Norway-5

I’ve been so content with my situation here that it wasn’t until yesterday, going over schedules with Helene, that I realized I have less than a month before I leave for Paris. It’s amazing how quickly attachments are formed and new habits are created; two months ago this was a foreign country, I was surrounded by strangers I couldn’t understand, and home was very far away. Now I have found my niche here and am feeling the heavy onset of nostalgia. In the last month I’ve made a priority of creating and taking advantage of any and all opportunities that could give me more perspective and understanding of the Norwegian culture.
I have officially mastered the public transportation system which has been a key factor in helping me to fill in a mental map of Bergen and its surrounding areas. I don’t have an awful sense of direction but I’ve had to walk the same streets I rode by on the bus and drove through with a ‘tour guide’ many times now to finally feel adept. The ultimate test came yesterday when I drove across town and back…alone. I’ve always felt entitled to call Seattle my city because of how well I know it, and I’m starting to feel the same way about Bergen. The more I learn the more I belong. The highlight of this feeling has been the few times I’ve popped out of a café or turned a corner in town and actually ran into someone I knew. This familiarity has given me a sense of ease as I discover the ins and outs of the city one street at a time.
Although my ‘families’ would like to give me a hard time about my language proficiency, to my credit learning Norwegian without a formal class has been exceedingly difficult, I have come leaps and bounds from where I was when I arrived. I get through every morning with the kids speaking only Norwegian and navigate most informal every-day situations, and, while I can’t necessarily participate, I do understand most of the broader conversations that happen around me. The kids tend to be my harshest critics. The first to correct me on pronunciation, they are constantly reminding their parents that I’m never going to learn if they continue to speak English with me. I play up the language barrier a bit just to keep the kids entertained; they think its hysterical that I still call their ski hats (lua) their swimming caps (bad hat) and they’ve found joy in correcting me EVERY time.
Food is another difference here that has finally become ‘normal’ to me. Traditionally breakfast, lunch, and the evening snack (after dinner) are all the same concept: slices of fresh bread (skive) with an array of toppings including jams, cheeses (jarlesberg, blue, brie, etc.), veggies, sliced meats, shrimp and chicken salads, and, to my dismay, kaviar from a tube and liver paste. Geitost (brown cheese) which is actually caramelized goat milk is my new favorite; on toasted bread with jam, mmm. The only meal that strays from the norm is dinner which holds a close resemblance to the dinners that I am used to although I have been treated to a few Norwegian specialties. Over the winter holiday I tried ‘the famous Grouse’ which is a gamey bird that Kristen hunts himself, it’s served with a gravy-like sauce that supposed to be the piece de resistance; lots of cream and nutmeg, and its very own, strategically hidden, bullet shards. I also tried rakfisk which is fermented trout that was served on flat bread with chopped leeks and sour cream, and fenalår, at Easter dinner, which is a slow-cured lamb’s leg. The common thread in of all these dishes was how extremely rich they were. At one meal I looked out at the huge expanse of the table (14 guests) and did not see one green dish; there was meat, gravy, caramelized mushrooms and onions, potato gratin, more meat…all fit for a Viking. Being in charge of grocery shopping, packing lunches, and preparing meals has been the best kind of cultural lesson, every day I have people depending on me to know how to shop and prepare for a proper meal and I haven’t had any complaints thus far (aside from Thale’s request that I carry her lunchbox instead of putting it in her backpack so that the toppings don’t come off her bread on the way to school…that’s pretty much where I draw the line).
I have also made travel a priority as well so I’ve managed a few day-trips and my big adventure was another ten day skiing extravaganza in Geilo. I spent most of the time trying to develop my insane cross-country skills although Janne, Helene, and I (we like to call ourselves the iron women) also decided to try snowboarding on one of the days. We had the most amazing weather; sunny during the day and snow at night, which motivated a hike to the peak of one of the mountains and many sledding/snow fort adventures in the evenings.
The trip was a good reminder to slow-down and it gave me time to think about what I had already achieved and what I felt was missing from my time in Norway. I had managed to find avenues in to most of the areas I was interested in except for volunteer work and the few people I had spoken to about it had all said the same thing. That because of the way the government is run the kind of volunteer work that puts you in touch with the community is hard to come by. I was determined to find something and as soon as I got back Helene put me in touch with a friend of a friend who is the editor of a local magazine that supports Bergen’s homeless. By Tuesday I had sent my resume to Megafon and by Wednesday they had hired me as a volunteer/intern. The paper not only gives homeless people the means to support themselves but it also gives them a voice that is unparalleled in this community. The vendors buy the magazine and sell it in town for twice the value, and at about $10 a magazine they are actually making a considerable profit. Thomas, the editor, was unsure of how much help I could be given the language barrier but the projects have just kept popping up. I’ve already interviewed the Executive Director of The International Network of Street Papers, chosen a feature article, written two articles, and spent a few hours volunteering in the store. This week I got to go out into the city with another intern to get answers to the question ‘what is the hardest part of being a youth today?’ We initiated conversations with some of the local ‘youths’ and took pictures of them holding their opinions on giant pieces of poster board. It was so fun to get out and interact with the community in that way, and to see how passionate some of these kids were about this topic. Not only has it been refreshing to be doing work that pushes me, that I’m excited about doing, but it has also been really interesting to see what poverty and homelessness look like here in contrast to the poverty I’ve seen at home.
This internship and my four other jobs are still keeping me pretty busy during the week but I also have more than enough free time. I’ve finished a few books that I’ve been trying to finish for years, taken more Norwegian lessons, done some hiking, and still spend a lot of time exploring the city. I also made a new friend, Agnete, who’s taken me to work out at a real gym and given me another perspective on the grand city-tour.
This weekend Helene is running a marathon in Paris and most of the neighbors are away so Nicholas and I have had some serious bonding time. I don’t think I’ve ever had to be so creative with entertainment, because he’s up at 6:45a and he only likes to spend about 15 minutes on each activity that means… a lot of activities. We have colored, played every board game in the house (his way, of course), shot a toy superman off of a hill a million+ times, played footbal (which I think is Norwegian for ‘kick the ball as far as you can and watch Solveig run for it…while laughing hysterically’), baked cupcakes, beat Dora the Explorer at her own exploration, and made a few apple juice non-tini’s Nicholas is quite the mixologist. He’s kind of a quiet little boy, it takes him a while to warm up to strangers and he’s usually the most outspoken when Helene is around, and getting him to sleep when she isn’t around has meant a lot of rocking and back rubs. All of this bonding paid off when I went to put him to sleep tonight and he skipped to his room, jumped in bed, smiled as he said goodnight, and fell quietly asleep. He’s hard not to fall in love with.
Its been surprisingly rewarding to be learning so much in what feels like such a short time. A few weeks ago, having newly discovered Skype, I was finally able to check in with my mom and I spent two hours telling her all about what I was doing and all the things I was learning. It wasn’t until this conversation that I fully understood the importance of what I’m doing here. Norway holds so much of who I am; my mother, my family, my name, our history, its almost been like walking through an art gallery with a blind fold on, hearing all the oohs and ahhs but never getting to see it for yourself. My mom and I talked about the house that she grew up in, the town where our family’s country house is, our favorite foods, places in town, we even spoke a little Norwegian and I hung up feeling a sense of relief like I had settled something that had been bothering me for years. Maureen O’Hara said it best when she said “my heritage has been my grounding, and it has brought me peace.”

Norway-4

This week was a nice change of pace…and scenery. The Aspelund-Strømme family invited me to spend the winter holiday with them at their cabin in Geilo, so I’ve spent the last ten days touring Western Norway, skiing, and sipping hot cocoa (it’s been rough). We left Bergen Friday afternoon and drove East into the countryside passing through the famous Dale, where the famous Dale sweaters are made, and stopping for a quick dinner in Voss, a picturesque town that sits right in between the Hardanger and Sogn Fjords. Then we actually took a ferry over the Hardangerfjord, which was amazing (even in the dark), and drove up into the mountains to Hol where Geilo is. The roads on the way up were solid ice; the wind was blowing at crazy speeds, and on either side of us for as far as I could see were rolling hills covered in snow. I had never seen terrain like that; it almost looked like what I would imagine Antarctica to look like.
Their cabin is actually a really old school house that was converted before their family bought it (it still has some of the original paint and decorations!) And they’ve done a lot of work on it so it now has a guest house, a ski storage, an attic (where I slept), and a sauna. It was very cozy and quiet, aside from the trains that passed their back door every hour or so, and it had a beautiful view of the ski slopes and a little lake at the base of the mountain.
A wind storm shut the lifts down on our first day so we went extreme sledding instead. With the wind still blowing full-force we managed to lug a dog, a million sleds, and eight kids up the side of the mountain to the perfect sledding spot. As soon as we reached the top the sun came out and the wind stopped…perfect conditions and the entire mountain to ourselves (that dream usually involves skiing, but I won’t be picky). We did get four days of skiing in and they even took me for my first cross-country skiing trip which I loved. The downhill skiing was a bit different than what I’m used to. The slopes are very gentle and wide open, there were at least half as many people on the mountain, and after taking two lifts up to the farthest point I could get to, I was skiing by and around private cabins, just right in the middle of the mountain. I also got to partake in my very first ‘after-ski’ experience which was fun. We went to a lounge at the ‘famous’ Dr. Holmes Hotel, where people go to “see and be seen,” and had drinks while the kids ran around loose in the hotel with all the other children.
Nights were spent visiting friends, playing board games, watching movies, reading, and relaxing. I also completed a ‘Norwegian course’ the girls created for me; they labeled everything in the house with post-its and they would walk through the house with me helping me say each word. My final exam was to put the post-its back after they had been taken down which I managed to pass with a 99%! I even have a certificate to prove it.
I was surrounded by breathtaking scenery and views the entire trip: At the top of the mountain with the sun shining, looking out across the fjords, even the view from their living room was beautiful. There was one night coming out of one of their friend’s cabins where I had to stop in my tracks to try to take everything I was seeing in. There were mountains as far as I could see with the quiet little lake at their feet, all covered in snow. The stars were clear and bright, it almost looked like just the constellations had come out. No street lights or house lights were shining it was just me and the view in the dark, and yet it was almost as bright as day. The moonlight shown everywhere but it was a different moonlight then I’ve ever seen, a beautiful blue I can’t describe, it was so amazing. Sometimes I lose sight of what my purpose here is but it has been moments like that that make me stop and say ‘this is why I’m here.’
It felt good to get out of Bergen for a little while, see more of the country, and spend time with the family as a whole. Sometimes I think the kids think I’m from another planet so this was a good way to show them how ‘normal’ I can be. We got to play together, they saw me fall over myself on skiis, and they even got to speak to my mom in Norwegian (I think that did the trick).
The day we were supposed to leave they shut down all the roads so we were going to have to drive East to Lillehammer, and then all the way around to come back to Bergen (seven hours of driving to get four hours away) but we got lucky and they opened up the pass by Hemsedal so we only ended up going about an hour out of the way. I think I remember a few tears when we found out the pass had re-opened, at that point Andreas had been screaming for about an hour, I had been moved to the middle seat after he had pulled Vilde’s hair and punched me, Vilde was crying in the very back, and Thale (who was sitting by me) had thrown up. Quite the adventure.

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

Norway-2

I finally have my bearings here so I spent the last week exploring the city. I bought myself a bus pass, found a really good map, and learned the key phrases I needed to get myself back to Åsane just in case everything else failed me. The nice thing about having all of these jobs is that they are spread out all over Bergen so I get to see and familiarize myself with several different areas. Åsane, where I live, is just North of Bergen. Then I work downtown at the architecture office (right off of Bryggen) and for two different women who live South of Bergen in a community called Helgeplasset. My Norwegian lesson takes me to a part of the city called Frydenbo which is on the top of a hill that overlooks all of downtown and the water, and just this week I started a new job, also in Åsane so I can officially add ‘laundry maid’ to my resume! Now on my way downtown every morning I stop by the local soccer field, let myself in to the men’s locker room, and bask in the stench of dirty socks and jerseys for an hour. I thought I could go with out gloves...big mistake. If my professors could see me now!!!
At Riss Landskap I work right across the street from Mariakirken (St. Mary’s church) which, it turns out, is the oldest building in Bergen. I was told the pulpit was the pride of the church so on Monday I made a point of touring the inside and it definitely lives up to its reputation. I also found time during the week to walk through the Fisketorget which is Bergen’s main fish market (scaled down for winter), Torgalmenningen the main square in Bergen where all the big stores and touristy restaurants are (Dolly Dimples pizza place is a big one here), and around the Lille Lungegardsvann, a tiny lake with a fountain in the center of town. I discovered Johanneskirken (St. John’s Church) which sits at the top of a hill in town, and spent an entire afternoon walking through the Picasso exhibit (which was amazing) and the three other art museums that are all part of the Bergen Art Museum. I was amazed at the scope of the collection this little art museum in Bergen was able to muster up. So I managed to cover most of the tourist hot spots although I still haven’t been out on the water and I haven’t taken the funicular up Mount Floyen both of which I’m told I can’t miss.
The weekend was the most fun I've had since I got here. Friday night we made dinner at the neighbors’ house which turned into the most casual gourmet dinner I’ve ever had. They had a friend come cook and he brought fresh tuna and blue shell muscles, so we had seared tuna with sesame seeds, pomegranate, arugula, and balsamic reduction and muscles in a creamy chili and coconut sauce. Dessert was a $200 bottle of wine and ‘crispo' their equivalent of a crunch bar, which also came with a great soundtrack and a foot rub from my ‘boss.’ We spent the rest of the evening music swapping, they introduced me to some really good Norwegian bands and then I got to share some of my favorites with them. On Saturday I went with the Aspelund-Strømme family to a swimming pool in Os. I had planned on reading by the pool but Janne’s brother brought his two month old baby so I volunteered and sat in baby heaven for two hours until they were all done and baby was asleep. Then Kristen was kind enough to give me the grand tour of the area so we drove out to this beautiful hotel in Solstrand and looked across the Fjord to Fusa which is the town I take the ferry to to get to Stranvik, where my grandmother lives. We drove up to the very top of Fanafjellet (Fana mountain), had lunch in Fanatorget (another neighboring city), and then took the scenic route home. It was so nice to get out of town and see the countryside and more of the fjords. Saturday night was all about the city. I had a girls’ night with Helene and a few new friends. We went to Red Sun sushi and then had drinks at the Penguin which was a fun little bar down a tiny cobblestone street in the center of town.
It was good to have a week where everything started to feel familiar and ‘normal.’ The first week I had a hard time transitioning because I realized I’m actually living here. In a way I felt like I was doing the same thing here that I was doing at home except that all my friends and family are at home. Traveling around is a different story because it’s a new place everyday and it is so far from your normal life that you don’t even have time to miss it. It only took a flight around the world for me to realize that I really am a home-body which has actually worked in my favor. This week everything just fell into place, my being a home-body has made it really easy to make Bergen home and I realized that that discomfort and finding my way in completely unfamiliar territory is exactly what this trip is about for me. I’ve found that the key has been to find a good balance between living and traveling, even if it means something as simple as walking a new way to work everyday.

Norway-1

The last two weeks have been, simply put, a bit overwhelming. I think the only way I made it through an entire week of goodbye’s was the emotional Vicodin that set in about Sunday and didn’t wear off until I saw the first exit sign for the airport on Wednesday morning. My flights were fairly uneventful aside from the two hours my plane from New York spent camped out on the jet way and the consequent six hour lay over I experienced in Amsterdam (which I spent playing cards with Anton from Germany). My host ‘mom’ Helene (Helena) and her son Nicholas (6) picked me up from the airport and drove us back to their flat in Åsane which is just north of downtown.
I have a great little room on the bottom floor of their four-story flat, next to Helene’s office and across from ‘the room for the treadmill’. The house is in the middle of some minor remodels but is still beautiful and very cozy and also, ironically, Ikea’d out. I’ve only seen the inside of four homes now but they’ve all been pictures out of Ikea (or as its pronounced here-Ickea) catalogues.
I heard a few nightmare stories about au pairs before I left so I was a bit weary of my living situation but I have to say I could not have asked for a better family. Helene is a single mom, a physiotherapist, and a star runner of Bergen. She is one of the coolest people I’ve ever met, very inspiring. We get a long great (and her English is perfect which always helps), we laugh a lot, share stories, swap books and chick flicks, and she even has me contemplating running a half marathon that’s coming up. Nicholas is about as sweet and cute as they come. He is half Belisian so he has a mop of brown hair on his little head and these big brown eyes. He doesn’t understand much English so communication is limited and yet he has been the best Norwegian teacher so far. We open the newspaper and I point and he says the word and then I repeat it until I get it right, he’s very patient with me. He attends an ‘outdoor daycare’ that is part of one of the companies Helene works for. When I went yesterday to pick him up they had all the kids in raingear and they were literally swimming in a giant mud pit. Helene and Nicholas have an ideal community here: her best friends live right next door and they basically run their families together, the school is minutes away, there is a soccer field in their backyard, and kids everywhere. The mall and central bus station are both a two-minute walk from the house and it is only ten minutes into the city.
The Aspelund-Strømme family that lives next door is just as welcoming and warm as Helene has been. Kristen is a dentist and his wife Janne (Yannah) is a therapist and they have hired me as an au pair to get their three kids ready and off to school in the morning. The children have been the light of my days here. Vilde is nine and she is just beginning to learn English in school so we’ve been practicing together and if ever I run into a situation where I just cannot communicate with the other children we call Vilde (Vilda) to help sort things out. I’ve overheard her kindly reminding her siblings that I don’t ‘snakke Norsk.’ She and I have chosen song as our medium for communicating so we sing popular songs in English and she teaches me songs in Norwegian. Thale (Talla) is six and they say she has a bit of a temper but I have yet to be witness to it. She is a very independent, very happy, and very helpful little girl. We have absolutely mastered the art of sign language (our own version of course) and drawings so she uses a lot of pointing and charades with me. Andreas is three and wonderful. He follows me around telling me stories and asking me questions and is never discouraged when I don’t respond or can’t understand. He picks up whatever English he hears and uses it quite liberally; it needs to be on youtube. He discovered that when he says my name in question form I respond by saying his name the same way and that has been our main form of communication so far…it never gets old. They also have a dog Theio (Tayo) that has to be the least intelligent creature I have ever encountered. He trips over nothing, runs into walls, comes to anything but his own name, and has a snot problem. He literally leaves a trail of snot everywhere he goes. He sneezes snot balls and even has his very own snot rag.
My day starts around 6:30a, I wake the children up, feed and dress them, pack their ‘matpakke’ and walk them to their schools and I love every minute of it. I have time after that to work out and shower and then I walk to catch the bus by about 10:45a. I have a job at a landscape architecture firm that is a block from Bryggen which is the historic port of Bergen. I buy groceries and prepare a traditional Norwegian ‘skive’ lunch for eight employees and myself (it is part of my job to have lunch and socialize with them). Then in the afternoons I’ve been doing odd jobs: cleaning house for two different women, assisting an English teacher, watching the children, and taking Norwegian lessons.
There is definitely a reason they call Seattle Bergen’s sister city. The mountains, the water, the rain, the grey, and the trees are all very similar to Seattle’s. The weather was pretty mild my first few days and then it just went crazy. Today there was a thunderstorm in the morning that was changing from rain to hail to snow, then lightning, then a wind storm hit, and after a two-hour drizzle it is now dumping snow. It has snowed everyday for the last three days. Everything gets covered in a blanket of white and then by morning it’s all been washed away by the rain. Helene says the suicide rate is very high here.
There is a distinctly different pace here. Everything seems to run efficiently and to the point without being stressful or drama-filled. As it was explained to me Norwegians are a duty driven people so they have accepted that they have these tasks that must be completed and once they’ve finished their days work they truly relax. Most nights, after dinner is made, Helene and I sit with Kristen and Janne just talking and laughing and sipping tea.

Prologue

With graduation behind me and the daunting task of deciding on a career path I decided, instead, on a trip around the world. So here it is: Norway for three months, France for three months, India for seven weeks, and Australia for four months. I loved what I studied and the security that comes with a job and a home were very appealing to me but I still could not shake the feeling that I had much more to learn before I could settle in. I need perspective, to do things I am not comfortable doing, survive on my own, experience different cultures and customs, open my eyes wide, quiet my ego, and find where my passion lies. I chose Norway because it has always been home away from home. So much of who I am is wrapped up in the Norwegian culture so what better way to ‘find’ myself? France I chose because, aside from it being…France…in Spring, I have taken over eight years of French and am hoping to get past that wall you can only break through by actually living in and experiencing a culture. My dear friend Annie and I have been accepted into a four week service learning program in India for an international health organization called Child Family Health International. So we will travel around visiting and assisting in HIV/AIDS clinics learning everything we can about public health in this setting and we plan on doing a bit of backpacking after we’ve completed the program. Australia, well, our winter is their summer so…
I count my blessings everyday that I have been able to manifest this for myself and I am eternally grateful to everyone who has helped me get to this place. To my family, friends, and loved ones I miss you more than you know and I take you with me wherever I go.