Scandinavia Days: Day 3

Today I ate meat for the first time in a decade.  More on how that basically makes me a man, later.  Now, for my regularly scheduled Norwegian update:


Finally!  A full night's sleep.  I'm sure the Ativan helped.  (Thanks, Aunty!)  I woke up around 9:30 with the sun bright and shiny, exactly as it was when I went to bed at 11:30 last night.  We've been starting our days with 7-11 coffee.  Don't judge -- it's good here.  After coffee, I swaddled myself in preparation for our six-hour hike.  The thing is, even though the sun is out and it's June 19th, Norway hasn't heard that it's summer yet.  I put on two pairs of pants, two shirts, a scarf, my Patagonia puffy, and of course my Vibrams.  And then I walked out of the house and felt overdressed.  It was actually mildly warm, like say, 60 degrees?  Anyway, we got more coffee, (this time at a proper shop), and some sandwiches for the hike and got on our way.


Bergen is a coastal town surrounded by seven hills, all of which can be seen from the top of Mt. Fløyen.  To get there, you can either catch a tram and take it 1/3 up the mountain then hike the rest of the way, OR you can be stoic like us and just hike the whole thing, and then wish you would have taken the tram.  The truth is, it's not technical.  It's a little like hiking Runyon, except that it just keeps going up and up and up.  With only a little sandwich a piece, (the Europeans have portion sizes like the Japanese), we were worried that we'd need more sustenance.  At the restaurant near the tram stop, we looked for something.  Our choices were a sit-down meal or hotdogs from a stand in the tourist shop.   Havis got the hotdog.  I ate half my sandwich and pretended like it was really filling.   Just like Oliver Twist would have.


While heading up the mountain, I saw this mural on the side of the ranger station.  I thought it was pretty because it seemed like she understood how miserable the cold will make a girl.

The good thing about the Vibrams is that you feel everything.  The bad thing about the Vibrams is that you feel everything.  Including marsh.  My feet were soaked by the time we got to the top.  It had been three hours since we started, it was really windy, and I just wanted to get down.  So we descended quickly, taking as many shortcuts as we could find.  (I know -- that's terrible trail etiquette.  You're supposed to stay on the switchbacks, blah blah blah, but I had to pee.)  

And as it turns out, one of the luckiest things happened as a result of taking shortcuts:  we got hopelessly lost.  Have you ever been lost in another country?  It's kind of fun.  We ended up in a totally foreign part of Bergen and walked in endless spirals until we happened upon a few beautiful parks where locals were sunning themselves.  (Apparently they're under the impression that it's warm here.)  We followed our instinct down, down the hill and eventually we wound up in a really touristy area of town, which we never would have visited otherwise because, well, it's touristy and we're snobby like that.   Anyway, it was neat.  I was happy.


By the time we got home more World Cup was on, so we watched that and got ready for dinner.  First we bought movie tickets because it sounded like fun to see an American film in a foreign country.  We then headed to this hipster pub located in the basement of Naboen, an old people's restaurant.  After dinner we time to kill before the movie so we decided to go for a walk.   But by 8 p.m. it was winter again, and I begged to get inside for a drink just to stop the wind from cutting my face off.   The bar we walked into was empty, save for us.  The bartender looked at us as if we were lost.  He asked us where we were from.   We told him, ordered drinks and I headed upstairs to the washroom.  I was looking around and trying to figure out the bathroom situation.  There were three doors:  a white one, ajar with visible urinals and the block figure of a man on the outside.  Not for me.  The second one was painted in rainbow stripes and again had the block figure of a man affixed to the door, but this time the man figure was sitting down.  Weird.  The third door, also white, had a woman on it.  I chose that one.  When I got downstairs Hav was looking at me and then looking at the wall of rainbow flags that we missed on the way in.  The question about where we were from started to make sense.


So we finished our drink and trudged to the movie theatre.  Outside, there was a girl eating from a tub labeled "Bacon" in bold letters.  Wtf?!  Its contents looked like mini strips of bacon.  Wtf?!  We went inside.  I had to investigate.  Bergen theatres don't have popcorn behind the counter like in the States.  They have entire candy ROOMS with loads of sugary goodness, pre-popped popcorn on shelves, and yes, tubs of bacon!  Two girls were standing in the candy room eating the mini bacon bites.  I asked one of the girls what she was eating.


Me:  Is that bacon?
Her:  *smiling,* (Norwegians are so nice), *but also not answering my question* Here, try one.
Me:  Oh, no thanks, I don't eat meat.
Her:  *smiling*  It's not meat.

So I ate one.  They're F*CKING PORK RINDS with food-colored strips of pink on them!!  She smiled at me.  I smiled back at her.  I smiled chewing, chewing, chewing the fried pig skin.  I feel like once you've eaten pork rinds you can't really be a hippie.  I thanked her and then went to watch Iron Man 2 in shocked silence.

It is the virtues, not the faults...which constitute one's true legacy. -- Gandhi

Scandinavia Days: Day 2

It’s a strange thing to feel as though you don’t belong to any time zone.  I woke at five this morning after going to bed at one, after sleeping through much of yesterday.  At that hour the only thing to do is watch music videos until it’s considered a reasonable time to go exercise.

One of my favorite ways to get to know a city is to travel it on foot.  This morning we started by walking to the new opera house.   Behold – it is an impressive creation.  Marble, sandblasted metal, and the adjacent harbor soften its hard edges.  Just off the shore, there is a glass shipwreck of a boat, at once giving to and taking from the water.  Twenty minutes passed before I pulled myself from its shimmer. 

Perhaps the opera house’s most remarkable feature is that it’s almost entirely climbable – a highbrow jungle gym.  It slopes upward with indiscernible stairs and cobbled cement toward its roof, which doubles as a public observatory for the islands surrounding Oslo.  I love the contrast between the hospitality of the building and the reputation of the art it houses.    

After walking the structure, I ran the structure.  I had to.  Its texture begged no less.  I’ve been wearing Vibram’s and the cool articulation of the marble and concrete urged me to keep running – along the waterfront until I could go no further, then into the neighborhood streets passing parks and brownstones and churches.   The sensation of running nearly barefoot is intimate and kinesthetic.   I am notoriously horrible with directions –I get lost exiting a hotel elevator – but somehow this morning I made my way through a new city and back to the hotel without thought, as if intuitively guided.  I reasoned that the sensory experience of the “shoes” creates neural maps which bridges new ways of learning.  (*Cough* hippie *cough*.

Anyway, I returned to the hotel for a complimentary breakfast of tubed caviar and meatballs masquerading as potatoes.  (I donated the latter).  Afterwards we headed to the train station.  We waited for the train to Bergen for about a half an hour, or just long enough to realize that we were the youngest people in line.  I worried that we were leaving cosmopolitan Oslo for what would be basically the Branson of Norway, with Shoji and Yakov Smirnoff at the other end.  The seven-hour train ride from Oslo to Bergen is regarded as one of the best in the world, by people who decide those sorts of things.   The path snakes through bucolic country reminiscent of the Pacific Northwest, through tundra and snowcapped hills and waterfalls and cerulean rapids.   It looked cold.  I stepped outside during one of the stops.  It was.  And when we finally ended in Bergen at 6 p.m., it was still cold.  So cold that when a guy walking up the street in front of us pulling his suitcase dropped his bag during a ridiculous gust, he told his luggage to f*ck off.  Cold makes people say angry things at lifeless objects. 

We are staying in a really cute, old apartment at the top of one of Bergen’s seventeen billion hills.  The person who rented us the flat must be from LA because she described the walk from the train station as “five minutes” when really, she meant twenty.  After unloading our stuff, we headed back out to find food.   You know what’s awesome?  Trying to follow Lonely Planet dinner recommendations in a country that apparently has never heard of a grid and also where you don’t speak the language so that street signs might as well be in Braille.  We walked for about three fights.   When we finally made it to Pygmalion, a veggie-friendly restaurant close to the local hostel, we parked ourselves at a table in the back and stole candles for warmth from other tables.  We enjoyed the beer. 

On the way back we stopped at 7-11 to get treats.  Getting treats is more fun when you know what you’re picking out.   I unwittingly ended up with some apple-flavored mineral water.  I don’t recommend. 

And now, I’m back at the apartment, having just finished watching England tie Algeria.  (Which reminds me:  watching World Cup in Europe is so much more fun than watching at home.  Last night when Greece beat Nigeria, the streets erupted with both of Greece’s goals!  Locals get wasted for countries that are marginally part of the EU.)  So I’m off to (hopefully) get a full night’s sleep.   I need to be well-rested for a day of sitting in cafes pretending I’m a tortured artist.

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Holy cow -- I'm SO excited about our show at the OK Hotel July 1 - 31.  Opening night is July 1st.  It's gonna be one helluva hootenanny.  

It is the virtues, not the faults...which constitute one's true legacy. -- Gandhi