Parkering forbudt and other Norwegian highlights
Josefine outside of the Canning Museum in Stavanger, Norway.
We enjoyed our 10 days in Norway! This was an exciting time for the family as we just started our long journey around the world. Annelies mentioned that we are finally decompressing from the endless to-do lists back at home. We got and then recovered from jet lag in Norway. And we visited some beautiful places and met some amazing people along the way!
Rain and cold - this was a long, extended winter in Colorado. We found ourselves scrambling 2 days before our flights to adjust schedules and quickly hire a moving van to avoid 6 inches of spring snow on our move date. We hoped to find amazing weather as soon as we started traveling! But it seems we found more cold weather in Norway, with temps in the 40s-50s (5-14 C) and lots of rain. Our amazing hike to Preikestolen, to visit the fjords from high above, unfortunately fogged over…
At the top of Preikestolen, a hike with 1500 feet of elevation gain in 2 hours! Usually this rocky outcrop has beautiful view of the fjord below…
Parkering forbudt - Norwegians speak amazing English! Seriously, everyone we encountered spoke English, from tourist information centers to clerks immigrant running mini markets. One of the fun things about traveling is picking up tidbits of new languages. Josefine found “parkering forbudt” hilarious - “parkering forBUTT” —> it means “parking forbidden”, and quickly turned into an inside joke for the family. We all learned “takk”, which means “thanks”. But since people can flip to English so easily, there wasn’t much struggle in communication. What a great start to a trip!
Expense - with its famous salmon & fish-canning industries and expansive coastline, we expected to eat lots of seafood in Norway. Except that we found food to be quite pricey, both in restaurants as well as supermarkets. A light family meal that we would expect to cost $40-50 in the US would easily run from $100-110 in Oslo, Flam, Bergen and Stavanger. After some currency exchange consternation during the first few days, we realized that we wouldn’t eat at all if we didn’t just go with the flow! A simple draft beer would run $11 (vs $5-6 in the US). So a number of our meals were bread and cheese, still approximately 80-100% more expensive than back home.
Brunost - at the Aegir Brewery restaurant and pub in Flam, we discovered ‘brunost’, or brown cheese. What a delightful treat! It’s a sweet tasting cheese which looks like a light caramel. It’s made by boiling down the whey - usually a byproduct of cheese production - for a few hours. This caramelizes the residual sugars, and then it’s added to goat and cow milk to produce a cheesy-like snack that we ate on bread for main meals and even snacks.
Not yet a new reality - things still feel like vacation; it doens’t yet feel that this is just how we live now. Certainly some of that is because of the newness. But we’re also moving around fairly quickly, with 1-4 night stays at each place. That’s not enough time to make new friends or even settle into routines where we can start actively teaching or working. We’re usually on the go from 8AM until 8PM and tired when we get back to the apartment.
Being the youngest and not totally understanding what it means to set out into the world, Madeline was quite concerned about how many nights we were staying in each place. Josefine has had dreams about staying in one place for 9 weeks. I’m just happy to not wake up at 3 AM for several hours due to jetlag. We’ll settle into this soon I’m sure :)
Overall, one and a half weeks in Norway was an excellent start to our family worldtrip. We had some adapting to do - dealing with foreign languages and new homes, learning how to pack/unpack quickly, fending off jetlag, etc. We had some small travel challenges which we handled with ease. Each of us had some slight grumpiness which was quickly shaken off and laughed about as a family. We found some amazing museums and “learning moments” to slow down, teach/learn, and really interact as a family. One country down and a world to go. And we’re excited to keep going!
On our ferry from Bergen to Stavanger, Norway.
