The world according to børk

So after my late breakfast, me and my bro went into Gothenburg (or Göteborg) to straighten out my various thangs that needed to get done. We drove to a mall by the central train station to check get me a train ticket. It good to have someone that is fluent in a language to help you get things done. The guy behind the counter knew English and we could have figured things out, but it went so much faster in his native language. I now have the train dropping me off an hour and a half prior to the boat cruise to Helisinki.

Typical middle class house in Sweden

We ended up cruising back and forth through the mall trying to get information on the bus line down south to the suburb where Craig is living. Apparently they changed the name of the bus line from a number to the Santa Rosa line. Err... ok. That's not even vaguely a Swedish name. Anyway, got the ticket - figured out the bus lines. Then off to try and find udon noodles for the supper and a city map and touristy crap for me. 

Moose shaped ice cubes? There is a God...

I managed to pick up some fridge magnets, change my Norwegian kroners for Swedish kroners, and get details on a sightseeing ship down in Gothenburg. We also walked around the central area near the train a bit, at least enough for me to get a more comfortable feel. So basically feeling out the town and getting my bearings and how to get around. 

This beer is more metal than you are...

Back to the homestead where Lovisa made some tasty traditional Swedish potato soup with a fine creamy butter flavor. We had celery, paprika, and sea salt to toss into it and finished with an "over pancake". Basically a pancake with a lot of egg cooked on a big cookie sheet. You add linganberry preserves on the top. It was tasty.

After a couple more episodes of Prison Break to get Lukas and Philip to sleep, me and Craig wandered down to the bus stop so I would know which way to go to get back to the house during the day. Hit the Shell station by the bus station for a cheap hot dog craving and got it free since they were about to close shop and the gal was going to toss them. Sweet! Nothing like free gas station hot dogs.

We had a shot and an beer and proceeded to play Bank Ping Pong. We had to use one of the walls of the garage to bounce the ping pong ball off of before it hit the table on both sides. Tricky, but I think we now have an addition to the next Olympic games.  

Hej då, Øslo!

Woke up around 9am in the morning and started the arduous process of packing all of my crap into suitcases. Craig had rented a car to come up to Oslo as it was a fairly short jaunt (well, in truth most travel from one country to the next is a short jaunt) of about 3 1/2 hours drive. So we went down the street to the large cafe (one of the few open on Sunday) and had a club sandwich, fresh apple juice, and a double latte. I wish I would have hit this place more as the prices were cheap and the food good, probably why it is almost always packed.

Anyway, the drive back was pretty boring. The countryside looked like the Oregon coastal valleys covered in trees and free range cow farms. The tunnel out of Oslo was interesting. They built a tunnel under the fjord to they wouldn't have to build a bunch of bridges. An interesting thing about Norway is that they had fire extinguishers every couple hundred meters and every third of fourth one also had a telephone booth. They are way big on safety in Scandinavia.

So the trip was uneventful and Craig and Lovisa had to shuffle between dropping off the rental car and arranging for two kids to be picked up from their respective soccer matches. I arranged the guest room downstairs while they were out. The house itself is pretty big in an upper middle class neighborhood behind a grade school. There is three bedrooms and 1 1/2 bathrooms upstairs and one bedroom/guest room and a bath downstairs.

The house looks like a Swedish house should look like, with a lot of Ikea style furniture and wooden floors. Craig and Lovisa made a nice udon noodle stew from stratch with veggies and beef, then we had cheese and ice cream for dessert. Then watched a couple episodes of Prison Break, a somewhat cheesy US crime drama-ish about eight guys that broke out of a prison.

We took a brief walk around the neighborhood as this is Craig's main form of daily exercise. Then sleeping in til 10am. Shower (the downstairs shower is awesome), double latte, some fresh homemade sourdough with a tasty sweet cheese/butter spread we got in Oslo plus the tasty juice for the same.

Ready to face the day now.

Pining for the fjords!?!?!?!

So last night was actually pretty cool. Me and my bro went out to simply have a beer and walk around the neighborhood. We took a shot of Schnapps at a cool bar that looked like a library, even to having the bathrooms behind a "secret" door that was a library bookcase.

Then on the way walking back to the hostel, we met up with a group of Norwegians college students just walking down the street. Once they realized that we were American, they started talking to us. It was Tom, Thomas, something, and something. Four guys, the last one someone they grabbed at college to go out drinking. We ended up hitting the homebrew place and then wandering back to the library bar once the homebrew place closed. It was a blast, they were fun guys and for whatever reason they loved the hell out of me. It was the long hair and tattoo I think, they kept saying I looked like a heavy metal singer. So we ended up drinking and doing many shots.

So late morning as I was a tad hung over. But we got up and out at around 11am and decided to walk downtown. We ate at a nice, very busy place down the road that seemed popular, but I had avoided since they had no English menu. Since Craig knew Swedish, we could figure stuff out well enough. Had some OJ, a nice egg and bacon sandwich, and a double latte and we were good to go.

We managed to hit Oslo at just the right time. There was some kind of book festival happening on the walk downtown that was cool, with tents of books and other goods all the way down to the central station. Then when we hit the docks to book a 2 hour boat trip to see the local fjords, we had a two hour wait... and there was a gourmet food festival happening at the dock/waterfront. Life is good.

So we wandered around sampling cheese, pickled and smoked fish of all variety, cook meat and sausage from many animals, fish pancakes, organic fresh juiced fruits/veggies, etc. Most of it was free, but when it wasn't it would be only 20 kroner (three bucks) for a nice sized portions of mixed cheeses, meat, or juices. So we filled up on samples of tons of stuff for less than 100 kroner. Nice. I ended up buying a bottle of organic apple/sour cherry/some native berry juice that was delicious.

Then off to the cruise where we scored on some seats in the very back of the boat. It was pretty cool boating by private islands and fjords and such.

I was pining for this.

After we got back, we headed down to the modern art museum and Craig was interested in checking it out. Unfortunately, I though it was open until 7pm. In reality I had managed to hit it the one day of the week when they stayed open until 7. Normally they closed at 5pm. Whoops.

What, me worry?

After this we decided to have a nice more authentic Scandinavian meal at the boardwalk. Ridiculously expensive, of course, but it was quite tasty. I has a lobster and spinach baked ravioli and langoustine soup, reindeer with pickled fennel and apple, cider sauce, gnocchi, oxtail terrine, and finished with a sweet cheese with elderflower sorbet in an elderflower "soup" (sauce). It was worth it. Then a hop back on the tram to hit the hostel.

After dropping off out schtuff, we headed back downtown to check out the scene. We walked around and had a couple beers and ended up in a go go bar. This was a step up from the failed strip club I went to. The beers were reasonably priced and there were actually (gasp) naked girls on the poles. I ended up chatting to a gal from Romania named Sasha. She was pretty cool and we ended up hanging out for an hour, which likely costed her some money - but we were having fun talking about our different culture and I didn't have to buy her uber expensive drinks like the last place.

We bailed from there to catch the tram back to the hostel and managed to hit central station for the last train back to Uranienborg (which awesomely stops right in front of the hostel). Lord save me from temptations. The seats open were in the middle of about 20 gorgeous 18-20 year old college girls, mostly blond blue/green eyed. Once they heard the American English accent they proceeded to chat up me and Craig about their travels to the US and where they've been and where we had lived, etc. And they were pretty drunk. With the street construction, the last stop was in front of our hostel where they all left the train.

Temptation, really, really, really, sucks sometimes. But they really were too young and too drunk. Plus partying in a bed and breakfast hostel would have kept all the people on my floor awake. So discretion was the better part of valor. Or some silly shit like that. <sigh>

Cest la vie. 

Its mehday in Norway

This morning was a nice late sleep in. I got a massage as my back and legs were sore from all the walking I've been doing. I'm not big on massages, but stretching wasn't cutting it and there was a place down the street. And not one of the "happy ending" types. Ahhhhh, much better.

I hopped on a bus to hit the historical museum as it was free from the ticket to the Viking museum yesterday. Unfortunately, it was also entirely in Norwegian. No translations anywhere. While it was cool seeing all the ancient Viking artifacts from throughout the ages, and then a cool medieval wooden church carvings (they used mostly wood for everything back then up here) - it quickly paled as I couldn't understand any of the exhibits. Meh.

So I looked around briefly for an Italian restaurant and when one didn't appear quick enough - I headed back to the hostel. I still had a bunch of food int he fridge from the supermarket, so I had a nice meal of spaghetti al carbonara, olives, fresh cherry tomatoes, and a egg/bacon spread on a sweet roll. I relaxed and read some of my book and decided to take a nap. Whoops. Now I'm up at 6:30 and since Craig should be arriving between 7-8.

Heh, speak of the devil. Craig just called and he's an hour and a half out. Its about 8:30 now so it looks like I should head down to the bar nearby and have a beer or two.

Wait, the Norwegians hate their natives too? Damn, we all suck...

I'm totally stealing the Laundromat Cafe idea. Popped in in the morning around 9am-ish. Threw my clothes into the machines in back. The front of the place resembled a nice Portland local coffee shop. A library up some stairs in a corner. Sofas and comfy chairs. Plus they served a nice breakfast too. People reading books or using the free WiFi while sipping their lattes. As a society, we have failed.

Went back to the hostel, dropped thangs off, and headed out TO PILLAGE!

Ok, maybe just to hit the Viking Museum. But it was seriously cool. They found two burial Viking ships back 100 years ago and they tried to preserve it via the methods they had then, which was alum. What they didn't know was that it would develop into sulfuric acid inside the wood. So now they are trying to figure out ways to keep the wood from disintegrating. Whoops. But it was pretty cool to see two fully formed Viking ships. Also you couldn't pay an entry fee, you had to cut the living heart out of villager and eat it in front of a chieftain. The good news is, lunch solved!

The ships really were beautiful. Though without the blood dripping off the sides, it could have used some color.

The ticket to the Viking Museum also allowed entry into the Historical Museum downtown. Unfortunately, the Viking Museum was across the bay along with the Kon-Tiki, etc. There was however a Norwegian Folks Museum down the road one bus stop. Since I was there, I figured "the hell with it, why not"

It was completely and utterly worth it. The exhibits were meh, though I found out that there is a native tribal culture called the Sami that the Norwegians have been screwing for centuries, just like us! They had an exhibit about their culture and how they have been taking their land while destroying their culture. Whoa. This is a Sami in Oslo now.

The rest of the folk museum was a tour of the buildings throughout Finland's history. You start with the typical wooden structures and eventually they went to the decades prior to present day. It was pretty cool as they had an actual set of streets from different periods with storefronts and items you could check out. One of the coolest things was a 13th century ornate wooden church that they had moved onto the open air park grounds (most of the "museum" was like that). It was a LOT of walking but well worth it to get a feel of how people used to back in those days.

After that I hopped on the bus to the Kon-Tiki/Fram area, and then a boat back over the the central docks. At the end of the boardwalk was a modern art museum. Those are usually hit or miss for me. I generally like about 20-30% of the art, but the rest is just garbage to me. Don't get me wrong. It is art, it is made to evoke emotions, and it does that. A lot of the time the emotion is a desire to vomit as its really hard to shock me anymore. Some of it was cool though. They had a huge mosaic of just different types of butterflies.They also had a variety of penises and vaginas and fake blood, yada yada yada. A cow that was cut in half and preserved was pretty cool, along with some of the paintings I seen. Most of the photography was crap. Just picture of jumbled things assembled and warped to try and invoke "terror". I'm not a slasher flick type, so it wasn't working for me.

I got some good pics and generally enjoyed the gallery, so it was a win for me. Plus I decided to treat myself on the boardwalk to a really nice meal of Angus steak in a red wine reduction sauce, with pickled onions, asparagus, and a layered potato and egg pie slice. It was expensive, but it was worth it for the treat.

After that it was just getting home and relaxing. I did walk around the local neighborhood for a couple hours for the hell of it, then came back and tried to figure out how to microwave some TV dinner thingy I bought. Corned beef, cabbage, and potato. I think. Whatevere, it was good.

Good day sunshi... well, still a good day

For some reason I couldn't get to sleep last night, so I finally ended up falling asleep at 4 in the morning. Feh.

So my day started out pretty late. The first thing out of the gate I noticed a sign on the door leading outside. Apparently the city will be turning off the water tomorrow, so I can shower tonight - but tomorrow is out and the water will be back Friday. Which wouldn't be that bad except I have one change of clothes left, so I would have to recycle on Friday. So I spent some time looking for a place to toss my laundry. They have a place a couple blocks away that is a combination cafe, laundromat, and small library. Sweet! But I will have to go to bed on time and wake early to get a day out of it. Also I'll need to stockpile some water to take a sponge bath tomorrow. No biggie.

I then took the tram to the waterfront and from there got a ferry over to the Maritime/Fram/Kon-Tiki museums. The maritime museum was interesting in showing the evolution of the ships from dugout canoes to the 15-16th century ships. They went later but it just wasn't all that interesting to me. I've been to other maritime museums and anything past the 15th century or so is all the same across the cultures really. The ferry over had some really cool views though.

The Fram Museum was built around one of the first ice breaking ships built in order to get close to the north pole. The entire ship and the tools used were inside a giant museum. That was actually pretty seriously cool. When they went on the expedition, there was a large chance they weren't coming back. It was the first ship of its type. They hadn't thought of anything like making an icebreaker previously. And while it wasn't a "true" one, it was the start of the design.

The next one the list was the Kon-Tiki Museum. I knew it was going to be cheesy, and it was. But it was pretty cool in its own right. There were two ships they built to prove that the Polynesian Islands could have been settled by South Americans and that South America could have been populated by Africa via reed ships. The archaeologists at the time said that is was ridiculous, so both the Ra (actually only the Ra II made it) and the Kon-Tiki were built and sailed using ancient methods to show that it could have been done.

And there was a film and description of the trip, yada yada. Still, all in all it was pretty cool. I was initially planning on getting some tiki stuff for folks but the gift shop kinda sucked and nothing there wouold travel well (I still have 5 more weeks).

I was planning on hitting the Viking ship museum, but fate was against me. I was using the time on my camera to judge what bus to get back. When I got on the bus, I realized I hadn't set the clock settings on the phone forward yet. Whooops. So I didn't have time. Instead I ended up having to get off somewhat close to Statute Park and wandering my way through upper middle class (though pretty much everything here is). Grabbing a pizza at a local joint, some groceries, and heading back for a night of early sleep and a good book.

A full size Bocci court in the park. Plus I saw a Tesla S series with charging station on the street. I've been surprised how many electric charging stations I've seen in Oslo. Pretty cool.

Prepare for jealousy in 3... 2... 1...

I found out what the dial next to the light switch is on the shower room is for. It sets what temperature of the floor tiles. So that way when I'm dancing naked, looking at myself in the mirror while singing "I'm too sexy...", my feet feel like the ceramic tiles are making sweet love to them. It is an experience to be sure.

Last night was a learning experience. I decided to check out a strip club in Oslo to compare them with Portland.

Bad idea.

Really bad idea.

While the women were beautiful and they did dance on a pole, that's not how they make their money. Y'know those ideas that only sound good when drunk? Yah. So I bought a couple bottles of champagne. No laps dances as while the gals get naked, they have to be on the other side of the room from you with a distance in between. So no difference between watching them on the pole and getting a lap dance, which costs 1200 kroner for 10 minutes. Well I was having fun talking to a gal from Portugal and one from Lithuania, so what the hell - bought champagne. Well, the two bottle ran me around 3600 kroner. Math at drunk am isn't good but I now know it was just under 600 bucks. Ouch.

Cest la vie. The lesson being, do NOT go to strip clubs in Scandinavia

So I made a decision to get pizza today. I was somewhat hung over and not in a sociable mood. So hit a chainish type place Pepe's Pizza down the road with "authentic" Chicago style pizza. The owner claims to have traveled the breadth of America to find the right type of pizza. This unfortunately if you only go into Dominos at each place you visit, you really learn little. The pizza was all right for a chain store, a step above Dominos but far below Pizza Schmizza. As to being anything vaguely like a deep dish Chigao style anything, that made me wonder if they went to a town called Chicago in New Mexico as they about as far from being a Chicago style pizza as any could imagine.

So no pics today. I'm just going to stay in and chill reading books, maybe hit a movie or watch TV. Just not in the mood for anything.

I did manage to get a hold of my bro last night and we made plans this morning. He's going to rent a car and come visit prior to bringing me to Gothenburg. So I got him a room for Friday and Saturday. We can hang out and maybe make some trips in the surrounding areas or some such. Yay!