Pinin' for the Fjords

Oslo - 7/25-26

Some random observations about Norway:

Norsk (Norwegian)
The Norwegian language is pretty easy to figure out when its just a matter of reading it. Exit is "utgang" (outgoing), coffee "kaffe," red wine "rodvin," The Perfect Storm "Den Perfekte Stormen." "Friske fiske" means fresh fish, and it is our new favorite thing to say. "Friske fiske, friske fiske, friske fiske, friske fiske." See what I mean?

Spoken, Norwegian is utterly incomprehensible to me, and even though everyone seems perfectly cheerful to speak English, it's very disorienting. I mean, I want to be polite and everything, so I'd like to say a few words in Norwegian just to show I am making an effort. So, I look in my little phrasebook for, say, "hello." "God dag," it tells me. Trouble is, no one says "god dag." Everyone says "hi." The second you say "hi," it's immediately obvious that you're American, which means that you probably don't speak a second language (and even if you do, there's no way it's Norwegian), and, BANG, the nice, accomodating Norwegian behind the counter trots out the English. So I console myself with "tusen takk" (thank you very much), which has impressed exactly no one--all the Norwegians whom I have thanked have looked at me like "whatever" and gone ahead and said "you're welcome." Unfortunately, I seem to be compromising by speaking English with sort of a nonspecific European accent. I'm not doing it on purpose; stuff like "hallo, do you haff toilet" and "one cooffeeee please" just keep popping out. I know I should just accept the fact that I am going to have to be one of those Americans (at least until we get to France) who goes to a foriegn country and walks up to people and starts in on the English with no language foreplay at all. This is so difficult for me, because my secret wish is for all the Europeans I meet to say as I leave, "American? No! She cannot be American...she is so...sophisticated, so well dressed, so considerate. See? She even said 'thank you' in our language!" Things will go easier for me when I give this up.

Barn (Children)
Norwegian children are folded into daily life with no fuss or fanfare. I think we've been to one restaurant where there weren't a couple of toddlers snacking on the friske fiske along with mom and dad. Unlike American parents who take their children everywhere, parents here are very casual about it. They don't get in their faces, they don't fuss over them, and they don't respond at all to tantrums. When a when a two-year-old throws a fit here, the parents sort of ignore it until it goes away. There was one little boy in a cafe who wanted to keep pushing his stroller after his mom had found a seat. She said no, he started to scream. Instead of making a whole big thing out of it, she just locked the breaks on the stroller, sat down, and lit a cigarette. He freaked out for about two minutes, and she just kept smoking and reading the menu. He calmed down immediately.

Kids are so cute when they throw a fit in another language. I don't know what it is. In America, when some toddler starts screaming "No!" over and over again, I have to leave. I Norway, they scream "Nei" (pronounced nigh), as in "Nei! Nei-nei-nei-nei-NEI! NEI! NEI!!!!!!!" It's just the cutest thing. My guess is that this would wear off fast.

Oslo to Bergen - 7/26

We took the train for the first time this trip to Bergen, which is on the West Coast of Norway. A friend of ours had advised that we do something called "Norway in a Nutshell," where you take the train to Myrval, another train to Flåm, a fjord boat to Gudvangen, a bus to Voss, and another train to Bergen. If it sounds exhausing, it was. I was completely wrong about our bags weighing 500 pounds. We think that Norwegian trolls got into our luggage and put boulders inside, as the bags weigh at least 5,000 pounds now. The last time I was on a train in Europe was as a student, and I must say that first class is much better than second--tons of leg room, PLUS they give you free coffee. The scenery on the way was beautiful, and the boat trip was worth all the hassle and bother. Rob's photographs do much more justice to it than my descriptive powers can. By lucky chance, the night before we left, we saw the "Monty Python" Dead Parrot sketch on television. This is the sketch where a pet shop owner, while trying to convince a customer that his Norwegian Blue parrot is not dead, utters the words "He's not dead, he's pinin' for the fjords." During the trip, we could not stop whispering "pinin' for the fjords" to one another and giggling uncontrollably. Naturally, I had to begin an argument about whether one could pine for the fjords while in a fjord--I still maintain that one cannot, no more than one could party like it's 1999 in the year 1999. Fortunately, we are no longer in a fjord, so the joke is still funny.

Good news: A few days ago, I got email letting me know that a piece of mine has been accepted by the online version of McSweeney's magazine. "Sometime in the near future," is as definite as they'll be. I'll provide a link here when it is up, so be sure to keep tuning in. 

--Lisa

the Sogne fjord

Rob on the fjord ferry 

 Lisa waiting for the Flåm