New apartment

The fact that I had to leave my apartment because it was up for sale, comes out a real blessing.

My new apartment costs about 180 US dollars more, but there are several advantages:

# It is a bigger apartment where I will have a fairly big living room,
a bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom and even place for guests.
In the attic I will have my fairly big office.
# It is an old wooden cosy house with two floors, and I live upstairs.
# It is very close to where my mother lives.
# It is very close to the bus stop for work.
# It is very close to the supermarket.
# It is very close to the sea.

Officially I will live there from September 1st.
I hope to get a regular phone number within ten days from now and then an internet connection within two weeks after that.

The apartment looks very minimalistic/empty at this point, but that is OK.
Buying furniture at FRETEX, the secondhand shop of the Salvation Army, solves all my problems.

It is actually quite exciting to start out with a clear canvas.

No internet

The house I am living in is up for sale. I am the last person living in the house.
So when the guy on the second floor moved out, that was the end of my (actually his) internet connection.

I then realized I will have to use the public library again for the internet.
But till Sept 1st they keep summer hours (shorter hours, in translation), so with my work hours I will be able to use the internet at the library only once a week.

I hope to be in my new apartment by Sept 1st.
But how long will it take to get an internet connection? Don't know, at this point.

Have patience.

The railway museum at Hamar

Travelled with the old train, on third class, for about five minutes. Fun!


Walked past a second class old railway waggon in the exhubition and heard voices in English inside.


Two English tourists were talking about the challenges of tourism in Norway, back then.
Here is one of them.


From about 1854 to 1860, the first years with railroads in Norway, you could choose to go fourth class, in an open carriage, with no roof. Guess the climate finished that alternative.


Several old railway stations have been transferred to the museum. Here is Kløften (Kløfta) station.

I love trains!

The park at Tomb agricultural school

Kantareller = Cantharel

Even for those Norwegians not too familiar with mushrooms, this kind is probably the only one they feel safe to pick.

It is called Kantareller in Norwegian and cantharel in English.

My mother is an expert on mushrooms and cannot be stopped when the forest fills up with mushrooms and wild berries.

Yesterday she and my niece picked all these mushrooms and today they carefully cleaned them.

Probably three kilo of Kantareller.

Well done!

PS. I did not inherit the picking-mushroom-gene from my mother and grandmother, but I love eating them.

Memories from before the age of 3

What do we remember from our first years of life?

I have two distinctive memories from the winter and spring of 1953 when I was about two and a half years old.

1. I remember sitting in the backseat of a Volkswagen with my aunt.
My father stopped the car at the bottom of some tall steps.
He walked up the stairs.
When he came back, my mother was standing next to him with a bundle, wrapped in a white and light blue baby blanket.
They walked down those tall stairs and the bundle was brought into the backseat, to my aunt. Inside I was shown the face of my newborn baby brother.

2. My aunt was going for a walk with the baby carriage with my brother, and me next to her.
It was spring, and a little cold.
A mother with a girl a little older than me, came towards us.
"See", said the little girl, "the mother is going for a walk with her children".
I remember that, because it wasn't our mother, but our aunt.
I also remember exactly where this happened. We were walking along a stone wall with moss - and it is still there in 2007!

NB. Those stairs at the hospital certainly had shrunk when I was back there 32 years later.

Getting married in Sweden

Ad for American firm http://www.magicmud.com/

35 years ago in Sweden eight out of ten couple who married, married with a priest.

In 2006 45500 couples married but only half of them used the priest for tying the knot.

The others married mostly with the help of judges, lawyers and politicians.

Amerikakoffert - the suitcase from America

For the 900 000 Norwegians emigrating from Norway, many would never see Norway again.
Most of them kept in contact by correspondence (Amerikabrev = Letters from America)
Some came for visits, bringing with them their suitcases - their Amerikakoffert.
Not only was the design of the suitcase iself special, but the content! The visiting relatives from America knew just what to bring to impress their relatives in Norway. After all they had lived in Norway not so long ago.

So the expression Amerikakoffert can still evoke associations, at least for somebody in my generation and those older.
When I was a child, one of my neighbours received Amerikapakke (Parcel from America) from some relative "over there". "An uncle in America" was a good thing to have.

Staying over in Hamar

Around 60 years ago you take two old houses and build a section to make it into one V-shaped building. You then use it as a pension for around ten years. Then you use it as an old age home for ladies for a few years. Then you again make it into a pension.
Now with new owners, big decisions will probably be made how to make this a nice place to stay for the guests, while making it profitable for the owners. Running a pension seems to me a job you can easily suffer burnout at work, if you don't find ways to unwind now and then.
The owners were nice people and I wish them luck!

The steam paddler Skibladner

When I arrived in Hamar on August 2nd this old steam paddler skibladner going back and forth on Lake Mjøsa, celebrated its 151th birthday. Impressive!

I intended to go from Hamar to Gjøvik to Lillehammer with Skibladner tomorrow on Saturday and eat "Dinner on Mjøsa", the traditional salmon menu with cucumber salad, steamed potatoes and melted butter.Strawberries and single cream for dessert

But all the places were sold out, so this will have to wait for another time.

http://www.skibladner.no/engelsk/index.htm

Walking in Hamar

Walking from the Emigrant Museum back to Hamar (around 4 - 5 km) I took this photo of the Viking Ship, a sports hall that looks like a viking ship turned upside down. They have all-year-round ice rinks, so the Dutch national team of ice skaters do a one week training camp there now, and they stay at the same place I do.
The Viking Ship was used for the Olympic Games at nearby Lillehammer.

It was a beautiful day for walking.

The Norwegian emigrant museum: buildings from the USA

Out of the 900 000 Norwegians who emigrated from Norway, most went to the United States, and many settled on farms in the Midwest. This little house was the home of a family of eight, parents, grandmother and five children!

This had both the cowshed, the hay loft, the pigsty and the chicken coop, also somewhere in the Midwest.
Americans of Norwegian descent decide to donate these old buildings on their farms to this museum in Norway in memory of their forefathers.

This airy little building was the storage for corn, a vegetable the new immigrants from Norway did not know from their home country.

This Protestant church was built by eight Norwegian families in the Midwest and used for many years. Then, after it was no longer in use, it was dismantled and sent to Norway. Here it is used both for religious services and for concerts.

Last Tuesday the museum received another container from the States with a dismantled oneroom school house with benches, blackboard and all the rest. Now they need money to rebuild it.

Ingmar Bergman

On July 30th 2007, the Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman died. He was 89 years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Bergman

44 films, made between 1946 and 2003 are listed in the Wikipedia entry.

I have only seen "Scenes from a Marriage"(1973) and that was a long time ago.

I wonder if I will find a way of seeing some of his other films now.

Inheriting a farm in Norway

In Norway, till 1974, it was the oldest son, born in marriage, who could inherit a family farm.

That year, it was decided that for children born after January 1st 1965, it would be the first child born in marriage, regardless of the sex of that child.

In the daily newspaper Aftenposten we learn that there are 180 000 farms of different sizes in Norway, and that today one fourth of these are owned by women.

During the years 2005 - 2006 38 % of new farm owners were women.

In general, women own the smaller farms, often with sheep and goats. Few women own the biggest farms with milk and beef production.

Naming your Norwegian boat

The local newspaper Moss Avis recently had an article listing names of boats here in Moss and in Norway. The journalist had even categorized the names. Here are some examples.

1. Names of the women in the life of the owner or his view of women:

Miss Behave, Høna (The Hen), Sexbomb.

2. Names indicating the financial status of the owner, or lack of such:

Gjelda mi (My debt), Il Conto Gigante, Plenty of Gold

3. Names indicating ambitions, tempo and quality, or lack of such:

Pomp&Øs (play with the words pompeous and Pump and Empty, in Norwegian), Piece of Cake,

Off Course, Ca. Halvveis (Around Halfway)

4. Names indicating the place of the boat in the owner's life or the place of the owner in his own life:

Time out, Lazy Days, Smake av Honning (Taste of Honey), Yes Yes.

Last but not least, a sailboat with the name Don't Panic, written upside down!