shooting range! First of all, it was the most random thing ever, tucked tightly behind the bowling area, which was decorated like a fourth grade classroom with planets and stars on the wall. We finished up two beers each and a few games of pool and headed over to the shooting range. Where else can you drink beer and then play with guns?!

Well, for me I think it was the first time I had held a gun since shooting bb pellets at Phil Peterson's farm in 3rd grade. Stian was more a of pro. We started with a hand gun. The old Polish man with large glasses only knew three english words. The first was "Hello" which he used whenever he wanted to get our attention. The second was "automatic" which Stian was excited about, and the third was "terrorist." That's right, after putting on the ear muffs he gave us the option of the typical target, or a mean looking guy like you would find in old cowboy arcade games that pops up out of the bushes. He quickly informed us that it was terrorist, so naturally we choose the terrorist (have to be practical you know). We each had five shots with the hand gun and I proceeded to hit the terrorist one time out of five...but the time i hit him it was in the heart, so at least i saved the world. We moved on to the rifle, which was not as fun, and then Stian threw down the money for the most expensive gun: the 9mm gun with actual gun powder and bullets (the rest were air powered). We had to have an extra safety lesson which consisted of the old Polish guy talking to a younger Polish guy who then told us "this is a very dangerous gun." With that in mind, we again tried to stop terrorism, and finally discovered that if both of us have 10 shots each, we will definitely save the world.

The rest of the trip pales in comparison to "U7," the name of the fun center we were at...but we've enjoyed great food and drink and have seen the beautifully old (yet recently reconstructed) architecture and today visited the very educational and powerful Solidarity Museum which traces the history of shipyard riots in Poland that eventually helped lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall. A lot of history in Gdansk, and I think today was our history day. Tomorrow we are all getting full body massages. Crazy. the funny part is that there is only one massuse (not sure on the spelling of that word!) so we have appointments from noon until 7pm! After that we are all going to the sauna followed later in the evening with karoke! As you can tell, we are doing well. Off to our 6 person hostel room now. And don't worry, Stian and I will be doing our part to keep this world safe!