Peace, Love, and Lutefisk: Adventures i Norge

After having the best day of the year on the 17th, last night I enjoyed the best part of the year: Rachel and Danny's pizza fest! It was quite an event. There was over 40 people at the party, and it was the most diverse, interesting, fun, and beautiful group of Norwegian and international people assembled at a party this year.

The party started for me at 6pm when I went to help Rachel and Daniel, who is a Swedish friend who has worked as a baker, start preparing the pizzas. I brought my speakers and soon we were listening to "That's Amore" while we cut vegetables and starting making the dough from scratch. Danny was great at teaching us about making the dough and soon we had almost 2 kilos of dough rising. A little before 8pm our first guest arrived: another guy named Daniel who was appropriately enough from Italy! He told us what it would be like if we were making pizzas in Italy. He said we lacked underwear hanging from the balcony, noise in the streets, and the Napoli accent. But, we did have some great pizzas! Danny started making very thin, very Italian pizzas and soon people were streaming into the party and the queue was quickly formed for the pizzas which were made continuously for 4 straight hours.

I had a great time welcoming people, helping in the kitchen, and meeting lots of new people. It made me very excited to come back to Tromsø to get know all of my new acquaintances better next fall. The best part of the night was that I was on (or maybe it was when a Turkish guy's shirt caught on fire). It was one of those nights when I felt extremely social, comfortable, excited, energetic, flirtatious, and somehow nearly fluent in Norwegian...or at least I felt that way. The beer was tasting good, everyone was laughing, and the sun shined the entire night lighting up Rachel's flat.

After a while I was mixing gin and tonics and trying to learn how to open a bottle with a knife. (I was successful with the former and not the latter.) Eventually Rachel had to kick people out because of the apartment building's curfew, but I think everyone would have stayed all night (it felt like day!) if we could have. We continued the party for a while at a bar, but soon I was headed open with the sun just behind the mountains. I had a smile thinking back on the evening. Great party, great pizza, great people.

When the moon (midnight sun) hits your eye like a big pizza pie that's amore!