Peace, Love, and Lutefisk: Adventures i Norge

The past three days a 37 year old Australian has been sleeping on my couch. Noel, better known as "the couch guy" in our house, has been traveling for seven months, from Singapore to Tromsø. He found me thanks to the greatest tool for travel since AAA: couchsurfing! It is an amazingly simple concept that makes me think of the rules of Greek hospitality I learned in Paideia. Basically, you create a profile on couchsurfing.com. Then, if you travel somewhere you look online to see what couchsurfers live there, and they let you stay for free on their couch, and often take you out, show you a local view of the city, and introduce you to fascinating people...like Noel, who worked in the mines of Australia for two years to get money to travel. Now he is traveling Norway for almost nothing. Plus, thanks to my housemate Jostein, Noel is looking into getting work unloading fishing boats. What a world. So pack up your bags and open up your couch. You never know who you will meet, but if the experience of thousands of people on couchsurfing is any indicator, it will be an adventure!

Although Thanksgiving was totally missing from my life this year, I think I had the next best thing: an early Julebord! Julebord is the traditional Christmas feast, and although Christmas is about a month away, Stian and 19 other friends have an annual tradition of having a Julebord in late November. They figure that they never get to celebrate Christmas with friends because everyone is always at home, so they get together and do the whole shabang, and this year they even invited an American!

The night was very cozy and Christmasy. I felt like it seriously was the 24th of December with a coat hanger decorated as a tree complete with gifts underneath and a Christmas star hanging in the window. We arrived at a girl named Sara's house and enjoyed great conversation while smelling amazing smells coming out of the kitchen. After what seemed like an eternity. The food was ready and we sat down for a traditional meal of ribbe (rib meat), potatoes, sauerkraut, plums, cooked apples, sausage, little cabbages (not sure what they were), and of course, aquavit to help clean the heavy food out of the stomach. There were lots of "Skål!" and a loud din of conversation and passing of food the entire time. At the end of the meal, it was me and the other skinniest guy still working on picking off the last remaining slabs of meat and taking the last of the sauce. So good! It felt great to eat a big meal with friends and to see everyone so happy and dressed up.

After eating and drinking, we began the present opening. We all had the mission to buy 5 useful gifts, each for less than 20 kroner. I went with the hygiene theme and bought toothpaste, dish washing supplies, soap, axe body wash, and soap. We passed around the gifts and everyone showed extreme excitement for each gift that was open. I got a muffin making kit that I already used this morning as well as candles, a small snow globe, English Premiere football cards, and some chocolate. Not a bad haul. I think I'm putting up the Michael Owen star player sticker as soon as possible. Might even be guitar case worthy.

We then cleaned up and enjoing more conversation and some games. Fredick busted out balloon animals from his balloon kit he got as a gift and soon the Yatzee game was out to the approval of all the men at the party.

Finally at about 1am Stian and I headed home with the Christmas spirit. On top of all the Christmas fun, earlier in the day I bought myself the new Sufjan Stevens Christmas album, so now Christmas songs and Christmas joy fill the top of Stakkevollveien 60. It's been a great Christmas already, and to think I have another month of it. How exciting!

God Jul alle sammen.

Today is Rachel's birthday! Marjaana and I helped her celebrate by getting up early and surprising her at a breakfast place this morning. Great fun! The funniest part was getting on the bus at 7.34am. It's been awhile since I've done that, so to get up in the middle of the dark and see all the people half asleep on the bus was quite hilarious. Marjaana and I had way to much energy for bus 42 at that time of the morning.

Also tonight is an open mic at the student bar, so Rachel and I are going to bust out a tune and I'm going to make my rap comeback. My first performance since the smash hit "Sacajawea" rang through the halls of BHS. We'll see how the folks in Tromsø like "Reverse Psychology," a cover of a Bullfrogs song with instrumentation done by me and my mac. Pics and reviews will surely appear online soon.

Happy Thursday!

Two weeks ago I was walking home from the center and I heard this music from an old building and found over 50 Norwegians swing dancing...tonight I joined in the madness!

I called up Elisa, a Spanish friend who is a great dancer, and we both dressed up in appropriate swing attire, me with pinstrip pants and a white shirt and Elisa with a funky skirt with Ché, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe and a black top. We matched quite well. We walked in and just had to laugh...they were basically swing dancing to country music. I felt like I should be back in SD. We joined in the fun though and after about 15 minutes Elisa had learned all the moves I had to offer. We danced alongside mostly older Norwegians who could shake it surprisingly well. We took a break halfway through of course for coffee and cake, and then we were back at it...almost 2 and a half hours of dancing! By the end of the night we were doing lifts and having a great time trying to dodge the dancing Norwegians. It was great to dance up a sweat and find a hidden, random building hiding such a crazy secret...some Norwegians can dance!

I have returned to the dark, and unusually warm metropolis of Tromsø. I had a great few days of travel, but I came home with an unexpected present...a cold! Somewhere between London, Madrid, and Tromsø I found a cold and have been fighting it off alongside Stian who has been going through the same. Friday, I tried the traditional Norwegian cure: tran!

Tran is cod liver oil and is supposed to be taken by Norwegians in every month that has an "R." That's right, add it up. September until April. Tran is very high in omega 3 and vitamins which helps counteract a life without sun and is supposed to give you energy! So, I took a spoonful with a glass of red wine and sudafed. It seemed like the right combination...and I must say, I think I'm recovering quite well, both from the cold and the taste of tran.

In terms of my travels, it's hard to summarize, maybe the photos do a better job. I felt a bit like a blur as I spent only a few days in each place. I had a great time in Spain with friends in the Northwest and with my family in Madrid, both my brother and my Spanish family the Fernandez. It's so great to be able to travel to a new place and be treated just like another kid in the family or another friend. After Spain, i was quite exhausted and my time in Netherlands were enjoyable, but I was quite content to wander, drink coffee, and read the paper at the bagel store. I stayed with a friend from Latvia who I didn't know that well, so that also made it awkward at times, especially after being a part of a family in Spain. I took a trip to Belgium which was a great, unexpected leg of the journey. I was able to meet up with two friends from Luther who work as teachers at an international school, and they were great hosts! I not only had a true Belgian waffle and French fries (which come from Belgium), but also was able to see the town and catch up with some other lutherites. Plus I got to see their int'l school. So interesting. Hundreds of kids from all over the world speaking a variety of languages, but all just being kids. I love the linguistic diversity and hate the lack of socio-economic diversity, but it really makes me want to somehow expose any kids I may someday have to a variety of cultures and languages as young as possible.

And just like that, back to Tromsø and tran. I'm trying to get back in the work mode after a day watching the latest episodes of "Lost" and "Heroes" (a ridiculous show that my Spanish brother Patrick got me into in Spain), so it's time to rest up, drink some tran, and start using that magic fish energy.

A sign is hanging over the stairway asking me: zin in 'n fiesta tlidens je siesta? Of course I had to answer yes. (and I got this great nacho bagel after answering correctly.) Thus is life in the Netherlands.

Yeah, the Netherlands. Craziness huh? I'm currently sitting in a bagel shop called Bagels and Beans looking out over a plaza in The Hague. I've been traveling for a week now, friend hopping, and it's going to continue this afternoon when I head to Brussels to see a few Luther friends. It's great to have friends who love to do crazy, random things like me and not surprisingly, the more I travel, the more people I want to go visit. It really is the only way to travel...so whether it is staying out all night in Santiago, inhaling caulk fumes in a flat in Cambridge, or listening to Grandpa Fernandez read the paper out loud to himself in between naps, adventure always is right around the corner.

So, time to turn the corner and hop on a train to Belgium...the heart of Europe. I'll be back in Tromsø Thursday with more photos and stories i'm sure.

you want to go to a movie, and it's not playing because it didn't make it to town due to bad weather.

That's right! I was very excited to see the new movie "Babel" which was coming for a special premiere in Tromsø, two weeks ahead of the Norwegian opening. I've watched the preview probably 5 times trying to convince other people to share my excitement, but this morning, when Rachel went to get tickets they told her that bad weather prevented the movie from arriving. Apparently the boat from the New World with the movie is lost somewhere in the North Sea. Or maybe it was eaten by one of those dragons on the edge of the world. Either way, no movie today. Just another day of surviving on the frontier.

I got a Euro haircut today from my friend Vibeke. It looks like this:



While at the Nikita salon, I started talking with the woman sitting next to me reading magazines. It turns out that she is an occupational psychologist who helps people deal with stresses in their life. Apparently she has mediation sessions and works on getting in touch with these thoughts in order to overcome them. It was one of the most intense conversations I've had in a long time, and I guess if the thesis gets the best of me, I can go to the free meditation session on Monday evenings. Happy Friday.