14 days and counting!

Another quick update from Huntsville:

All the red tape paperwork has either been completed or begun, so at this point, I believe I am all set for departure. I have paid my deposit for my room in Oslo, I have started the visa application process (which does not, in fact, have to be completed in the United States, only begun), I have booked my flights and arranged to meet up with some other program students upon my arrival on the 9th. It looks like a go!

I'm already very bittersweet about leaving Huntsville since there is a possibility that I won't be coming home for quite a while; there really is nothing quite like leaving your home town to make you appreciate all the things that you've taken for granted all your life. The Parkway with its pointless overpass across from the cinema, driving over Chapman Mountain on 72 to get home after a long day on campus, my morning walk from the office at work to the ugly 60s style courthouse, evening dinners with friends at Jamo's (drinking cream sodas and munching down more pita bread and hummus than can possibly be healthy), Friday nights spent at the Nook enjoying Guinness and Paulsner, random visits out to my grandmother's house in Madison, and even the long and treacherous drive down to Birmingham during the holiday season... I know I'm going to miss all of this when I leave it, but I hope I can form the same kinds of bonds with Oslo as a city as I do with Huntsville.

Hopefully, it'll feel a little bit like home to me, too.

A list of foods I must try while in Norway.

I like to consider myself the type of "foodie" that chef Anthony Bourdain would be able to tolerate for at least a few minutes; I love to eat, I love trying new things, and I always want to find the local places that are a little off-beat and off the normal tourist-y loop when it comes to lunch time. Mind you, I don't think I'll be trying chicken anus anytime soon. Bourdain is a better man than I.*

But I have compiled a meager list of things I would like to try while abroad in Norway--some obvious stuff, and then some less obvious stuff:

Norwegian smoked salmon. As a maritime country, the majority of traditional Norwegian cuisine involves fish. I have a sneaking suspicion I may end up comparing Norwegian smoked salmon to Alaskan smoked salmon. We'll see which one is tastier.

Gravlaks, or "dug salmon." This is apparently a salt-and-sugar cured dish seasoned with dill and lemon.

Reinsdyrsteik, or "reindeer steak." Apparently the meat is very rich, so it is often served with juniper berry or lingon berry sauces. On that note, I'm also keen on trying...

Cloudberry jam! I had some of this while I was visiting a dear friend in British Columbia, and when we looked it up on Wikipedia we discovered that it is grown and distributed in the Nordic countries even moreso than in Canada. (It tends to crop up in Newfoundland in Canada, unless I'm mistaken.) Tastes very nice on toast, and apparently is also used to make...

Lakkalikööri, a Finnish liqueur derived from the cloudberry fruit. You can drink it either on its own or in coffee, which seems rather like Baileys or Amaretto to me. At any rate, I'm determined to try this, too.

There are some other dishes I'm really interested in trying: torsk, which is poached cod, often served just with potatoes; lapskaus, a meat stew that can have everything in it except fresh pork for some reason; fårikål, Norwegian mutton stew; Norwegian coffee, which supposedly has its own very distinct flavor and texture; and, of course, mjød, perhaps better known on this side of the pond as mead. :)

This website providing the names and addresses of good restaurants in Oslo will, I'm sure, become my best friend, even if I will like as all be too broke to enjoy all of these things too often. But I am determined!

* yes, I am well aware that I am not a man at all. shh.

Some thoughts on why I'm going to Norway.

A few people have asked me recently why I'm going to Norway to study abroad instead of somewhere else, so I thought I would take a moment to lay out my response to that here while it's on my mind.

I got into Scandinavian and Nordic history and literature via a pretty interesting segue way--Icelandic music. Sigur Rós is one of my favorite bands and has been since 2006 when I first got into them; they kept me company while I moved out on my own for the first time, got my first serious job, and started taking on more responsibilities in my life as a student. For Christmas in 2007, a good friend gave me a copy of their musical documentary Heima, and... well, let me just quote directly from the website:

"The question of the way Sigur Rós’s music relates to, and is influenced by, their environment has been reduced to a journalistic cliché about glacial majesty and fire and ice, but there is no doubt that the band are inextricably linked to the land in which they were forged. And the decision to film this first-ever Sigur Rós film in Iceland was, in the end, ineluctable."

Needless to say, I was more than a little inspired. :) The stunning visuals combined with Jónsi's melodic voice and the sound of the language on my ears turned me into an addict pretty much overnight. My dad found a copy of The Sagas of Icelanders, which immediately got me hooked on medieval Icelandic literature. This continues to be what interests me most.

So... why Norway? Why not Iceland? For one, it was easier for me to study at the University of Oslo than in Reykjavik in Iceland, because the program I am enrolling through, the University Studies Abroad Consortium, did not have an agreement with any Icelandic universities. For another, Oslo is centrally located on the Scandinavian peninsula, meaning I'll have greater access to its neighbor countries. More travel opportunities! Having said that, I've got every intention of visiting Iceland while I'm abroad, and I have no doubt that it will be an intensely personal and uplifting experience for me.


Sigur Rós's "Heima."

Norway in T minus 29 days...

Hello!

For my last semester as an undergraduate student enrolled at UAHuntsville, I've been accepted to study abroad at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Oslo in Norway. According to the university website, it was established in 1811, before Norway gained its independence from Denmark, which I think is pretty cool. :D Over the past few weeks, I've been doing my best to get all of my affairs in order before departure; this included filling out a Declaration of Acceptance on the university website, applying for housing (the rental contract for which has now arrived in the mail--I'll be living in the Kringsjå student village!), applying for the visa, etc. It's turned out to be quite the exhausting process, especially while juggling a lot of responsibilities here at home, but I'm going to take a page out of my dear friend Jennifer's book, who is being an awesome Fulbright Scholar in Celle, Germany as we speak. This journal is intended to be a travel blog, not a personal diary, and so my personal whinging will stay out of it.

So, my travel itinerary at the moment: I'll leave Huntsville International Airport on January 5th for London, where I will spend a few days with my father's family in and around Wimbledon. Having family scattered across the globe is pretty nice, I'll go ahead and admit it; last year while Jennifer and I were in Germany for a university course, I was able to meet up with my paternal grandmother's family in former East Germany. It didn't seem to matter that I spoke no German and they spoke no English, because when you're family, somehow these things just sort themselves out. :) Anyway, I won't be going to Germany, at least not immediately, on this trip. On the 9th, I'll fly out of London and straight to Oslo, where the SiO people are supposedly going to meet me to help me get to my student village in the city.

I've been looking at some photographs of Oslo online while preparing for my trip, and it looks so strikingly modern in comparison to other European cities. Here are some photos nicked off Google:


This is actually an image of the University of Oslo itself. :) I'll be there soon!


Photograph of a longboat in the ship museum. I'll be all over that. :B


Norwegian flags!

I'm sure I'll post a few more entries while I'm here in Huntsville as I prepare to leave. Go ahead and bookmark this if you want to keep up with my adventuring.