Quiet is the New Loud

Things are quiet here on the eastern front.  The entire city takes vacation in July, and all the Norwegians head out to their vacation homes on the southern coast of Norway (Sørdlandet).  


I heard it was quiet around here in July, but this is unbelievable.  I love it.  My favorite things so far are dodging fewer people during runs, hearing far fewer cars and scooters zooming down our street, having the shared laundry room in our building all to myself, and gleaning the sale racks at H&M with tons of elbow room, as opposed to pushing through the usual troves of skinny blondes.

Ken and I decided that, since we put up with the harsh winter here, we wanted to stick around for the beginning of the summer.  He also has a client that requires him to work most of July.  So, we're just laying low and enjoying the ghost town around us.  We have visitors coming next weekend, and then we'll head out on some Scandi adventures in late July and early August.  Then the travel doesn't really slow down until the end of October.

So here's to the low-key times!

We did have a busy 4th of July weekend, with a Dutch wine tasting at the home of our awesome Dutch friends, Daan and Anne, an absolutely beautiful paella dinner at Nader and Mel's for Mel's birthday, the American 4th of July celebration at the park, and our own 4th of July gathering at our apartment.  

A few pics...

4th of July in the park with Linda and Connie.  It was so odd to see booths with normal food (why don't those people have restaurants in this city??) and to hear so many American accents in public.  It actually felt like we were home for an afternoon.

We grilled at our place on the 4th, and it was so nice to have friends who wanted to celebrate with us!  Anne, Connie, Silje, and Linda chatted amongst our massive flag (thanks Henrik!).  I decided cooking was more important than decor, so it was this and some little flags my mom sent for the food (thanks Mom!).  Good enough.

Just one year ago, I never in my life would've thought to make something like this.  Who have I become?  Oh domesticity...

Pretty Agnes and Ellie showing America some love.  Mel and her little ones got all red, white, and blued up for the occasion too - it was awesome.

So, patriotism aside, we're really just chilling around here.  

We're losing daylight each day now, but the long nights are still going strong.  We took a nice night walk this week, and I snapped at few pics around 10:30pm sans flash.

This sculpture has baffled me since we move here.  Have to find out what it means at some point.

St. Hanshaugen park.

So glad everyone keeps up their flower boxes - just makes the city so nice.  I had some pansies in mine for a solid two months, then they shriveled up for some reason.  So, I'll resume plant-killing when we return from our travels.

Great wildflowers everywhere.

Moment of Zen for the week:  finding A&W root beer for 20 kr per can (around $3.50).  Root beer is a rare find here, and it's usually 30 kr for something not so great.  I was a root beer snob back in the U.S. (Virgil's microbrew...mmm).  But here, I'll take an A&W any day.  You better believe I had two root beer floats last week (one of which was following an amazing rib-smoking lunch by Ken).  No photos.  They didn't last long!

It's Fryday, I'm in Love

Howdy.

The past ten days have produced a lot of photos, good times, and patriotism, so it's time to catch up.


First, we'll discuss good food.

Last weekend, a beautiful thing called "Fryday Saturday" was established at the home of our fun foodie friends, Hal and Alison.  They have every cooking contraption in the universe, including possibly the only deep fryer in a home in Norway.  They're pretty awesome.  


We rarely eat fried food here, because it's just not as common (or tasty) as the goodies at home.  I suppose we don't really eat it in the U.S. all that often, but whatever.  When it's gone, you miss it.


We decided to tackle all fried cravings in one day.  This glorious day was Fryday Saturday.


So Hal revved up the deep fryer, and the Fryday crew rocked the house...

Fried pickles with chipotle mayo sauce (nearly cried tears of joy when I found a few cans of chipotles in adobo sauce hidden on a shelf in a shop here), a spot-on rendition of KFC chicken strips, ditto for the KFC biscuits and coleslaw, sweet potato fries, and crab wontons.

Oooh and the dessert:  donuts.  These babies were better than donut shop donuts.  Also featured but not pictured: batter-dipped and fried Oreos and various chocolate candy bars.

Wowza that sounds like a lot of fried food now that I'm typing it all out.  


Can I just say that I'm so glad we've found friends that are not only a great time, but enjoy the experience of good food as much as we do?  Our get-togethers are fantastic, to say the least.  Thanks for the delish evening, Hal, Alison, Vier, Brigita, The Jet, and Bethany!  

Don't you worry though...the good eats for the week don't end there.


We were able to attend an early Fourth of July gathering, where tasty American food was handed out for free!  Again, things we don't even really partake of in the U.S. that often (other than the Erath Pinot Noir and the burgs), but when they're in a foreign context, you flock to them...

Burgers that tasted normal, Hebrew Nationals, Erath Pinot Noir from Oregon, Sam Adams, Ben and Jerry's, and...

McD's fries.  I loved watching a bunch of people in business attire walking around with bright red boxes of fries.

Thanks, America.  You know how to throw one heck of a party.

After all of that, you'd think we wouldn't want to eat for days. 

However, Norway celebrates the summer solstice, so Silje made us a traditional Norwegian porridge, which was delish.

After dinner, people go out to watch bonfires around the city.  We went to Aker Brygge and watched a bonfire on the fjord, of which I did not take a photo.  However, here's one pic from the evening:

No, we weren't even drinking.

Alright, now for the flip side of things.  We do actually exercise too.

The sun doesn't set for most of the summer in Northern Norway (Nord-Norge), and there's a marathon and half marathon in the city of Tromsø that takes place at night around the time of the summer solstice.  Ken and I really wanted to see the area, we like to run, and I wanted to run a half marathon as a fundraiser for a non-profit I support in Portland.

So, we flew almost two hours north to beautiful Tromsø, and ran a half marathon that started at 10:30pm.

Getting ready to run at what would normally be the time we fall asleep on the sofa.

What most of the race looked like - just gorgeous.  This is around 11:30pm.  

It was really cloudy that day, otherwise it would've been broad daylight all night long.  It was indeed light outside all night, and it was crazy to finish the race and see people lined up outside of bars downtown in daylight in the middle of the night.  Thankfully, our hotel had really dark curtains so we could actually get some sleep after this and do some sightseeing the next day.

    

Tromsøya from a mountain on the mainland.

Pretty mountains surrounding the city.

Tromsøya.  Thank you, iPhone panoramic app.

There was definitely no shortage of taxidermy in this city.

See caption above.

Now for some tasty tidbits from Tromsø...

Some sort of dried fish.  Nei, takk.

Various goodies at the meat market.  Nei, takk.

And the Moment of Zen:

Alison and Hal's donuts get a second shout-out, because now I can't stop thinking about them.

Juni

Time to catch up on the past couple of weeks, after my sappy post from last week...

Ken's birthday was a few days before mine, and he headed to the U.S. a couple of days after that.  Yes, he skipped out on my birthday in Oslo so he could go home and see friends and family, but I can't fault him for that since that was his first trip home since we moved here! 

Anyway, we started Ken's birthday off with this...

A beerfest in Oslo?  Could it be??

After the beerfest we enjoyed a fun dinner at a new restaurant on the Akerselva river, and ended the evening with Cuba Libres at our favorite semi-dive bar with Pierre.  

We also enjoyed some good ol' grilling in the park the night before Ken left, courtesy of the ingenious Scandinavian engangs grill - a little disposable grill you use once.  You just have to light it and it's ready to rock shortly after.

Ken and Henrik doing some manly grilling while I fell asleep in the sun.

Come to think of it, I don't know that I've given Henrik a shout-out in this blog yet, and that just doesn't seem possible?

When we got the keys to move into our apartment back in October, we accidentally tried to unlock the door on the floor below ours, rather than our door.  Lo and behold, Henrik opened the door to see what the heck the two crazy Americans were doing fiddling with his lock.  Luckily, Henrik (a.k.a. the partysvenske) turned out to be a very friendly Swede who had studied in the U.S. for four years, so we started hanging out shortly after.  He's the best neighbor we could ask for, and a great friend!  He appreciates my cooking, so he can come up for dinner or buttermilk pancakes anytime.   

Now, back to Ken ditching me on my birthday for a trip to the U.S...

Ken's flight was at the crack of dawn last week, so I got up to help him with last-minute packing.  I also snapped some photos of the astonishing amount of daylight at 3:30am...

View of the sunrise over the hills from our balcony.

Flower box on our balcony at 3:30am - no flash was used in this pic!

I was a little bummed to miss out on all the U.S. fun Ken was going to have, but it was paybacks for when I went without him back in the winter.  So, I decided to have a fun little bachelorette week to myself, and it wasn't too shabby.  I also lived vicariously through Ken via phone calls, where I asked every detail of who he was with, what he was doing, every morsel of food he was eating, etc.

On my birthday, I treated myself to a nice breakfast, then I was treated to a fun lunch by a wonderful group of my girlfriends here.  I'm so grateful to have such fun friends here.  Ladies, you know who you are...thank you for a lovely birthday lunch!  It decided to rain all afternoon afterward, so I just chilled, then headed to Connie's place for dinner, where she made us some tasty Thai.  Thanks to Connie as well!

I spent the rest of bachelorette week staying up way too late and eating way too many potato chips (a.k.a. crisps).  I know, I'm a wild woman.  

Then Pierre and Silje invited me out to a cabin in the forest last weekend.  It was absolutely gorgeous there, and reminded me a lot of the Cascades on the way to Bend, Oregon.  The cabin was so cozy and lovely too.  

There was some crazy rain for a few days before the trip, so we made it out there despite landslides around Norway.  We went for a really mushy, muddy walk the first day.  I'd like to give a shout out to wellies, for making this walk possible...

Pretty colors along the way.

Pierre and Silje on the trail.  In the words of Pierre: "Det er tåke."  (It's foggy.)

 A few flowers along the trail.

Pierre & Silje at the foggy lake.

Silje was an excellent tour guide!

 It finally stopped raining on our last day there, so Pierre and I took a bike ride along a river.

Thanks to Pierre & Silje for a lovely weekend in the forest!  

June always seems to be a non-stop, fun month.  I can't believe it's already halfway over, so I guess that's just how it goes...

To wrap it up, there's a tie for the Moment of Zen for the week:

1.  Running 16k/10mi and ending at a 7-11 for a cold drink, only to find a blue raspberry slush machine was installed for the summer.  I had two in one evening, and sadly there's no photo of this epic moment.

2.  A beautiful run in the forest - you can't beat the smell of rainy, tree-laden air!

29

I had a little late-night inspiration when I went to bed last night and realized I'd be 29 in the morning.  Here's what I came up with (saved it until this morning, because it's never smart to post a blog when you're half asleep...crazy talk much?):


Here I sit on the eve of my 29th birthday, restless and wide awake due to fact that: 


a.  The guy across the street is playing the guitar and singing on his balcony (which I really enjoy, because he's playing good songs).
b. It's still a little light outside at 11:30pm (equally enjoyable).
c. Birthdays are still exciting.


Since my mid-20's, I've wondered what it would feel like to face the end of the glorious decade everyone so adores in their lives.


Well, here it is...one more year left until that oddly definitive mark of 30.


And you know what?  I feel fantastic.  I have no regrets about my 20's thus far, and that's something I've worked very hard toward since college graduation.  


It may seem like I have a pretty carefree schedule these days, traveling and being available.  I'll admit, I do feel pretty carefree right now.  And I can't tell you how thankful I am for every single moment of this opportunity, because I know it won't last forever.


However, being a nomad and leaving behind dear friends and family three times in the past seven years isn't all easy-breezy.  Starting over multiple times takes a tremendous amount of energy.


I also spent the majority of my 20's working hard and doing a lot of soul-searching with regard to my not-so-stimulating/nerve-fraying career choice of accounting.  Sometimes I really wish I could go back and tell my 19-year-old self to avoid following the paycheck or the job security, in hopes that said 19-year-old self would take the hint and major in English or Journalism or Art or Education and hopefully enjoy going to work every day.


Alas, I never would have met the love of my life or some of my favorite friends without some of that spreadsheet-suffering in the audit rooms and cubicles, so 'twas meant to be in the end.  And I'm optimistic, so we'll see what happens when this fun little hiatus is over.  


Anyway, back to 29.  


There's a passage in Eat, Pray, Love (I know, I know...the chick book of all chick books) that really hit home when I read it a couple of years ago:


"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it." 


Thank you for hitting the nail on the head, Elizabeth Gilbert.  You're a gem.


So there.  My thoughts on turning 29 are basically to keep swimming, be thankful, and have no regrets.


I'd also like to take a moment to thank the great 2-8.  It was one of those definitive years of life that helped to show me another little piece of myself.  


Actually, now that I think about it, my definitive years have surfaced every two years since college... 


At 22, I stuffed a suitcase to its limit and moved to a place I'd never even visited to attend grad school at the University of Oregon.  That year brings me smiles and tears every time I think about it.  It taught me more about myself than anything else ever could have at the time, and the amount of fun I had that year is indescribable.  


At 24, I stuffed my little Jetta to her limit and headed for the addictive green mountains once again.  This time I headed to Portland from Tulsa.  My family and Ken were in T-town, but I knew I had to live in P-town.  I constantly think about how extremely grateful I am that Ken joined me one year later, and that I met some of the coolest people I know.


At 26, I got married, and learned that the independence I thought I would lose didn't go away at all.  It actually became something even better.


A few weeks after my 28th birthday, the opportunity to move to Norway surfaced.  And everything in life got gloriously flipped upside down.  It was a year of goodbyes, scaling down to the bare minimum of possessions (which is absolutely refreshing), getting over the guilt of not working (okay so that didn't actually take long...), figuring out a whole new world, navigating frozen sheets of ice that were supposed to pass for sidewalks, traveling to places I'd always dreamed of visiting, and making amazing new friends.  


At 30, we'll return to our "normal" lives in Portland, but with a different perspective due to 28 and 29.  And I plan to get the biggest, furriest, drooliest dog I can find.  So, it seems like the two-year trend will stay true.


I'd also like to give a special thanks to Ken for making years 23-28 pretty darn fantastic. 


All that to say...here's to the last year of my 20's!  Time to make it count.  

Oops...I Did It Again

Well, it seems I have an addiction.  I wouldn't exactly call it a problem, though...

I went to Alicante, again.  There, I said it.  And it was amazing, again.  

This all started when my good friend Mel decided she needed a little vacation to someplace warm and awesome.  

With such great prices on Ryan Air flights, Alicante was suggested.  I couldn't let her go alone now, could I?  We all know very well that I didn't "need" a vacation.  But why the heck not?

Our other good friend Connie also needed a vacation from the long hours at work.

So...here you have it.  Girls weekend in Alicante!  

Note:  Please don't judge me for a repeat trip.  I have a new quest of picking up my Spanish studies from college (good thing I kept the textbook from freshman year in 2000), so I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to practice.  Okay, still not a good enough reason to justify two trips in two months?  See the pics below and you won't need any more of an explanation...

Hike up to Castillo de Santa Barbara.  I use the term "hike" loosely, since it took 20 minutes and the entire route was on pavement.

The forecast included rain last Friday, but Alicante pulled through with a full weekend of sun!

Just love this place.

We took a boat ride to Isla de Tabarca.  There was a stag party on the boat (Americans: stag = bachelor) and they were absolutely hilarious.

The water around the island was amazing!  So clear that you could see every single jellyfish swimming around the boat.  Mel, the super-Aussie, was a trooper and stayed in the water, while Connie and I made a couple of quick jumps in and out.  There's just something unsettling about being surrounded by jellyfish, even if they aren't poisonous...

We discovered this beautiful neighborhood on the way down the mountain from Castillo de Santa Barbara.  We also discovered a restaurant here where we had one of the best dinners of our lives - hiked up tons of stairs to get back to it later that night, and it was totally worth it.

These red pots were gorgeous - all the little details just make this place the greatest.

The Moment of Zen has to be the beautiful restaurant where we had one of the best dinners of our lives, as noted above.  The food was spectacular, the servers were so nice (they even gave me a menu in Spanish, knowing that I wasn't good, but I was trying), and the view from the side of the mountain was fabulous.  If you ever make it to Alicante, eat here!  I absolutely love that dinner is so late in Spain that they don't even open until 9pm.  

We didn't take any pics of the place, since we didn't want to look like rookies, so you can check out the view here if you need a visual.

http://www.laereta.es/

So there you have it.  Alicante Part 2.  Promise we won't go back until at least Fall 2011...Ken has to make it there at some point!

Mai Oh Mai

Can I just start off by saying that springtime in Norway is fabulous?!  I've heard this has been a somewhat rare, extra warm, and amazing spring...so I'd like to thank this fair country for giving us this lovely gift.

May is an excellent time to be in Norway, as their National Day is celebrated on the 17th of May (syttende mai, as it's called here i Norge).  The Norwegians dress up in their traditional gear (bunad), and the rest of us wear dresses and suits.  Everyone fills the streets, watching parades and celebrating.  And people smile at each other and talk to strangers - gettin' all crazy!  It was such a fun and festive day, and  I couldn't believe how many people poured into the streets.

We started the day off with a traditional breakfast at Pierre & Silje's apartment.  Pierre is British, and Silje is Norwegian.  So Silje decided it was her duty to show the immigrants a proper syttende mai frokost.  It was lovely...

Silje's homemade kransekake - very tasty.



The remnants of the kransekake after an attack by the hungry non-natives.  You also drink champagne with the breakfast.  And no, the chocolate cupcakes in the background aren't normally part of a Norwegian breakfast, but they are all this American knows to contribute to a gathering.  If you put flags on them they seem more legit, right?

After breakfast, we hit the streets to catch the parade and continue the celebration.  There were so many pretty bunads everywhere, and it was funny to see people partying it up in such traditional costumes.

With Silje in her bunad - I loved her cute hat.

Lovely details on Silje's bunad.

I then proceeded to photograph random people for other examples.

Pierre modeling Silje's hat.

Ken and I in our Tuesday best.

This pic doesn't do the crowds justice - insane amount of people and flags lining Karl Johan up to the palace.

The Royal Family waving to the crowd.

Another important aspect of syttende mai is the russ.  A russ is a graduating high school senior who is celebrating this milestone in life.  The russ version of celebrating includes buying buses that they decorate and pimp out with huge sound systems and lights, and driving the buses into the forest every night for a couple of weeks to party with their sound systems, get wasted, and do who only knows what else.  They also wear blue and red jumpsuits every day, so they're easy to spot on the streets.  Syttende mai is the last hurrah for the russ, and they park their buses in the city and party all day.  

Pierre needed help opening a beverage at one point in the day, so he stopped off in a russ bus, where some nice teenagers helped him out.

We don't know this teenager, but I had to capture Pierre reliving his glory days.

So, it was a great day, and we appreciated seeing a bit more Norwegian culture!

Other than syttende mai, we've been cruising around the city on foot and bike, enjoying all this spring loveliness.  

Botanical garden in Tøyen.

St. Hanshaugen.

More Tøyen.

Outside of the Munch Museum.

Authentic Scandinavian engangs grill-style grilling in Frognerparken.  Please note the blue bikes in the background.  These are the Oslo City Bikes, and they're awesome.  You pay a tiny amount for the year, and you can swipe your bike card to check out bikes at stands all over the city.  Then you just drop it off at any stand when you're done with it.  We love it!

I hope you've enjoyed the pics above.  For the Moment of Zen this week, I'll give you the gift of this photo.  

Nader, Ken, and Daan all Euro'ed up for Connie's Eurovision party.  Sorry ladies, they're all taken.  I'm sure you're pretty jealous...