Things we've learned about Norway

• Ice is everywhere.  There is no avoiding it.  The key is just to try and fall as gracefully as possible to retain what little dignity remains after you slip as well as to prevent serious injury.  Tyler has been more sucessful at both of these points than I have (unfortunately).
• We still have warm weather in the winter.  By warm of course I mean anytime when we don't have to wear our gortex shells over our polar fleece or when we can get away with not wearing gloves for a few hours.  It might not sound like much, but when you're used to being bundled up to your eyeballs your face, neck and hands enjoy the rare occasions when they can willingly be exposed to the elements.
• The plus side of the temperature is that your cheeks always have a rosy glow about them.
• I am in desperate need of a humidifier and a can of Static Guard.  I (somewhat) regret complaining about the humidity in Houston now that there isn't a drop of moisture to be found in the air - except in the form of snowflakes.
• Everyone carries a backpack/shoulder bag/satchel around.  Why?  So we don't have to carry bags in our hands as we need those to catch us when we fall!  No seriously, the government has made having a car ridiculously expensive with all the taxes and tolls and fees so most people walk and it is much easier getting around with the pack on your back for the big stuff.

Other factoids:

• All wine, liquor, anything over 4.75% alcohol can only be purchased through Vinmonopolet, literally the "Wine Monopoly," which is owned by the state.  It's closed Sundays, open only till 3pm on Saturdays, and only till 6pm during the week.  They really want to limit and control consumption by the people.  I think I might have mentioned earlier, bottles of rum that might normally only cost 20-something dollars back home cost over $50 here!  The taxes on alcohol are ridiculous, until you get to the expensive bottles of wine - those are actually a pretty good bargain, but when you're looking at a bottle that's already a couple hundred dollars that is hardly any consolation.
• We had an interesting talk with our Norwegian teacher about some aspects of life over here:
• The state has a pension fund - the state oil account, 60% invested in worldwide oil shares, 40% in a trust
• The retirement age is currently 67
• Next year it will be 62, but that will only qualify for part of the pension, with full pension still not being paid until age 67
• Pension payments are taxed
• There is a progressive payout dependent upon their salaries while employed
• If you live here for 35 years and your only job is to be a homemaker, even if you aren't a citizen, you get 8,000 NOK per month, after taxes
• The pension is not designed to cover all your bills; it is just designed to help you out.  You are still expected to have some accountability for your own retirement - some of your own money set aside and lined up to help you after you retire.
• Women are allowed 11 months of maternity leave the year after their baby is born
• They cannot be terminated while they are gone and have to be given their position when they return to work.
• This has been the coldest November/December in Norway in 91 years! (lucky us, right?)

Vi snakkes!

Santa is from Norway - Drøbak to be specific

Yep, that's right.  Apparently Santa Claus, known as Julenissen here, is Norwegian :-) Apparently local officials decided in 1989 that Santa was born in Drøbak.  The local post office has the name and image of Julenissen on their postmark year-round and the city has little "Santa crossing" signs around the area.  Of course there are replicas of these signs available for purchase ;-) Here's a link with a little more info about the official declaration of Julenissen's origins:
http://www.norway.org/ARCHIVE/News/archive/1995/199510santa/

So of course with the Christmas season upon us and Santa's home so nearby, last week some of the wives from Ty's office and I decided we should all check out his hometown together.  It was about an hour-long bus trip and was an absolutely gorgeous drive with the snow-covered vista.  Remember, the entire country has a population smaller than the Houston metro area, so the drive was primarily through undeveloped land and rural areas and the untouched nature was simply breath-taking.  Here's a few of the better pictures from the drive down:

  

  

  

 

The town of Drøbak was very quaint and quite fun to wander around for the afternoon.  The first stop, of course, was the Julehuset - The Christmas House.  SO many ornaments and decorations!  I think the trip was more interesting because one of the other wive's mother, who is from Denmark, was with us and helped explain some of the holiday cultural differences.  Here's a few of them:

• Julenissen is not a big, jolly man like we picture him.  Their version is more like a gnome or elf.  Smaller, but still rewarding good girls and boys with presents.  Julenissen literally translates to "Christmas Elf" - Jul = Christmas; nissen = elf.
• Toadstools are supposed to be a symbol of good luck in the upcoming year, so there are often red and white toadstool ornaments or decorations for sale.  Pigs are also supposed to be a sign of good luck.
• Instead of milk and cookies, children leave out a sweet rice pudding for Julenissen.  We saw some cute decorations that featured Santa with a big bowl of pudding and a spoon in his lap.  I found a recipe online and am hoping to try it out, maybe while we're in Lillehammer.  This is a treat for the family as well and the tradition is that you hide a whole almond in the rice pudding and whoever finds it in their bowl gets a prize, often a marzipan pig.  Remember, pigs are supposed to bring good luck!
• Christmas trees here tend to be decorated in a much more simple fashion.  Most have white lights, especially those made to look like little candles clipped to the tree, with some ornaments and tinsel.  The larger trees throughout the city at the major landmarks are simply decorated with strands of large white lights.  At first it was a little disappointing after seeing what our National Tree normally looks like.  But I've started to really appreciate the simplicity of the decor and not feeling the need to spend five- or six-figures decorating the larger trees.
• The red heart is the symbol of Christmas.  Strange to get used to at first since most of us associate that with Valentine's day in the States, but there are red hearts everywhere and it's pretty cute.  Not sure if there is any meaning or significance behind the heart though.

So we walked around the little Christmas House (Julehuset) and there were SO many cute decorations and ornaments!  I bought two reindeer, a porcelain toadstool (for good luck!), a mini Norwegian flag, a little white ball with a map of Norway on one side and the flag on the other, and a heart (for our Christmas here in country) - all ornaments for our tree.  I also found a cute little Santa figure that looks like their smaller elf version.  All you see is his little nose and his hair peeking out under his red hat.  I'll add a picture later!

We walked around town, found a lovely church that was built in 1776; got some fabulous pictures!  We also found a tailor that specializes in traditional Norwegian garb from the different regions across the country.  It was fun to walk through the store looking at all of the ornate details on the different garments.

We stopped at a little cafe, had a late lunch, and enjoyed the relaxing bus ride home.  Fun day with the ladies!

More pictures from Drøbak - the scenery and the tailor shop:

Free Christmas tree and more pre-Christmas fun!

It's been a while and for that I apologize, but y'all know how it goes around the holidays.  This was a pretty busy week or so: 2 office Christmas parties; finishing all the Christmas shopping; and skiing for the first time!

We had one party just for Aker Solutions, the company Esso Norge is working with on a few projects.  They took us in two busses up to this cabin 30+ minutes outside of the city where we had an amazing dinner of cured trout, halibut, and reindeer.  Here's a shot of the place they took us, though it hardly does it justice:

The next evening we had our own little party with a few fellow ExxonMobil friends that involved a lot of Wii and Apples to Apples :-p The following night we had the official Esso Norge Christmas Party at the Grand Hotel where all the different employees got together, including the new head of Esso Norge.  First thing (and I'm simplifying the titles quite a bit, but bear with me) it was pretty humorous to hear both the Oslo boss and the Esso Norge boss speak.  The Oslo boss is Norwegian and spoke in Norwegian to the entire group, except when he was introducing the new Esso Norge boss when he switched to English.  Then the Esso Norge boss gets up there with a big ol' Texas drawl and I just couldn't help but smile.  Silly, I know, but it made an impression :-)

Outside of the Grand Hotel

Back to the important stuff, the party!  Oh...my...gosh!  They reserved an entire floor of the Grand Hotel, just a few blocks from the Royal Palace and the venue that hosts the annual Nobel Peace Prize banquet, for the whole event.  Cocktail hour was in a series of connected studies and they poured champagne.  Dinner was held in the Mirror Room, which is the actual room where they hold the Nobel dinner - thought that was a pretty neat little fact.  We once again had halibut and deer - very tasty - and were seated with most of the other people from Ty's project.  They also provided entertainment during dinner - a violinist who played Norwegian folk music and a guitarist (with the most beautiful voice) who played/sang some American songs.

The Mirror Room where we had dinner

After dinner, dessert, and coffee we were ushered into another ballroom where they had a Blues Brothers cover band playing...AWESOME!  Ty and I had so much fun dancing and hanging out with our friends.  And as if the night wasn't fabulous enough, it was snowing when we left - big, soft, fluffy snowflakes!  Which reminds me, I got to show off the latest in "Norwegian formalwear" - a little black dress, tights, fur coat, and Sorel winterboots with socks over my tights.  It makes for quite a sight when everyone gets to the coat room, all the women removing boots and changing into dress shoes that they've brought with them in another bag.  But it works.

I've bought some fun stuff as keepsakes, like this little set of candleholders that says "Christmas" in Norwegian.  It's also been fun walking around the Oslo Christmas Market since it's right next to our place.  We like to stop and get a little German mulled wine on our way back from Norwegian classes ;-)

Below is a picture of the little train set-up inside one of the tents, Tyler and I enjoying some mulled wine, and a video of part of the Julemarked.

Now, for a new segment of the blog - meet Jean, my cohort here in Oslo.  Her husband, Lucas, is another EM employee out here working in a different office and they've only been here about a month and a half longer than us.  We've been exploring Oslo together and with our other halves and it certainly has been nice to have another couple our age to hang out with.  Today we went out to take some photos by Akershus Castle because it was just gorgeous outside.  There was a veil of fog covering the fjords and from the higher vantage point of the castle we got some really nice nature shots.  They're all on Jean's memory card, but I'll make sure to post them when I get them.

The trees in front of the train station

We then went out to do some shopping for Christmas and hopped on the tram towards the city center.  As we approached our stop, we saw there were about 60 Christmas trees lined up in the square between the tram stops and the train station.  Some were decorated, some weren't, and some had people decorating them right there in the square.  Curious, naturally, we went to see what was going on and were told it was a promotion for a Norwegian company like Lowe's.  The organizers had lined up the trees in rows with extension cords spread amongst them and arranged a stack of pre-sorted plastic bins of Christmas decorations - each with approximately the same value of ornaments inside.

My tree



Turns out that if you volunteered to take a bin of ornaments and decorate a tree, you could come back later that afternoon and keep the tree and all the decorations for FREE!  Apparently they thought that having the different trees all lined up with all the different kinds of ornaments would motivate people to buy decorations/get their own tree/what have you.  They also had free mulled cider and cookies for everyone.  So we got some cider, thought it over, and I decided what the heck, it was free, we didn't have a tree in the apartment, and worst case scenario I could just take the ornaments home.

So I picked a bin with some neat looking ornaments and we darn near froze our fingers off decorating the tree out there in the middle of the square!  I thanked Jean for helping me and "rewarded" here for her efforts by getting us some hot chocolate at a cafe we saw just down the street.  Neither of us had been before, but they had the most AMAZING hot chocolate.  It was like hot chocolate soup, served in a bowl with no handle.  But it warmed us to the core and tasted delicious.  We had more time to kill before we could pick up the tree so we went shopping for a bit.

Me and the tree riding
the bus home

When it was time to pick them up, we stripped all the ornaments off the tree (so they wouldn't get damaged) and Jean carried our bags while I carried the tree to the bus stop.  You should have see the looks we got standing there at the bus stop with a Christmas tree wrapped in a strand of lights and some garland.  I certainly wasn't about to walk the whole way back home carrying the tree and I'd seen plenty of odd stuff take a trip on the bus before, so I had no problem hopping onto the bus, tree in hand, and holding onto it till we got to our stop.  The best were the looks on other's faces standing on the street looking into the lit bus and you could tell they were thinking, "Is that a Christmas tree???"  In the end it made it back intact, Jean fell in love with some of the little ornaments so I split them with her, and I have a free fully-decorated Christmas tree in our apartement - base, lights, star, garland, and ornaments.

Not too shabby for a Tuesday ;-)

Last random photo - we saw this chocolate Santa and just couldn't resist!  (fyi, it costs almost $100)

A Successful Thanksgiving Weekend (more pictures)

Here's to our first Norwegian Thanksgiving - it was quite a success.  We made everything listed on the previous post except for the boller :-/ I didn't know that the yeast we needed was not provided in the package we purchase, so we'll be making those later.  I also added some sage & onion stuffing to the menu; nothing fancy, but I saw it at the store and thought you can never go wrong with stuffing on Thanksgiving.  Tyler did an impeccable job with the deer tenderloin!  It was cooked to perfection and topped with a balsamic reduction that Rett made at his place beforehand.  I made my own version of French's onion rings (oh yea, so hard...all I did was grill some thin slices - nowhere near the same, but at least it added some flavor).  I also think I made my best sweet potato casserole ever by adding a whole Tahitian vanilla bean to the mix.  Ty agrees ;-)



Two chefs in the kitchen

Our kitchen table

The spread

yours truly

 Tyler and his masterpiece - definitely something to be proud of :-)

Later we met up at Icebar Oslo with Jean and Lucas and two of their friends, Katie and Scott, who were visiting for the weekend.  Very fun, though I had to wonder how silly we looked going into the Icebar when it was almost as cold standing outside...and it was snowing.  I was surprised how cheap it was to go in there (compared to just buying a drink at a normal bar here in Oslo).  It was 200kr, just over $30, to: go in for 45 minutes, get an ice glass, and two drinks.  Its about 100kr just to get a mixed drink at most places, so pretty cool to get the whole experience AND the two drinks for just 200kr.  The whole interior is ice - the walls, the bar, the tables, the seats, and the glasses!  There were lights behind the walls that slowly changed colors creating a really neat effect.  There are more pictures from the night on Jean and Lucas' camera - I'll post those when I get them.

  

So while we had no turkey or pumpkin pie, I'd still say our Thanksgiving celebration was a complete success :-)