Peace, Love, and Lutefisk: Adventures i Norge

I finally have a moment with internet so I am excited to write and say hi and that I made it to Switzerland! It was an eventful trip but it ended up working pretty well.

A friend from Oslo, Richard, picked me up from the airport in Oslo and I spent the night at their house which was beautiful. Lots of trees, Norwegian food and cheese, and a bed to crash on. They even took me to the airport the next morning for my flight. And, when I got on the plane I recognized this guy and girl. After we hit 30,000 ft. I walked back in the plane and sat down by them and started talking, and it turned out that it was the guy in charge of Bergen ultimate frisbee whom i had met when I went to an indoor frisbee tournament in Oslo last spring. He and his wife were going to an ultimate frisbee wedding of an ultimate player from italy in italy. pretty cool! so we talked a long time and we started sharing some ideas about ultimate in Tromsø. Basically, he is in the Norwegian sports organization which can give me a bunch of money if I can get a group of people playing. I might try to start a team at least once a week and go down to Oslo for one tournament in Dec and the one we went to. So, we'll see!

But I landed in Milano and John and I walked around there for the afternoon which was alright. Kind of just a big city. But we did see the fashion district with a ton of high class stores all along this huge block. There were men and women all in black waiting at every door to open the door for you. Pretty posh! We took the hour and a half train back to Lugano and went out that night to a city concert that was in the plaza downtown. We heard some good blues music and had some great wine and pasta!

Yesterday was fun. We got up and went to a town about an hour north in the mountains. There they were having a beach ultimate frisbee tournament! There is a river and next to one part of the river is a beach area where there is enough room for one field. It was gorgeous. You could see vineyards on the mountains surrounding us and a little swimming hole with lots of beautiful Swiss people jumping off of rocks into the water and sunning on the rocks. There were even a few topless Swiss women tanning unbashfully. We didn't get to play, but we met a lot of people that will be good contacts for John and will hopefully find him a team he can play with.

Today we've been chilling in town. I helped John move in a little more and we did a major grocery run so he has some food. Lugano is a beautiful town that reminds me a lot of Bergen, Norway with green mountains with houses dotting the slopes and a big body of water cutting through the mountains. Plus, it's pretty small and quaint and it feels safe, so I think John feels comfortable here. A good place to study and enjoy a new culture. And that's one thing that has surprised me, is the amount of Italian John will have to know to get by. Since English is the fourth language here after Italian, German, and French, very few people speak it. So I think John will be doing a lot of pointing and hopefully a lot of learning throughout his time in Lugano.

It's been good to be here with him a little bit. Now he's at class so I'm at his library finally checking the internet. He is supposed to have wireless access in his common room of his dorm, but it's pretty spotty. i'd say it works maybe 10% of the time, and i get way to click happy to actually read anything. But I think it's good because it will force him to get off the internet and out into the culture (I should work on that too).

Tonight he is having a meeting with a few of his study abroad compatriots who are also keen on traveling. They are getting together to try to gather information on the best places to travel and hopefully plan trips together. They are already planning on perhaps going to Amsterdam this weekend, so John has the opportunity to do that, and he also was asked to play at the Swiss Ultimate Frisbee National Championship game this weekend in Bern, Swtizerland. Pretty cool choices! I'll be sticking around until Wednesday morning when I head back to Norway and back to the academic life. In the meantime, I'm going to soak up this Southern European weather (in the 90's today with a ton of sun) and eat as much food and drink as much wine as possible!

Ciao from Franklin College in Lugano, Switzerland!