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Published: December 19th 2009
I was the only person I could see who was white on my flight to Istanbul. I sat next to some seamen who spoke next to no English and yet I managed to help the computer illiterate old men to work their tv screens to the channels they desired and hold a brief conversation mostly based on pointing and acting out words. The flight went by quietly. The movies weren't that good, the food not so great, sleeping was pointless. It was one of the first few airlines that had predominantly male stewards though and I thought that was quite interesting.
The Turkish airport was very nice but not very fun to kill 4 hours in. There was no free internet like in Bangkok and it was a big airport to navigate and nothing to do. I think Singapore takes he cake for best airport I have ever been in for every category. I got to my terminal and I have noticed lots of Asian countries do it this way but was intrigued to find it like it was in Turkey when you board the plane. We were ferried over the plane by a bus. We checked into the terminal only
to go onto a bus that drove down the tarmac then we got out and climbed stairs to the plane. This one was smaller and I WAS the only non Scandinavian or Indian on the plane. The youngest person as well except for two Scandinavian girls. The flight wasn't too exciting either because I looked through the tv channels and couldn't find the English version for the movie so I watched it in Norsk. Sadly near the end of the movie I flicked to a different channel and there was the English. At least the movie wasn't too good or something I really want to see again so no harm done. This flight last a few hours and when we started our descent all I saw was dark clouds and the occasional snowy landscape. This got me more excited than you can imagine. No snow since my Jindabyne trip in late June… That’s the longest I have never seen snow!!!
We landed in the airport and seeing all the signs in Norsk filled me with a sense of glee and I laughed when the signs said funny things and how the entire airport is done in hard wood making
it look like it is a cabin in the Canadian Rockies. People there are really nice, many have great English and the whole environment gave me a feeling of ‘returning home.’ =)
I saw Nina outside the gate and it was great to see her again. We hung out in the airport catching up a bit while waiting on a train. She made me eat a piece of pizza because I hadn’t eaten lunch and she wanted some pizza. I must say I was impressed with the quality of the trains and the train stations here. Though I guess my standards weren’t too high after Asia. We traveled just over an hour to Vestfossen which is south west of Oslo. It is a small little town with one gas station, one bank, one atm, one of basically everything and what it lacked the cities next to it made up for. Some of that being 2 gas stations, a bigger store, a small mall, liquor stores etc.
I spent the first day with Nina just relaxing and catching up, meeting her family and made a trip to one of her Grandmothers to wish her a happy birthday! Or gratulerer med
daggen as they say here.
On the 9th, we drove to a neighboring town known as Drammen and went to a scenic lookout there, saw the new Ypsylon bridge and then went to visit Nina’s other Grandmother on the way home. After dinner Nina invited her friends over to meet me! Oh no! I met her friends Kenneth, Marlene, Hanne Tora (Toosha) and just hung out watching tv and having fun watching them try to speak English or Norsk with each other.
On the 10th, Nina studied; we chatted and just relaxed all day. It was nice to have a change in pace from my go go go lifestyle to a relaxed at home lifestyle.
The next day we slept in, missed our train to Oslo for our day adventure so Nina studied some more! We went swimming then she had some friends over again and her friend Marianne came this time and we watched one of Nina’s favorite movies, The Naked Gun.
On the 12th we stayed at home again while Nina studied (whenever she studied I organized my photos or played some games, caught up on emails etc), helped her mom with some Christmas decorations
and went over to her friend Marianne’s house to watch Titanic (ugh). Christmas decorations here are quite subtle and the Santa’s all have really long noses, fat cheeks and look rosy like they have been out in the cold. They think it is weird that I walk around smiling, no one does that here. They make fun of any of their neighbors who have Christmas lights outside their houses. They don’t put up trees until about a week before Christmas. Everyone has a 7 candle light in their window. So many little differences I find quite amusing. It would be interesting to have Nina out for Christmas to see all of the differences between there and here.
The next day we went over to Toosha’s farm and sat around a campfire for a bit in the morning then went for a wagon ride behind a horse before going on another viewpoint hike to a cliff that overlooked the countryside. It is nice and chilly here at about -6 degrees at the worst but hovers around -2 degrees. I think it is a good transition to Canada because last I look it was -37 degrees… That may have been too
much from my 30 degree lifestyle. I have been lent or given lots of clothes by Nina’s friends and father so I am well outfitted for the cold, do not worry about me =) I am getting taken care of.
The 14th Nina studied some more and we left to go to a Christmas concert with her mother and her friend. It was a popular choir in Norway that performs on TV on Christmas Eve and a well known trumpet player and his band. It was very fun and quite amusing to hear all the Christmas songs from back home sung in Norwegian, the occasional one in English. Nina showed me her ‘university’ and the surrounding towns to where she lives and we stayed up late just chatting and having a good time.
On the 15th Nina went to her test, I slept in a bit =), and when she came back we left to go see her grandmother so I could try a real Norwegian dish known as for i col (lamb in cabbage). It was a kind of soup but turned out to be quite nice especially with some potatoes for some more substance. Her grandmother
likes me most because I eat lots of potatoes which happens to be her favorite food. We came back so Nina could study some more so we could head to Oslo the next day for an adventure and for her test on Friday.
We headed to Oslo on the 17th! We woke up super early and the train never came at 8am. We instead drove to the next city to wait for the train because there was construction in Vestfossen and we hung out with Ingrid, Nina's friend from down the road, on the way to Oslo. She was off to do her Christmas shopping. Over the course of the exciting day we saw two famous people or so Nina said. The host of Norwegian Idol and the host of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. We bought an oslo pass for 220 Kroner (5 Kroner = 1 CAD), which includes all transit and museum entry in Oslo for the day. We headed first to the largest outdoor museum on the planet which basically was a lot of old stuff from Norwegian history and some old log cabins that showed old Norwegian architecture and buildings. Nina wasn't impressed so
we left soon because we had lots to see and it all looked very similar. We went to the Viking Ship museum which had a couple of wagons, some odd broken pieces of Norwegian artifacts, two intact viking ships and 1 broken viking ship. They were quite large and really neat but the museum was small and it didn't take much time to explore. We left from there to go to meet up with Ingrid and her friend Henrich and had lunch at TGI FRiDAYS. We had cheap food at a restaurant which was 100 Kroners and you could get unlimited refills for coke for 40 Kroner ($8 CAD!). We saw the accommodation that Obama had stayed in for the Nobel prize, parliament and the university of Oslo.
We headed to see the museum of natural history and the geology museum next to it. It wasn't as exciting because Nina had to translate everything and didn't know some of the scientific words. It was getting late and we left and had to make it to a park before the sun went down so we missed the Munch museum (the man who painted 'the scream.' I was a little sad
about that but there is just too much to fit into one day. We made it to the park at sunset where there is something like 200 statues designed by some well known sculpture and there is an oblelisk of bodies intertwined pointing skyward at the end of the park. There is a famous angry baby on the bridge we made sure to get pictures of and then headed back to the downtown to catch the train home. It turned out we had just missed it so we hung around by the train station and went to see the opera house, part of the harbour for the fjord, and walked down the main shopping streets that were 'elaborately decorated' for Christmas. Basically some lights hung across the street with a few ornament and a tree once and a while. We ran into a manger (Jesus' barn?) and got something called Gluogg and free cookies from Christians while waiting outside the train station. Nina taught me some more Norwegian and sat admiring how clean and orderly the train station was an how everything in Oslo seemed to run very smoothly and how clean the city was. Everyone of course is very
well dressed here and seems to not like the cold even though it was only -6 degrees. I will admit it is chilly, I think the proximity to the water makes it so but I am interested to see how I stack up against the weather back home.
We had a nice nap on the train ride home, ate dinner and took it easy while Nina studied again. Today we have just studied all day while I relaxed, played some games and caught up on my blogging. Nina finished her tests tomorrow so we can start to get up to more trouble which will be her party on saturday, snowboarding on monday, maybe heading back to Toosha's to have another ride and keep her company while she is super hung over, and going to a bar for boxing day which is called the second day of Christmas here. Everyone opens presents on Christmas Eve here because apparently Santa stops here before heading to North America.
I found it amusing that Nina told me it was weird that I smile while walking around here because no one does it and it may scare people. No one says hello to
each other in passing either so it is a little hard to adjust but since we have been staying mostly at the house or at her friends it isn't a big problem for me.
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Monica Coulson
non-member comment
:) :) :) Glad you are having a nice relaxing time of it! Weather has warmed up to +4 with a lovely chinook!! More snow in the forecast but the deep freeze has ended for now. Say Hallo to everyone for us, and try not to grin !!! I love moose too. Do they have lots in Norway? I would have LOVED to have seen the Edvard Munch galleries! Wow! Maybe you will see it another time. Can hardly wait for you to come home for New Year's . Enjoy the Norse life until then!