Moving on up, to the top

Bodø, Norway is a wonderful place to spend the summer. For reasons I can't identify or quite articulate it keeps reminding me of Manhattan, Kansas where I lived when I earned my undergraduate degree at Kansas State. I had guessed that Bodø was about the same size as Manhattan, perhaps a little bigger. I finally got on Wikipedia and checked it out this morning. I was surprised to find that Bodø is less than half the size of Manhattan (in population). Manhattan has 113,829 residents whereas Bodø has 47,282. Maybe it is the fact that from my dorm room window, I can look out on to an active port, hear military jets and civilian aircraft taking off from the airport, and look down on active railroad tracks that give the city a buzz that makes me feel like it is bigger than it is. Also, I could regularly walk from one end on Manhattan to the other in a perfectly cromulant amount of time. Doing so in Bodø is a more ambitious undertaking. This is because Bodø is nestled on the edge of the water and surrounded by a semi-circle of mountainous hills. The city then snakes along the coastline between the water's edge and the mountainous hills for a fair distance.

Speaking of the mountainous hills and walking, Leah and I decided to take a break yesterday and climb to the top of a nearby peak. Leah had been before, but it was my first time to wander up that way. So, it fell to Leah to serve as guide and sherpa, which she did admirably well. The view of the city below and the surrounding landscape is fantastic and puts the city in a cool perspective. Below is a photo and short video I shot from the top.

Epilogue—Leah and I were wrestling with the term to use to describe the terrain we were standing on. Mountain seemed a bit of an overstatement. It was only a 30-40 minute trek from the water level to the top. However, hill is an understatement, because it's an impressive climb to the peak. Finally, we decided that an adjective was the solution and coined the term 'mountainous hill'. Hah! Problem solved.

Trying not to get snookered

There is a billiards and bowling hall in the basement of the Radisson Hotel in the Bodø city centre. This evening my new buddy Leah and I decided to go down and play a round and quaff a beer / cider or two. This was the second trip to the ArkAden for the two of us. On our last visit we were intrigued by the giant table that is the one snooker table in the joint. Before returning, we each perused the rules of snooker until we felt like we had a basic grasp on the game and tried our hand at it tonight. And, in case you are wondering, snooker is a game that is played with 15 red balls and a few other balls of different colors. The balls are smaller than pool balls and the tips on the end of the cues are smaller as well.

As you can tell by the photos, the table is indeed big. Snooker turns out to be a game that is more challenging and less forgiving than pool. It was a good time and we are definitely going to go back for another crack at it before the summer is over.

The latest in Norwegian fashion

Hola Amigos. File this story under the category of Norwegian fashion. My dorm room has hard floors and it's been consistently chilly enough that the floor is consistently cold on my tender and delicate feet. Wearing socks around hasn't been enough, so I decided to go get some slippers. And if I'm gonna get slippers, how can I not get the warm fluffy Norwegian flag slippers that saw in a store window downtown.

What you can tell from the picture below is that I have fantastic inside pants that complete the ensemble.

What you can't tell from the picture below is that the slippers also came with Norway flag themed socks. Awesome!!!

Happy belated Fourth of July

Hola Amigos, I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya. It’s not for a lack of adventures and stories, I just haven’t caught up on the blog in a bit. So, on that note, let me share a particular story and wish a happy belated Fourth of July to you all.

Jan-Oddvar, a professor who is serving as our host while we are in Norway, offered to help the Texans celebrate the Fourth of July by bringing us out to his cabin for an overnight barbeque. I am happy to report that all had a good time.

Jan-Oddvar came up with the idea a few weeks before and occasionally mentioned it in the weeks leading up to the 4^th. Then, we got a Facebook message from him saying “4th of July at the cabin update! Pack your comforter and pillow, and I'll provide the rest. Bring your own drinks and snack! I'll provide bbq dinner and breakfast on Tuesday. Also, do bring swimming clothing and a big towel. Looking forward to it!!! At about 5 p.m. on the 4^th, Jan-Oddvar pulled up to the dorm in his red station wagon followed by Hege, one of the Norwegian students, driving her white Volvo station wagon. Hege and Jan-Oddvar both arrived wearing shirts with an American flag motif and ready to celebrate. We headed out and got to the cabin at about 5:30 p.m.

Jan-Oddvar’s cabin is a pretty awesome set up. First, there is one small building. It is a 1-room cabin that is basically a bunkhouse with a bunk bed. The bottom bunk is something close to queen-sized. The top bunk is about twin-sized. Jan-Oddvar told us that this would be the boys’ cabin. The second building was the main cabin, which I would guess was about 1,200 square feet. There was a kitchen, dining area, and a living room that were all a part of one large open space. There were 2 bedrooms. One was a Master bedroom and another bedroom with a normal bunk bed and a regular bed was to be the girls’ room for the night. If you head on out back you come out on a large porch, which has a table that seats 6, a couple outdoor couches, and a foosball table. Beyond the porch, there is a hammock in the trees, a trampoline, and a 6-person hot tub. Fantastic!!

Once we settled in and popped open a beer or two, Hege came around and had us draw slips of paper. Each slip had a job written in Norwegian that we would then be in charge of doing for the bbq. My slip (I just looked in my wallet to see if I still had it on me so that I could type the exact phrase, and I don’t) translated into “onion expert”. Melissa was in charge of tomato prep, Nick drew the job of grill master, Matt was in charge of plating the food, etc. We got busy and in short order, we ate our fill of burgers, hot dogs, and chips.

Once the food settled a bit, Hege and Jan-Oddvar led the charge positing that we should walk down to the dock and go swimming. I stepped up and Jan-Oddvar, Hege, and I were in the first wave to head out. The three of us walked down the road, and then the trail, to the docks. And, remember, this water is well above the Arctic Circle. Once we got out on the dock, we saw that there was a group of 8 or 9 folks (I would guess in their late 50s – early 60s) already there, hanging out, and grilling up dinner themselves. They were sitting at 2 picnic tables on the edge of the dock and having a good time. The three of us walked over to say hi. Jan-Oddvar had recognized a couple of his cabin neighbors and they all started heartily speaking Norwegian. Pretty soon, a hello turned into an invitation to sit with them. Everyone was engaged in a robust conversation punctuated by frequent smiles and laughter. I have no idea what they were saying, but I smiled, nodded, and laughed with the best of them. After awhile the fact that I am from Texas came up and one guy engaged me in a bit of conversation in English. At about this point, Jan-Oddvar and Hege broke off from the group to go swimming. I saw them go and I admit that my nerve faltered. I wasn’t at all sure about the tall jump (best guess about 15 feet) into the surely super-cold water below. So, I stayed particularly engaged in conversation and deftly avoided jumping in. Well, that conversation turned into the question of whether I wanted to have some dinner. I said sure and one of them pulled a foil-wrapped package off of the grill. It turns out that they had one more meal than they had people. I opened up the foil and found a mix of salmon and cod (that had been recently caught by one of the guys at the table), potatoes, and vegetables. That was followed by an offer of coffee, which I “Irished” up with some Aquavit, and then dessert. Hege and Jan-Oddvar came back from their swim in the midst of my second meal. Hege playfully gave me a hard time about not swimming and my second dinner. Jan-Oddvar then told a story in Norwegian at the end of which everyone laughed riotously. Hege told me later that he had told a great dirty joke. Everyone seemed to love it and I still wonder what the joke was…

Once we got back to the cabin, the party started up in earnest. The group presented Jan-Oddvar with a gift bottle of Johnny Walker black label whiskey. A few drinks flowed and we spent the next while playing a new-to-me drinking game that Nick, Matt, and Joe taught us called Tip-Cup. Eventually, the party moved to the hot tub and all had a fun relaxed time. The party eventually wound down and people started wandering off to bed. By 4 a.m. it was down to Matt and I. And after a bit, Matt decided to pack it in, which left me as the last man standing. I soaked for a bit longer and then I shut down the hot tub, got into some dry warm clothes and, rather than head over to the guy’s cabin, I crawled into the hammock with the big fluffy comforter I brought, pulled the corner of the blanket over my eyes to block out the light, and blissfully fell asleep…for a little bit. An hour or two after I fell asleep, I woke up to the strangest sounds of many herds of sheep heading up into the hills to graze. The sounds of sheep bleating and all of the “cow bells” they were wearing started up and just kept on going. I managed to doze off every now and again, but it was difficult with all of the continual sheep noise that was going on. After a while, I was able to relax and mellow into the rhythm of the sheep cacophony and I went back to sleep for another hour or so. That is, until I woke up to the sound of footsteps. I peeked out of my cocoon and saw that Hege was making her way towards me with, what I was to find out was, the idea that we should go swimming. Hege was one of the first people up and was looking for a morning swimming partner. In my half-awake always-up-for-a-challenge mental state, I answered “Heck Yeah!” and we were off. There was no escaping it this time, so I boldly followed her into the open water. I’d like to say I did it without flinching, but I gotta tell you, that water was C-O-O-O-L-L-L-L-D-D-D!!! Once I surfaced, it took me awhile to get enough control of my body to breathe again. And once I did, I taught Hege a new English word, BRISK! This is because it was the only word I could say and I kept saying it again and again. Once I finally adjusted to the temperature, it was OK and we went swimming. I even waved to the morning ferry in the distance. After a while, we headed back to shore and headed back. We ran into and chatted with a couple neighbors who were awake and chuckling about the people swimming in the cold water. Before long, we returned and got into the hot tub to warm up. That was a fantastic sensation. The rest of the morning was a blend of dozing, hanging out, and breakfast. At one point I was super-relaxed and chilling on the couch when Jan-Oddvar put the Tom Waits album The Heart of Saturday Night on softly in the background. I spent two cycles through that album in that exact spot gazing through the big picture window out onto the mountains and water in the distance.

Eventually, things wound down. Most folks left in the early afternoon in the first car. Hege and I stayed with Jan-Oddvar to help him clean up and lounge in the hot tub some more. His son (I’d guess 11-12 years old) rode his bike out to the cabin that afternoon (which is about a 20-minute car trip, by the way) and joined us. The four of us made another round of breakfast and then we all packed up, piled in the car, and headed back to town. When we got back to the dorms it was 5 p.m. on Tuesday, so the whole adventure took almost exactly 24 hours. Good times!

Cooking in Norway: An experience in functional illiteracy

As I have been cooking in Norway, I have come to realize that I consistently need to build a couple extra steps into the process.

The first step is taking the time to type what look like the key instructions on packages into Google Translate in order to decode my next steps. For example, I bought a packaged pancake mix and thought I'd whip up some hotcakes one morning. The package I bought was boldly labeled, "Pannekaker", but once I ran the instructions through the translation program and I took a closer look at what I thought were pancakes in the picture on the package, I realized that I have a mix for something that is closer to crepes. On my next trip to the store, I picked up a package of "Lapper Sveler" and I am happy to report I had a big ol' stack of pancakes for breakfast yesterday. Of course, I needed to run the instructions through translation. After all, I wasn't sure if I needed to add anything (eggs? milk?) to the mix. Turns out I only needed to add 2.5 dl of water to the mix and I was good to go. The only thing is... I have no idea what unit of measurement a dl is. Decaliter?? So, I dug through the box of cooking supplies that they provided us with our dorm rooms and, sure enough, I found a measuring cup with marks for "dl" running down the side. I still don't know what a dl is, but I sure know how to measure 2.5 of them.

The second added step is a conversion phase. Last week, I went to the equivalent of a hypermarket, called Coop Obs! to buy a few things to augment my cooking kit. One item I picked up was a big ol' casserole dish. A quick thanks to my friend Keely for sending me the recipe. Yesterday, I followed her recipe whipped up a tasty tuna and rice casserole big enough to feed a crew. Once I dove into this project, however, I realized I needed to pause and do some conversions. It turns out that the celsius oven needed not to be set at the 350 degrees in the recipe (the oven dial doesn't go that high), but once converted to celsius (or is it centigrade??) I saw that I needed to set the oven to 176.6667 degrees. Next, I realized I needed to measure things in cups. I'm still not sure what the cup to dl conversion ratio is and I was stumped by how to convert cups of dry materials. So, I found a Norwegian coffee cup, decided that it was, by definition, a cup and pressed on. One of the lessons I take from this is when dealing with recipes from the U.S., is to stick to casseroles. That is a very forgiving class of recipes when it comes to guesstimating quantities of ingredients.

Going to the grocery is always an interesting experience as well. I am making my shopping selections, in part, based on the pictures on the packages and whether the cooking instructions come with pictures accompanying each step. And even then, I make mistakes—like getting a crepe mix instead of a pancake mix because when I sounded out the big word on the package it sounded like something else in my head. Another student here, bought sticks of butter that turned out to be sticks of something like Crisco. Whoops. :) I recently bought a box of Uncle Ben's boil-in-a-bag wild rice. It has instructional pictures and everything!! I boiled the water, put the bag in the water (just like in the diagram), and then I realized I didn't know if I was supposed to leave the water boiling or turn down the heat? Ummm.... Uh oh. So, I quickly fired up Google Translate and... nothing happened. It turns out, the instructions weren't in Norwegian. Crap!! So, I started clicking on language buttons. German, Danish, Swedish... Ah-ha! The instructions were in Swedish! I then realized I was supposed to turn down the heat, quickly did, and the rice turned out just fine.

So, not to go all ABC After-School Special on you, but every time I go to the grocery store in Norway and when I am dealing with the instructions on packages, I think I am getting a very small slice of what it must be like to be functionally illiterate. And that's a tough existence. I looked up functional illiteracy rates and statistics for the U.S. this morning. I won't go into the bulleted details of what I found here, but it was an interesting moment of raised awareness.

And now, I'm off to heat up a plate of tuna casserole!

T--