A Roll in the Universe

I hear Americans go on about a war on Christmas because someone says "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". Bizarrely, Norway seems to be showing up the Americans on how to actually wage a war on Christmas. There are some true and some fake stories about a war on Christmas here in Norway. From a serving tray painted by my grandma, Marion Beale Mundal So let's start with the Muslims: Muslims in Norway are not upset that we have marzipan pigs for Christmas (that was a humor site's joke). Nor that we sing songs with words like "Jesus" and "Yule" in them. One Muslim blogs [in Norwegian] about why she loves this time of year . I'm tickled by the idea of a gingerbread mosque. The Muslim I eat lunch with at work loves this time of year, too. All the lights! All the "pinnekjøtt" (steamed ribs of mutton, a traditional West Norway Christmas dinner)! However, the cancellation of the school Christmas mass in nearby Voss ...

Prologue: On the way home from a midnight birdwatching session, I saw two tawny owls. First one by the side of road, and another atop a lamp post. Beautiful birds, calmly staring back at me. The myth is that old dogs can't learn new tricks. The truth is, we can, but we might need a bit more coaxing. And coffee. Last year, I was forced to switch jobs and with that, learn a whole new set of skills. I was wondering how my then 53-year-old brain would handle it. Turns out, it handled it just like a 23-year-old brain would: With patience, notes, and lots of coffee and candy. Because heavy-duty learning is exhausting ! I hadn't realized that. I just thought you're tired in college because of not enough sleep or something. Turns out you're tired because learning several new things every single day is like running a marathon every single day—but brains need more energy and more recovery time than bodies do. The brain marathon hasn't ended. There's always somet...

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

This is a response to the comments on my Wordless Wednesday post showing a part of Håkonshallen, especially Alice's thoughts that it looks like a prison. Nothing could be further from the truth so I thought I'd give you a whole post about that. First, the pronounciation of Håkonshallen (the hall of Håkon): That funny "a" in the first syllable is a Scandinavian vowel, and pronounced like a very open "o" (approaching an ah). HOH-kohns-hahllenn. The 750-year-old Håkonshallen is beloved by the people of Bergen, and those massive stone walls make an excellent backdrop for outdoor operas. I've seen "Aida" there. The walls would have been painted white in medieval times, as was the custom then. It has occurred to me that many tourists miss this building, because they are distracted by the rather fascinating row that precedes it: In really old days, when the main mode of long-distance transportation was the boat or ship, Norway consisted of to...

Wordless Wednesday by Bergen sculptor Bård Breivik

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday Sculpture outside the main mail processing and distribution center, Bergen

One of the excursions out of Dresden was a morning visit to the town of Meissen. That told me nothing until it was announced that we were visiting a porcelain factory . Then a memory stirred in the back of my mind about Dresden and porcelain , and I had the sense to appreciate what I was in for. The Meissen tour was quite educational, with the group being slused from one demonstration room to the next, being shown the forms the potter uses, how the forms can be taken apart to get at the clay shape inside, and how it shrinks by 17% so one has to work large. We were shown the stages and types of glazing, types of glazes, including the famous Dresden cobolt blue, and how repeated firings at different temperatures can alter colors. Most impressively, it is all hand-made. The intricate designs are painted on by a very steady-handed artist, and little hands with fingers and feet with toes are sculpted by another steady-handed artist. She spent most of the time we were there working...

Wordless Wednesday Courtesy of xkcd - because it wowed me.

I do have more to tell - or show, really - from Dresden and the rest of my trip. I just sort of have to figure out how to pare down all the photos. And figure out what to say. The truth is that I have some gorgeous photos from Dresden - and nothing to say about the city. It - didn't move me. But Dresden matters, even in my story. Here's one reason: You see, you can't go through Norwegian school or Norwegian life without thinking about Martin Luther at some point. His protest, nailed to a door in Wittenberg, started the reformation and forever changed Norway's Catholic churches to Protestant ones. The official state religion of Norway is Lutheran Evangelical. As a child in a Norwegian school, I had to take a religion history class (called Christianity class) which introduced us to his catechisms, the big and the little. I got good grades in that class, simply because I was able to pay attention and learn (most of the other kids hated that class). It never converted ...

My trip to Berlin was enjoyable in part because I got to travel by train (through very beautiful scenery but impossible to get a good picture of)… …and by ferry from Oslo down to Copenhagen (and home again from Kiel). I am used to thinking of international ferry trips from Bergen which have to cross the open and often mean North Sea, whether headed for Newcastle or Hirtshals (look 'em up). It finally dawned on me that the shelter of Denmark makes the ferry lines from Oslo down to the continent more comfortable. Here we are passing by the nuclear power plant Barsebäck, on Sweden's shore. We drove from Copenhagen down to the end of Falsen, and from there took a ferry to Rostock, in Germany. Rostock would have been in the former East-Germany (DDR). It was already late in the afternoon and we didn't arrive in Dresden until around 8:30 pm. To the hotel's credit, we were served a delicious, fresh and hot dinner. The next day we were on a bus tour of Dresden in the ...

Wordless Wednesday This odd pornographic art exhibit was on display in Voss last Friday.

Tim's comment that the color of the wild roses on yesterday's post was soothing, got me thinking. The more I looked at the brilliant magenta of the roses, the more I realized that although the color is strong, it does not agitate. And that got me thinking about some other colors. There is some major rebuilding going on at work, opening up our office space to more cramped actual work areas by the windows, and with café-like socializing areas near the window-less entry area into each floor. This week, the temporary walls in the first floor came down and we have all had a chance to get a sneak preview of our new work space. All I saw were gray walls. And I felt like panicking. I guess each of us not only has a favorite color, but also a loathed color. When I take those personality tests based on which color you pick first and last, I always pick gray last. It comes after colors like brown, green and orange. Though I own some gray clothes, it is not a color I want to see in ...

Wordless Wednesday

Lured by a free outdoor concert I took a trip to town on a glorious Sunday afternoon. Me and my camera. Among the things I wanted a picture of was the sparrows' favorite drinking spot. I had noticed them a couple of times before as I walked by on other occassions. They had found the perfect perch (though I think it's actually a carp - HA!) in one of the city's older fountains, featuring a crying boy , which is understandable as he is perpetually showered by four fish. The sparrows were there again today, so I walked over and got my camera ready. The sparrows, of course, scattered. Darned skittish birds, they are. So I waited. And they didn't take long to come back, though a bit cautiously: They didn't wait long to move around to the other side of the fountain: And there they are, on this one particular fish in the fountain, drinking and bathing. Other birds are not able to balance on the bronze fish's back and drink. They rely on puddles formed o...

An annual rite for me is to go to the tourist information office and pick up the season's new guide to Bergen. It's just as useful to us locals as it is to the tourists. The tourist information office used to be on Bryggen, the old wharf, a logical place but the office itself was dominated by a very large, old-fashioned counter and not much room beyond it. If there were more than five people in there, browsing pamphlets, exchanging money or signing up for "Norway in a nutshell", you'd instantly feel that you were inside said nutshell. So they moved. They took over the main floor of the building that had once been the Bergen Stock Exchange. I was so happy that's where they moved because that office contains one of my strongest childhood memories. I didn't know it was the Bergen Stock Exchange when I was a kid. When I first came to Norway, the building belonged to a bank, Bergen Privatbank. My maternal grandparents, whom I was living with, opened an acc...