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".