Wild Wild Life

First let me say that I started this week being attacked (dive bombed and strafed) by some species of small gull.   I haven't consulted my Sibley's yet, but it might actually be some type of Northern tern.  In any case, they were sleek, mostly white, and apparently angry at me because the veranda that I was standing on and grilling (my veranda) had been claimed by them for their summer nest, I think.  They started with loud warning screeches and then commenced to systematically take high speed runs at my head.  Knowing that a bird that size weighed less than a kilo and that an actually collision with my noggin would be much more catastrophic to the bird, I was not much phased by the attack (hehe... try getting the garden shear-like beak of a parrot bite off of your finger sometime!).    When I started waving my arms, snapping my tongs, and whooping back at them, I think they decided that this crazy primate was not responding appropriately to their little threat display and moved on.

Earlier this month, as the weather warmed up for a few days, I kept hearing this loud buzzing sound in the house.   I discovered that a large wasp had gotten into the house and was lazily flying around the room trying to find a way out.   Well, I opened the veranda door and tried to "herd" it out, but I think I eventually triggered it's defensive instinct, and it started coming after me rather than flying away.  Unfortunately, I had to invoke my natural right to self-defense (but on the up side, it was a tasty free meal for Carlos.... more on this later).    Well, no sooner than I had disposed of the first body, I noticed another wasp was in the house.   Then, later, a third!   I thought that perhaps wasps had made some kind of nest in an air vent or interstitial space, but after observing the local bees and wasps for a while, I think I have figured out that they seem to instinctively land and fly into small openings in the walls (or indeed anywhere).   I watched them repeatedly land and crawl expeditiously into small cracks in the exterior wall, into utility boxes with exposed conduit openings, and even my barbecue grill which has a small vent hole in the side.   

Marine biology, and especially malacology, is a field of special interest to me, so after the first rain, I was excited to see my first European snails which are very small with yellow shells.   I was told that there was another larger variety of gastropod, but I have yet to see those.   

For the record, the fjords, though fed by countless freshwater tributaries, are in fact salt-water and should more aptly be thought of as large inlets or bays, than wide river canyons (which is what they tend to look like).    They are glacially cut and extremely deep, a kilometre or more in some places.   There is this place in town called Ravnkloa (Raven Claw for you Harry Potter fans) down by the waterfront where the fish market stands and where fishermen traditionally bring their fresh catch to be sold right off the boats on the dock.  Yum!    I have found it an enjoyable exercise to go see what types of fish they bring in from the cold depths.  It is mostly shiny black-grey cod and halibut, but there are also some interesting odds and ends that I cannot readily identify.   There is some kind of skate which I did not know was edible, and some type of large red fish similar to a lingcod.   Salmon of course.  I have learned that Norwegians eschew eel, finding them "disgusting" for some reason.   

Norwegians are dog people.   They have dogs of every breed from Afghan hounds and St. Bernards to toy poodles and rat-sized chihuahuas who are freezing their butts off up far this north.   I have seen a greater variety of dogs here than in the U.S. even.... akitas, borzhois, greyhounds, pugs and whippets. There are far more dogs here than cats as far as I can tell.   They are out in the city on  a leash by the hundreds, and the public trash cans, like at bus stops, are just piled high with little black plastic bags of poop.   Surprisingly, dogs are permitted to ride the bus if their fare is paid (by the owner.... since as Seinfeld points out, dogs have no pockets to carry change).   

There is a VERY interesting thing about dogs here.   They behave quite differently from dogs in the United States.   It is hard to precisely articulate, but they seem more.....    civilized and inured to human activity.   For example, if you are walking along on a sidewalk and are passing a fenced yard with a dog in it.  What would you expect?   First the dog probably would have barked when you were halfway down the block... then it would probably run to the edge of the fence in a territorial display and bark and follow you until you had completely passed it's yard.  But in Norway.... no.    Maybe  I have just encountered some really well-disciplined (or severely unmotivated) dogs, but from my experience, they just sit there, calmly, give you a good stare down, and... quietly watch you pass.  They mind their own business.  Just like the Norwegian people.  Dogs sitting in cars in front of stores, don't bark.   Dogs on a leash passing you on the sidewalk do not even give you a passing glance.   In fact, the first time that I heard a dog bark in Norway was when a dog encountered another dog in a public park and was playfully trying to initiate some playful behaviour.   

My newest neighbour is a badger that lives in my backyard.   I have never before seen a live badger before and I only know them from reputation and Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.  They are supposed to be voracious omnivores in the weasel family, I think.   Interestingly, the neighbour has a Dachshund, a breed, I believe that was designed to hunt badgers.   What I can say about the Dachsund is that it is lightning fast which is something that I never expected to say about that breed.    It will zip through our backyard like a low slung blur presumably chasing the badger.  

Speaking of speed.... I thought it was just my imagination at first, but I think I have pretty much confirmed now....   dipterans here (single wing paired flies and mosquitoes) are slower than in the United States.  Do you know how you can swat at or sweep the air at a fly or mosquito and most of the time you know it is pointless?  most of the time you just expect to miss? (except in Alaska where the mosquitoes are so thick that you can hit a whole hand full of them at once).   Well, in Norway, one can actually hit a fly or mosquito a high percentage of the time!   Perhaps because it is colder, or they have not evolved in the Old World to avoid human swattage, but I have stunned many flies and mosquitoes here already who were as surprised as I was.   I have been feeding them (alive) to a spider that lives on my veranda.

Arachnids here are not particularly large and seem to be of a monochromatic variety (either solid grey, brown, or yellow).   I have not seen one that exceeded a total of 1 cm from front legs to rear legs.   Some do spin those classic radial orb webs though.

What are large are the ants!  Except in the deserts of the American Southwest and the jungles of Central America, I have not seen an ant species so enormous.   At first I thought it was some kind of coleopteran with odd proportions, but when I got closer it was a formicidean that was nearly 2 cm in total length.   It moved pretty slowly, thank goodness, but had irregular jerky movements with frequent stops.   These big ants did not seem to follow the traditional trails (the behaviour that I associate with ants) but rather, seemed to scatter radially and randomly from the hive-hole.  They are tenacious and extremely durable, I can attest, as I have accidentally trod on one before, and rather than being traumatically compressed, it seems to shake it off and hobble off with a slight limp.   I just hope I don't get an infestation of these bad boys.

I think that even the mycology around here is different, that is, the bacteriological life.   I have noticed that the rates of decay are different and even the smell of garbage is noticeably different.   When I left California, it was the height of the allergy season and I was suffering terribly (runny nose, itchy eyes, sneezing, wheezing, sinus headaches) but from the moment I stepped off the plane, my symptoms have completely cleared up.  Not a sniffle or a sneeze.   It was like a switch was turned off.   So apparently I have been exposed to a whole new alien set of allergens that I am currently not reacting to.   I wonder if, like the Aztecs, there are things that I have no natural defense for.  Something distinctly European.  Like  bubonic plague.

When You Gotta Go

On a somewhat related note, I thought I would just segue into a related topic that I always find endlessly fascinating when visiting far off lands.    Everybody has different facilities and procedures for this common human activity, that is, going to the restroom and in my travels I have encountered some surprisingly varied ways of doing it.  Norway, though a modern western country,  is no exception.

The basic plumbing is the same, a flush toilet, but the configuration and the set up of the typical restroom is different with different emphases.

First, there seems to be far less of a big deal made about gender division here.   In other words, I have encountered more toilets that are uni-sex, and even in the segregated "men's" room, the cleaning staff may be of either gender.   It startled me a few times, thinking I had inadvertantly walked into the wrong restroom, but I soon got into the European spirit of things.

Norwegians (and indeed Europeans in general) do not seem to have any compunctions about oddly shaped restrooms either.   They will with fair frequency squeeze their water closets in any spare space in the building:   What I am saying is that don't expect your restroom to be square or rectangular.   I have been in triangle shaped rooms, trapezoids, rhombii, semi-circular pie wedges, and 4 metre long runways. 

I guess that is the thing.   Many restrooms are actually separate little rooms instead of a larger common room with cubicles or stalls in them.   Those that have stalls are of this floor to ceiling variety made of coloured laminated particle board with aluminum frame.   

Facilities vary, but once you enter your room or stall, you are generally in a private sanctum all your own.   There is the standard toilet, a sink, disinfecting soap, a garbage can, and a hand drying system of some kind, but there is also a heater with a thermostat that you can adjust.   There are often hooks and shelves for your coat, jacket or backpack.  Stalls also often have a fire alarm siren so that you are not left out of the loop in the event of a fire while you're doing your business.

Sometimes these rooms are quite large.... large enough to lay out a sleeping bag and sleep in.   It occurred to me that they can be virtually a mini-hostel (except for the fact that some public restrooms use a UV lamp to keep the riff raff from hanging out inside).

One thing that there is NOT are toilet seat covers.   That is just not an amenity that is provided, in general.  

On the toilet there are generally two buttons.   Some are cleverly designed as a full circle and a quarter circle within the full circle, i.e.  a full moon and a quarter moon.   The smaller moon segment is for a low volume flush, and the bigger moon segment is for the full monty.    Some older toilets have just a single knob on top of the tank.   I eventually figured out that you must pull the knob upward.  I have been to some very fascinating old restrooms too, like circa pre-WWII, with old pull handles on chains and porcelain trough latrines that look like something from the Victorian era.

An interesting thing about home bathrooms is that they seem to have a central floor drain.  In other words, when you take a bath or a shower it is actually ok to splash or spray water beyond the tub because the water drains away on the bathroom floor.   There is no caulking between the bath fixture and the wall and shower curtains are just to keep the oversplash from soaking the towels and stuff in the rest of the bathroom.

Also, most home bathrooms have a nifty underfloor warmer!   You just adjust this knob and it keeps the bathroom tiles nice and toasty warm.  Woohoo.

In true European fashion, the bath-shower head is at the end of a long metal cable (think: Inspector Clousseau in that hotel in Gstadt) which is handy for rinsing the undercarriage.  Oh!  and the water here comes out of the tap incredibly ice cold and/or scaldingly hot.   The cold part is actually very refreshing.   A glass of water from the tap is like fresh, clear, ice water.   The scalding hot takes a while to get used to (burned myself a few times) but is handy when cooking or making tea, as water is hot enough out of the tap to steep with.

Speaking of Inspector Clousseau in Gstadt, I must make a tangential mention of this German made Siemans vacuum cleaner that I have been using here.   I have never encountered a vacuum cleaner of such power!   Like the comical vacuum cleaner scene in Return of the Pink Panther this vacuum had the suction power to pull up debris from out of the air.    I mean that literally.   I would bring the vacuum head near the floor (like 6 inches away) and I can see dust and debris in a 1 foot radius being pulled toward it.   If I put the head directly against a wooden floor, it would adhere and become immovable.   It was almost a ludicrous amount of suction power.   The amazing thing was that all of this power was generated by a relatively quiet motor.   That German engineering!

I Drank What?

One of my favourite parts of traveling and seeing new parts of the world is seeing how people deal with common human functions like eating and procuring food.    Most of the time it is not only interesting and delicious, but I think it truly reveals the inner "character" of a nation or region.   Food is like a national costume for the inside but I think in a deeper and more meaningful way.    For example, anyone can don a kimono or a serape and sombrero, but to eat and enjoy sashimi  or jalapenos is another thing.

It is in the alien-ness of food stuffs do we find the edges and differences in our cultures so a trip to the grocery store or market where the locals shop is the most revealing.  Here you see what foods they consider important (staples), what meats they consider acceptable (proteins) and what their primary carbohydrate (starch) is.    In some countries the meat department alone is worth the price of admission, being a real life freakshow where you see things like whole birds (beaks and claws too), hooves, heads, entrails, every variety of mollusc, reptiles and amphibians, echinoderms, rodents, monkeys, and the most monstrous fish from the ocean depths.   What you might call inedible, rest assured someone in the world considers it a delicacy.

Immediately, probably the two most "shocking" meats here in Norway are reindeer and whale.    Gasp!   It's not like they are a staple of their diet here, but both are available in the meat department right alongside beef, pork, and chicken.   I guess it is more palatable if you just call it venison, and try not to think of Dasher, Donner or Blitzen (or Rudolph for that matter).   As for whale, I still reserve my judgement on it.  As an interested scientist, I find whales fascinating and wonderous and would not support unnecessary or opportunistic killing of whales (even for food) especially the endangered species.   But I generally feel the same way about any living creature (and not just the cute ones), and yet I don't feel a need to protest beef ranchers or oyster farmers.   I don't think it is evil for a wolf to hunt and kill an elk.   Animals including humans do what they have to do to sustain themselves in different ways around the world.   If you don't happen to like horsemeat, sheep testicles, beetle grubs, or monitor lizard, feel free to opt out.

When you first walk into a food market, the first thing that you notice that many of them are set up like a one-way maze.   The way that American stores put dairy or meat in the back so that you have to walk down the aisles to get to them, the Norwegians arrange their stores/shoppes like a single long circuit (much like Ikea is) so that there is one entrance, and then you must run the entire gauntlet of the shoppe to get to the exit and check out even if you are running in to get one item.  I suppose there is also a security benefit as one must get past the staffed check out point.

Shopping baskets and trolleys here are great!    The rigid hand baskets have a convenient fold out handle and wheels so that you do not have to lug the entire weight of the basket around the store.   The shopping carts (or trolleys) here are equipped with 4-way wheels so that they can maneuver deftly in any direction at any moment.  Oh, and they seem to have a good solution to the shopping cart theft thing (not that homelessness is a problem here) and simultaneously the leaving of shopping carts willy nilly around the parking lot, the shopping carts are all locked together, and in order to get one, you must put a 10 kroner coin (about fifty cents) into the lock itself to unlock it.   Once you are done shopping you can go get your 10 kroner back by locking it back up to the other carts.   It is an incentive to bring the cart back to the cart dispensary area or for someone to bring it back for you if you happen to be in a hurry (sure! I'll walk a cart back into the store for fifty cents).

Somewhere in every store there is a recycling station and a bottle deposit refund station.   It is bascially a hole in the wall with a sophisticated scanner that counts the number of empty beverage containers that you bring back.  I say sophisticated because it recognises and chastises you if you put the bottle in the wrong way.  It also recognizes non-deposit items and items from foreign regions!    After you are done there is a convenient station to wash and disinfect your hands.   I am talking about some wipe dispenser but a full running water sink with disinfectant soap and reels of cloth towels.

I have mentioned before that cheese and dairy are really big here, often with a special walk-in cold room filled with all the dairy and cheeses.   The cheese selection is outstanding.   Too many to count.  Meats and cheeses are sold by the gram of course.   Having very little practical experience in dealing with metric (like drug dealing) it took me a while to get a feel for what a gram or a kilo is, but generally one wants to purchase about 500 grams of meat or cheese for preparing a dinner meal for two.   If you order 100 kg of cheese, you'll get a wheel the size of a Hummer tire.

Barbecue or more technically "grilling" is very big here.   It seems to be a part of the national Norwegian self-image of being outdoorsy and sort of rustic.    Almost every home has a gas grill of somekind on the veranda and for those that don't there are convenient little foil charcoal sets available at the grocery stores.   This includes a little foil pan of quick lighting charcoal brickettes and a crude mesh screen suitable for grilling up a meal on the go.   These foil barbecue kits are seen all over the city parks and grassy lawns.   Ready-to-grill barbecue foods are readily available in the food stores, burgers, hot dogs, ribs, kebabs, chicken.  BTW, grilling tomatoes seems to be a thing here, at least from the advertising that I've seen.   Also, Norwegians seem to eschew beans as if it were infected with plague.   I slow cooked a whole pot of ranch-style barbecue beans for a recent family barbecue and no one touched a bite except me.   Beans (legumes) just do not appear in the Northern European diet.

Mayonaise and other condiment come in tubes, like toothpaste, which is very convenient for picnics.   Sauces are categorized by ethnicity mostly, and the world is well represented in Norwegian stores.  Thai, Mexican, Chinese, French, and, yes, American are well represented. Things like American barbecue sauce or American hamburger sauce.   The name of American cities are often used to market food products too... like Dallas ribs, or Chicago steaks... and New York sauce..... ???.  

The preferred local starch seems to be wheat (flour and bread), although there are lots of people who have embraced potatoes and rice too.  Bread seems to be the thing in Europe.   Big loaves of bread are delivered daily to all the stores, and consumers put the loaves into these mechanical slicers just before purchase.    Seems like a great system.  Most of the breads here are the wheaty, whole-grainy variety reminescent of the Middle Ages.  They are good and hearty.   I do miss many of those exotic sandwich breads available in California... ciabatta, asiago foccacia, dutch crunch, San Francisco sourdough.

When eating homemade sandwiches in Norway, be forewarned that they very thoughtfully place little pieces of waxed paper between their wet sandwich layers so that, for example, one's tomato does not soak the adjacent bread.   The only problem is when the Norwegian host does not inform the oblivious foreigner about the aforementioned paper and the oblivious foreigner consumes the paper, thinking that "this sandwich has an odd fibrous consistency... hmmm".     

I say this whenever I travel outside of California, but in general, the world is used to a very different standard of what is considered a "fresh" vegetable or fruit.    I will not complain.   I just realized that I have  been lucky all my life to have enjoyed such fresh, crispy, pristine produce in vast abundance while growing up in California.   They do seem to have all the basics though, mostly imported from places like South America.

The most outstanding food I've eaten here so far was this really lovely seafood soup at this old waterfront hotel in Brekstad, near the mouth of the fjord.   It was a cream and sherry based soup with leeks, bits of salmon, shrimp, and lobster.   If I understood the menu correctly, it had been served there since the 1920s.   It was easily the most delicious, delicate and complex repast that I have had the pleasure to enjoy here in Norway.   A solid 9 out of 10 on the Yummy Scale.

McDonald's and Burger King are here in town, and there is a TGI Friday's opening here soon also.   I have been enjoying the great sidewalk cafes here... very European... hehe.   My favourite here is called Dromedar and is located in an old historic department store building with a huge dome and cupola on the roof.   I have also visited the local "community" pub, which is run by a staff of volunteers, a group of University students in their spare time.   It is essentially the ground floor of a small home, jam packed with perhaps 80 to 100 people, plus live bands.   It is a place to hang out, have a drink, listen to some music and socialize, and though I am not a drinker, I must say, I had a splendid time.   Given the dangerous over-crowded condition, it is ironically called "The Fire House".

Adjustments

My first week here in Norway has been wonderful.   Ingrid and I are as happy as clams being reunited, and our domestic life is pretty much as we imagined it.   The calming rhythmn of everyday life starts to settle in.

The first few days were nice and rainy (which is the way I like it) but now it has turned pretty warmish and the Norwegians are out in droves sunbathing and carrying on outdoors.  As I have mentioned before the Norwegians (probably due to sun deprivation for the other half of the year) are a nation of sun worshippers.   As soon as the weather turns warm and sunny (like 80 F) the masses literally flood into the parks, lawns, and open spaces, lay down a blanket, and shed their clothes, as if solar radiation was life support.   I have never seen so much whitish-pinkish fleshtone laid out like a vast human carpet anywhere (not even at California beaches!).   

 I am just adjusting slowly to the Norwegian life, letting my California city-boy guard down responding appropriately to the new threat level, which is almost nil.  Little crime.  No earthquakes.  No unruly protesters (protesters here are nothing but orderly).  Very little littering.  Polite law abiding motorists.  Heck, I may stop carrying pepper spray around.

Norway is a country of amazing scenery.   Astounding world-class natural beauty, but in startling irony, sometimes it is suddenly and surprisingly interupted by jarring ugliness or the degradations of man.   Like on my recent cruise down the fjord to Brekstad....  lovely blue fjord, charming coniferous trees and noble glacier carved mountainsides punctuated with....  an oil refinery!      This noble and ancient town with a giant thousand year old cathedral spire which is inspiring also has a butt-ugly TV tower and a giant smokestack from the garbage-burning power plant that mark the cities distinctive horizon.  Or the idyllic, majestic snow-capped mountains and rolling hills with lovely centuries old farmers fields at the base laid out like multi-patterned picnic blankets and then a giant earthen scar at one end of the mountain where some kind of open pit mining operation is going on.   This open sore on the earth is visible from 25 kilometres away.  Obviously the Norwegians are not familiar with the concept of "scenic easement".

I am still completely amazed at those little differences, the way things are done here as opposed to the US way.   I encounter them everyday.  Like being able to cross diagonally as a pedestrian at intersections.   Or having your whole loaf of bread sliced and neatly stacked back into the bag at the grocery store.   Oh! I shall write more about this later, because going to the grocery store is a fascinating adventure in itself.   Just trying to figure out what is what in the jars and packages is great fun and it is clear that in Europe the culinary emphasis is on different areas than the US.   Cheese and dairy is very big here.  So is American "barbecue".  More on this later.

The kid's fad du jour seems to be trampolines here.   They are like the equivalent of swimming pools in California.   Private swimming pools BTW are non-existent here.    Every yard with kids seems to have a trampoline of some sort, with a safety net around the perimeter to keep the kids contained within (unlike in the US where the netless trampoline industry provides ample fodder for America's Funniest Home Videos).    I walk through very child safe neighbourhoods where kids are riding bikes at 10pm without adult supervision, and kids are bouncing up and down on their trampolines, burning off energy I suppose.   It's just curious to me what catches on (and how safe Norwegian society seems to be).

Safety vests, reflective safety suits, and reflectors are also big here.  All the young school kids seem to have their own reflective vests and helmets.   And the same way that trade workers wear Carhartt brown in the US, the workers here wear these elaborate one-piece "survival" suits with multiple pockets, harness clips, reflectors, knee pads, and universally coloured a safety lime-green.  It seems to be the standard uniform.  They are easy to spot, and somehow...  they seem to never be caught leaning on a shovel or standing around apparently doing nothing.    I might add, Norway is a booming economy, and there is massive construction everywhere!  roads, tunnels, airports, boat piers, houses, office buildings.   They are just heaping money into their infrastructure and economy, extravagantly.   I found myself laughing out loud when I saw that the teacher's union was on strike this morning and they were out en masse, of course, in nicely printed orange safety vests.

Among the overkill in infrastructure investment is the plethora of seemingly useless or under-used pedestrian underpasses and overpasses.   For example, a street, just a regular street not much different from any other street, somehow catches the attention of the city planners and Lo!!!   they dig a pedestrian tunnel under the street or this elaborate pedestrian bridge over the street, probably at great expense.    But here's the rub, I don't see people actually using these "safe" overcrossings or undercrossings.   With the exception of railroad tracks, they seem completely superfluous.   Why expend the extra time, calories, and risk encountering criminal thugs down in this seldom trafficked tunnel, when you can simply stroll directly across the street when the motor vehicles aren't coming?

I love the rampant use of public transportation here, buses, streetcars, trains, ferries, and the fact that so many people use the system that the conveyances seem to come every 10 minutes in a constant circuit so you rarely have to wait.  It seems that this is what is missing in the US, a certain "critical mass" if you will of usage so that the ridership makes the extra vehicles cost effective which in turn makes riding them convenient which in turn increases usage, and so on.

Hey!  here is a logical idea.   When bars and nightclubs close and people who have been drinking need to go home (at 1, 2, 3am) why not have buses available instead of virtually shutting down the transportation system.   Well, that is what they do here in the interests of public safety.   There is no excuse for drunk driving.    

Not to beat a dead horse.... but... my pet annoyance about the Santa Clara County light rail system is starkly contrasted here.   I've always said (the reason why ridership on the Light Rail has never reached expectations and it continues to hemorrhage money), any public transit system must go to places where people want to go.   DUH.    The transit lays out miles of expensive track to Milpitas and the suburbs of Almaden.... or sleepy Mountain View via the Bay slough... and they scratch their heads, why aren't people riding?  Did they ever think the airport might be a good destination? or how about the major sports venues?  how about the major shopping hubs?  how about connecting to other major transit systems?    but I am digressing into my rant again....  sigh.

The buses here are wonderful.  They are either low emissions or no emissions with huge ominous looking streamlined power plants on the roofs.   They are amply stocked with safety equipment, tv monitors, cctv surveillance, handicap ramps, signals for the blind, three exit doors, and lots of schedules and maps.   The buses accept multiple forms of payment (phone scan, cash, credit, bus passes) and get this...  they even make change!  bus drivers carry a leather satchel with them and deal with cash and coin just like an old time conductor.  The buses seem to be GPS linked and computer coordinated with each stop because lighted screens will tell you when the next bus is arriving down to the minute.  

I had this remarkable experience of riding this rickety old street car up a mountain and into this charming evergreen forest with lakes, vestigial snowdrifts, and charming rustic residences.   Like so many times before, I kept thinking that I was on some ride in Disneyland.    The little shelters at the stations were like mini-log cabins and the narrow gauge track wound its way up the slope to a charming little mountain lake with a nice restaurant with a spectacular view, then wound around  into a loop to head back down the hill.  All that it needed was a little diorama with animatronic dwarves to complete the picture.

Cars (our shortening of the word "carriage") are called "bil" here (shortening of automobile).    They are mostly of the small 5-door variety, like a Ford Focus or Toyota Prius.   Large cars, vans, or even pick up trucks are almost non-existent here in Norway.   They have odd looking mini-trucks that the tradesmen seem to use the way pick-ups and vans are used in the US.  To replace the utility functions of the pick-up truck, they have ingeniously taken up the use of flat trailers (much like wheeled pick up truck beds) so that every car can become a pick-up truck when you need it.   People do not in general drive around large pick up trucks unnecessarily for one's image, nor do they drive SUVs unless they actually use them for rugged terrain (like dirt or non-existent roads).   All the SUVs I have seen here are covered with mud up to the door handles and have ropes, winches, and jerry cans hanging off of them like they just came from UN Peacekeeping Patrol in Serbia.

Another not so innovative solution here seems to be the overhead rack box (what we call Thule boxes in the US).   Almost every car has a roof rack, and about half those have the ubiquitous storage box attached to the roof.   What exactly is in those boxes is not clear to me.   They seem to be too small to carry much except a couple of rucksacks or maybe a snowboard or two.   I have always associated Thule boxes (which come in a dozen different brandnames BTW) with those that wanted to carry sports equipment around.   There are so many of them that I just wonder if that many people could be schlepping that much sporting equipment around.

To get a Norwegian driving license here, one must jump through a dozen bureaucratic hoops and pay fees everytime.   They require that everyone go through a driving school and pass many tests, on a MANUAL transmission car.  I am not sure if it is in the interests of safety or to discourage people from driving .

Gasoline here is fabulously expensive.    Converting from litres to gallons and Kroner to dollars, I estimate that a gallon of gasoline (benzine) costs about $8-$9, so I shall not gripe about US gas prices anymore.   I should mention that the maximum speed limit in Norway is 90 kmh, which is about 60 mph.    So there is really no reason to speed or to have a high performance car which goes racing speeds, which is something that has baffled me about the US also (like, if the speed limit is 70 mph.... why make cars that go 140 mph?  just in case you need to pass someone really fast?).  Also interesting to note, many gasoline/diesel/electricity stations are completely self-serve and completely unstaffed.   I guess it is just like the US except there is no annoying foreigner behind bullet proof glass snoozing.

There are many interesting cars that I have not seen before.   Volvos and Toyotas seem to be very common here as well as the usual Mercedes, Hondas, and Nissans.   The European brands seem to be well represented here also, including VW, Renault, Peugot, Skoda, Opel, Audi, and BMW.   There are a couple of all-electric cars here, the Think which is made in Norway, and this other one, which looks like an absolutely ridiculous wedge of cheese with wheels.

I think it is refreshing and, yes, nostalgic, to see people out and about in their city, and children playing outside (confident that they are safe).     I am reminded of my childhood when I used to go out and play in my neighbourhood with my friends, and our only curfew was "come back at sunset".    

A New Beginning

Hello, gentle readers, and welcome to the premiere edition of my newest travel blog intended to document my adventures and adjustments into Norwegian society.    For those that are not up to date, I am an American of Japanese ancestory who has recently moved from the San Francisco bay area to Trondheim, Norway to marry my dearest life companion, Ingrid.    I guess I shall write more about this back story later for those that may be interested.

Today, in my inaugural post, I wanted to mostly write about my journey to Norway and my impressions here on my return (second viewing of Norway and the city Trondheim).

I had this sense of dread when I purchased my ticket on United Airlines last month.   United once known in the US as the"big" air carrier along with American has in recent fallen on hard times.  With the downturn in the economy and internal re-structuring, one heard these horror stories about the austerity measures imposed mostly on passengers.   Baggage fees.   No more blankets or pillows.   No meals, unless you pay for food.   No entertainment, unless you pay for it.   No magazines.  No seat reclining.  No toilet use, unless you pay for it.

I am relieved (in more ways than one) to report that most of these are not true.   You do get to recline your seat and listen to 8 channels of tinny, crappy music on the headsets.   I picked channel 4, "classical" and listened to 6 hours of classical warhorses and transcripted arrangements of the type that people who really did not like classical music would listen to just to fall asleep.  How many different ways can they play Pachelbel's Canon?

And BTW, we were permitted the use of the restroom free of charge still.  But, that largely did not matter to me because I spent the majority of the United Airlines flight absolutely parched and severely de-hydrated.   Mistake one (my fault) was that I neglected to refill my water bottles post-security.   Secondly, since my flight took off at 7:24am and I must be at the airport 2 hours early for international flights, I had started my day about noon the previous day.   So I was exhausted.   Consequently, I was just dead asleep once the plane took off and I missed the first beverage service entirely.   By the time I awoke, the cart was 20 rows down the plane with an impatient mob waiting to go use the restroom beyond the beverage cart, so I decided it was not worth the trouble to go down and beg for the drink that I was entitled to.   Instead, I mostly slept, faintly hearing Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers crooning "Cool, Clear Water" and dreaming of crossing the great salt flats of Utah.

My major source of dread was really about my first layover/transfer at Newark; New Jersey.    I know that just entering the greater NYC airspace meant a 30% chance of delays, which as expected occurred.   Due to weather in New Jersey, our flight was delayed an hour and a half to relieve the congestion.  What this meant for those of us whose final destination was not "Joisey" that we would likely miss our connecting flights to Europe or wherever, and be stuck in a hotel in the Garden State overnight.    Oy.  

Luckily, our gallant pilot seemed to have a good service sense, and ignoring the instructions not to stack went ahead and found a flight plan which got us to Newark only about 15 minutes late, making up over an hour of delay.    He even asked the passengers who were not trying to catch an immediate connection to remain seated so that those of us who did had an inkling of a chance to make our planes. 

It just so happened that this little old lady who was seated behind me was also traveling to Stockholm (the next leg of my journey).     So from the moment the captain turned off the seatbelt sign, we became compadres in this limping three-legged race, dragging our hand baggage across the United terminal onto a train to another terminal..... begging our way through the priority security line.....   and then a quarter mile final sprint to the waiting SAS flight.    At one point, the lady's baggage handle twisted and her rolly-bag fell.... and from a dramatic scene right out of a war movie, she says, "Go on!  Go on without me!  YOU can still make it!"  I am happy to say that we both made it with just a minute to spare.

Now, compared to the "steerage" like conditions aboard the United Airlines flight, Scandinavian Airways is the polar opposite.   Hot towels, ample beverages, fantastic FREE meals, snacks in between, blankets, pillows, just exemplary service too.   My first big surprise was as I searched for my seat and 200 angry Scandinavians were giving me the staredown for being so inconsiderate as to delay their flight was that.... 28a, 29a, 30a....    ack!!! there was no 31a!!   (swell.... i thought)   Instead there was a big restroom where the seat should have been.   Beyond the restroom was this rather large void where an emergency exit was, and on the tailward end of this void, was my seat!  a pair of seats really.   But it was like a throne with all the leg room that I could want and compared to the UAL flight that I had been on, it seemed like First Class.  Oh man, it was posh!    Great food, easy access to restrooms, luxuriant leg room.   I started by slamming down 4 cans of Coke.

Do you know how you get that sense when you are around people not of your kind?   It's not just the language, but the mannerisms, the eating habits, the clothing, and the haircuts.    For one thing, this group of people traveling to Sweden appeared to be from some kind of old time rock'n'roll reunion tour.   There was a dude that looked like Sammy Hagar, and another lady that looked like just like Bjorn Ulvaeus from ABBA if he was a woman.   A bunch of big rocker teXens with long hair that looked like roadies.   Looking at them another way, they sort of reminded me of a viking crew, sitting down at their benches to row their long ship.

I don't know if it had to do with the new equipment used by SAS, an Airbus 330, or perhaps technology had changed, but I don't recall flying at 39,000 feet before.   It seemed extremely high.   The exterior air temperature was an unimagineable -73F also.   I was immediately reminded of Chuck Yeager and his test flights in the early days of the space programme.   And thinking of Burt Rutan and his X Prize and what people will be paying Richard Branson for the privelege of reaching the edges of space, I felt like I was about halfway there already.  

I noticed on the little GPS map that my plane flew somewhere between Trondheim and Bergen en route to Stockholm.   It felt like I was backtracking to get to my final destination, which I was.  

Listening to all the conversations and in-flight announcements in Swedish during the flight, I think that I have grasped an important concept in Swedish communication.    One is to fill the lungs at the beginning of a sentence or paragraph... and even as you run out of air....  you sort of gasp or ....  sigh... out the last part of your sentence, no matter how important it  is.   "Please fasten your seatbelts, put all seats and tray tables to their fully upright positions, turn off all electronic devices, please gather any materials that you may have brought with you, and (instead of taking a deep breath).......   fill out the customs form completely or you will be detained and tortured (as one final soft sigh). "   I just noticed they did this over and over.

For those that love a good airport, count Stockholm's Arlanda as one of the best.   It is a beautiful Scandinavian design airport with the building as much a work of art as anything else in the cavernous building.   First of all, Arlanda is like a big shopping mall.... or... more aptly... like a big Ikea.     Nice little shoppes and cafes line this boulevard of warm wood and exposed grey metal beams.   The lines are clean.... cool...   bespeaking efficiency.    There is so much that they did right at this airport.   The security and passport controls are efficient and friendly.    The terminals are ingeniously double-decker so that large amounts of people can move, wait, or queue up without interfering or even seeing each other.   The terminal was impressively a kilometer long with this wonderful hardwood floor.   Even the air vents on the floor were made of wood (instead of a metal grate that one might expect elsewhere), and everything and anything that did not have to be solid was made of glass!   counters, rails, partitions, the purgatory-like "smoking" room.   The smoking area... hehe... was this little glass spheroid with an ash tray stand in the center of it.   It clearly shows what the Swedes thought of smoking.

As much as I enjoyed Arlanda Airport and the shopping there, I must say, I thought that the food offered in Sweden was.....  dreadful.   I tried my best to keep an open mind and went from restaurant to restaurant, but nothing seemed appealing to me.   Shrimp salad...  bagel with tomato and egg....   smoked salmon (which I like!) served with tomatoes, cucumbers, and melon slices... ???   I will look into this further and maybe I hit them on a bad day, but what they had did not seem to be food to me.   

Others seemed to be enjoying it though.   Like I noticed a table of Germans who were enjoying a round of beers at 8:30 in the morning.   There were some kids that were enjoying some pancakes.   I noticed that there was all this really cool modern Swedish furniture in the center that was weirdly shaped and low to the floor, surrounded by "normal" tables and chairs.    I semi-reclined in one of these Swedish chairs to enjoy my orange juice(s), but I was the only one sitting there.  Everyone else was seated in the regular chairs.

When I finally boarded my plane to Trondheim, I was rested and calm.   I felt like I was going back to something familliar.   All the way along I had encountered mishaps but it seemed to work itself out anyway.   Like for example, when I landed, my baggage did not come out of the baggage carousel.    It was apparently lost     But no sooner than I had gone to report it at "arrival service" my bag appeared on another flight (from Oslo) so no net harm done.    I stepped onto the final bus to town, and I was home.