Becoming Scandinavian

Hi again!

It was fun to arrive back in Copenhagen--I got there around 10:30 at night and it was still so light out! I took the train back into Malmö, then headed back to Copenhagen the next morning to meet up with a friend from college who was doing a summer program there. It was so fun--and funny--to meet up with her on the other side of the world. We had smørbrød (bread topped with pickled fish, in my case) and chatted, then wandered around a bit. I headed to the train station to take the train to Helsingør, up the coast of Denmark. Helsingør is a cute little town, but what makes it famous is "Hamlet's castle." Apparently, Shakespeare took his inspiration for Elsinore from Helsingør. The castle is on a peninsula jutting into the water--across the sea is Sweden--and it is beautiful. I explored the part under the castle, which was made up of lots of dark, dank cellars where people stored supplies or hid during raids. That even freaked me out, and I'm not scared of much.

After visiting the castle I took a short ferry over to Sweden, then took the train down to Lund, a beautiful little university down near Malmö. I admired the half-timbered houses and ivy-covered brick university buildings, thinking about study abroad (what would my major need to be for me to study abroad in Sweden?) and getting lost. After only a short while I hopped back on the train and returned to Malmö, because it was already past dinner time. I spent the evening with family friends, then took a train to Oslo the next day!

My departure to Oslo was on June 25th, the official midsummer celebration in Sweden. I was sorry to miss the festivities, but it was fun to see girls on the train wearing flowers in their hair, and the views out the window were beautiful.

When I arrived in Oslo I began by not finding the metro station for a while, then paying 4 dollars for a metro ticket when I finally found it, taking it a few stops, and dragging my bags through the rain all across the University of Oslo campus, then discovering that I had passed the dorms a while before. A slightly frustrating arrival, but I was still excited to be there. I found my room and met my roommate (from Minnesota!), and after a bit of unpacking and a meal of fish and boiled potatoes, walked around the area with some fellow summer school students.

During our first official day we took a bus tour of Oslo: we visited the Viking Ship museum (amazing!), drove through the center of town and saw the new Oslo opera house, which is an amazing modern building. Sunday I spent the day waiting in line to officially register, and then I started class on Monday. My class had about 24 students in it, of all ages and from all over the world. It was so much fun to meet my classmates and learn about where they were from. My teacher was also great--a very entertaining norwegian guy who also managed to teach us a lot, and who spoke mostly in norwegian.

After our first day of class we had the official summer school opening ceremony at Oslo City Hall, which was amazing! We all dressed up, and the vice mayor of Oslo spoke, along with the director of ISS and an alumna of the first ISS in 1947. There was also a performance by a band from the University of Oslo, and afterwards we had fancy hors d'oeuvres and champagne and met the American ambassador to Norway. All in all awesome! Then we missed our bus back, so some friends and I stayed at a bar near city hall for a while, then took the T-bane (metro) back.

So thus began my norwegian adventures! I had class every weekday from 10:15-1:00, then had lunch and either hung around in the afternoon, explored Oslo, or attended "Norwegian Life and Society" lectures. In the first week I watched the USA-Ghana world cup match in a park in Majorstuen, the zone near my campus, and went to the Oslo Ice Bar. As you may have guessed, that is a bar made out of ice! The walls, tables, bar, chairs, and glasses were all ice, and we were given big poncho-like parkas to wear. Definitely a crazy experience.

I spent my first weekend in Oslo visiting the islands in Oslo harbor and swimming in the not-too-cold ocean, then celebrating the Fourth of July, American-Norwegian style! There was a celebration in Vigeland park (Norway's most famous statue park), attended by lots of American x-pats, with food, stalls selling souvenirs, and entertainment ("Independence Idol"). I got some norsk jordbær (norwegian strawberries--delicious) and wandered around in my red, white and blue, happy to be able to celebrate my first Fourth of July outside the US in good American fashion.

ISS organized some fun events for us--one was "norwegian cultural evening," where we saw some great folk music and dance performances, and some traditional Sami "yoik" (singing). Afterwards, we had traditional norwegian sausage and cornstarch porridge which was surprisingly delicious. We also had a fun evening of folk dance instruction and spent some nice afternoons at Sognsvann, the beautiful lake right down the metro line from campus.

Next time: white-water rafting, Stockholm, and more fun in Oslo!!