I’ve always loved the fact that Oslo was such a safe city.  You can walk right up to the royal palace.  You can drive past the building with the prime minister’s office.  It’s happy.  It’s neutral.  Things like this don’t happen.  …Until they do.

This whole thing makes me sad.  It makes me sad for the people who were killed or injured.  It makes me sad to see the trust and comfort of the happy people around me undermined.  It makes me sad to know that Oslo is not going to be the same city for a long time, if ever again.

I’ve walked down that street many times.  The library is there.  I have friends who live nearby.  It’s a quiet area during evenings and weekends, when the government is not at work, and it reminds me that I live in the capital of a quiet peaceful nation.  It will not remind me of that any more.

Now we’re all left wondering, “Why?”  What was the point?  Why now?  Why did it take place late in the day on a Friday during the nation’s summer holiday, when most people were away, and many of the rest had already gone home?  Of course, I’m glad that it did!  Otherwise it would have been an even bigger catastrophe.  Was it a crazy local?  Did it have anything to do with the charges filed against Mullah Krekar (up until now, even our local terror suspect was more of a local oddity than a threat)?  What does anyone have against Norway, other than the fact that it’s an easy, trusting target?

I’m glad that my friends are all fine, and now I find myself refreshing the news feeds, waiting for answers that will be a long time coming.

I’ve been a sappy sentimental tourist in Europe before, and I vaguely (but fondly) remember the first time I heard someone playing La Vie en Rose along the Champs. I remember wondering where all the anti-accordion sentiments I’ve heard over the years came from.  While it may not be the most beautiful of instruments, surely it deserves this reputation less than other more irritating instruments (I’m looking at you, piccolo).  On the contrary, the accordion provides ambiance and atmosphere.

I got to thinking that maybe it was simply a problem with over-exposure.  If you have to listen to accordion music all the time, whenever you’re out and about in a European city, then perhaps you do just get sick of it.  Vigelands Park has its fair share of accordion players, especially in the summer, and so I’ve had a chance to put this theory to the test over the past few years.  Every day that it’s sunny, we load up the grill bag and head to the park.  More often than not, there is an accordion player hanging around busking for spare kroner.  I find that I don’t mind this.  Quite the opposite, I continue to enjoy the ambiance and the music lends a hint of the old-fashioned to our modern lifestyle, reminding me of old Audrey Hepburn movies where Europe was a far-away land of fantasy,  rather than an everyday reality.

However…

This year all of my accordion tolerance has finally been drained.  As I said, the instrument itself is not to blame.  Rather, I have finally been exposed to shameful accordion misuse.  Our entrance to the park has fallen victim to the worst accordion player I have ever heard!  I cringe whenever I walk past, and I even have fleeting fantasies of kicking over his little container of donations (no huge tragedy, since he appears to earn no more than one or two kroner per hour) to force him to stop playing for a little while.  I’ve also considered paying him a few hundred kroner to go away, but I fear this might just encourage him to come back.

Imagine the accordion equivalent of the worst American Idol audition, and play it on a continuous loop.  That should give you the basic idea of what this is like.  He “knows” only three songs:  Für Elise, The Godfather theme, and the Chicken Dance.  And none of these he plays at all correctly or particularly well.  He knows a few bars of each and repeats them endlessly until awkwardly transitioning into the next one.  On one occasion, he played his adaptation of the Chicken Dance non-stop for at least ten minutes straight.  The Chicken Dance is far from my favorite tune under the best circumstances, but after ten minutes of an out-of-tune accordion rendition I was about to pull my hair out.  Since this guy plays right across the street from our apartment, he is almost impossible to avoid.

To remedy this kind of problem and to preserve the good name of the instrument, I think someone needs to introduce an “Accordion License.” You can only play in public if you have undergone extensive training and passed a rigorous exam in order to prove that your accordion playing will not harm the general populace.

Every time I go back, I experience little moments of reverse culture shock, and this trip was no different.  Since it was my first typical work experience, there were lots of small experiences that felt oddly unusual to me now.  Driving to work instead of taking public transit, going out for lunch instead of eating in the company canteen, etc.

The biggest shock, though, was the surprising lack of environmental awareness!  I remember when my friend Scott did a semester abroad in Sweden during university, and when he came back he was uncomfortable with all the disposable silverware and takeaway packaging that our dormitory dining halls went through.  I now completely understand how he felt!

In general, Scandinavia has a long tradition of environmentalism.  (Here in Norway, with such beautiful natural scenery, it makes sense that the general reaction is to try to protect it!)  Recently our office has gone a step farther to try to obtain an official environmental certification.  Beyond turning off the lights when we don’t need them and recycling just about all of our trash (including food, which goes into some kind of organic waste program), there are policies on how soon your computer should go into low-powered standby mode, etc.  We’re even advised to power off our monitors instead of just letting them programmatically power down, since they’re still using electricity to light the little orange standby LED!

Outside the office, almost all soda bottles/cans carry a deposit and are returned to the collection points at the supermarkets.  Most of the rest of our trash is recycled, and the city has plans to implement a new program to provide more extensive plastic recycling and some kind of city-wide composting or organic waste disposal.

So frankly I was a bit shocked to arrive at our office in Texas and find that not only do most people use disposable cups for their daily tea/coffee, but the cups provided are styrofoam!  I haven’t seen styrofoam in years, and here were towering stacks of Texas-sized 24-oz styrofoam cups next to every coffee machine or water cooler.  And of course they all went into the trash, where they will inevitably find their way to a landfill with no hope of decomposition.

This made me start to notice other things as well.  People would ride the elevator for a single floor instead of taking the stairs.  Some of the offices had overhead lights that never turned off (they didn’t even know where the switch was).  The air conditioning of course was turned down to “Finnmarken.”

And it wasn’t just the office.  I just noticed it there more, since I spent most of my day there.  For example, I also went to a restaurant that served very decent food entirely on disposable dishes.

The amount of wasted materials and energy made me physically uncomfortable.  I was very glad to get back to this land of public transit and recycling centers every few blocks.

When tickets went on sale, the Final sold out in a heartbeat, but we had a chance to take our time and get a small group together for one of the Semi-Finals.  Since May is a peak travel time in Norway, we only ended up with a few people, but we were able to get fantastic seats!  We splurged on the highest priced tickets, but we ended up with four seats in the front row of the second floor section:

I love watching Eurovision at home with a group of friends, laughing at the bad acts, admiring the good acts, and cracking MST3K-style jokes through the entire production.  But I have to say that actually being there is a completely different experience!

There’s so much national pride, and everyone is brimming with enthusiasm.  I imagine that the Olympics would have a similar vibe, but Eurovision is free from the emotionally-loaded “I’ve been working for this moment my whole life” kind of feeling.  It’s just pure, unadulterated fun and silliness.  Some of the audience costumes are even more bizarre than the outfits on stage, and everyone is clearly out to have a good time.

It’s also a vexillophile’s dream!  I love flags, and there were some fantastically obscure flags at our semi-final.  When I learned all of the nations’ flags for the Bar Blu pub quiz, it was partly for moments like this one.  After all, how many other times does being able to recognize the flag of Azerbaijan come in handy?

I was very disappointed to have to attend Eurovision without a flag (we toyed with the idea of bringing an Indian flag for Lucas and Paavani).  However, Paavani totally came through for me!  Before the show, she ran up to someone with a badge and a couple of Turkish flags and scored one for us!  At the arena entrance, representatives for Georgia had been handing out flyers with a picture of their hot female singer, trying to convince us to vote for them, but Turkey definitely bought one of our votes with the flag!

Our seats were pretty good, and we could definitely see the stage, but even the show is a little different when it’s live.  The acts are clearly designed for a television audience, and there are often little extra things going on at the sides or in the back that the TV viewers aren’t meant to see.  Costume changes, prop mechanics, etc.  Even some of the choreography doesn’t make much sense unless it’s viewed from the right camera angle.  So while we could see the stage and the performers, the visual appeal of the acts was much different than when I watched the broadcast later.

One other huge difference is in the appeal of the music itself.  At home, Belgium’s talented singer-guitarist was one of our favorites during Semi-Final #1, but in a crowded party atmosphere, the slow songs don’t go over as well.  Everyone reacts so much better to the crazy antics and energy of Lithuania’s silver-shorted goofballs than to Israel’s soulful ballad.  Sadly that means a lot of disappointment when the finalists are announced, since the votes of the home audience vastly outweigh the few thousand performance attendees.  We did feel bad for Lithuania, since their performers spent the rest of the show streaking through the audience in their sparkly silver shorts, waving the Lithuanian flag.

Overall, the entire evening was just so much fun!  The energy level, the fans, the whole experience!  This is one of my personal definitive European experiences, and I’m so glad we were able to go!

Last weekend we had particularly nice weather and a three-day weekend, so the park was popular and crowded.  In the span of those few days, I saw the largest variety of park sports I’ve ever witnessed:

Kubb, Frisbee, Football (Soccer), American Football, Badminton, Croquet, Cheerleading, Cycling, Skateboarding, Slacklining, Capoeira, and Sumo Wrestling

Yes, sumo wrestling!  We’re pretty sure that was a bachelor party, but they were definitely sumo wrestling!  Right down to the pre-match intimidating ground stomp!  It was very funny!

Every night, I found myself planning to go to bed around 10:30, but even after changing into my pajamas and nestling into bed, I didn’t feel sleepy.  Of course this meant that I ended up staying up until a ridiculous hour reading or surfing the web (thank you, shiny new iPad!).  And after sleeping in the next day, it would be easy to stay up late again, creating a vicious circle.

With all that extra time at night, I had plenty of opportunities to analyze what was going on.  I started to realize that it wasn’t so much that I was still stuck on Houston time, but the long hours of daylight were affecting me more than they usually do.  When I left for Houston, sunset was just after 9 pm, and it was getting dark by 10:00 pm.  It was the beginning of spring, and we were starting to appreciate the long days, without having especially long, bright evenings.  However, since I was gone for quite a while, by the time I got back the days were nearly an hour longer, and sunset was pushing 10 pm (with dusk lasting until nearly 11 pm).  The sudden shift had pushed the end of the day right up to my ideal bedtime, and that combined with a little bit of jet lag managed to completely skew my internal clock.

I’ve often told people that I don’t have problems with jet lag, and when people ask if it’s hard to sleep through the sunny Norwegian summer nights, I say no.  I guess this means that I have to bite my tongue now, because while I don’t have problems with either one, I clearly can’t deal with them both at the same time!

I’m not sure if it says more about my frugal nature or my disinterest in fashion and beauty, but since moving overseas nearly five years ago, I’ve been using a little dual-voltage travel dryer that I bought at Target shortly before the move to China. When it’s switched over to 220-volt, it only has one setting, and it has a US plug that needs to be adapted to our European outlets. Originally it had one of those polarized US plugs, where one prong is wider than the other. However, since the polarized prong wouldn’t fit into our plug adapters, at some point we took a file and actually filed the prong down to standard size. Later, since the plug in the bathroom faces straight down, we also had to squeeze the prongs together to make the plug tight enough to stay in the adapter.

You would think that such a small purchase wouldn’t be a big deal, but somehow it carries a sense of permanence. I don’t really know why, but as long as I keep using the travel dryer, this is clearly a short-term situation. Especially since it’s a “travel” hair dryer, it makes me feel like we could just pick up and travel somewhere else.

In the last few months the plug has started coming loose again, and every morning I have to readjust it more than once when it loses contact and the power cuts out. When I could no longer find a jury-rigged solution that lasted more than a few minutes, I decided that the time had finally come to bite the bullet.

Luckily, the timing of Elektrofil was perfect, and I was able to buy a new 220-V hair dryer at a significant discount. So if we do suddenly pick up and move, it won’t be a huge loss!

Trying to fit two weeks’ worth of clothing and supplies into a 20kg bag is going to be an interesting packing challenge, but unfortunately excess luggage doesn’t look like a viable option. According to KLM’s luggage policy, on the South Africa flight excess weight will be charged at €30 per kg! Looking into their policy for sports equipment, we could check another bag with the diving equipment for the “bargain” price of €80, but since we really just have the masks, snorkels, boots, and fins (and we can leave the fins behind), it just doesn’t seem worth it. And sadly camping equipment isn’t considered special sports equipment and will be charged at the regular ridiculous €30/kg rate.

So this has lead us to shop for new camping equipment. We have a great little dome tent that we got as a wedding gift, but since it weighs at least 7kg on its own, carrying it on a plane to Africa isn’t really an option. Since it would be nice to have a lightweight tent for trekking in the mountains (or cycling to Sweden if Lucas and Mohammed have that crazy idea again), we decided it was worth buying something new.

We went shopping at one of the sports shops downtown, and based mostly on the weight, size, and price we ended up with an Exped Sirius II Extreme:

It’s a 4-season tent, and knowing that we were headed to Africa, the guy at the sports shop suggested we just buy a 3-season tent, but I figured we might as well go for the 4-season. That way Lucas can take it on the macho guys’ tenting weekend at Jotunheimen that always seems to get postponed until so late in the season that it’s cold and windy and miserable. A 4-season tent will hopefully help Lucas makes it down from the mountain safely in one piece.

So I knew this was a tent that (in spite of its incredibly light weight) could handle some cool-weather camping, but I didn’t realize quite how hard-core it really is!

Last weekend, we did a pre-trip trial run to figure out how the tent goes together, so that we’ll be ready to go when we reach Africa. We spread the tent out in the living room and walked through the assembly instructions. The setup is designed to be extremely simple and efficient, but at the end of the brief instructions, it suggested that we “Practice setting up the tent in the dark, wearing mittens.” Good advice, but I don’t think we’ll be wearing mittens on our trip! It also recommended that if we camp in deep snow, we should build a tunnel entrance into the enclosed front section to preserve heat. I seriously doubt if I’ll ever go camping in snow deep enough to tunnel an entrance, but it’s nice to know that we have a tent that’s ready for it!

When I was looking for the product photo above, I went to the Exped website, and the artwork for the website’s entire tent section features our tent model. This is their photo, showing our tent in use:

That really makes our little warm-weather trip to Kruger (in a designated campsite with electricity and a shower house) seem so wimpy! But if we ever decide to take up dog-sledding, I guess we’re already prepared!

In early March, the new Holmenkollen ski jump finally opened, and a few weeks ago we went up for the competition. From the city, the jump certainly looks a lot different, but from the stands, not much has changed. It was still fun to visit the new jump, and thanks to the redesign, there were a lot fewer wind delays during the competition, compared to the last event we watched.

Lucas has spent the last two weekends getting his PADI scuba certification in preparation for our trip to Mozambique. Back in Austin, this would be no big deal, but we’re in Norway. And this is “open-water” diving!

Yes, that means that his certification dives were in the Oslofjord. Swimming in the fjord is shockingly cold even in the hottest summer weather, so the idea of going in the water in February/March sounds insane to me. Even some of the Norwegians were surprised to find out that they offer dive courses at this time of year!

Of course the divers wear dry suits, but can you imagine getting in the water when it’s -10°C outside? Even just the thought of standing around on shore in a dry suit and a few layers of wool underwear makes me shiver. I guess the perk of getting a scuba certification in Norway is that you get your dry-suit diving certification by default at the same time. (If you can call that a perk. I personally don’t think I have any desire to get a dry-suit certification!)

But Lucas and his classmates survived, and I’m very proud of him for making it through the ordeal! And I’m sure he’ll be excited to dive in Africa, where hopefully the water will be a little warmer.