Signing Off and Final Thoughts

Tomorrow will be full of packing, cleaning, and all the final measures I need to take before I can get on the plane Saturday morning. Today will be full of saying goodbye to people. So on that note, I'm going to give my version of a conclusion to this experience and say goodbye to the Norway Travelogue. Before I can do that, though, I have to talk about Oslo yesterday. The Nobel Peace Prize festivities might have been more exciting to me if the recipient was someone that I was more familiar with, but as it was it was still a great time to be in Oslo. There was a class trip to the modern art museum to look at an Andy Warhol exhibition, there was lunch, and there was wandering through the streets, but it was the different events that surrounded the Nobel Peace Prize that were the most interesting. The first of these was the children's parade, which turned out to be quite scary. A large gathering of children learning about peace, listening to music, receiving a speech by the recipient himself. I think that's something that Norway is on the short list of: countries who think that children should be hearing complicated lectures about conflict mediation in groups numbering 1000's. Of course, I couldn't understand any of what was going on, but the event was clearly a big deal. The crown prince and princess made an appearance, Martti Ahtisaari made a speech, and there was food for all. Also, few chaperones were to be seen. I can't help but think that America's children entrusted with more independence and responsibility while learning about complex issues may grow up to be less apathetic and removed. This isn't the first time when I've seen children in situations that Americans would find either unruly or pointless, but the Norwegian kids seem to handle it just fine. Not that I give them that much credit, but maybe. Then there was the CNN interview, which I was tragically undressed for. It was a really cool event, broadcast live, and it turned out to be a great summary of everything that our class had learned about during the year. Ahtisaari has done a lot of conflict mediation since he was president of Finland in places like Kosovo, Namibia, and Iraq, and we've learned a lot about these types of processes, specifically in Kosovo. Being able to notice the subtleties in what he was talking about, even in a television event, was cool. The interviewer was not great, though, and for some reason seemed obsessed with getting Ahtisaari to say that the "international community" (which seemed to not include any countries in Africa) should use military force to remove Robert Mugabe. This would be a valid question if it was at all relevant to what the interview was about, but it wasn't. The interview took place in City Hall, which is beautiful and a great place for an interview I guess. I thought it was a perfect way to wrap up the class. Now to the more unpleasant parts. Tonight and tomorrow I'm going to make sure I can say goodbye to all the international students that are left, and that's going to be kind of depressing. It's one thing to say goodbye to people that you know you'll see again, or will at least have a chance of seeing again. It's another to say goodbye to somebody who lives in Hungary or Tanzania, and who you've just started to get to know and think is really cool. Such is the nature of these types of programs, but it does put a bitter touch to the generally sweet part of going home. I'm sure I've touched on this before, but one of the most valuable parts of this experience for me has been getting to make friends from countries and cultures that really are foreign to me. It's a good learning experience, but more than that these have been great people and I'll miss them. Facebook makes some type of communication a possibility, and that's nice, but being back in a comparatively homogenous classroom will be an adjustment. And something basic like just not hearing different languages being spoken at a party will be strange. It's not something I had thought about before. Now I'll probably think about things like the lack of students from "developing" countries when we're talking about globalization in class. But it goes deeper than that, too. These people aren't just a learning experience, or it wouldn't be hard to say goodbye. But it will be, because it's hard to say goodbye to friends. Trying to emerge from this depressing pit, I'll say that I'm looking forward to going home. I feel like I've become more of an American since I came here, paradoxically, and it will feel like my true home in a way it never did before. You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. And more locally I miss my friends and family from Phoenix, and my friends and the outdoors in Washington. Those always felt like home, but I'll feel at home with all the more general American traits that I just kind of put up with or ignored before. Ice water, fast food, and cars: they all exist in Norway too, but I don't think they're as ingrained in the culture as they are in America. And there are of course more essential parts to the American culture that I can't even think of now, but will be entirely welcome when I return. I've talked about the minutaie of my study abroad experience, and I've taken the chance to look at the bigger parts of it too. I've covered the travel and the staying inside, so I guess now it's time to talk big picture. The learning has been both gradual and sudden, and most of it will take a couple months to sink in once I get back home. But the general experience of being in a foreign place, physically and mentally, has dropped my guard more than I expected it would. That effect is not quite as drastic as it was when I left for PLU, funnily enough, but I've gained opportunities to learn about myself and the world in a way that was unexpected. On a personal level, I've learned skills for dealing with situations that I don't understand and I've just had a lot of fun. On a less personal level, this trip has been about being in the world and experiencing that. If that's not broad enough, I don't know what is. What I mean is that the USA is a large and influential corner of the Earth, but it still is a corner of the Earth. So is Norway and every individual country represented by our program and every country I travelled to. But when I combine Norway with Tanzania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Nepal, Namibia, most of Western Europe and Scandinavia I get an experience that may be even more than the sum of its parts. It's a little more subtle than saying I've become more open-minded, because that implies that I'm the most important facet of the equation. I'm just glad to have seen and experienced a greater portion of the world than I was familiar with before. It makes me feel even smaller than I did before, but less insignificant. All of this is abstraction, though. Concretely, Norway is expensive, travel is great entertainment, and I'm not as comfortable with the cold as I orginally thought. To put a capping thought on the last 3 months would be impossible, but I hope my travelogue has given some insight into some aspects of daily life, some aspects of travel, and some aspects of the overarching importance of this trip to me. I look forward to seeing all of you back home soon.

I think I'm going home at the right time

It's starting to get mighty cold here. Apparently, when we go to Oslo on Wednesday it's going to be -14 Celsius which is pretty cold. Also, the snow and ice are really starting to take their hold on Hamar, and I've taken my first fall. I think if I stayed much longer I'd have a concussion and hypothermia, neither of which would be all that nice. So I guess the bottom line is I didn't realize how truly mild Washington's climate is (at least in the West) or how wimpy I actually am when it comes to the cold. People always ask me "how did you put up with the crazy heat in Phoenix?" and I usually said "I don't know, I just did". I imagine Norwegians and other people from more frigid climates would have a similar answer to my question: "How do you put up with the cold?". Because it's not so much a question of how does your body handle it or something like that. It's the day-to-day knowing that it's going to be very cold outside and having to prepare for that and getting used to it that is hard to understand for me. That is what I would mean if I asked a Norwegian "How do you put up with the crazy cold here?". And it's not even that cold here in Hamar. To the North, they're looking at epically cold temperatures like 80 below. That's a different story altogether. I couldn't even put up with 5 below for any longer than a month. Then add the ice to that and I'd probably be dead by spring. Good thing I'm going home.

I know what orange juice and cinnamon are in Norwegian, at least

The language barrier has been a weird thing in my time here. On the one hand, I've never really been in a situation where I've been unable to communicate with someone or had to use hand gestures or anything, since so many people speak English here. On the other hand, sitting on a train or in a restaurant and not understanding anything that's going on around me has been a bit disorienting. It's almost tiring to spend so much time unaware of what your surroundings mean. In the U.S.A., airports are still confusing but because all the signs around me are in English I'm able to go about figuring out where I should go and so on. But the airports and train stations in Norway, and the rest of Europe for that matter, become a lot more intimidating because of having to guess at what things mean. This mostly doesn't matter, because I can pretty much always ask someone where I should be, and also because there's nice universal symbols for bathroom and exit and those types of words. It's more of a psychological problem, the feeling of never having complete control. It's something that I guess I took for granted back home, or maybe didn't realize that I have, but the ability to understand written instructions or menus or maps at a glance is pretty wonderful. The flipside of that, though, is that it's kind of nice not to have to understand all the personal or mundane conversations behind you on a train. And it's a little bit funny to let someone talk to me for a few seconds before I stop them and let them know that I've wasted their time for the last 10 seconds while they tried to talk to me. This is especially great when somebody makes what's obviously supposed to be a joke and I laugh to play along. It gets kind of awkward if they follow that up, though. I just feel like such a failure among the people here, especially the international students, none of whom know less than like 4 languages it seems like. Some of the students knew English as their 3rd language and were getting by in the class. This is something I've felt on my previous shorter trips to Europe, too, but it's a little more deeply ingrained than I knew. For example, when I was doing my field study, I think every person I met with asked what other languages I knew, as if that was just a given, and I said Spanish but really I don't have any fluency with it. I just don't see the incentive of learning a foreign language (besides the inherent learning value) when it seems so obvious to me now that English is really becoming, to an extent, a universal language. Of course it's a good thing to be able to communicate with people in the language that they're most comfortable with, but as a student or a tourist like I've been it isn't necessary or expected. I've been continually impressed when somebody comes up, asks a question in Norwegian, I say "Sorry" and they continue to ask "Do you have a lighter?" without even pausing. Having to engage with people in their language is a great learning experience, and it simply hasn't happened since I've been here. Meanwhile, all these Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Germans, and Dutch have had that experience of interacting with me in my language. I just wonder if us Americans have missed a chance as all of Europe seems to pick up English. Granted, my experience has been limited, and I know there's places outside of the tourism/commercial industry where one can really be in a foreign place in terms of language. I just mean that, in general, there's less necessity and fewer opportunities to have to learn a language and use it. I don't know if this makes us dumber or somehow less complete, but it was always something I thought I'd have to deal with in a study away experience and that hasn't been the case. Maybe Spain or Chile or something next time, then. So with one week left, I will continue speaking my English. Actually, this last week will not be nearly as boring as I had anticipated earlier. Plenty of activities lined up, and the final goodbyes are starting to happen. As potentially depressing as that is, it's been fun while it lasted and it's important to be able to say that. It doesn't hurt that I do feel ready to be back home as well.

Reflections I: The Whole Money Bit

When I first arrived here in Norway, the exchange rate with the dollar was about 5:1 and a really basic sandwich from, well, anywhere was over 50 kroner. That means a ham and cheese sandwich was 10 bucks. I found that kind of ridiculous, but what was even worse was that beer was even more expensive than that at bars. A chicken breast or two ran about 100 kroner, and the list goes on. The exchange rate has improved drastically, thanks almost entirely to the economic collapse of the world, and is now at about 7.5:1. That said, this must be one of the top 5 most expensive countries to live in right up there with Switzerland and Luxembourg. And I've been to Switzerland; it almost seemed cheap in comparison. Part of this is due to sales tax, I guess. They tax gas pretty heavily, and the tax on liquor is 25%. But that only explains part of it. The sales tax at the grocery store, for example, is not any more than at a grocery store in the states. Another part of it is simple economics I'm sure, but I don't know simple economics so I'll leave it alone. The good news for Norwegians is that their jobs pay pretty well. The least you can make at a part-time job, according to the people I've talked to, is somewhere around 80-100 kroner/hour. So that would've been 17-20 bucks back in August and somewhere between 10 and 15 dollars now. Not bad. For me, without a job, prices looked pretty terrible at the beginning. Though that's eased up a bit now, I'm still looking forward to returning to a place where I can get $4 appetizers and beers that are in the single digits. To veer left a bit, I'm now officially done with coursework, tests, presentations, and the like, so the next 9 days will be a chance to say goodbye to everyone (yet another international student party on Friday) and clean the room. It's a small room, but it is a dirty one. Probably have to start tomorrow, I think 8 days should be enough time to clean. And that ties back to the money bit again. It's bad enough to buy a broom when you don't really want to but you know you have to so you do, it's worse to buy a broom at a ludicrous price and then know you'll only use it a couple times (yeah Curt and I are pretty dirty people). I guess I'd take it home, but a broom takes up a fair amount of space and I'd look pretty crazy carrying a broom on the train and they probably wouldn't let it through airport security anyway. To wrap things up, I will now list the 5 things I look forward to most when I return home (excluding friends and family): 1. Chipotle 2. Rock Band 3. playing music 4. having a TV 5. eating chicken.

What It Feels Like To Be Done And Still Be Sitting For 2 Weeks With Miserable Weather Outside

It feels pretty good, actually. The test yesterday was a final, I guess, but the hardest part about it was walking through the ice to get to the building where it was held. After that, it was pure cake. I'm often forced to confront the fact that I may have learned something during the semester, but I'm not sure that the test brought out that fact as one might think. A couple funny points about the test: the people administering the test either didn't speak English or refused to speak English, which is funny because our class is taught in English and only a few of the people in our class spoke Norwegian. Lucky we had our teacher there to translate, then. I guess I overstated it when I said there were a couple funny points; it was pretty much just the one. And the ice. I almost died in the ice on the way over. That's been the way it's been the last week or so, mostly sitting inside and then embarking on a journey outside that mostly involves slipping on ice and being freezing and then coming back inside a few groceries richer or, in the case of the test, glad to be done with school. There is the formality tomorrow of presenting my case study, but I'm more excited than concerned about that because I'll be able to further explain and understand what I was talking about. After that comes the long haul. 10 days of preparing to return to a place that is probably a good 60 degrees warmer than where I am and 200% lighter. I guess it'll take some time to pack and probably a longer period of time to clean the apartment, but for the most part I'll have even more free time than usual. The only travel that I'll do is to Oslo with the class for the Nobel Peace Prize festivities, which will be my 3rd time in Oslo not counting train connections, and the only outdoor time I'll spend will probably be in 20-30 minute stretches in which I need to get groceries or money or something. All in all, though, the boredom at the end is a fair price to pay for what has been an outstanding experience this semester. I'll try to write everyday in this travelogue as a sort of debriefing, talking about my reflections and stuff like that. For now, it's a wonderful snowy day outside so I'm going to go about making some lunch or something.

Two parties tomorrow, it's too late to talk about Bergen, and I'm almost done with my paper

Those three things sum up the status of life here in Hamar. I can feel everything wrapping up in the form of a fiery crash. My 21st birthday will be celebrated a day early in a country that diminishes the accomplishment of turning 21, if you know what I mean, because my birthday happens to be relatively close to another classmate's and we're having a joint birthday party. I'm most definitely looking forward to it, especially because it coincides with the due date of my case study and my case study is pretty much finished. I have a few revisions to make and a bibliography to finish, but it's going to happen and that's a good feeling. Then the 22nd (my actual birthday) will play host to the christmas/goodbye party for international students. It's always a fun and unique time when the international students come together, so I'm expecting big things from the final jamboree. Between those two parties, my birthday will not go un-celebrated to be sure. As for the second point of the title, it is kind of too late to talk about Bergen, but not really. I didn't want to write a large travelogue entry then because I was working on my case study and typing was beginning to hurt my fingers. Excuses aside, however, Bergen was a great way to (maybe?) end the many and varied travels in and around Norway. It was very rainy, somewhat cold, and ridiculously scenic. As with all cities we've been to, it seems, the city was built around water, and between that and the inclement weather the best word to describe Bergen is wet. The first day there was all about hiking, and the second day was all about wandering. At this point, that's become the status quo, but the hiking was unusually good here (no Switzerland straight uphill debacles) and the wandering was solid due to the fish market, preserved historical buildings, and the better exchange rate than a couple months ago. I'll give you a sense of daily life in Hamar at this point: I slip on ice a lot these days, I eat a lot of pasta, and I get rather cold outside. Also there's this cereal called Coco-Pops: Crunchers! which is a wonderful cereal and really needs to catch on in the States. I mean, sure I like Marshmallow Mateys and Golden Grahams and stuff, but this is some good dessert cereal. I will miss it when I leave this place. Finally it was dark at like 3 today, and it was never really light. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that.

Are gas prices really that low?

When I left Washington in the summer, gas was just over 4.00 a gallon. Now I'm reading its like 2.50 or something on the West Coast. Is this true? I suppose it's possible, considering oil prices have like halved in the last couple months. I guess if there's one good thing in the global economy verging on collapse it's that I'll be able to drive when I get back and not go broke. Hooray. I've been working on my case study, incidentally, about the effect of Puritanism on political structures in colonial New England and will have the rough draft of that done tomorrow. It's basically a two week academic dash after a whole lot of nothing, and then there will be another two weeks of nothing until I'm back in the States. And then I will drive my car without regard to the environment, the economy, or my own sanity. Anyway, I'd appreciate it if someone would comment if this news that I have read is untrue, because I feel like I've actually missed something huge in America. Not the changing of a president; I'll get to see that happen for real on January 20. No, gas prices returning to American levels. I think Norwegians hate us; even though they have the largest oil reserves on the planet save Saudi Arabia, they still pay quite crazy gas prices. But at least they have a decent train system. Win some, lose some, I guess. This post seems more like a blog than a travelogue. But do not fear, because I leave for Bergen on Thursday, and after that the content will become blissfully travelogue-y again.

Finally, copious amounts of snow

But not in Hamar. The international students had a bit of a party/trip to a cabin in the mountains, and there was lots of snow there. Apparently not as much as last year when they went in April, but it was still satisfying to me. So we got to do the whole snowman and snowball thing, which is something I'm still hoping becomes an option here in Hamar in the coming weeks. I'm not here much longer, though, as I'm starting to realize. After 2+ months that have managed to feel like both a very long time and a very short time, there's only about a month left until I get on the plane back to Phoenix. So I hope we get some good snow. I also hope I manage to squeeze in enough trips to the county building for my field study, which I will probably describe later. And then there's the case study, which should occupy a good deal of my time. I would have thought that having so much time on my hands would have put a dent in my procrastinating habits, and there's still a lot of time, but as usual everybody seems much further down the road than me. Oh well. As long as there's no snow outside and it's still cold and miserable, I have no reason to go outside. Except for the Bergen trip we're making on Thursday. I would definitely say that learning outside the classroom has taken precedence over more traditional methods i.e. learning in class. To make a circle back to the beginning of this post, one example is the interactions with other international students. I don't want to make it sound like we're always having deep political discussions or anything, but when I do talk with other members of the international student community it tends to be interesting. Of course everybody wants to ask us about the election and everyone has an opinion about that, but the crazy moments for me are hearing people talk about the Balkans like they're a great place to visit and hearing people compare African democracy to American democracy and stuff like that. This is why PLU wants its students to study abroad, I know, so that they can hear things they've never heard before. This extends to the serious and the casual, but I have to say that the times that I've felt most intellectual this semester have actually been at these sort of parties for international students. It's not so much that we go out trying to have boundary-crossing discussions or anything, but I think that by talking to people that are fundamentally different from me, I'm forced to try to understand that. I also find that Americans may be more similar to people from other parts of the world than we think, even despite these fundamental differences that can be hard to understand. I wish us Americans were less separated or cliqueish or whatever than we are, but the time that we spend with all the international students is always fun and maybe even enlightening. Maybe my case study will be too, but I doubt that right now.

I cannot wait to have a laundry machine in the kitchen

For some reason, school seems to think it's cool to charge exorbitant amounts for me to do the essential task of laundry. Then malfunctioning machinery leads me to lose 50 kroner in one go and I'm left trying to pick up the pieces. AND they charge you 25 kroner for every 100 kroner card you buy. AND I have to walk outside in the freezing cold without my warmer clothes (because they're in the laundry) to get to the laundry room. It is quite terrible. I write this mild diatribe for two reasons: 1) These are the little things I deal with on a regular basis, as I planned to describe and 2) I have to do my laundry today. I slept for 16 hours last night, I've eaten nothing but cereal for the last 36 hours or so, and surprisingly I don't feel like my body's going to explode. Apologies for the corniness of the last post, but as I said sleep deprivation is a powerful thing. The other problem, though, is that describing something like I was feeling yesterday necessitates some use of corniness. No excuse, but there it is. The next stop in this stream of consciousness is Sweden. I'm not going to write a whole travelogue of Sweden just yet, but I will just say that one thing we saw was a little girl peeing in the planter of a really nice hotel. It was as out-of-place as a fire engine in a string quartet. Just had to mention that because I didn't want to forget.

Yes, I've been up all night

And no, I'm not going to bed anytime soon. In fact, I have to warn you this entry will get a bit sappy (or like REALLY sappy) but I assure you that's all because of lack of sleep. Regardless of my political preference, which is probably known by most of the readers of this travelogue, I think this election was very exciting. Therefore, I thought it was completely worth it to stay up all night and watch the coverage via a million different live streams and maps that exist on the Internet. I'm glad I voted, I'm glad turnout was relatively high, and my mind is definitely racing on caffeine, some healthy skepticism, and some genuine excitement. But whatever. The interesting part was seeing the most fascinating election of my lifetime from a foreign country, completely removed from what was actually going on. Of course the internet has made the world a bit smaller, but I still felt the physical divide not least because the first polls closed at 1 AM here. To answer many questions, "Yes" the Norwegians are happy Obama won, "Yes" most of Europe expressed a somewhat ecstatic preference for Obama in my travels, and "No" I don't think my vote actually counted for much. But it's the fact that people really got excited and decided to go vote (and I don't give all the credit for that to Obama, McCain managed a fair amount of votes himself) that makes me feel patriotic today. I can say that the Norwegians and international students I talked to today viewed us Americans a little bit differently than they did before Election Day, and mostly positively. Any negative view can probably be attributed to the fact that a few of us were absolutely delirious from drinking the darkest coffee in humanity's history. I don't want to alienate people who happen to have a different ideological background from my own, so believe me when I say this has little or nothing to do with the results: Today we earned our democracy in a way I guess we have to every election, and the rest of the world acknowledges us for that. I wasn't there to see it, but I could feel it even over the internet. I'm proud to be American not because Barack Obama won an election, but because I was in a foreign country and could feel the U.S.A. come alive. I heard the anger, the joy, the music, the rhetoric, the division, the drunkenness, and a million other conflicting and awesome things. But I didn't hear any apathy or hopelessness from anywhere in America. Just the beginning of a discussion that I hope doesn't fade when the hype is over, and which I believe could shape a generation. It's a hard thing to define, especially from overseas, but it feels like something woke up that was sleeping for a bit. I have one wish now, and that's that people take this opportunity to keep making their voices heard through civil disagreement as well as hopeful affirmation. When I get home, I'll exercise both of these voices as well as many more and I hope that America will be united through all its people using their voices together, in harmony and in dissonance. It will take a song to keep us united, so just keep singing and I believe we'll be fine.

The Great Adventure (Part 4)

It has now been a few weeks since the Great Adventure has come to a close, but deconstructing it has proven to take a long time. Since I want to be writing about things around here, as well as things like the recent Stockholm trip and the exchange rate and food and such, part 4 of the Great Adventure may be shorter and less descriptive than the first 3. Sorry, but I believe it's in my best interest as a traveloguer and as a lazy person. I had no idea what to expect from Brussels, as Belgium was the only country on our trip that I hadn't at least touched down in once in my life. First impressions were vaguely industrial, somewhat rich, and not exactly clean. These impressions were mostly borne out over the course of a couple days of sightseeing and eating waffles, fries, and chocolate. I'll start with the good stuff. I really like Belgian waffles. Like, a lot. This holds true even of the terrible knockoffs I've experienced in the States, and even though the waffles I had in Brussels were probably tailor-made for tourists, I was still quite happy to be eating them. I didn't know that fries were famous in Belgium, but apparently they're right up there with waffles as far as national pride goes. The only problem is I tried to eat way too many and almost had a heart attack. At least the sauce I had with them was good. And finally, the chocolate. The chocolate I had was good, but it was from a supermarket and probably manufactured by Nestle so I'm not sure if I can say I really had Belgian chocolate. We saw about 1300 chocolatiers scattered around the city, but a truffle there would have run me like 10 euros or something so the Nestle-manufactured variety was not a terrible choice. My favorite thing about Brussels not involving food was the musical instrument museum we visited. It had thousands of instruments, and their hook was that they had headphones you wore that automatically picked up where you were standing and then played you music by the instrument that you were looking at. This was kind of neat, very well-done, and extensive. We spent a couple hours there and then visited a comic book museum which was also cool, but more constricted by my inability to speak French. There were Smurfs everywhere, though. Turns out a Belgian created the Smurfs. The cultural learning in travels like these truly are infinite. So, the food was great and the museums were nice. What, you may ask, did you enjoy less about this city? I answer by saying that it had a strange idea of how to incorporate modern architecture into an ancient city. Brussels dates back to medieval times, which would be fascinating if the structures from those times weren't surrounded by parking garages and ugly hotels. Philosophically I don't necessarily oppose this type of mindset, but as a sightseer it makes things a little less interesting. It gave an odd vibe to the city, like they were actively trying to destroy their past and move into the 21st century. This was so in contrast to all the other cities that we visited in Europe that it just came off a little flat. That and the trash that was left in the streets at 7 PM and stayed there until 9 AM. You would think that the center of the EU would have a more effective garbage service, but you would think wrong. The juxtaposition of old and new, trash and shopping districts, nicely dressed people and graffiti, all served as a completely different European experience than we had witnessed up until that point. I'm not going to completely write off Brussels as a city to visit in the future like the other members of party seemed to want to, but if I were to cut out one city Brussels would probably be it. Amsterdam, on the other hand, was a great way to end the trip. After we got there. Our train was delayed several hours because of a "collision" on the "train track", which was mildly annoying but better than the alternative of actually being a part of this collision. Nonetheless, we arrived in Amsterdam considerably later than we had planned to, and were robbed of a little bit of time that first evening. Amsterdam is a beautiful city, what with the canals and all, and may have been cheated a bit in the tourism department because of the whole "everything is legal" bit. The "coffeeshops" (they didn't sell coffee there) were widespread and clearly quite geared towards tourists, but I didn't find that this really distracted from the experience in any way. Clearly, a lot of people were there to kind of experience the most legally liberal city in the world, but there was also a lot of other things to do. Walking around the city, as we did by ourselves and as part of a tour, was enjoyable for the architecture and looking at boats and all that, but it was also easy and remarkably pleasant as the weather in Amsterdam was finally very agreeable. It was great to be outside near water, even if it was all just in canals, and just soak in the city. We also visited the Anne Frank house, where her and her family hid, which was converted into a great museum, and took a boat tour. The boat tour was disappointing. We only had a speaker (and by speaker, I mean a speaker like you attach to your computer, not a person) give us about 5 words of information about 4 different places in 6 languages. Those are the highlights and lowlight of Amsterdam; all in all I thought highly of Amsterdam and would recommend it to anybody. Don't worry about the Red Light District, weed, whatever you're worried about. Let's just say there's something for everyone, and I don't feel like any type of tourist would be marginalized in the city. So that takes us back to Hamar, I guess. Things were quite low-key for a while but now we're making weekend trips again. Took a trip to Stockholm this weekend, which was beautiful and afforded us the chance to see the new James Bond movie a couple weeks early. Then next week a cabin trip then the week after that maybe Bergen? Anyway, travel has definitely been a huge part of this study away experience for me, but my travelogue will likely take a turn toward the small and mundane in the next few posts. There's a lot of great parts about living in a foreign country, there's a few bad parts, and a lot of parts that are just different. I'm going to start addressing that sort of stuff soon, so my travelogue doesn't give the impression that I just travel all the time. Some may say the point of a travelogue is to document travel, but I respond by saying that this entire semester counts as travel and thus grocery shopping belongs in a travelogue just as much as The Great Adventure does. So look forward to that, and now I'll make my obligatory mention about the election. I'm glad it's ending soon.

The Great Adventure (Part 3)

As a quick detour, I just passed my Norwegian exam. Which is a joke, because I still am at best very unfamiliar with the language. Anyway, back to the task at hand. The next chapter in this imaginatively titled expedition continues where we left off: on the way to Switzerland. The night train was somewhat miserable, in no small part due to the fact that besides us 4 there was one other guy who tried to lay out across 2 seats and was generally a source of mild discomfort. Couple this with a train that seemed to turn more than normal trains and seats that didn't recline more than an inch or so and you have about 2 hours of scattered sleep. Nonetheless, we arrived in Bern tired but excited so we tried to find our hostel. This proved difficult because of the most hilariously imprecise directions I have ever had to follow. The directions told us, among other things, to turn left when we reached the clock tower with the McDonald's on the left. So we did this, but quickly realized we were not in the right place. So we wandered about for a bit longer and eventually found another clock tower with a McDonald's on the left. When we turned left there, we found our hostel! So, I guess all the directions were lacking was a clarification that we should actually turn left at the second clock tower with a McDonald's on the left, but it's certainly not the type of situation where you would expect to need that clarification. We did find our hostel, though, and after a quick crisis where we thought the door was locked but actually Kelley just needed to push the door we managed to store our luggage and go about the business of seeing the town. There were quite a great many fountains in Bern, so that was one thing. There was also a bear pit, which was a second thing. By bear pit, I mean there was a pit with a bear in it in case that needed some explanation. We watched this guy walk around for a while, which was thrilling. The rest of the day was occupied with the same type of sightseeing that has filled the virtual pages of this travelogue to this point. The next day, also known as Day 6, was filled with great excitement though as we sweated our way through the Alps. The previous day we had tried to arrange it so we could leave for Brussels that evening and stay that night, but because of various problems we were forced to take the night train to Brussels on Day 6. The good part of this was that we got to spend the whole day hiking in the mountains. We were a bit concerned because we thought we would have to pay money on top of what we had already paid for our Eurail passes to make it to Lauterbrunnen, but everything turned out OK. The train director person didn't even check our passes or tickets or anything so we saved a great deal of money. I'm a bit conflicted ethically about that, but I am very much in favor of it economically so I'll live with myself. The train ride to Lauterbrunnen was quite beautiful, very Swiss, and not all that long. Then we walked a bit about town and enjoyed the view. Also of note were the cows and goats who all had bells on, of course. At times I thought I was inside a windchime. We went inside one mountain to see a waterfall from inside, and then we went inside another mountain and saw several waterfalls. You would think it would be a lot colder inside mountains with glacial waterfalls, but it really wasn't. In fact, it was downright hot our entire day in the Alps, which was annoying because I brought my fleece and my jacket and had to carry those around the entire day. The next portion of my story takes a slight turn for the worse. We wanted to hike up in the mountains more, instead of just through the valley like we had been doing. So I found a trail. It's important to say I found a trail for reasons that will be explained later. There was a sign at the beginning of the trail that said "experienced hikers only" but we all considered ourselves experienced hikers. This may have been a mistake. The trail was entirely uphill except for about 15 minutes. And uphill in this case meant practically rock climbing or mountaineering or something. I guess mountaineering would be most accurate since we were climbing up a mountain. Anyway, the level of discontent grew in the group as we grew more tired and, because I had in some way chosen the trail, I bore the brunt of the discontent. Sometimes you just have to take blame when blame is due, so I did. It probably wouldn't have been such a problem, but we were completely unprepared. Mentally, physically, and especially waterandfoodally. The water became a special problem the longer that we hiked, but luckily there were troughs on the side of the trail at one point. Sure these were for cattle, but we were dying of thirst so we did what we had to do. It's probably the second time in the last few months that I've risked getting some sort of bacteria, but that's another story. We turned back after about 2 hours of straight uphill and after we realized there was no sign of it stopping. By the time we had reached the apex of our journey, we had risen to the level of a town on the mountain opposite us that we couldn't even see from down in the valley and which required a rather substantial gondola ride to reach. So at least we got a good workout. I had a bar of chocolate back at the train station, which was truly the right item of food at the right time, and then we headed back to Bern to catch our night train to Brussels. And thus our enjoyable time in Switzerland came to an end. And so too will Part 3 of The Great Adventure of the Norway Glenn Travelogue.

The Great Adventure (Part 2)

So we left for Salzburg, Austria on a regional train from Munich. It was quite a beautiful train ride, what with trees and mountains everywhere. I like that stuff. Getting in relatively early in the evening was nice, and it allowed us a bit of time to decompress from the craziness of Germany. Salzburg is very much a mellow kind of place, and that was just what we needed after Berlin/Munich. That night when we got in we ate at the hostel, sat around watching about half an hour of The Sound of Music, and kind of just getting everything together (including our minds) so we could have a productive next day. This mostly meant going to bed really early. Day 4, then, began somewhat early in the morning and we set upon Salzburg. We started by visiting the Mirabell Gardens which, like so much of Salzburg, was made famous by The Sound of Music. I'm not exactly sure how I feel about sightseeing spots from movies as such, but these gardens and the other places were interesting and nice in their own right. It didn't hurt that the city was untouched by drunk Germans and busy streets. There were pretty much only older people, so I felt a little more distinguished than I did being an American at Oktoberfest. Distinction by association, I suppose. We visited about half a million churches in the Old Town, of which one (St. Peter's) was truly outstanding. The others were decent, but St. Peter's Church was a cathedral with great artwork, a huge organ, and graves. Everything I look for in a church, in other words. A large portion of the morning and early afternoon was dedicated to the fortress that overlooks Salzburg. We walked the 750 meters straight up, and took the funicular down, but while we were there we visited a couple different museums that they have inside the museum. These were by and large a good use of time. I always think it's kind of cool to learn about a certain segment of history in a place where it actually happened. I haven't visited that many places like that in the U.S.A., which is probably just because I grew up in Arizona where besides cowboys nothing old has ever happened, but it makes me appreciate those types of museums anyway. The one lame thing about that fortress was that it was attacked several times over the course of its history and was never taken, but they surrendered it to Napoleon without a fight. Seeing it, I definitely thought they could have held Napoleon off, but what do I know. All of this sightseeing and such was nice, but the problem was we had to burn time until midnight because that's when we would be taking the night train to Bern. To this end, we started just walking everywhere and ended up walking up a mountain that happened to have a monastery on it. This was a good place to spend an hour or two, so that's exactly what we did. We were able to see out on the Old Town and the river and the mountains around the city, so it was a pretty cool place to just sit. At the end of this sitting extravaganza we were hungry, so we went back to the hostel and ate. Then we sat there for a few hours, the last couple of which we spent watching the Sound of Music. They really loved the Sound of Music at this hostel. I can tell this because it was in the DVD player the entire time we were there. Finally, midnight came around and we headed to the train station to go to Switzerland. And in this transitional way, Day 4 sort of came to an end and turned into Day 5. Day 5, however, will have to be another post. Switzerland awaits.

The Great Adventure (Part 1)

It has now been about 4 days since we miraculously made it back to Hamar, and I think I've now been here long enough now to write about Europe. Which is not to say that everything resides in a perfect state of memory in my mind or anything, but I will try to relate the highlights and the minutiae and the train travel as best as I can. I'll start by rating the trip though: it definitely gets two thumbs up. I will continue by saying that I don't want these entries to reach epic lengths, so the one big trip will be divided into several shorter travelogues. This only matters because I may write one section every hour or one section every day or something but it won't be long before I detail the entire great adventure. Without any further rambling, I'm going to talk about Germany. As a little background, we knew we would be traveling into Bremen from the very beginning because that is where the illustrious Ryan Air flies to out of Norway. This being the case, we had planned to stay in Bremen for a night and then take the train down to Munich for Oktoberfest. The only problem with this plan was that we only had one night booked at a hostel in Munich and we woud have to find somewhere to stay between our night in Bremen and our night in Munich. Berlin, Dusseldorf, and even the forest were floated as possible ideas. Thankfully we ended up booking two nights in Berlin, cancelling the hostel in Bremen, and setting ourselves up for 3 more hours of travel on Day 1. So taking a few steps back, we took the train to (Oslo) Torp, as Ryan Air calls it, which is seemingly about as close to Oslo as L.A. is to Phoenix. This train ride was followed by a bus ride followed by a plane ride followed by a tram ride followed by another train ride. It was somewhat excessive. But we made it, even with 5 crazy guys next to us knocking back a fifth of vodka and a 30 pack of beer over the course of the flight. This reminds me, if you have not heard of Ryan Air or are hazy on the details you should check out their website: www.ryanair.com. It is truly a classy organization all around. I mean, if you ignore their strict alcohol policy of allowing anyone to drink anything from anywhere while on their plane. And if you ignore their flight plan of ascending to cruising altitude as quickly as possible without stalling the plane. Lest it seem I am becoming sarcastic here, I will say truthfully that it wasn't that bad and that the flight was very very very cheap. So thank you Ryan Air. Snapping back to the end of our travels, then, we arrived in Berlin in the late evening and decided on Chinese food at the place directly adjacent to our hostel. Its convenience was matched only by the quality of the food, which admittedly might have had something to do with the fact that we were all extremely hungry and extremely sick of being on trains/trams/planes. Thus ended Day 1. Day 2 began with a wonderfully cheap breakfast where a Hungarian employee humorously offered his thoughts on the U.S. vice presidential debate, intermittently accompanied by youtube videos of Matt Damon making fun of Sarah Palin. That cereal was good. Given the time that we had (1 day) and the budget that we had (pretty much none), we decided on a free tour. Ours was guided by an Irishman who got degrees in history and theater at Kentucky and used both of these degrees extensively during his tour. Over 3+ hours, we saw and learned about the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, Hitler's bunker, the Holocaust Memorial, the Berlin Wall, various old Soviet buildings, and many many more. The overarching theme of the tour was Berlin's incredibly long and sometimes checkered past, which some members of our party found more interesting than others. Despite the length of the tour, it was still easy to feel as if you hadn't seen 1/4 of the city and hadn't heard a tenth of the history. So what did we do after our interest was piqued and we felt as if we had only seen a small fraction of the city? We went back to the Brandenburg Gate and partied, of course. The day that we were there just happened to be Reunification Day, the anniversary of East and West Berlin's...reunification. The Germans apparently celebrate this event with beer and music, which makes it different from the Fourth of July only due to the conspicuous lack of fireworks. Our experience of this festival was somewhat short-lived, but it was full of bratwursts and pretzels and a Ton of people. Then a little bit more sightseeing on the way to the nearest underground station and it was back to the hostel where we reflected on how happy we were not to be in Bremen. Day 3 upped the ante in terms of beer, bratwursts, and Tons of people because Day 3 was the day when we arrived in Munich for Oktoberfest. We left early in the morning, arrived mid-afternoon, and met a few of Breanne's friends in the middle of Munich. Already I was beginning to sense the sheer population that was residing in Munich, and I was starting to feel a bit claustrophobic. But when we all decided to visit Oktoberfest that evening (as was not exactly in the original plan), I learned the true meaning of "a lot of people". Stepping onto the fairgrounds was somewhat akin to the first time you attend a rock concert or the first day at kindergarten. By this I mean primarily that there were more people in one place than I had ever seen to that point. Major fire hazard, to be sure. Somehow, we made it into a beer garden that first evening and in the interest of portraying PLU as an upstanding and mature institution (since I've been informed that my blog reflects on them somehow. I'm sorry, PLU) I will refrain from any more narrative regarding that evening/night. The next morning was an Oktoberfest morning, and we managed to get into one of the major tents for the last day of the festival. Between the people, the band, the decorations, the lederhosen, the pretzels, the food, the liters of beer and the songs I must admit that this place was like nowhere I've ever been. Oktoberfest really is all it's cracked up to be, and we all felt strangely privileged to take part in it. The food was fantastic: I had half a roast chicken with the most delicious seasoning ever and a great soup. The people were friendly: the Austrians in lederhosen behind us taught us the lyrics to the songs the band played. The glasses of beer were big: 1 liter for 8 euros. I could continue, but I will instead just say that it is an experience that really is for everyone and if you ever happen to be in Germany at the right time don't hesitate to go. I don't mean to say "you had to be there", but unfortunately I just don't have the skills or the frame of reference or whatever to accurately describe it. And this was all before 1 PM. I don't even want to think about what it's like at night in one of those tents. We left for Austria that afternoon, and I'm going to end this portion of the travelogue on that cliffhanging note because I have laundry to do.

Hiking is Fun

Which is good, because most of the time there's not a whole lot else to do in Hamar. I pretty much walked in the same area twice last week for a few hours each time, so that was fun. This is also important to do, because exercise does not come naturally in the course of my normal life in Hamar. I don't know what it is, but back in the States I feel like I just randomly end up doing physically active things at least on occasion. In Norway that hasn't really been the case. So hiking's been a good thing in that when I do go outside at least it's for a long time and I feel like I'm not completely the laziest person of all time. And I shouldn't really put that much emphasis on hiking, but more on walking when we travel places. Copenhagen is one example, but there was also a lot of walking involved in our Northern excursion and when Hamar was still new and unfamiliar there was a lot of walking then too. I'm a little worried that when it actually gets cold around here I won't ever leave the apartment, but I guess I'll just have to make an effort to go out and ice fish or something. I don't know. But for now, hiking's still a good pasttime and I could always pump up my bike tires and see how far this trail I found goes around the lake. Sorry the travelogue was more of a bore-alogue today, but there will be plenty in about 2 weeks when I return from Europe. Just a preview: Berlin, Munich, Salzburg, Bern, Brussels, Amsterdam.

Roller Coasters, Free Travel, and Lots of Walking

All of this occurred, at least to me, over the course of Curt, Kelley and my weekend trip to Copenhagen. These are the types of trips that I think would be really fun to continue over the course of the semester, but this one specifically definitely took a physical toll. The first point by any standard was our 5:15 train departure. This lasted 10+ hours, and though it involved a lot of sleeping it still seemed like an eternity. Then. Then we saw the hostel. It was a bit sketchy, I guess, but it was cheap. Maybe a picture here: I mean, it wasn't as bad as that picture makes it look. But it wasn't the Radisson. Or the Motel 6 for that matter. Nonetheless, that night we had kind of a lame moment where we realized that the one place we wanted to eat at more than any other place was the Hard Rock Cafe. I'm not exactly sure why; I guess maybe it's part missing that fantastic American culture and part missing burgers. Normally, I would absolutely scoff at the Hard Rock but this meal was one of the greatest things in my life. Sad. But I promise I won't start frequenting McDonald's or anything. The rest of that evening was taken up with exploring Copenhagen by the evening light. We caught our first glimpse of Tivoli, where we would spend the next night, and we got to see a guy pee right in front of City Hall. Somewhat of a strange night when I put it that way. We went back to the hostel relatively early that night to retire to our blanketless beds and my 10 kroner pillow. It had 36 beds, I think, and an atmosphere that could best be described by "graffiti". Once again, I'm exaggerating, but not much. The next day was the most walking without rest I've ever done in my life, and I've done a lot of walking in my life. We visited a botanical garden first thing in the morning. Well, first thing after delicious cheap chocolate croissants from a nearby bakery. I'm in a picture-like mood, so here's another: Following this exhilirating expedition, we paid a visit to the palace which I know only as the fairy-tale palace. I'm guessing that's not Danish, and it didn't really look like it was from fairy tales at all, so I don't know what that was about. The King's Gardens surrounded this fairy taleish building, and they featured some pleasantly weird sculptures. Like this one: Then it was back to the botanical garden to visit the inconveniently open from 10 AM Palm House. It was worth the wait, if for nothing else than to get out of the rain. It was somewhat wet outside, as the pictures don't accurately portray. I was kind of soaked. Then the hourlong walk to the Carlsberg Brewery. It was an hour long, and then we went and learned about beer making. Then we drank some for free. I feel that poetic language would be misused on such an experience. We then traveled something like 4 km to the northeast to visit the Marble Church, the royal residences, a huge epic fountain, and the Little Mermaid statue. These made good tourist stops, and the Queen was in so we were more or less in the presence of royalty. Times like this, it's kind of fun to just walk and experience the city. Of course I liked Copenhagen. I'm not picky after all, but the city felt different enough from Norway and the places I've visited in Europe that it was a way different experience for me. The easy way to put it is that it's the bridge culturally between Norway and Europe, but I get the feeling it's really it's own separate entity too. There were bikes EVERYWHERE, there was a great deal of water, and there was a great deal of history. Those are the first 3 things that popped out to me, but eclecticism was something that became apparent later. So many different kinds of restaurants and stores. This separates it from Norway in that it seemed to value consumerism or whatever. I can't really make a judgment based on one full day, but it was a lot of fun to be there. Oh, and the Little Mermaid statue was small. I think that's something that one returning from Copenhagen. So I said it. That night, as previously foreshadowed, we visited Tivoli where we yet again spent an exorbitant amount of money on dinner and enjoyed what was basically an amusement park. I say that it was an amusement park, but it was way classier than your Disneylands, Magic Mountains, Knott's Berry Farms etc. It was nicely lit, there were fancy restaurants everywhere, and then there were rollercoasters. And crazy ones, too. We rode one rollercoaster that was definitely world-class. I'll just say I didn't expect that to be something I could say upon returning from Scandinavia, but I will. Yay Tivoli! It even sounds fantastic. Much more so than Magic Mountain. Tivoli is much more magical. So that's it, except the 10 hr. train ride back, of course. P.S. please forgive the highlighting at the beginning of this entry. I don't know how it happened and I can't get rid of it.

It was much hotter in Northern Norway than I thought it would be

However, it was also just about as fantastic as I hoped it would be too. A general overview of the weeklong trip that our class took as a sort of field trip: We visited Roros, Trondheim, and Kristiansund to try to learn more about Norwegian society and culture. What ended up happening included a lot of hiking and sightseeing, but also a lot of meetings with local politicians and oil infrastructure executives. Once again, I'll reference Kelley's Picasa website because her photos serve as a far more specific document than I have space to make right here. I also am going to steal a couple of her pictures in this entry. But I do want to talk about the things that I found really cool, so I will do that right now. Roros was notable for its age; the city was founded in the early 1600s and large parts of it remain unchanged because it's a UNESCO world heritage site now. This not only means that the buildings are protected by law, but also that people who buy property there have to live on that property year-round and they can't change the exterior or interior design of their house. So basically you can't paint your house and you can't tear down walls between your kitchen and your living room if you live in Roros. That was kind of interesting, but not as interesting as the random desert in the middle of the city. Don't know how to explain this, because all the interpretive signs were in Norwegian, but it was definitely a desert. Just a really, really small one. Here's a picture: I don't really even know what to say about that; it was just kind of weird. Good view from the top, though. It wasn't hot at this desert, but this would be the only time for the rest of the trip that I wouldn't at least be uncomfortably warm. The train that night took us to Trondheim, which is more or less the last big city as you go north in Norway. From a political standpoint, it's interesting for its leftist policies, even by Norway's standards. We talked with a member of the Labour Party our first morning who talked to us surprisingly directly about rifts within the Labour Party, about the success and failure of certain policies, and about the way politics works in Norway. This was interesting enough to me that I actually stayed awake for the whole hour he talked (even on 5 hours of sleep). I guess I've never heard a politician really speak honestly and/or give such an insider's account. Trondheim also happens to be a big city, and we walked around it a lot. And by a lot, I mean like a lot. It seems like that's all we did for the 2 days we were there. Luckily, this allowed for a pretty comprehensive look at the city, including the largest unversity and the 2nd-largest cathedral in Norway. But (and I don't mean this to be a slight against Trondheim because it was a really neat city) the best part of Trondheim was leaving. The only reason for this is because the boat ride from Trondheim to Kristiansund was absolutely awesome. It's one of those situations where transportation really should be billed as a tourist attraction, and though I understand that there's fjord boat tours in places like Bergen, the ride through the fjord and out into the North Sea on this commuter vessel would be pretty tough to top on any sightseeing boat. The walls of the fjord were sometimes populated by small villages, sometimes by sheep, sometimes by strawberry fields, and sometimes just by trees, but the view was consistently beautiful. To think that this is the trip that oil tankers and commuters make (who apparently live in Trondheim and work in Kristiansund) seemed to me to a be a point of envy. But it would be too tough to get work in Norway, even though they need plenty of oil employees. All because I'm not an EU citizen and I don't speak Norwegian. What a shame. Because I would definitely live and work in Kristiansund if they would have me. The town is an interesting mixture of industry and scenery. For a person who tends to equate oil drilling and all that with deserts and wastelands, (e.g. large parts of Nevada) it was somewhat eye-opening. Also interesting was what we learned about the relationship between government and oil over the course of our stay in Kristiansund. The government in Norway would be considered extremely liberal on the American political spectrum, and in the current American political debate liberal=no offshore drilling. But let's just say that the Norwegian government is pro-offshore drilling in a big way. It's the reason that they're one of the richest countries in the world (they tax oil companies 80% of the revenue and that's not a typo) and the citizens of Norway have what seems to be a relatively trustful and positive relationship with the oil companies. This all seems really foreign from my point of view, but that's probably because it is. But my experience of Kristiansund was more about enjoying hikes and walks through the surrounding area, which can't really be described without pictures. So as I (finally) wrap this entry up, I'll just say that Northern Norway is an outdoor socialist's paradise, but it's a bit hotter than you'd expect it to be in September. Especially that bus ride home. Man, that was miserable. Here's a final picture of Kristiansund- Beaches by evening light make good pictures I think:

At nights, it tends to be loud here

People are always partying in the streets. And when I say always, I mean every single night. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and especially Thursday. The weekend is a given. Curt and my bedroom is fairly close to the main centre-type thing of Hamar, so as my title suggests, it tends to be loud here. My favorite is the singing. I don't think I hear enough drunken singing in the States, because I love to hear the drunken songs of Norway. In other news, our class departs on a weeklong "excursion" next week to 3 northern cities: Roros, Trondheim, and Kristiansund. So I'll be writing about that when I get back because I'm pretty sure it's going to be the greatest week ever.

Everything is very expensive here

The country of Norway is quite rich, but as the guy at the bar last night told me, that means that most of its people can feel very poor when they try to spend money. And for poor Americans who are getting the short end of the stick in terms of exchange rates, it's just downright ridiculous. To be specific, the exchange rate is 5:1, and this means that a 150 kroner breast of chicken (which is an accurate price) costs 30 dollars. This makes eating well hard, it makes really touristy tourism hard, and it makes travel within Norway hard if you don't have a Scan Rail pass. Thankfully I do, but in the case of yesterday we went to Oslo and I decided not to use the Scan Rail pass since it works for a limited number of days once you decide to use it for the first time. The round trip was 340 kroner, so the math is relatively simple. The good news is that it was entirely worth it, as most things are once I manage to readjust my idea of what expensive actually means. First impressions of Oslo were not entirely positive in our group, but as we went further into the city it ended up being a great time. Oslo looks like a big city, but it's incredibly laid-back and has a low population density. It also places an emphasis on parks apparently, because we saw several and they were all large and full of character. The one where we actually spent the majority of our time was filled with some type of neo-classical Greek-influenced weird-something sculptures. They were all nudes, but they depicted people doing out of the ordinary things. A picture is worth more than a thousand words in this case, so I recommend looking at Kelley's pictures if you want to know how "unique" it was. The city as a whole is a good city for just walking around in, which is good since that's what we did. The Oslo fjord sits right near the city, and we got the chance to see a nice view of the fjord from a huge fortress designed to keep the Swedes out. I'd qualify that as a uniquely Norwegian thing to do. I also tried my first kebab, which was delicious, especially after a steady diet of food influenced by the aforementioned harsh exchange rate. We also saw the Royal Palace, which was incredibly low-key. This mirrors Norwegians' general attitude towards royalty, which is somewhat detached and uninterested I guess from what I've experienced so far. Maybe that's just the young people, though. I'm not sure. Two more things of particular note this week: we planned our mid-semester break trip today, and I participated in an iPod battle last night. The iPod battle involved playing tracks and the people choosing the DJ who they thought chose better tracks. I definitely think my first round exit was almost entirely due to regional bias. I might have chosen songs that were a little too far out of the mainstream, but I thought that would be the point. Guess I was wrong. Meanwhile, we've decided that our mid-semester break will encompass Munich Germany, Salzberg Austria, Bern Switzerland, Brussels Belgium, and Amsterdam Netherlands. It should be nothing less than awesome. Between that, a probable trip to Ireland, a probable trip to Sweden, and numerous daytrips to different spots in Norway, I feel like I'm making the most of my chance to travel here. And the best part about going to other countries? None of them will be as expensive as Norway.

Jeg ikke snakke Norsk

I spelled that wrong, I'm pretty sure. It means "I do not speak Norwegian", which was my first thought on getting to Oslo. It seems like everybody in Norway can speak English, but everything is in Norwegian anyway. Go figure. It made life a little bit frantic when we got into the airport in Oslo, and then just kind of confusing when we rode the train. But the train ride was really beautiful, right along Lake Mjosa (it's supposed to have a slash through the O but I can't find that one). Then we arrived at the train station in Hamar, and we were ushered around rather awkwardly by students to our dorms. It turns out that Curt and I are sharing a room that's actually quite nice (pictures attached) while Kelley is in a dorm twenty minutes away living with another American from North Dakota State named Breanne. We were basically dumped into our rooms with no instructions except for that we would start school (kind of) on Monday. It was Friday when we got here, so we were left with a little time. We used this to do absolutely nothing. On Sunday we met our international coordinators, Stian and Knut, and we took a tour through Hamar and the university and such. Knut Haugen is an ex-military man and he walks very fast. He is also probably insane. He led us on a great tour along Lake Mjosa, as we saw a castle and lots of water and greenery. This was also the day when I got to meet the other international students, who are all really cool people. The international program at Hedmark University includes students from Nepal, Hungary, Palestine, Kosovo, Tanzania, Namibia, Russia, Czech Republic, Indonesia, USA, and possibly another country or two that I forgot right now. It's an interesting group, and over the last week or so I've gotten to know pretty much all of them. As much as I love PLU, I've never really had the chance to talk to people from so many diverse backgrounds, and even though I've really spent most of my time with Americans the conversations that I've had with people from other countries have been awesome. Monday through Friday was an orientation week, as we would call it back at PLU, but it had an emphasis on drinking that I don't think PLU could legally condone. Personally, I think this is not a terrible thing, as it helps people come out of their shells a little bit more. The activities surrounding the drinking, however, were top-notch as well. There was a party at Hydranten (the pub 10 seconds from our room) on Monday night, karaoke night Tuesday at Hydranten, a barbecue out at the agricultural campus about 15 minutes away on Wednesday, a concert featuring a crazy band called Surferosa on Thursday, and then another party at Hydranten on Friday. I think the reason that so much of this went on in the pub was that Norwegians are naturally slightly awkward or shy, except when they are drinking alcohol. Karaoke night, especially, illustrated this fact. At 9 o'clock when we showed up, there was no one there. From 10:30 on it was nonstop drunk butchering of American pop songs and Norwegian traditional anthems. That night certainly was interesting, and the entire week has been a really fun time. I've definitely met more people this week than I thought I would have, and I've had the chance to check out the city and start to appreciate it a bit. I've been writing for long enough now that I think I can stop detailing the week and attach pictures. I have pictures of our room and of a bit of the town. There's a lot of streets and some beach photos to check out. I'm just going to link to my facebook albums so anybody can look at these pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2036317&id=44903424&saved#/album.php?aid=2036317&id=44903424 AND http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2036317&id=44903424&saved#/album.php?aid=2036315&id=44903424

London

Is not a very creative name for an entry. That's okay, though. First, I'm going to reel off the laundry list of places we went in London and then maybe I'll talk about what I found interesting about the city in general. So: Tuesday - Tour (Big Ben, Parliament, that part of the city), War Rooms, National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, and Jack the Ripper tour through the East End Wednesday - Historic London tour (different part of town), Tate Modern Art Museum, wandering Thursday - Tower of London, Natural History Museum, Abbey Road, getting lost somewhere near Abbey Road Two things jump out of this list: we frequented museums and tours. This is almost entirely owing to the fact that both of these things were free. That said, museums and tours ended up being a good use of time. The tour group we found was, we're pretty sure, made up of maybe 4 people and in our 3 tours we saw 2 of them. The two guides we had were both Australian and pretty insane, but they gave entertaining and occasionally informative tours. Near the end of our first day tour, an older British woman came up to me and said "He's quite mad, isn't he?". Referencing our tour guide, of course. She rambled on about how she'd never seen anyone so odd, and then let me know: "He's not a real tour guide, you know". I felt bad telling her that yes he actually was, so I let it slide, but it somewhat illustrates the nature of this particular tour guide. The other guide was more normal. The museums were museums, so I'll cut any further description out. Except for saying that they were uniformly excellent, especially for being free, and that the Museum of Natural History was absolutely huge and completely crowded. As was the Tower of London, but this is expected since it is peak tourist season. Getting lost on the way back from Abbey Road was an interesting experience, but at least we got to see what was one of the less wealthy parts of London. And Abbey Road looked like it does on the album cover, so I was not disappointed with that. I'm sorry for not writing more in-depth about specific experiences, but I thought I'd rather write a little bit more about general impressions and random musings since there was just so much that happened while I was there. I don't want to write a newspaper article so much as a journal. That said, London is a busy place but I like the feeling of it in general. The underground is some sort of miracle, the accents never get old to me, and hundreds of years of history are there right next to ultra-modern business. I've never been to New York, but from what I've heard/seen on TV/read/whatever New York would be a lot like London if it had 1,000 year old churches a quarter mile from Times Square. It's weird, because people in general seem completely unaffected by the history around them. I don't mean that I expect Londoners to go around staring at landmarks, but I guess I do mean that their newer buildings and so on seem geared toward the future e.g. the London Eye. In other parts of Europe, including what I've seen of Norway now, architecture and business seems somewhat bound to the past; that doesn't seem to be the case in London. Also, the businessmen are much more like Americans than I would have thought. Mostly, that means they're on cellphones and are loud and pushy in the streets. The culture in general, at least in 3 days of limited sightseeing, resembles America's a lot more than I thought. Unfortunately, it's just a little bit too long ago to come up with much more to say about my time in London, but it was a fun way to kick off a semester of studying abroad. Later posts will probably be more specific, but they'll still feature random thoughts more than facts about what I've been doing. For anybody who read this post but not yesterday's, there are pictures of London linked to that post. A lot of them. So check them out since a picture is worth a thousand words. And there are captions, so it's more like a thousand words and change. Next week: Culture Shock (?), language barriers, arriving earlier than you need to, and living next to the best pub in Hamar.

Test Page/Flying to Texas

I will be writing in catch-up mode for the next couple days, by which I mean I'll start from the beginning of my trip and keep on writing until I reach the present day. This may take a few days since in the last week and a half or so I've been to London, arrived in Norway, and been subjected to a variety of unique experiences that I figure I should write about in this space since that's kind of the point. First, though, I have to make sure I know what I'm doing as far as posting on this blog. Actually, I'm going to call it a travelogue because I think the word blog is a little annoying and not quite accurate for the type of writing I'm doing. So this entry is for figuring out what I'm doing. And for writing about my experience flying to Houston. This actually relates to my experience in London and Norway, though, because I think there's a common lesson I learned from spending 3 days in London and 3 days (and counting) in Norway. Stereotypes are almost always completely wrong, but people in certain regions do act the way that I've seen in the movies or read about in books. What this meant for my flight to Texas was that there were more than a few guys in cowboy hats and that everyone was loud, had an accent, and for some reason refused to sit in their airplane seats for longer than 5 minutes at a time. Also, I should be more tolerant of the Texan accent, but it just doesn't make me smile the same way that a British accent does. I don't know why, but the combination of all these things and maybe the general annoyance of plane travel made for a tough plane ride. The fasten seatbelt light was on for the entire flight, and people were in line for the bathrooms the entire flight. This wouldn't have been a problem for me, but I was in the last row. This made it hard to sleep, because there were cowboy hats and Texan accents and wicked amounts of turbulence all at the same time and I thought I was going to go crazy. It was actually hilarious, but I didn't want to laugh at everyone so I just watched Kung Fu Panda instead. Which was also hilarious, so it was ok. The flight to London, on the other hand, was awesome and full of me sleeping. Finally, I'm going to post a link right now for some pictures from London from my friend Kelley, who along with Curt made up our travel group through London and to Norway. For those of my family members who don't know, Kelley and Curt both go to PLU and I've known them since freshman year. I didn't have my camera in London, and yes I know not many of the pictures have me in them, but 1) that's not a terrible thing, and 2) it was my choice, so don't blame Kelley for that. That last bit was mostly meant for my mom. I promise to have more pictures with me in them from Norway. I'll be attaching my pictures to my posts here, but Kelley's site (I'm assuming) will be up and running the whole time we're here so if anybody wants to see more pictures that's your best option. Here's the site:

http://picasaweb.google.com/kelleyw06

Next post: London.