new experience Archives - Nine Years in Norway

Planes, Trains & Automobiles

June 11, 2015 by Cindi 12 Comments

“Planes, Trains & Automobiles!” No, not the movie … but a pretty good description of my last month!

A plane flight from Norway to Iowa (with my luggage catching up with me three days later).

A short lunch train trip in historic Boone, Iowa.

May 20, 2015 - planes, trains & automobiles

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cindi-keller_2015-05-20_12.10.11_planes-trains-automobiles

A longer overnight Amtrak train trip through Iowa, Nebraska, and Colorado.

Ottumwa, Iowa train station

An Iowa sunset

Hello, Omaha!

Nebraska farming

Somewhere in eastern Colorado

Pulling into Denver; lots of rain has made the rivers a little treacherous!

Colorado Rockies stadium!

And many automobile trips, both local and long distance. This collection shares the highlights of my first few (cloudy) days in Colorado.

Union Station in Denver

Arriving in Colorado Springs!

The Air Force Academy

Pikes Peak

Looking back at the foothills in my daughter’s side view mirror

I love taking in the scenery around me. But the best part of this trip is, of course, the family connections — especially time spent with these three!

Norwegian culture: vacations and hytte

April 5, 2015 by Cindi 17 Comments

It’s Easter Sunday. Norway slows down the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Monday. Shops close. Businesses close. Many Norwegians take a trip to the mountains for days of winter skiing. Or they are on the coast, enjoying the hint and promise of spring. And many of them are at their hytte.

What the heck is a “hytte”? And what does it have to do with Norway, vacations, and especially culture?

Hytte is a difficult word to translate. From my American perspective it means vacation cabin. But it’s not just a physical building. The word represents generations of outdoor exploration and living, and the family hytte is at the center: it’s the place to return to after a day’s activities, and represents all that is cozy, warm, and relaxing with family. The more remote hyttes don’t have electricity or running water, require hours of hiking to reach, and then (in the winter) more hours of shoveling to get to the front door. There are also many hyttes closer to civilization; an hour or two of driving, and a family can have a relaxing weekend together.

At this stage of life, escaping to the mountains for days on end of hiking or skiing is something that is physically beyond my abilities. But I’m fascinated by this aspect of the culture, and enjoy listening to my husband’s stories of his experiences when he was a young boy and teenager, and father to young boys and teenagers. Experiencing “outside” was the backdrop for all their family activities, which is opposite mine as a girl, teenager, and Mom raising daughters.

In June of 2007, the first year I lived in Norway, a friend invited me out to her family’s hytte on the coast for an afternoon’s worth of girl time. Sotra, an island easily accessible from Bergen that has made several appearances in my blog before, is rocky and typical of the southern Norwegian coast. It reminds me of my trips to Monhegan Island, Maine.

My friend had fixed a lunch that we enjoyed on the deck overlooking the small harbor area looking out towards the Norwegian Sea. The sky was washed out and bright, and the landscape showed the effects of the strong winds that blow in off the ocean.

After lunch we took our dessert — a thermos of coffee and tin of sweet rolls — and went out in their small row boat, planning to get to one of the small outcroppings visible in those images above. My friend was rowing the boat, and I was supposed to offer steering guidance from my place at the bow. I was clueless; I’m sure it was a comical site, with strong winds pushing us in various directions and me offering useless suggestions. My friend wisely decided it wasn’t the safest activity! We returned to the dock and took our dessert to an area overlooking the ocean. Once there, we realized we’d forgotten coffee mugs … so used the aluminum containers that had held the sweets. More laughter for the two of us! The early June sun, approaching the longest day of the year, was glaring and hot. It was a peaceful time, all centered on my friend sharing her family hytte with me.

I asked my husband to share his experience both as a boy/teenager, and in the family hytte in northern Norway as his boys were growing up. It’s the typical Norwegian experience of his generation.

My whole life I have been roaming the mountains. Skiing in the winter and hiking the rest of the year. Every week-end, no matter what weather it was, we packed our rucksacks and went skiing or hiking. We never thought about the WHY; it was part of our culture.

As I grew older, we started getting bolder, walking and tenting in the mountains (the real high and dangerous ones) for days and even crossing glaciers. Properly equipped, if the weather got really bad, we dug ourselves a snow hole and waited for the weather to get better.

When my boys grew up, we had a hytte way up in the high mountains of the north. Summertime it was fairly easy living, despite no electricity, no tap water and no toilets. It was marvelous! Walking to the creek to get water, fire up the fireplace and fry dried reindeer meat, light the kerosene lamps, watching the field mice and squirrels hopping around in the fire wood. And long hikes in the deserted mountains, coffee making on a fire beside a lake or a creek, watching the reindeer, the occasional wolverine or even a brown bear and numerous birds. The boys learned very early to walk in the mountains, that is, keep a steady pace and get into a rhythm and make enough noise to alert any predators. It was a wonderful time…

Winter is very different. First of all, we had to get there. In foul weather, the road was closed. If we got there it was very cold, down to around minus 30 degrees centigrade ( and fantastic polar light!), a lot of snow, 5 to 7 yards, and we had to get to the hytte. It was quite a stretch to either ski or trample in the snow and the last hill was very steep, so I had to carry food and sometimes kids up a little at a time…

Once we were there, we could only see the top of the pipe of the hytte, so I actually had to dig a tunnel into the door, and once inside, fire up the stove and the fireplace and get some food and drink into our bodies. It took two days for the hytte to thaw, and in the meantime we had to stay winter clothed at all times, even when we slept.

If this sounds exhausting, we actually never thought about it. It was as it should be…

No photos to show of the family hytte, but his description does it justice, doesn’t it? Here’s one found online that’s in the same area … but missing the final steep hill to get there!

Click the photo to see others similar to it, as well as photos of families enjoying summer and winter activities during their time at their hytte.

How about one more photo? This one from the 1960’s is my husband, 17 years old, out for a hike in Sogndal with his friends (referenced in his second paragraph up there). I say “hike” — but this trek was part of a fourteen hour day: hours up a steep ascent from a hytte to get there, hours exploring the area, hours back down. The glacier is one we took my oldest daughter to see when we visited Sogndal in 2010 … although we didn’t get as close as Jan is in this photo, and — to make it easier for this American — our “hytte” was a comfortable hotel . 😉

daydreaming of Spain’s summer light

February 17, 2015 by Cindi 22 Comments

After several days of beautiful yet cold sunshine, it turned dreary/rainy/windy/blah outside again today. To distract myself, I think it’s time to daydream of the summer light and warmth of our August trip to Spain. Although mountain views were familiar, the light and colors were completely different compared to our everyday views.

The bright daylight of the sun directly overhead was almost too intense.

August 10, 2014, 4:52 pm - Spanish summer light

August 13, 2014, 8:56 am - Spanish summer light

August 13, 2014, 9:12 am - Spanish summer light

August 13, 2014, 6:08 pm - Spanish summer light

August 13, 2014, 6:10 pm - Spanish summer light

August 11, 2014, 5:01 pm - Spanish summer light

The warm, lingering evenings spent sitting out listening to the night sounds, with the only light coming from the setting sun/rising moon or the man-made reflected light from pool and patio lights were magical. (Well, except for that one accidental camera flash … but I liked the result, so decided that image can be included in the “magical” collection, too! 🙂 ).

August 110, 2014, 9:15 pm - Spanish summer light

August 15, 2014, 9:12 pm - Spanish summer light

August 12, 2014, 10:03 pm - Spanish summer light

August 12, 2014, 10:05 pm - Spanish summer light

August 14, 2014, 10:09 pm - Spanish summer light

The red reflected light of the strong summer sun through our restaurant’s table umbrella at lunch was cool and inviting.

After a lazy week of sleeping late and “morning” coffee under the mid-day skies, our last morning was an earlier one before the taxi picked us up for our trip to the airport. The morning sunrise and light were the perfect ending to a perfect week.

August 16, 2014, 7:44 am - Spanish summer light

August 16, 2014, 7:45 am - Spanish summer light

August 16, 2014, 7:50 am - Spanish summer light

Ah, that was refreshing. I’d forgotten how the changing light of the different times of the constant sunny days made for interesting and diverse photographs!

Now it’s time to get back to the rainy/no-snow blah-reality of this 2014-2015 winter in the Bergen area. How’s the light in *your* part of the world?

From my Archives: West Berlin

October 10, 2014 by Cindi Leave a Comment

(Buried in my blog’s Archives are many emotions and experiences from my first years as an American living in another country. I’d like to let them see the light again! So, on occasional Fridays, I’ll share my favorites in a “Flashback Friday” type of reblog format.)

Recently I’ve enjoyed a comments conversation with aNa, “a language loving German with Colombian roots” who spent a year and a half as a study-abroad student in Izmir, Turkey. (Yes, it’s a very interesting blog!) She’d posted a night-time photo of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin that brought back powerful memories about my time living in Berlin. As I’ve shared earlier, I was only there for two years, 1982 – 1984. But what an intense time it was!

Because of our conversation, I thought this week’s “Flashback Friday” post should highlight another memory of that time. It includes just a few written thoughts, and three images that captured that experience as a member of the military, our reality behind the Wall, and (if you squint) me two days away from the birth of our oldest daughter.

West Berlin, Germany
(May and July, 1983)

… a few photos from that time “behind the Wall” …

[Read more]

Spain: over the mountains to Ronda

September 2, 2014 by Cindi 14 Comments

Last month, on our last full day in Spain, we decided to drive over the Sierra de las Nieves mountains to Ronda. This town has many important historical sites and facts, including being famous as the birthplace of modern bullfighting. But we didn’t plan on a huge exploration. We had to get up early the next day to begin the trip back to Norway, so planned on just a drive and lunch and short walk to experience an area that was a different environment compared to Marbella and the Costa del Sol where our friend’s house is located and where we’d focused our week.

And that was a good thing: the day of our trip, August 15th, was a holiday in Spain, so many shops were closed … which also meant there weren’t as many people around. Nice!

We had spotty internet at the house, so couldn’t do any research. We weren’t sure what the road would bring and we didn’t know how high we’d go. We had bought a map at the gas station earlier in the week, so found our route, programmed the GPS, and said “let’s go!”

I hadn’t realized how high the route took us! We ascended towards the green mountains, stopping to look back towards the road we were on, the hazy skies, and the Mediterranean that isn’t really discernible in the first two images but I *know* had to be there in the distance.

August 15, 2014 - over the mountains to Ronda

And then we kept ascending. How high would we go? The road sign told us. The sign behind *it* warned of hielo (ice), but no sightings of that in the middle of the summer! And we drove at that height for a while, passing the tree line, weaving and winding, taking in the differences between Spanish and Norwegian rock. I have to admit that, even with my familiarity of Norwegian mountain roads, the road snaking around the upper mountains made me a little nervous.

And then we began the slight descent into Ronda, catching glimpses of the white buildings glistening in the sun, and the occasional house out away from the village.

We parked and walked a bit in Ronda, enjoyed a light tapas lunch at a restaurant’s outdoor area, then walked a bit more.

And then we took our time on the drive over the mountains back to Marbella, stopping to take photos, appreciating a little more the twisting road and different scenery and topography compared to our accustomed Norwegian views.

One of the first stops was to get a closer look at this. I’m still not sure what it was, aside from an old abandoned building with very unique graffiti, old iron beams, and an engraved rock — and my limited research hasn’t given any answers. Anyone have ideas?

Our journey continued, and I grabbed a couple impressions from the car window.

Stopping to look at this section of the road — after we’d driven it already, twice! — was a little disconcerting for me. My brain *knew* we’d already safely traveled it, and that brain *knew* it was a wide enough road for two cars … but still, the emotional “fear response” kept overruling the brain when, from this angle, it looked like freshly carved mountain and tumbling rocks.

But the closer scenery was a more colorful contrast — and I saw a couple vultures riding the winds above us.

One last shot through the car windows, looking back at the tree-bare mountains we’d just snaked through …

August 15, 2014 - over the mountains to Ronda

… and, according to the GPS, we were only about fifteen minutes from the house. All in all, a delightful way to spend our last full day in Spain!

(Here is where this part of the world is on the map.)

a trip on the Statsraad Lehmkuhl: the beginning

August 24, 2014 by Cindi 27 Comments

I’ve been sitting here barefoot on a rainy Bergen-area Sunday — no Uggs in site! I don’t think I’ll be wearing them again anytime soon, but they were needed last Wednesday (along with the layers we wore, and the hats and scarves we took): Jan and I enjoyed a four-hour trip on the Statsraad Lehmkuhl!

It was a breezy, sun-and-clouds-and-wind-driven-rain trip. It was beyond gorgeous. The only thing that could have made it better is if it had been a longer trip and we’d gotten far enough south to see the familiar surroundings of Lysekloster (and maybe even sailed past our apartment) … but as it was, we traveled in fjords that I’d seen from airplane windows on take-off and landing, under bridges where we’ve driven, saw the familiar mountains that surround Bergen from different angles, and experienced bright sunny moments, wind-driven rain moments, and a complete colorful rainbow.

I’d planned to present the adventure as one post, but I took so many photos and experienced so many different weather events and emotions to my *finally* being out on this beautiful lady it’s a little overwhelming to present in one go. So this post will focus on our arrival in Bergen from Lysekloster, walking around the ship in port, and first explorations once we boarded.

I invite you to join me on the first part of our trip. And since it’s through your computer screen, no Uggs are required no matter where in the world you are. 🙂

Driving into Bergen, there she was waiting in her berth just at the end of Bryggen. We parked and walked around Bryggen, waiting for 5:00 pm when we could officially board. After our recent time in Spain, it was nice to be back home and watch other tourists enjoying my adopted city — especially as, with the threatening rain clouds, cooler temperatures, and only one cruise ship in port, it wasn’t too crowded:

August 20, 2014 - Statsraad Lehmkuhl trip

It was exciting to be standing so close, knowing I’d finally be experiencing her very soon:

Once on board, I explored a bit of her open areas before we were scheduled to leave, taking it all in.

Down the steep stairs found me looking where we’d be served shrimp and herring once underway:

I also peeked through to her berth in port, and thought the sign for the recent Tall Ships Races 2014 in Bergen made an interesting perspective through the window:

August 20, 2014 - Statsraad Lehmkuhl trip

Wandering around back up on the main deck, I kept craning my neck upward. I’ve always been fascinated by the Tall Ships’ masts, and standing under the mathematical perfection had me mesmerized:

I walked up steep stairs towards the stern and looked to the heartbeat of the ship where the captain is in control, understandably blocked off from us landkrabbes crawling around (but I’d seen the previous setup in the Maritime Museum, so had a slight understanding of what was hidden):

Back down the stairs I went, to the main area of the deck under the protection of the canvas (for us landekrabbe’s protection from the elements):

August 20, 2014 - Statsraad Lehmkuhl trip

I walked around a bit under the tarp:

And before we began the trip, I stood hanging over the side, drinking in the sight of Bergen from a different perspective — in the harbor. I stitched together six images to create a makeshift panoramic view (click it to open a larger version):

And I also captured a few individual shots of Bryggen, Fløyen, Ulriken, Løvstakken, and out towards Byfjorden:

Fløyen, with the funicular coming down the steep slope

Ulriken rises behind Bergen

The sun and clouds created interesting shadows on Ulriken

Løvstakken rises in the distance

Looking out towards Byfjorden

And soon after capturing these images, we were off! There was rain and sun throughout the journey. Do you think I stayed under the canvas the entire time? Absolutely not! 🙂 Look for a post next weekend where I’ll share images and a video I took during the journey!

Have you ever longed for an event … and then were able to fulfill that dream? Was it as good as you’d expected?

What a difference a week makes!

August 22, 2014 by Cindi 11 Comments

Last week

August 2014 - Marbella, Spain difference

This week

August 2014 - Bergen, Norway difference

You know the reason for last week’s bare feet. Can you guess the reason for the warm Uggs on my feet this past Wednesday?

Hint: that’s a combination of rain drops and sea spray in the last image … and this post’s tags probably give it away, too. 😉

Photos of the journey coming soon!

Spain: Andalusia, Málaga, Marbella

August 18, 2014 by Cindi 40 Comments

We are home after a week in Spain. Friends have a vacation house in Marbella, and we had the place to ourselves: Relaxing hours spent by the pool, interesting hours spent walking in old Marbella, satisfying hours spent exploring different traditional tapas and paella restaurants as well as those that featured a more modern menu, delicious hours sampling new Spanish wines, exploring hours spent driving in the Andalusian mountains … the week went quickly and we didn’t dive into any deep historical exploration, but for a last-minute opportunity to go we felt we absorbed as much of the local cuisine, culture, and experience as we could.

It was wonderful.

Even with just a week’s visit, I have (of course … 😉 ) way too many photos and thoughts. To begin sharing a few of them, I decided to first focus on the autonomous community (Andalusia), Province (Málaga), and especially city (Marbella) in which we stayed.

Andalusia

Source

Wikipedia highlights about Andalusia:

– Most populous autonomous community, it covers 17.3 percent of Spain

– Located south in the Iberian peninsula and north of the Mediterranean Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar, the main mountain ranges are the Sierra Morena and the Baetic System, and the average temperature throughout the year is over 16 °C (61 °F)

– Rich culture and a strong cultural identity; many phenomena that are seen internationally as distinctively Spanish are largely or entirely Andalusian in origin: flamenco, bullfighting, and certain Moorish-influenced architectural styles

Province of Málaga

Source

Wikipedia highlights of Málaga:

– Area of 7,308 km² and 2012 population of 1,639.127, concentrated mainly in the metropolitan area of Málaga and throughout the coastal area

– Climate is a warm Mediterranean, with dry and warm long summers and short mild winters

– Main industry and claim to fame are its tourist resorts

Marbella

Source

Wikipedia highlights about Marbella:

– Part of the region of the Costa del Sol (Sun Coast) on the Mediterranean Sea in the foothills of the Sierra Blanca

– Has a significant archaeological heritage; some historians believe the first settlement on the present site of Marbella was founded by the Phoenicians in the 7th century BC, the Roman population center was in what is now the El Casco Antiguo (Old Town) area, the Caliphate of Córdoba fortified the coastline and built a string of several lighthouse towers along it, and so much more

– Between the old town and the Mediterranean is a garden with fountains and a collection of ten sculptures by Salvador Dalí

– Particularly noted for the presence of aristocrats, celebrities and wealthy people, it is a popular destination for luxury yachts (which Jan and I made a conscious decision to NOT go see)

I have specific “themed” photos for future posts, but thought I’d share a few random images from Marbella now — most are my own but, as with those above, a couple are from the Interwebs and I’ve credited their sources.

Source

How about you — when you only have a brief time in a new area, do you try to absorb and experience as much as possible overall, or do you focus on one or two aspects of the trip to experience more fully?

(Here is where this part of the world is located on the map.)