One Time Grill

The sun was shining brightly before I even woke up at 5am.  There’s not much night this time of year.  I was happy to fall back asleep, even with the bright light outside my window.

Kory took off before Kaleb did this morning as he had an appointment for our car to get the every-other-year check that’s required on all vehicles here in Norway.  It’s not a cheap endeavor as they inevitably find something wrong.  Such was the case today.  But lucky for us, the guy that owns the mechanic shop is a childhood friend of Kory’s so he’s being more than helpful. Apparently, this guy arranges to put the car on the back of a flatbed and drives it to another country to have the work done for about half the price, if we have the time to be without it for a week.  We do.  We’re going to Israel in two weeks, so I’m sure it will save us thousands of dollars.  Car repairs aren’t cheap.  The work that needs to be done isn’t critical or even bothersome, but they have their rules here about all cars being in tip-top shape, so it’s still cheaper than trying to buy another car.  It’s just the way it is.  Ugh.

While Kory was gone I did boring things like grocery shopping, laundry, bill paying and checking Kaleb’s homework.  I also finished up a photo book I’ve been working on and I got that ordered, which took way longer than I wanted it to because the internet access is so slow here.  I also spent some much needed quiet time with God.  The morning was gone before I knew it.

Kory went for a long walk while waiting for the car to be done.  He filled the gas tank on the way home to the tune of $180.  I’m sure we won’t complain about gas prices when we get back to America.  But here, we don’t drive as much.  I think our gas bill for March was over $600 at home.  So far here, it’s only been less than $300, even with gas prices being over $12 a gallon.

The sun was so inviting today that both Kory and I wanted to go to the beach.  We drove out to Kaleb’s school (he gets out at one o’clock on Wednesdays) and picked up him and Toban, Andre and Henrik, and headed out to Emblemsanden – a gorgeous park only about five minutes from their school.   The boys all had homework to do but they figured they could do it after dinner because it was just too nice to be inside today, anyway.

I’d bought some hot dogs and buns and an “engangsgrill” (one time grill) so we could have a little cook out at the beach, Norwegian style.  I love those grills – they are just a couple of bucks and they fire up so easily and are disposable.  It’s basically just an aluminum lasagna pan with briquettes in the bottom and a little wire mesh over the top.  They work great and cook the food quickly. Every park has a special metal container just for throwing them away so they don’t mix in with other garbage and potentially start a fire in the trash can.  People even take them hiking up in the mountains, but they are most often used at the beach.

I also brought along some snacks we bought in Turkey, so it was fun for the boys to have some time together doing something a little different after school.  From what I gather, they normally just jump on trampolines or play their Nintendos.

I forgot to bring drinking glasses today so I showed them how to pour the pop in their mouths without touching the rim of the bottle, which none of them had ever done before.  It turned into a very fun challenge for them.  Who knew.

Toban had to be home by 4:30 for a soccer game, so everything ended way too soon, but it was still fun to have a few hours outside.  I never did have time to go for a walk, though.  Kaleb stayed on at Andre’s house until 7 tonight.  He didn’t want his fun to end, but mostly, I think, he was postponing piano practice and his own homework.

After we took the boys home, we stopped at Odd and Turid’s to pick up some of our mail and they invited us to stay for dinner.  We weren’t hungry but we sat and chatted with them while they ate.  They are heading off to Copenhagen tomorrow for a long weekend.  It was just announced today that Denmark is going to close their borders and start doing passport checks again.  All of Europe has open borders for years, but apparently there has been too much crime between Denmark and Sweden and Germany, so things are reverting back to the way they used to be.  Odd also told us that Norway is talking about a new law where no one will be able to buy anything that costs over $500 with cash.  Too much “black money” is being used (generated from illegal activities) and the government wants to crack down on that.   I’m a cash kinda gal so that law might put me in the slammer at some point.  When I’m out of cash, I know I can’t spend anymore.  It’s so much easier to manage money that way, but then, I’m not often buying things that cost $500.  In this country, though, it’s not hard to do.

It's All About Who You Know

Kaleb was up early this morning, anxious for his first day of school (see photo).  He left his bike at his friend Andre’s house so he had to take the bus to school then get his bike afterwards.  It was pretty quiet when he left the house, but it didn’t take long for Kory and I to head down to the “people register” place to find out what the problem was with not getting the plates on our car.

When we bought our condo in 1999, we were given “people numbers” that identified us as outsiders.  When we applied to live here, we were issued new numbers that identified us as residents.  We weren’t exactly sure which numbers we should use, but we assumed when we were no longer residents, we should go back to using the old numbers, since we are now outsiders again, but we had no idea.

The “people register” office is the same place that does income taxes, which are due May 1^st, so even though we got down there right after they opened, we were number 27 in line, and it was certainly going to be a long wait before we were helped.  We decided to use the wait time to walk the mile or so down to the car licensing place to find out exactly what information they needed before they would release the plates.  When we got there, it was apparent they didn’t know.  They pointed the finger at the “people register,” saying they were the one that had us registered with two different numbers, and the insurance company registered us using a different number than the car.  It was one of those situations where no one wanted to take responsibility, just blame the other bureaucracy involved, and we were stuck in the middle with no transportation until the issue got resolved.  Honestly, it seemed hopeless.  So we prayed and asked God for help.

In another part of the car registration place, Rune (Kory’s cousin)’s girlfriend, Sol, was working.  As we were standing there, getting nowhere, I caught her attention just to say HI – since I hadn’t seen her since we arrived.  She asked how it was going and we told her about the problem we were having.  She called us over to her workstation and tried to find out a solution – but couldn’t.  We told her the people register place seemed to be the one that was hanging us up, but there was such a long wait for help, we came down to the car registration place to be sure we had everything else we needed before we got the runaround one more time from them.  “Coincidentally,” her sister works at the people registration office, so she called her up and asked if she could help.  She said we should come on down, NOT go into the main office but call her on her private line when we were there and she’d meet us in the stairwell and bring us into her office and try to straighten things out.  Whew.  Sol even offered to loan us her car to get down there quicker because we’d already walked quite a bit.

Sol’s sister took us right into her office and said she had no idea why we were having a problem.  She told us never to use our old people numbers again, even though we are still outsiders because those numbers are dead.  Good to know.  She then entered a few things into the computer, filled out a few forms, had us sign some things, took copies of our passports and then wrote a certified note to the car place.  She told us to go back there and see if her paperwork would straighten things out.  She wasn’t even sure if it would help, but it did!   We got the plates released right away so we now have our car back on the road.  Hallelujah!  I hope we don’t have this problem again, though, because it was crazy we had to wait a week for all this, and I’m sure we’d still be waiting if we didn’t have those two inside connections.  God works in mysterious ways.  (The photo below is the view from our deck through the zoom lens on my new camera - :)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch… I got a text message a few days ago from my friend, Kristin, that said, “Haaper du har tid til aa ta en tur paa mandag kl. 11.”  Translated that meant to me, “I hope you are free to go on a hike/walk on Monday at 11:00.”  I texted back that I was.  I was stressed for all the time it was taking this morning with the car, so I headed back early to our condo so I could change into my hiking clothes – I changed my shoes and put on my rain pants and coat, since the weather looked threatening.  I put on lightweight gym clothes underneath it all so I wouldn’t over heat.  Another friend, Rigmor, picked me up to go to Kristin’s house.  I saw Rigmor wasn’t exactly dressed for a hike (or even a casual walk, for that matter) so I asked her if she knew where we were going.  She said it was Kristin’s decision.  When we got to Kristen’s house, it was obvious we had a translation problem.  She had invited me to lunch!  Boy, was I ever embarrassed.  Apparently, the exact words one uses to invite someone on a hike are the same words people use as a sort of short-hand for inviting someone to lunch.  How was I supposed to know that?  She never said anything in her message about lunch!  I was once again looking like a slob, sitting at a well decked out coffee table with Rigmor and Kristin, having a fancy meal over a long catch-up conversation wearing ¾ length yoga pants and a short sleeved Hawaiian shirt.  I felt like such a moron.  Rigmor felt silly too since she didn’t know what I was talking about when I said something about a hike.  She agreed that Kristin should have spelled out her plans a little bit better, considering I’m not terribly fluent in Norwegian, but it did provide us all with a pretty good laugh and we had a wonderful time visiting just the same.  They offered to go on a hike, but I was happy to pass it up and just sit and talk.

Rigmor brought me back home just as Kory was done getting the plates back on the car and firing it up.  He’d gotten a text message from Tone, our old neighbor, asking if we could come for coffee when Kaleb was out of school, so we drove our car (!) over to his friend Andre’s house and picked him and his bike up and headed out to our old neighborhood.  “Coffee” to Tone meant homemade pizza, cake, coffee and pop.  We were there several hours (see photo of her beautiful place), before Kaleb fell asleep on the couch because he was so tired from last night.  We visited with Tone and Sabina and invited them to our place next week.  Sabina has great memories of playing the card game GOLF with us night after night when we lived here, and eating Kettle Korn popcorn, so Kory promised to make her popcorn next week and we can all play Golf all she wants after dinner.  It’s nice she has good memories of us. (See below.)

Our calendar is filling up fast.  We got a call tonight from a cousin in Bergen that would like to come up for a few days and visit us, but it’s tough now to find some free time on our schedule.  Crazy life. 

I was up til midnight trying to get my new Apple laptop to work with the printer I had here.  It just isn’t compatible.  I even brought my old Dell laptop along just in case that should happen, as we’ll need to print out some of Kaleb’s school work, but after hours of fussing, I couldn’t get that to work either.  It was sad to end the day on such a frustrating note, because otherwise, it was a pretty great day.

The Long Drive Home

It feels so good to be home! Even if it did take all day to get here, there’s just no place like home (away from home). When we talked about “home” on our trip, Kory kept asking, “which one?” so we do feel a bit too decadent with having a home here in Norway and one back in America, but coming back to our home in Norway was as welcoming as any time we’ve been gone from “home” in Mount Vernon. There’s just no place like home. (But I’m very tired now, so I hope I make sense.)

We did a little grocery shopping in Oslo before we took off this morning as the stores that were open, were just open for limited hours. I’m so thankful for that as I needed fresh ingredients to make Easter dinner tomorrow, and then the stores are closed for two more days. This whole Easter thing is a big deal here and planning is the key to eating for the next few days.

The whole eleven hour drive home was like driving through storybook land pages as the scenes that unfolded were just picture perfect in every way. Many of the farms were still covered in snow, the lakes were frozen and people were out skiing on them. The rolling hills of southern Norway are so different from the jagged and steep mountains along the coast line. We passed several vacation destination areas today where people were just out enjoying the holiday at their cabins. The sun was so inviting today, in several places I saw folks sunning themselves out on their decks, with perhaps two feet of snow in their front yard. Too funny.

We made a few memorable stops today – one at a Stave church (pole church made of wood) built in the 1200s. The priest was walking around outside so we asked if he could let us in to see the altar, and he did! I was excited to let Paula see the interior as most of the old Norwegian churches just look so plain and simple on the outside, but inside they are almost gaudy with ornamentation, carvings, paintings and minute details in their decorations. So that was a worthwhile stop. Then we also found a junk shop open on the side of the road (see photo), and it really was quite junky, but it came with super cheap prices so we didn’t care. Paula and I both found a few treasures for a couple of bucks and it satisfied that need we both felt to go shopping today for mementos of our trip. Kory says it satisfied our need to go “hunting” this Easter season, as I don’t think we’ll have any eggs to find tomorrow because we’ll be the ones hiding them.

The last stop we made tonight was when we were nearly home and couldn’t believe that a restaurant was open at the same time we were all hungry for dinner. The odds of that happened seemed like our own Easter miracle. And it was a good food restaurant too so Kory and Paula got to have a traditional Easter dinner complete with steamed lamb and mashed kohlrabi, and Kaleb and I got baked potatoes and salad, just what we all love. God is good. I so didn’t want to cook dinner tonight because we left Oslo at ten this morning, but didn’t get home until almost nine tonight, and I’m making Easter dinner tomorrow for eight people, so not having to cook and clean up the mess was a good thing (plus I had to unpack the van from the trip.)

All-in-all this was a very successful road trip for us as we got to see different parts of Norway that we hadn’t seen before, we had good weather the whole time, great food, no traffic or vehicle hassles and we all got home safe and sound - can’t ask for more than that. And meeting up with my friend Paula and being able to take her to her family farms was priceless. I love that stuff. Paula keeps saying I could make money doing this, but it’s too much fun to get money involved. I like the fact I can do something that’s of use to someone else, as sometimes I do feel quite useless, so it gives me a boost, too.

The minute we got in the door tonight, Kaleb was on the phone to Tobias. Tobias was over here in a flash and Kaleb just talked and talked and talked to that poor boy until I thought we were all going to lose it. I’m sure Tobias didn’t understand half of what Kaleb was saying because he was talking so fast he left out critical details, but it was obvious Kaleb missed him. Tobias couldn’t get a word in edgewise, and while we were gone he turned 13, so he probably had a thing or two to say about that, but we won’t know until tomorrow. Tomorrow is EASTER, and it’s so good to be home.