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 :-)
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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)
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