On Saturday we venture to Geilo. It is a city I know little of, save that it is one stop along a famed railway line between Oslo and Bergen, and that it holds an annual Ice Music Festival each February. Our trip will coincide with this festival, a happy coincidence. The temperatures in Geilo are predicted to be lower than anything I've felt yet in my lifetime: -20 to -30 Celsius. I imagine it will be the kind of cold that will make my eyes ache.
If we can summon the spirit, we will head outdoors to ski. At any rate we will lug our equipment along. It is to be a true vacation, so neither of us will mind if we end up in our room most of the time.
We also plan to attend the Ice Music Festival and listen to a concert played forth on instruments of ice. It is something I never would have thought up on my own. After nine months in Norway (a full year for Jonathan) some things are still entirely alien to us.
Continue reading Bound for Geilo.
Yesterday, I had lunch with a new friend and her four-year-old niece. The little girl spoke no English, with a couple of pleasant exceptions. "Okay." "Gimme five." "Yo dude."
"Makes sense," I said, sipping my peppermint mocha. "She's spending so much time with a California girl."
"Believe it or not, that wasn't me. My Norwegian sister-in-law actually taught her that one."
While we adults talked, the little one played and played. A toy tube of fake lipstick kept her occupied for a few minutes. Eventually the separate plastic pieces skittered across the floor. Then she scribbled and sketched on a paper placemat. Then she crawled under the table and proceeded to "hide" from us for a while, shrieking with delighted terror when we "found" her.
After a while, though, she'd had enough of our all-English conversation, our low-and-steady adult voices, and she popped up like a gopher, grabbing for the delicate white and black patterned infinity scarf around my friend's neck.
The brain of any child is a mystery to me, but I enjoyed watching her take this scarf through its paces. From one moment to the next the scarf was a hat, a blanket, a hammock, the veil of a spøkelse (ghost). Her voice warbled through the fabric, a haunting howl. When the ghost-game was done (in a matter of less than two minutes), she demanded a dress from her aunt. My friend proceeded to wrap the scarf around the child's tiny waist, covering her red Helly Hansen snow bibs, and then tied and tucked the remaining end, pulling her hands away to reveal a makeshift dress.
The little girl stared down at her new garment in wonder, twisting her head far around both sides to examine it, making sure it was a true dress, that no part of her was left exposed. Determining herself truly elegant, she drew back and hurled herself into her aunt's lap, wrapping her slender arms around my friend's neck. Grateful.
Continue reading A Mug of Kakao.
As of midnight on New Year's Eve, I only had one spoken-aloud resolution.
"I want to take the time to sit and eat breakfast each morning before checking my email."
It was a noble, if somewhat unambitious, goal. I've noticed that my heart races and I can't calm my mind at night if I've spent more than a little time before the glowing specter of my computer screen. It's just email. It can wait fifteen minutes for me to make tea and peel a banana.
Day Two dawned and I slipped into my office and began working without a moment's hesitation to boil water for oatmeal.
Resolution Fail.
So, what's important? What am I aiming for this year? After all, there must be a goal, something to work toward and anticipate.
I'd like to post more often here. My thesis work sometimes coincides with first drafts here, but not always. It would be good to take some of the pressure off of myself and write journal entries here, too. After all, daily life just isn't always interesting, inspiring, or memoir-worthy.
_____________
Dear Journal:
Woke up late. Checked my email before breakfast. Resolution Fail. Got caught up with work while listening to Adele belt out Someone Like You on repeat for two straight hours. Her voice haunts me. I switched to Adele after trying the same thing with Maroon 5's Moves Like Jagger, and ended up dreaming about a stomping, gyrating Carson Kressley. The growling of my stomach startled the cat into jumping off my lap around 1:30. Almost forgot to eat lunch. Down to my last frozen bagel, really only a bagel in the literal sense. Round. Risen dough. Works as a vehicle for cream cheese. I'm dying for Noah's.
Especially since the cream cheese is hardly worth chewing my way through a make-believe bagel. I cave and buy reduced-fat Philadelphia Cream Cheese every time I visit the store just because of the look Jonathan gives me when I grab the real thing. Like he knows so much better. Like we'll gain ten thousand pounds if I shop the way I want to. Like I don't know that. So, I buy the reduced-fat garbage and suffer through the oddly rubbered texture of it all for peace at home. And less poundage on my hips. Hips which, as Shakira warned me years ago, do not lie.
Continue reading Resolute.
Christmas cards and Christmas letters, chronicles of our year at a time of supreme reflection, appear to be a very American phenomenon. It's one I like. I have a box of cards collected over the years from my friends, and in the pictures I can see them fall in love. I am reminded up their weddings. I can marvel at the growth of their children and follow their adventures throughout the world.
We may live in a digital age that allows us uniquely (and sometimes disturbingly) intimate access to the lives of friends and acquaintances alike, but these paper cards are important to me. In fact, the more digitized the world becomes, the more special it is that someone would take the time to sit and put pen to paper or lick a stamp and press it to the top corner of an envelope. (I'm exaggerating. No one licks stamps anymore.)
This year, due to the cost of printing and shipping and paying for international postage, I wasn't able to send as many of the paper cards as I have in years past. To make up for that, I thought I'd post the card here, too. After all, if you read my blog, you're important to me. You remind me that my writing is worthwhile. You help hold me accountable. You make me go on.
So... drum roll please...
Continue reading Our Christmas Card.
A predictable post, I suppose, considering that I'm a California girl at the commencement of her first winter in Norway. For California kids, certain Christmas songs and lore carry a different kind of mystique. Not only Irving Berlin's White Christmas, but also Jingle Bells, Winter Wonderland, and Frosty the Snowman. We don't understand these things. That is, unless our parents dragged us to the house of a relative who was fortunate enough to live someplace where it snowed. While my Illinois cousins spent the afternoon of Christmas Day throwing snowballs and sledding, my brothers and I were out rollerskating on sunny sidewalks through our neighborhood. Without coats on. And while my cousins might have debated the point, I still say we were the ones who drew the short straw.
So, you can understand my excitement when, after the warmest November Norway has on record, big, fat flakes of white began falling damply and intermittently from the evening sky.
Continue reading Snow!.
On September 22, Jonathan and I joined the rest of Oslo in celebrating the Autumnal Equinox. We followed the crowds down to the Akerselva River walk in Grünerløkka, and snapped photos all along the way. Night lowered itself over the city, flooding the winding river canal with shadows. Colorful light installations glowed at every other turn. We saw fairies, giant mushrooms, an enormous dragon kite leering from behind a building in vicious shades of pink and orange. We stuffed our hands deeper into our pockets and walked slowly with everyone else. There was muffled laughter and catcalling in Norwegian, all of it made somehow more sinister by the darkness and the otherworldly images around us.Several different small choirs had gathered to sing traditional songs. Their breath puffed white as they sang. We stopped for waffles and jam at a stand near a bridge. The pastry was hot through the napkin and warmed our hands, though just for a moment.
All of the color and fluid light, candle flames dancing in the windows, reminded me of why I love this season so much. It's the spirit of the people, children beginning anew at school in spite of the way the natural world is drawing itself to an end, young people dancing in pairs and trios, stretching their mouths carelessly around every lyric, and old people standing back, wrapped in the wisdom of their experience, considering the minor beauties of this time from a place most mindful and most appreciative.
Recently in Norwegian class, Jonathan and I learned a new verb: å glede seg. It means to look forward to, or to anticipate. So what am I anticipating this season?
Baking pumpkin bread.
Mom passed along her scrumptious pumpkin bread recipe to me the moment I asked for it. It was the fall of 2005. I'd been married a full year and hadn't baked a thing in my new kitchen. She came over and walked me through the recipe, swiping the flour flat in the measuring cup, scooping the pumpkin goop from the can into the bowl, and showing me how I should err on the side of extra with the cinnamon.
Since then I have baked it several times each autumn. Here in Oslo, though, a single can of pumpkin costs something around $12. Pumpkin bread will be a luxury for us here, but as the days retract into darkness and the cold wind forces us to close our windows tight, I look forward to pulling golden-brown loaves from the oven and letting the scent of cinnamon, cloves, and pumpkin fill the flat.
Piles of leaves.
Walking in the fall is more fun than it is any other time of the year. The sidewalks are covered in a deep, crunchy blanket of leaves, brightly colored and dry and light as air. Every step kicks up a few so that they tumble into new piles around me. If I move fast enough, they whirl a bit in my wake. I like to stand on our street when the wind begins to blow just to watch the yellow and red leaves in the trees release their hold on the branches and take their fluttering, circuitous journey downward and into my path.
Sweaters & scarves.
Here the wardrobe change has happened quicker than I'm used to. In California I would wear sweaters from November through the beginning of March. In Oslo, sweaters are necessary from the beginning of October all the way into April. The thick woolens feel soft against my skin. I layer a scarf around my neck, swirling and tying it so that it protects me from the cold fingers of the wind. I am wearing overcoats and rain coats. Soon I'll be pulling on a parka! But for now, I'm excited to be reunited with all my colorful sweaters.
Continue reading What I love about Halloweentime.
Our last perfect weather day was last Thursday. I took the bus to Lysaker to drop something at Jonathan's office and afterward I took a walk.
The water gulped against the wood and stone side of the pier below me. I was thirty feet up on a flat, grassy space between several buildings, glass and concrete exteriors housing posh condos with an extensive view of the fjord. Four men sat at the end of the pier, fishing poles aloft, tackle swinging and blinking in the sunlight. A small yacht was moored there, too, but all I could see were the long white masts and the smart red and blue flag.
There was quiet except for the scuttled chasings of two yellow-billed magpie. They swirled against each other, so close I could see the teal patches on their wings. They snickered and hopped back into the short hedges nearby. I watched them for a while and then bowed my head to read and scribble in the margins of my book. Everyone once in a while I took a sip of my lemon soda.
These days I favor my lemonades and sodas flavored with citron. It is a flavor I will forever associate with this time in my life - perfect days when the words had all the time in the world to conceive themselves in my mind and come to me.
More than one perfect day has been squandered since my arrival in Norway, of course. My cup runneth over with time and dreams coming true; my cup is so full that some time and dreams have been lost. I cannot mourn them now, though. There is too much to record. I am a journalist as much as I am a poet.
Last night our Norwegian instructor asked about our hobbies.
"Jeg skriver... poems," I said, because I've been writing poetry again, but I lacked the correct word for poems.
"Dikt," he said.
"Pardon me?"
"Dikt. Du skriver dikt," he said, chortling behind his answer. "Liker ikke du det? Hvorfor ikke?" You don't like it? Why not?
"Nei! Jeg liker ikke det! Fordi... Because that's a terribly ugly word for something as pretty as a poem!"
To soften the blow he added that the Norwegian word for poet is also poet, and the word for poetry is poesi. Now that's more like it.
So I record these bits of language that keep my life so interesting in this Nordic land. I record the weather, the street names, the tragedies, the carnivals. I have a responsibility to the page, and that truth, as esoteric as it is, keeps my pen moving, especially on the perfect days.
I paused in my scribbling last Thursday to watch as a motor boat cut a curve in the water and turned back on its own wake to thump its stern against the waves. My lemonade was pale yellow and only half full. The skinny, triangular Norwegian flag atop the yacht's mast nearby curled and unfurled at turns in the breeze. The sun warmed my back, and I wrote:
This is the stuff of my life, and as long as I can put it down in ink, my heart may be at peace.
Continue reading The Stuff of my Life.
Today I went out to watch other people run the Oslo Marathon. It's a big event. In 2010 it attracted 16,000 runners, more than half of them women. People came from all over the world. It's a beautiful course, winding along the edge of the Oslofjord and then up into our sparkling city. Jonathan and I live about three blocks from the middle of the course, so we walked over to cheer the runners on.
Running is not second nature to me. It's not even natural. My gait isn't graceless or anything. I played sports for too many years to be clumsy when I run. It's just that my lungs, my heart, my mouth, my thighs, my calves, my feet, my knees, my arms, my hands, and my ponytail can't seem to find the appropriate harmony when I try to use them all at once.
Believe me, I've tried. Jonathan and I have completed the Disneyland Half Marathon twice, first in 2008 and then again in 2010. We also ran the Death Valley 30K together in a record rainstorm, and Jonathan had an injured knee that time, so we basically walked the last half of it. I've also done a sprint triathlon with the Mermaid organization in California, an event which required me to face my fear of sharks and swim out around a pier in Santa Cruz (and making excellent time, I might add, due to that fear). After the swim, I biked 11 miles and ran the final 2.5. I dragged myself over that finish line, my skin a vibrant shade of pink blotched with red. Throw in a couple of 5K races and the weekly timed miles in my high school P.E. class and you've got the grand total of my life as a runner.
But it all seems like so long ago. And unfortunately, being able to point back a year or two and say, "See? I ran that once. I went from here to there. Not very fast, mind you, but faster than if I'd walked it," well, it stops being satisfying after a while.
The start time for the Oslo 10K had been 9:40 a.m. When we arrived at the part of the course closest to our place, the stragglers from that race were huffing and puffing their way up Karl Johans Gate, the long pedestrianized street which runs from Oslo Central train station uphill to the grand, yellow royal palace. We watched people of all ages, all sizes, and all levels of skill as they rounded that turn.
Most were dragging their feet, sweat thick in their hair. Some were limping over muscles strained somewhere earlier on. These were the survivors. I knew they'd finish. Give them another hour or two and they'd barrel stiff-legged over the line. Victorious, but pained, haggard, battle-worn.
I've been there. If I were to attempt a half marathon now, having not run seriously in over a year, it's how I'd look and feel. That's a tough truth for someone who likes to think of herself as healthy.
Continue reading Running. A goal..
Yesterday we arrived in Norway. All together. Two humans, two cats, six bags. Somehow we managed to lug everything from customs to the airport train station, from the Nationaltheatret station to the taxi stand, from the taxi up five flights of stairs. Twenty-four hours of constant motion culminated in the moment Jonathan turned the key in the lock of our new flat in Oslo, pulling the front door open with a theatrical sweep.
It's beautiful. Cozy. Light. Charming. Perfect. I giggled and spun as I entered each room, trying to memorize every inch of every wall. Our belongings arrived in early March, and Jonathan has spent the last six weeks setting things up for me. The nest, as it were, has been built, and he did it all exactly right.
We reached our flat before 10:00 on Wednesday, so the whole day was ours for the spending. However, this coming weekend is Easter, and Norwegians take their Easter holiday very seriously. Maundy Thursday, the Christian commemoration of the Last Supper, and Good Friday, the Christian commemoration of Christ's crucifixion, are public holidays. The Monday following Easter Sunday is also a public holiday, making the weekend officially five days long! The day we arrived in Oslo was the last working day of the week and many shops were set to close early, and remain closed until next Tuesday. We needed to get out and grab some groceries.
Continue reading Velkommen til Oslo!.
Audrey Camp
I'm an American expat and freelance writer living in Oslo, Norway with my husband. I love language, adventure, dogs and classic movies.
