Norway-3

It is now my third official week in Bergen and, aside from a cold that just will not quit, all is very well. Everyone in both families has had this strange cough that starts with a sore throat and I finally succumbed to it on Sunday so I spent the day in bed. My theory is that we all caught it from Theio and his chronic snotty-ness. Monday after work Helene and I, inspired by our sushi extravaganza on Saturday, decided we’d attempt home-made sushi. It wasn’t half bad Norwegian sushi and it turned out to be a lot of fun! Aside from my daily jobs I had one afternoon to myself that I spent exploring a part of the city I hadn’t been to yet and one evening which I made a point of taking off to attend Helene’s sister’s birthday party. Family had come from all over the country to surprise her and partake in a traditional Norwegian meal and some good family time. After the many differences I’ve encountered here I have found family time to be one thing that is essentially the same: the same teasing and joking, goofy uncles, doting mothers, and hyper-active cousins. I’m still not sure if it’s just the Norwegian way or if I got extremely lucky but the families that I live and work with have all of these crazy family nuances and they’ve thrown me right into the middle of all of it. I run errands and grocery shop with them, we have a Friday night dinner and a movie tradition, we walk the dog, visit family and the whole time I feel like we’ve been doing this for years. The best part has been the joking and laughing we do. They all have this crude sarcastic kind of humor, which I find hysterical so it was easy to join in, and it has become quite entertaining. We have vocab lessons where they teach me all the unimportant/useless words like the word for bellybutton fuzz and swimming cap, ‘affectionate’ nicknames, and tons of running jokes all of which has made it seem more and more like home and less like a foreign country. They’ve also been really great about teaching me the useful facts as well. They put up with my incessant questions and without really knowing it they have been the best cultural teachers. They’ve given me quite the collection of notable ‘Norwegianisms.’ Here are just a few:
-Horse salami is a common lunch meat
-Kids love Kaviar from a tube
- They have pre-parties called vorspiel (foreplay) before they go out
- Almost every family skis both downhill and cross-country
-The word for desk and the word for sex are exactly the same (with just a slight change in pronunciation): pult
-The big song right now is “Beggin’” by a Norwegian band called Madcon (they mistakenly sing ‘beggin’ beggin’ boo’ which is actually ‘beggin’ beggin’ you’)
-Very few families own dryers so most everything is air-dried
-There is not one Starbucks in the entire country
-They follow winter sports like biathlons (where they cross-country ski and then stop and shoot at targets), ski jumping, and speed skating
-Cars cost three times what they cost in the states
-Police don’t carry guns
-Their legal limit for drinking and driving is .02
-They are huge fans of the roundabout