Capital Cities

With grandparents in town for a week in late August, and our 10-year wedding anniversary approaching in late September, Erik and I decided to escape for a brief 4 day trip to Stockholm. The fact that it coincided with a 3 day ecology conference for Erik helped with airfare. Well, at least for one of us.

Erik pointed out that I have been in five European capital cities within the last two years. That seemed rather impossible, but he was right. Granted, we were in Copenhagen for all of 8 hours on a long-layover on our way to Paris. But that enabled us to explore the downtown for a few hours in the days leading up to Christmas.

LONDON
April 2011
A Royal Wedding

COPENHAGEN
Pre-Christmas 2011
A half-day layover tour

PARIS
Christmas 2011
Eiffel Tower at night

OSLO
June 2012
The Royal Palace

STOCKHOLM
August 2012
Drottningholm Royal Palace

As we wandered around the charming streets of Stockholm last month, Erik wondered out loud if having lived in Europe for the past two years has somehow made us a bit more jaded when it comes to fully appreciating the historic richness of these cities and the feeling of "OMG, I am walking down the streets of PARIS. I am in STOCKHOLM of all places!" We agreed that yes, we are perhaps a little jaded. We certainly don't respond to these cities like a Minnesotan who has never traveled further than the borders of the state might upon arriving in Europe for the first time at the age of 40. But, on the other hand, we're not so jaded that we can't admit that Stockholm really impressed us, Paris overwhelmed us, we only skimmed the surface of Copenhagen, and Oslo (while charming in its own right) was obviously the resource-poor capital of a very poor nation while all those other aforementioned cities were booming.

Media darling. We hope.

My pursual of a midwife and nursing license in Norway came to a sort of standstill back in May, when the appeals board upheld SAFH’s decision that I should essentially begin my entire education from the beginning. Back in June, we were in contact with a former head of a nursing department at a local nursing college, but the spark from that initially promising meeting fizzled out over the Norwegian fellesferie (common vacation time in July). Every other Norwegian that we spoke to has been equally disgusted and disappointed in the decision, and their response is almost exactly the same: “You need to take this to the media! That’s how things get done in Norway! Take this to a politician!”

But frankly, I didn’t have the energy to mount another battle. The process of making the right contacts, assembling the papers and presenting our arguments one more time was overwhelming. It was summer. I had just failed two Norwegian exams. I was feeling defeated on several fronts. And I was juggling two new jobs, a bit overwhelmed in this shift from stay-at-home-study-Norwegian/mom/wife/home renovator lifestyle to full-time-job(s)-speaking-Norwegian/mom/wife/home renovator. Not to mention blogger. I hadn’t forgotten my desire to blog about this all, despite what you may think.

Instead, the media come to me. Our neighbor, who owns a fat black lab dog who is Tika’s best doggy friend and invites herself into our home whenever she has the chance, is a TV journalist for the local news office of NRK. NRK is the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, a government-owned public television and radio broadcasting company, and the largest media network in Norway. After chatting with Erik in a neighborly over-the-fence chat about my current job situation, he told a fellow journalist about my plight; a journalist who has some experience investigating the health care system and related matters.

In mid-August, the journalist came to our house. I presented my case, summarizing as best as I could what has transpired over the past two years, trying to highlight our best points and not get caught up in the minor details. Oh, and trying my best to do this in Norwegian, of course. I handed her a stack of papers, offered her the 3-ring binder of documents and correspondence, and gave her a half-dozen names of people who have been “on our side”. Her response included, “Wow. I had initially thought I could get this on the air next week, but now I think I’ll need some extra time to interview people. I’m thinking the nursing and midwife organization, SAFH, NOKUT (the accrediting agency that has approved  both my bachelors and masters degrees), this nursing instructor, the local midwives, politicians. . . “.

Go girl.

A few days later she was back in our home, with a camera and microphone to boot. We sat on my couch, and she peppered me with the sort of “touchy-feely” questions you’d expect them to edit out into 15-second clips to highlight a few points. It was rather overwhelming. I was very cognizant that this could very well end up on not just the local “fylke” (county) news program, but on the national news program, and I did not want to sound like a blubbering, incoherent, grammatically incorrect foreigner who thinks she’s good enough to catch Norsk babies. But, on the other hand, I also wanted to succinctly answer her questions, to give her good soundbites, and adequately express both my frustration and my competence. But, on the third hand. . . sometimes the words just weren’t there. That elusive word or phrase that would capture my thoughts perfectly was not in my active Norwegian vocabulary. It was frustrating, and made me worry more that I had sounded like a simpleton and a thinks-she’s-entitled foreigner. Had my fluent husband been sitting at my side, he could have provided a few nice soundbites. He, however, was sitting at an ecological conference in Sweden.

The filming moved upstairs, where they filmed the typical “at home with family” shots of me reading a story to Greta in her room. The next week, they came to the museum shop, and filmed me doing the typical “underemployed menial tasks” of organizing T-shirts by size; a few days later, they came to the nursing home, and filmed me doing more typical “underemployed menial tasks” like loading the lunch dishes in the dishwasher, all the while asking me loaded questions like, “what is it like to work here, when you have such a high education?” Honestly, what am I going to say? “This job sucks, quite frankly. Somedays I cry after work because I think of all that I gave up to work here.” And piss off my colleagues and boss and get fired the next day? (Because honestly, the jobs don’t suck. They are just a little. . . you know.) But, is saying, “this is a great job, I love working here,” going to support their story—and mine--that Norway is throwing away my competence? It was a delicate balance. A nuanced balance. One that I can only hope was captured with my not-so-nuanced “mastery” of Norwegian.

The news report has yet to be aired. The journalist contacted me last week, and wanted to film me again at home, hopefully with the whole family. Erik is in the middle of a 12-day trip to France, and won’t be home until late this week, so the report is at least delayed until then. The journalist said she has had some “interesting” interviews with the nursing/midwife professional organization and has others still to interview. I feel like she is absolutely on my side, as I called her after one episode of filming and expressed my concern that my response to a question had not come out as I had intended. She immediately reassured me that she would not use that particular quote, as it would “not support our case, the fact that you are qualified and not working at the level that you are educated to”.

Stay tuned.

OOH-shlow

Not "AHZZ-low".
Not "AHH-slow".

Repeat after me: "OOOH-shlow" (like you're doing a haunting, ghostly oooooh).

Got it? That is how the locals* (in Lillehammer) pronounce "Oslo".

I've been down to Oslo quite a few times in the past 6 months, for both "business" shall we say, and pleasure. Any any rate, it's enough times that I'm beginning to get a little sick of certain parts of town, and often have a list of things that I can find only in Oslo. Have not yet found that must-go to restaurant for dinner, however.

In May, on one of my solo sojourns to Oslo to fail a Norwegian exam, I saw posters advertising a two-day children's festival in early June. I reported to Erik that we would be attending this festival, in an all out effort to do something relaxing and enjoyable in Norway. We are very lucky to have friends who have a generally empty apartment in Oslo, just mere meters from the Majorstuen T-bane (metro/subway) stop, a major top in Oslo Sentrum, and they generously lent us this apartment for the weekend.

Greta tries the cello, and makes her
mamma tear up. . . 

Norwegians like their summer music festivals, although they tend to showcase a bunch of artists that I've never heard of. A pretty major one is Øyafestivalen, that goes on for several days. The children's version of this was thus aptly named Miniøya, although did not feature as many bands and likely had about 200x the number of strollers as its parent festival. Make that 2000x.

We spent a full day at Miniøya, enjoying life sized giraffe puppets (people on stilts), face-painting, bag decorating, food tasting, story-telling, puppet shows, a violin/cello making/trying/coloring station, and a rather odd performance by Pippi Longstocking (in Swedish) from Sweden's own Pippi Longstocking World.

In our defense, this is not considered
 bad form, or bad parenting, to allow
your child to climb or pose on the
Vigeland statues.

On Sunday, as the weather was gorgeous, we headed over to Frognerpark, the largest park in Oslo, which contains the Vigeland Sculpture Garden. The sculpture garden has hundreds of statues by the artist Gustav Vigeland, depicting the circle of life and life stages. They are amazing statues and it is a park that continues to amaze. It was Greta's first time visiting the park, and even she was quite enthralled by them. If you go anywhere in Oslo, I would recommend Frognerpark. I think Greta would, too.

We had specifically headed off to eat our last breakfast at a cafe I had heard about through the grapevine, Laundromat Cafe. It had just the funky brunchy vibe I was looking for, with comfy chairs, telephones decorating the wall, and a laundromat in back (ok, wasn't really looking for a laundromat). But my cappuccino was poorly made and my apple pancakes drenched in syrup. And not even good syrup. Think Aunt Jemima. Probably was Aunt Jemima. Big disappointment to the start of my morning. . . So we are still looking for a good breakfast joint in Oslo.

Despite the disappointing cappuccino,
we still had a koselig time (and check
out the deco-phones).

Since many of my recent trips to Oslo have revolved around a meeting with SAFH about nursing shit or a Norwegian exam. That usually means we have a meeting in the middle of the day, leaving not enough time to do anything significant before or after, especially if it's a day trip (a train trip from Lillehammer is 2-2.5 hours). But in early August, when my mother-in-law invited me to join her and her friend for a few days in Oslo at the tail end of their visit, I happily agreed. Seeing that they had tourist destinations on their itinerary, and not just wandering, I decided that I would hit some of the big sites in Oslo this time around, too.

The Oslo Rådhuset, or City Hall, is a strange-looking, imposing square brown building on the Oslo Harbor. It is known to many as the brown cheese building (brown cheese is a Norwegian specialty). In fact, it is the home to the Nobel Peace Prize award every December, and the inside is especially impressive. I believe I stuck my head into the building 5 years ago, but remembered very little of it. My parents gushed about the building, so I tagged along on a tour with my mother-in-law and her friend.

Painting inside the Rådhus (City Hall)
where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded

I also put a tour of the Oslo Opera House on my to-do list for this trip, which was truly cool as well. The Opera House was designed by Snøhetta, which is designing parts of the Twin Towers memorial in NYC, and was finished just a few years ago. It has been identified as one of the best pieces of modern architecture in the world. Also worth checking out.

Toss in a tour of the Parliament building, the Norwegian Centre for Design and Architecture, and the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design, and a few tasty cappuccinos, a few somewhat disappointing dinners, and a very rewarding gelato, and I've summed up my time in OOOH-shlow the past few visits, including, as usual, a good deal of wandering.

Oh, and how could I forget. . . On the tail end of my final day in Oslo in August, I joined the locals on their hourly pilgrimage to IKEA (pronounced in Norwegian and Swedish: "eee-KAY-ah". Do you think I'm kidding? There is a bus that leaves central Oslo every hour from 10am-midnight during the week for the 20 minute ride to the nearest IKEA (there are two outside of Oslo). The bus was cram-packed with people, and there were at least a dozen of us with standing the entire ride. And after having spent the day walking around Oslo, sprinting around the train/bus station to find the damn pick-up/drop-off location, and with the anticipation of walking around the store itself for the next two hours. . . I was not exactly pleased.

Free IKEA bus every hour!
They're not kidding!

*If you live in Oslo itself, apparently one would pronounce it with a more refined "Oooh-slow", without the slurring of the "S" and the "L" together into a "SHL" sound.

A busy Pappa and a Good Dog

Although we've been comfortably living in our "new" house since December (or maybe it didn't become comfortable until February. . . ), we still have a fair amount of work to do. We have an upstairs bathroom that is concrete floors and unfinished walls--plumbing is in, but no fixtures. The kitchen has no shelves, no drawers, no upper wall cupboards. A second bedroom remains unprimed, unpainted. Our closets are still of the makeshift variety. There is a lot of molding/trimwork to be done. And we still make weekly pilgrimages to our basement storage to pull search after one buried treasure or another. Or maybe just a pair of shoes. Or a wisk. Or a pillow for a guest.


But huge progress was made in June when Erik's father came to visit us for a week. He came with the pronouncement that this was a "work week". He had done the sightseeing in Lillehammer on previous trips; this time it was meant to contribute to the project that we've been slaving over for the past year. With some solid prep work from Erik in the days preceeding his father's arrival, we found ourselves with a deck! More time was spent scraping old paint from the side of the house and priming old siding, allowing Erik to take advantage the rare sunny days we've had and paint 75% of the house (the south side remains a bit of an eyesore). It's just the first coat of a likely three, but it is amazing what a difference it makes. Suddenly this addition, which seemed rather conspicuous before, now blends nicely into the rest of the house. And to top it off, our neighbor came over and announced to Erik, "That red is just perfect". Since she's probably going to see the red more often than we will, we were quite pleased by this! 


An excavating machine and dumptruck came one week ago, bringing a few loads of topsoil, and within a few days we had the makings of a lovely lawn. We are beginning to see the fuzzy appearance of itsy bitsy blades of grass. In the meantime, we manage to be keeping both large dog and small child off of our delicate lawn by just a simple rope fence. She's a good dog.

Is something working in my favor???

My motivation to write lately has been sapped. I feel like my blog has become a bitch-about-Norway blog, and that was never my intention. I actually do have moments of complete contentment, peace and a sense of Life is Good. It doesn't happen often, but they do come. And I have inspiring ideas of humorous, entertaining posts to write, but find myself struggling to get the ideas onto the screen.


As I wrote earlier, I started two new jobs in June. One is at Maihaugen, working in the musueum shop. The other is at a local nursing home as an uncertified nursing assistant. I just finished a stint of 8 days in  row between the two jobs, including this unpleasant back and forth and back and forth between evenings shifts (ending at 10/10:30pm) followed by day shifts (starting at 7/7:30am), and then back again. This apparently is the "Norwegian way" of working shifts in the health care field. An evening shift followed by a morning shift. It sucks. 


My two-ring binder of papers, licenses, letters of support, etc. remains in the hands of our well-connected neighbor at the college nursing department. We haven't heard from her since mid-June. Seeing that most Norwegians are wrapping up their 3-week summer vacation, that's not too surprising. I'm very used to playing the waiting game, so I'll just keep on waiting. 


A few weeks back, however, we had a small piece of hopeful news. One of the many hoops for nurses educated outside of Norway is the 4-week long "national nursing course" that brings us outlanders up to speed on the Norwegian health care system. You might remember that I have tried to get into this class for over a year, but was denied for a variety of reasons. You might also remember that mid-way through this whole process they suddenly raised the bar for the language standards to take the class, now requiring the Bergenstest--written and verbal. You might also remember that I then proceed to not pass either Bergenstests this past spring. It was not a complete surprise, but still felt like a huge setback. 


Until a few weeks ago. Because this new language standard is so new, there are not a lot of people who were able to pass the test. On the admission website to the nursing course it is explained that first priority admission is given to those who have passed the Bergenstest, but those who have the lower language standard will be put on a waiting list. I've been on a waiting list for a year.


There are 80 people admitted to the course. 20 people passed the Bergenstest. 60 spots are open. There is not an opportunity to take--and get results--of another Bergenstest before the next nursing class in November, so the chance that 60 people with passing Bergenstest results sign up for the class is essentially 0. 


I am number 4 on the waiting list. 


Finally. Something is working out. Looks like I'll be spending November in Oslo!

SAD in Summer?

I've been wondering lately if it's possible to have Seasonal Affective Disorder in the summer, and not just the winter. . .

I expected the Winters in Norway to be cold, dark and long, so when they turned out to be cold, dark and long I wasn't at all surprised. However, I expected the summers to be warm, sunny and, well. . . summery. And they aren't. They are cool--60 degrees, rainy, and spring like. Tonight, 10pm, I am wearing jeans, wool socks, long-sleeve cotton T-shirt, and the same green Patagonia fleece hoodie sweatshirt that I've worn for the past 23 months.

I like living in a place with four seasons. I don't think I could ever give up snow in the winter. (Well. . . maybe I could, but since I don't want to live without my husband, I think I need to have snow in the winter). But, I also really like heat. Sun-generated heat. And I'm not asking that much--70, 75. Just enough to feel like I can throw on a pair of shorts of summery skirt first thing in the morning, and not pull on that same damn pair of Levis for day #21. . .

We intentionally delayed a trip back to the States until the Fall, and not for this summer. For one, my parents are in Norway this summer, traveling about in their RV, so it's dumb to go back to the US when  half the parental units are not there. But secondly, Erik argued, "summer in Norway is beautiful. . . we don't want to leave during the best part of the year!"(I might add that thirdly, we have a house that needs to get finished).

You know what Norwegians do during summer? They leave. Denmark. Spain. Italy. Greece. Turkey.

We're half-way through week one of felles ferie (common vacation), the three weeks in Norway (and most of Europe) when every Norwegian goes on vacation. And it's not a matter of "if" they are going. No, no. . . Norwegians do not ask you, "ARE you going on vacation?" It's "WHERE are you going on vacation?" Because it is expected that you WILL take a vacation, and preferably several weeks long. Even as I began two summer-temp jobs, I was asked, "Which week of vacation do you want?"

An article in the local newspaper reported a study done by the University in Oslo. The study found that the body needs a full three weeks of continuous vacation to bring the stress hormone levels back to normal. Older workers might even take longer.

And what are we doing during felles ferie, you ask? Seeing that the barnehage is also closed for felles ferie, someone needs to be around to watch over the little one. I'm taking this first rainy, cold, miserable week off (cue the tiny violins, please. . . ), and on Thursday evening we have been invited to join some friends in their hytta (cabin) for the weekend. The next two weeks we will have visits from Erik's mother and a friend of hers, who will be bouncing in and out, watching Greta on some days and visiting sights near and far on others, while Erik and I juggle the childcare between jobs, day/evening shifts, a sun setting at 10:30pm, and the never-ending house projects.

"Next summer", we say "next summer we'll take 3 weeks off. . . "

And be damn sure to go somewhere warm.

Another Norway blog to check out

For those of you who follow my blog because you're curious about Norway, or for those of you who follow my blog because you know me (somewhat) personally, you may be interested in my parents'  blog, Our Travels with Rover. They have been traveling around Norway since the beginning of June in their American RV (affectionately named Rover), and have been blogging their way through the country.

They have spent the last four summers driving Rover around various regions in Europe, and decided to focus on Scandinavia this year. By their own admission, they are not big "nature people". They far prefer to hit the big European cities, see the museums, famous cathedrals, castles and World War monuments. So, we were all a bit nervous/curious as to how they would like Norway, which is kind of known for, well. . . nature.


According to their Facebook updates, blog posts and Skype calls, they do seem to be managing to enjoy themselves and are having a hard time denying that Norway isn't beautiful. Today they visit Bergen, probably Norway's most beautiful city, so I'm hoping the weather in this notoriously rainy city holds out.