Hurtigruten - following a boat minute for minute over 5.5 days

We just finished watching a recap of the Hurtigruten's trip from Bergen to Kirkenes (wayy up north near Finland and Russia) on TV. It's a cruise type ship that travels back and forth along the coast, and over the past week they broadcast the entire thing live on TV, minute for minute.

You can see a map HERE

According to NRK (the national channel) nearly 3 million Norwegians followed along to some extent. Meaning nearly three quarters of the country's population.



With people cheering and waving Norwegian flags as the boat went by, airplanes swooping to salute it and various activities along the way, it definitely had the country's attention. With the sun barely going down, then midnight sun once it reached the arctic circle, it looked like a stunning trip!

Just thought I'd mention it since I found it interesting they would dedicate a channel to a boat for 5.5 days. "My little Norway", a blog written by an Australian living in Norway, has a way better article on it than I could ever write HERE.

It always amazes me how strong national pride and identity Norway has for such a little country. Or maybe that's exactly why it's so strong?

A few more pictures from nrk.no







Gorgeous country!

A quick update

It's been a while since I last posted, so here goes a quick picture update of the last two weeks. In that time I've been down to Stavanger, eaten a sheeps eyeball, had a visit from home and said the first of many goodbyes here.

With my buss card here, I can travel down to Stavanger fairly cheap by bus. (you can see Stavanger and Bergen on the lower left of Norway)

It takes about four hours, and two weekends ago I decided to make an impulse trip there to visit Hannah, an exchange student from Australia who lives there. It just so happened that Kate from Canada was visiting as well, and I had an amazing weekend with them.

The bus had a screen where you could follow where we were

Kate with a dutch caramel waffle

Stavanger

Me, Hannah and Kate

Hannah's host family lives on the ocean, on an island which you have to take a little ferry to. We swam, rowed, played scrabble, drank amazing coffee and just layed outside and enjoyed that strange yellow ball in the sky that they apparently call the sun.

Oh, and ate sheeps head. Remember how I said in one of my last posts HERE, I'd never eaten smalahove in Norway. Well that changed in Stavanger. 

The meat on the head wasn't all that bad; it was pretty much just the cheek you could eat.

but this.....

was the grossest thing I've ever eaten.

The optic nerve was still hanging out the back of the eye, and it was so big! Hannah even had to take the eyelashes off hers. Ususally you just see bones in the scrap bowl, but imagine what looks like a set of false eyelashes clinging to the side?

Thanks to not wanting to be a wimp and the "try everything" mentality of being an exchange student, I shoved the entire thing in my mouth. Thankfully nothing "popped" like I thought would happen, there were no juices. It was just like a giant stringy fatty ball that took FOREVER to chew. I just tried to tell myself I was eating something else, and tried not to look at the head sitting on my plate with the gaping eye socket.

excited about sheep heads

Staring it in the eye

The long chewing process

It was such a great weekend! (apart from the eye haha)

Thursday my art class had our last day of wandering in the city:

Hard to believe I won't be going into 3rd year with them in the fall! you can see some of our class's art on the walls

Silvia and me

Bergen...suchh a gorgeous city when it doesnt rain!

Friday night Marlies and Annalea came to visit!! Marlies went to school with me, and Annalea is her older sister. They've been travelling around Europe and decided to make a stop here. SO amazing to have them here, and we had an insane amount of fun!

It was strange to have so much english in the house again, and interesting to be constantly switching instead of speaking one or the other. Dinner table conversations were entertaining!

We wandered in the city, hiked up Ulriken:

...and back down.

I never knew just how hard it is to hike down a steep train when you're laughing so hard that your knees keep buckling!

We decided that eating a tub of ice cream with forks was cheaper than buying individual cones:

And hung out with trolls:

We took advantage of the long days and went hiking up arnanipa at 10 pm on Monday night. And didn't come home until 1:30 am, thanks to deciding to take a break partway down and make "music videos" (or, well, walk funny to music in front of the camera) 

I don't know how to get the videos off facebook, but once I get them from Marlies I'll post a couple here if I remember.

They left Tuesday evening on the night train to Stockholm.

Tuesday evening I also had a little going away get together with my art class, and made them pancakes. We sat outside, ate, took jumpshots and went down to the beach for the sunset of the longest day of the year. Some pictures:

Pancakes in the sun

Toppings: everything from maple syrup to strawberries to whipped cream to brown cheese :)

Vilde and me a little after sunset. (11:30ish maybe)

Jump!!

So that was a quick summary of the past two weeks, today was the last day of school. So I'm finished with my extra year of high school in Norway; it's been a good one!

Just a few pics I took about a week ago (while up on skype watching the canucks game), since I still can't get over the fact that it's 1:30 am and not completely dark out:

Sunset at 11ish

Midnight

2 am

3:30 am

4 am.

2 weeks left here as of today.

On learning Norwegian

Before I left:

When I found out I'd be coming to Norway this year, I had basically no idea what Norwegian was. I started searching just to hear what it sounded like, and obviously understood nothing. I was determined to learn as much as I could before I left though, and downloaded the only "learn norwegian" podcast itunes had. It had 10 phrases, working up to the most advanced "jeg elsker deg" (I love you). I thought that "jeg forstår ikke" (I don't understand) sounded really fun to say, and went around repeating it when people asked if I knew any Norwegian yet. Never mind that the way it's actually pronounced here is entirely different than how the man in the recording pronounced it.

It's also not that much fun to say anymore, after saying it way too many times.

Sonja (who has Norwegian grandparents) decided she would learn Norwegian with me, and we occupied many hours of ski training inventing little challenges for ourselves, and quizzing eachother. The funniest was saying a sentence in english, then getting the other to translate it. Since our vocabularies were non-existent, "The trees are green and the sky is blue" would become: "vegetables are green and airports are blue." I'd read through the basic food, colour and travel sections, and just substituted in words that were sort of associated. (sky=airport?). 

Every once and a while we decided we would only speak norwegian for a little while, which led to enthralling conversations like "Hello grandma!" "Hello vegetable!" "I am home" "I have a door". 

I also downloaded a few Norwegian news podcasts for my ipod; I figured somehow listening to the weird sounds would help me understand. I remember coming back from a run during the summer proud that I'd listened to Norwegian the entire time, even if the only words I'd understood were obvious english ones. 

I used to think sentences in french all the time when I was doing something repetitive, and they would get stuck in my head, correct or not. Norwegian blendet itself into this and made for some really odd phrases. By the time I left I understood how to put together basic sentences and knew a decent amount of grammar. Since you don't have to conjugate verbs in Norwegian, I found it a lot easier than French.

I also labelled basic objects in my room at home, and drew arrows to limbs and body parts labelling posters in my room. I still picture the painting on my wall of a mountain when I write "fjell" or my bedside table when I think "bord".

Having talked to all the other outbound exchange students and hearing them talk about their new languages, not learning Norwegian never seemed like an option. It never occured to me that people would be surprised I wanted to learn it when I could have just spoken english the whole time. I'm glad I had this idealistic mindset about it though; I think being so determined in the beginning helped a lot.

Arrival:

Being able to put together simple sentences was pretty much useless in the beginning, since I could neither understand nor pronounce anything. Bergen's dialect sounds really different from the man in the podcasts, and translating that into speech seemed impossible. I forgot I'd ever tried to learn any of the language, and actually forgot how much effort I put in before I came until I started writing this. It was helpful though, because knowing basic sentence structure and grammar made it easier when I started trying to talk, as well as when I started understanding more spoken words.

When I think back over the year I tend to superimpose my language skills now onto all my memories, and tend to forget that it didn't come instantly. I don't really remember what it was like to stand in a group of people and understand nothing, but I did a lot of that in the beginning. The first time I remember understanding part of a conversation was at the district conference in late September. It was a simple conversation between 3 or 4 people, and I was able to follow along for a couple minutes, which I got ridiculously excited about.

Starting to talk:





Language camp for the exchange students was a month after I came to Norway, and from a language learning perspective, not very helpful (although lots of fun). The week of speaking english and not having to try and decipher the weird sounds was a good break though. For some reason when I got back I was all..."I can do this", and the first sort-of Norwegian conversation was driving back from the airport with Helene. I'd tried speaking a fair bit before that, but I don't think I ever really made sense. I think that was the point where I asked them to speak more Norwegian to me, and started getting more confident with simple sentences and conversations.

There's a big difference between understanding a conversation between other Norwegians, and understanding when someone talks directly to you, the latter being much easier. Being able to properly follow and contribute to bigger conversations took several more months (and is still an ongoing process). But from what I remember, I started really trying to have basic one on one conversations in Norwegian in late September. That doesn't mean I stopped speaking english at that point, just that I would try first in Norwegian, and it became more often a blending of languages than straight english from the beginning.

And the months kept going....

I have a hard time convincing myself I'm any better at Norwegian now than I was in November, although logically I know I must be. Most of the learning happened in the first few months for me though, as speaking and comprehension caught up to writing. After that it's just been a very gradual upward slope of picking up new words and expressions, getting more confident, and slowly understanding more.

The process of learning Norwegian: a graph

Middle of the year:
In the fall and early winter, I really missed speaking english. It got frustrating to try and say things and get blank stares, or have no idea what people were talking about. I don't think I missed english so much as I missed how easy it was to communicate before.

Sometime in mid-December I remember sitting with a group of friends and realizing I just....understood. That I was thinking about what they were saying and what I would say rather than focusing on the language itself. People talk about the moment where the language "clicks", and if I had to pick, that would have been it. Although it's been more of a constant sequence of smaller clicks than any one epiphany.

The last few months:
There's never been a point where I spoke only Norwegian; I've always mixed in english words and sentences,  more or less depending on who I'm talking to. But I'd say now that I can have a fairly normal conversation, read a newspaper article if I want to, and understand the TV and radio. After the first couple months I've learned mostly by talking, so there's words I use but don't know how to write, and grammar bits I mess up because I never really learned them.

In contrast to the seven years of French I've had in school, I'm happy with the past 10 months of being in Norway. I'd be terrified to speak French with a native speaker, whereas speaking Norwegian feels normal. My pronounciation still needs a ton of work, but unless Norwegians are mind readers, I've been somewhat understandable.

One of the girls I babysit asked me "do you speak Norwegian?" while we were jumping on the trampoline the other day. We'd never spoken any other language together over the past month! So I guess?

There's still plenty of times where I say a sentence and realize I pronounced it entirely wrong, or just give up and speak English. But the challenge of speaking a new language has been so much fun, and I no longer miss speaking English. I have to think more before I talk, but I think that's a good thing. When I speak English for a while now I feel like my brain shuts off and I babble, just because I can. Compared to the winter when I just wanted to speak my own language, I could now see myself continuing to learn and use Norwegian most of the time. Too bad it's not exactly a major world language.

I could've been learning Arabic, or Japanese....


According to wikipedia (that's become way too common of a phrase for me now), Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese and Korean are the hardest languages for an english speaker to learn. Regardless of how true that is, Norwegian definitely isn't one of them, although Norwegians seem to be convinced their language is impossible for English speakers to learn. I think this is because you don't have to learn the language to get by here, and many people don't. So they're surprised when a foreigner does speak it at all. So you get a ton of compliments on being able to say basic things, even though the alphabet, word order and grammar are so similar. How proficient you can get in a language over ten or eleven months depends a lot on which language it is. Pronounciation has by far been the hardest part for me, and I can't imagine having to learn all new characters and sentence structure and all the other aspects of languages I know nothing about.

I came across THIS interesting article a while ago, explaining why the author believes Norwegian is the easiest language for english speakers to learn. It has by no means been easy, and I'd like to believe the Norwegians who say it's so hard to learn. But I have to agree with his points, and in relation to many countries I've had it pretty easy.

Nearing the end of the year...


Nearly 10 months ago exchange seemed so impossibly long that it would never end, like I had all the time in the world here. But I don't, and time goes by insanely fast. I'm ready to go home and see everyone, to walk barefoot down Mountain Station road, go to dairy queen and then down to lakeside, argue with Shawn over who'se on dishes and be able to drive again. But just for a couple weeks, until I'll be missing speaking Norwegian, taking busses and trains and all the people here. I could see myself going home for the summer then coming back for next school year, but for now it's time to go to university and start life. Even if the life I've been living here is pretty much amazing. Aaand I still have a month left of it! (as of today).

Before I knew what country I'd be going to, I had three dreams where I was in Norway, and none about any of the other countries. Isn't that weird? I never thought I would be thinking and speaking a language I'd barely even heard of a year and a half ago, but I am!

And I'll come back someday.

11:45 pm a week or so ago - it's starting to barely get dark at night

(Odd) foods of Norway

It's not like the food in Norway is all that different from home; pizza, tacos, spaghetti etc. are all normal. I'm not going to talk about the strange Norwegian foods that come up when you google search it either; I've never even seen lutefisk (jellied fish) or smalahove (sheeps head)

Rather, just a few foods you come across in fridges and cupboards that aren't necessarily strange to most people, but just unusual for me. Doesn't mean I don't like these foods either:

• Flatbrød: if eating paper is your idea of a good side dish, then here you go. It shatters when you try to put on any topping, except maybe sour cream. Even though basically all food packaging is smaller than home, sour cream containers here are bigger than the ones we bought at home. figures!

        

• Pickled/canned fish: 

I still don't get this pickled fish in a jar/bucket idea (they eat it for breakfast on bread), and I've never bothered trying it before. But for the sake of this post, I did.:

It was....chewy and sweet and weird. Fish shouldn't be sweet! 

• Bread: I pretty much hated eating bread before I came here, unless it was toasted or fried in some way. The everyday bread here is much denser than at home (you can see a chunk in the picture above), and actually tastes good without compressing into a squishy little ball. So whole wheat bread is more the norm, and I actually WILL make a sandwich when I'm hungry instead of eating crackers, like Dad always told us to do :P

• Salad dressing (or lack thereof): The only kind of salad dressing I've seen used here is thousand islands, and I'm usually the one who remembers to bring it to the table. They like to eat salad with their other food, putting a bit on their fork along with meat or potatoes or whatever. Like trying to disguise it so they don't notice they're eating vegetables? I tend to eat things in order, usually from what I like least to most, without mixing much. Maybe I'm just strange.

          They also use the same word for "lettuce" and "salad", making things more confusing. 

• Hamburger dressing: just like a flavoured mayonnaise. No doubts about what you put this sauce on!

• Chocolate pudding: The exchange students like to make fun of this one. Chocolate pudding here is a jelloey square that comes out of a box, and is basically plain brown jello with a slight hint of chocolate. It looks chocolatey, but I'm pretty sure that's mostly food colouring.

• Kaviar in a tube: I always thought caviar cost like $20000 per spoonfull, and was the steryotypical rich person food. Or, you know, you could come to Norway and buy toothpaste tubes of it and squeeze it all over your breakfast (why do all these foods seem to be breakfast related?) I'm guessing it's blended out with other ingredients and a different kind though, not that I know anything about caviar. I've grown to like it over the past couple months though, even if I never thought I would.

That's all that comes to mind for now, I guess the rest seems normal to me? I told Tonje I'd meet her for a run at 8 so I guess I should go change, although this chair is much more inviting than outside, where it's been foggy and cold all day. Don't think I've ever been so ready for warm weather; the Norwegian weather website has popped up in my top visited sites over the past week or two.

Norwegians speaking English, and syvfjellsturen

Creds to Devin for this picture! haha

Norwegians speaking English, and some other language observations:


-You know how in english, when someone asks "are you not going to the beach anymore today" or "aren't you going to jump off that bridge", neither yes or no works as an answer? Like "No, I'm not NOT going....wait, I mean yes, I am not....going." Norwegian actually has a word for that! They have "Ja", "Nei", and then an inbetween word, "Jo" for all those confusing double negatives.

-That's one example where they have a word we don't have, but for the most part it seems they have a smaller range of words to use than we do. The word "nydelig" (google translates it as "beautiful") is used to describe everything from people to food to scenery. Or "deilig" (delicious) is used for food, scenery and experiences. We wouldn't say that both our hot chocolate and our ski trip were delicious, but they do that here.

-Norwegians are generally very good at english, but sometimes they have little expressions they use where they translate directly into english from norwegian. For example:

• "I'll follow you" instead of "I'll come with you"
• They often replace "V" with "W", so things become "werry good" and you "waccuum" instead of "vacuum"
• The "TH" sound sometimes gets replaced with "T", so you get "tank you" 
• "Fun" and "funny" are the same word in Norwegian (morsom), so people will ask "did you have a funny time?"
• "I will learn you this": they often confuse "to learn" with "to teach"
• 
  

I'm starting to notice more and more that I have to actively stop Norwegian word order from coming out when I speak english. Just for fun, I'm going to try and write a little dialogue in english, but translated directly from norwegian.

-Hei, how goes it?

-It goes good, I've been out and jogged in the nature.


-Sounds good out! I have been bad today, I have infection in the lungs. Thus have not I done some thing outside of cozying me in front of TV

-Uff da! that sounds not funny out. Good bettering to you!


-Thanks for that! I have actually taken enough medicine that it does not pain. So have I big cozied me today! Delicious to just take it with easy.

-Not worst! Saw you what her with the big black boots had on her yesterday night? Her who has program on the TV? Have not you want on those boots?


-Jo, I have very want on those boots! But soon become it summer, so shall I rather use money on sandals.

-That sounds smart out! Now must I make dinner, potatoes and fish tonight, like usual. Hope you are soon healthy like a fish! Perhaps that was a bad comparison! In any case, we talk!


-Yes, we do that. Have it good!

I've yet to meet a Norwegian who talks anything like this, but give me a couple more years (nahh, months even) in Norway and it'll be me!

7fjellsturen:


On Sunday Inger and I  hiked over the 7 mountains around Bergen. (They're all around 350-600 m above sea level, so not like, enormous by Canadian standards, but plenty big enough for me!!) I guess paying to hike all day in the rain is an appealing prospect to Norwegians, because there were 8000 people hiking at the same time. It's called the 7 fjellsturen (you can do a 4 mountain one as well) and basically you pay for a card that you clip at the top of each mountain, and when you get to the end you get a t shirt. They don't even time people, and you can start whenever you want. I still find it a bit of an odd idea, but it was neat to do!

We started around 6 am, and I finished around 4 pm. Inger (host mom) finished an hour or so later. So all in all it took me about 9.5 to 10 hours, and I never stopped for more than 10 minutes! I don't think my legs have ever been so tired!

The first three mountains were muddy and wet, and then the weather actually cooperated a bit, although it was still cold.

 Top of the first (at like 7:15 am)

Coming down from the first- it was like a muddy slip and slide! When the sun came out a little bit people actually started cheering. And the guy in front of me started loudly singing a norwegian song about wearing sunglasses. 

 Top of the second

And top of the third.

Shoes are getting muddier

After the third we had to cross through the city to start up the highest, Ulriken:

Ulriken from the bottom and top.

By this point I was starting to get a little tired, and we were joined by the people doing the 4 mountain hike. You could tell who was doing which by how high up on their pants there was mud.

As we were walking up the road to the start of the trail a ridiculous looking tourist bus passed us. On the side and back it said "you haven't experienced Bergen til you've been up mount Ulriken" and some kind of ENJOY Bergen's highest mountain quote. I doubt I was the only person it drove by thinking "enjoy?? hah!! as if".

After I came down from Ulriken I was pretty much sleepwalking, but being passed by kids and grandparents forced me to keep walking.

From the fifth, looking back at the third mountain.

Somewhere along the top there were random people dressed up as.....trolls? wizards? who knows. It was funny though.

I eventually made it to the end, got my t shirt, and then had to wait an hour for the train. I don't think I could've walked another 100 metres after that! 

All in all it was about 35 km, here's a map:

I'm still a bit sore today, although not too bad! Glad I got to experience something so Norwegian!

On monday night I had my final presentation for the rotary club here, and then I switched back to my first host family, who I'll live with for the last month. I had planned that before I switched to live with Jon and Inger; there was absolutely nothing wrong there! I'm so thankful I got to live with them for 6ish months!! Takk for meg  =)

Have it good ;)