Only in Norway

So I’ve started to notice little things in Norway that are different from anything I’ve seen anywhere else in my travels. I’ll share a couple here and invite your thoughts on what they might be for (I think I’ve figured them out, but don’t want to spoil it for you).

Above the walkway to our apartment is the 4th floor walkway, and there are these chains hanging off the side of our walkway.

In our hallway is this electric heater, and underneath is this plastic tray.

Both of these things were initially quite puzzling to me, but after some thinking, I am pretty sure I know what they are for. I’d love hear your thoughts in the comments.

The toy store next door

Maddie and Ada have been dying to check out the toy store that is next door to our apartment. They’ve had some not so great moments in our previous shopping expeditions of running into stores and goofing around, so I was trepidatious. But yesterday, I scouted it out on by 20 minute venture without them, and I was impressed, so I relented today, after agreeing to some ground rules. 1. No buying anything. 2. We leave when I say it’s time to go.

One strange thing I’ve noticed around here is even though the area is built up like a small town/city—we have 5 grocery stores, a indoor mall with a dozen or so stores, and a bunch of other things, everything is super quiet and pretty empty. Maybe it’s because July is when most Norwegians go on holiday, but today, we were the only people in the toy store.

Ada and Maddie are excited to report back on the state of Norwegian toys. In a nutshell, they are expensive. Here are a few photos of our adventure.

I’m pleased to report that Maddie and Ada did a great job of sticking to our agreement. They didn’t ask to buy anything and we left when it was time to go. But they did put a LOT of stuff on their Christmas wish lists. At least Santa won’t have to lug toys very far to get them to our house, but I’m not sure how to tell him that we have no room in our bags to bring anything back to the states.

Speaking of groceries, an adventure

Today was a long and exhausting day. We started by heading back down down to central Oslo on the bus (no throwing up this time) to get our personal numbers (something like a social security number that will let us open a bank account and all sorts of other important stuff. We then headed way out to IKEA to get pillows, and IKEA truly is the same everywhere. It was an odd sort of comforting to know where everything I needed would be since it was exactly the same layout as all the other IKEAs I’ve ever been too. By the end of these trips, Maddie, Ada and I were all pretty tired, but we didn’t have any groceries for dinner. The last thing I wanted to do was try to navigate the grocery store with the two of them taking their mini-shopping cart all around the store and picking up everything that caught their eye. I decided to do what I’m going to say is a very Norwegian thing, and leave my kids home alone (don’t judge). I made them a snack, gave them the iPad, and explicit instructions about not leaving the apartment, trying to open the windows, or otherwise cause harm to themselves or others.

I grabbed my grocery dag, closed the door and headed downstairs and entered a completely different Norway. It was quite and calm everywhere. I could hear my thoughts, and those thoughts had nothing to do with “put that back” or keeping them from getting into a fight over who would get to push the cart. It was just an wonderfully serene moment. The store even looked different when I had a moment to browse and didn’t have to think of this as a tactical mission. Everything was awesome. I planned out a simple taco dinner, I paid for my groceries, walked back to the door of the apartment building and then realized I’d left my key in the apartment.

Panic set in. The thing I didn’t explain to Maddie and Ada was what to do when the buzzer at the door rings, or how to let people into the apartment. My landlord was likely at work and lives 20 minutes away. Why did I ever think to leave them?

And then I pressed the intercom button for the name just below mine, and someone answered. I said, “Hi I’m your new neighbor, can you buzz me in?” And that’s how I met my new neighbor, a very nice elderly woman with a Norwegian name I can’t begin to pronounce.

And when I opened the door to my apartment, Maddie and Ada had decided to sneak the last ice cream cones from the fridge, so I don’t think they were too traumatized by my absence.

Every day is an adventure. Don’t forget your keys.

90 seconds to grocery store

I have a thing for grocery stores. Back at St. Andrew’s, one of my favorite things to do on a Saturday night after putting my kids to sleep is the Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Wegemans trifecta shopping trip. It’s about a hour to drive to Trader Joe’s, and Whole Foods and Wegemans are each about an 15 minutes further north on the same road. I even have the timing down to a science. If I leave around 8, I can just get to TJ’s before they close at 9, then move on to Whole Foods which closes at 10, and finish off at Wegemans which never closes. It’s a 3 hour oddesy that I find wonderfully enjoyable, especially when listening to a good audio book.

Naturally, one of the first things we did when we dropped off our bags in our apartment was go to the grocery store downstairs, the Coop Extra. I decided to time the trip, and it was 90 seconds, even with two dwaddling kids in tow. There are also about 5 other grocery stores and an awesome bakery within a 5 minute walk, so I think I’m in heaven.

Our new home in Bekkestua

We moved into our new apartment in Bekkestua yesterday, and it is absolutely perfect for us. Back in March when I came to Norway on my scouting visit, I stayed in central Oslo and came out to Bekkestua to visit the Oslo International School as a possible school for our daughters. Right when I got off the train and saw this apartment building next to the station with a grocery store underneath, I thought it would be a great place to live for a year, but I never imagined that mostly blind luck would land us an apartment in the very complex I had fancied.

The place is a pretty huge mess right now, and these photos are from right when we moved in, so please be understanding.

This is our kitchen. It came furnished with all the basics and has a large pantry. Norwegian stoves are interesting—there are nearly a dozen oven settings and I look forward to figuring them out.

This is our dining room next to the kitchen. The door looks out onto a small balcony overlooking the main thoroughfare. We have all the doors open here because we are having a heat wave–temps are getting up to 85°F and our apartment seems to be getting a lot of afternoon sun so it can get quite hot in here.

This is the patio that looks toward the center of Bekkestua. It even has a 1000W heater on it, so maybe I’ll get a furry blanket and sit out there during the winter like real Norwegians.

I’ll take a moment here to admire Norwegian construction. That sliding door is about 3 inches thick, and the window is a double pane window that seems super energy efficient. When you close the handle, the door seals with a satisfying lock that feels like I’m really locking down the hatches.

The living room, with a working fireplace and a TV. Maddie and Ada have developed a fondness for Norwegian cartoons thanks to their friends. Still working on the internet (I’m typing this post on my phone).

Our bedroom with lots of closet space.

Maddie and Ada’s bedroom. In the second photo, you can see their window looks out to the toy store.

This is the hallway/entrance.

This is the entrance to our actual apartment. It’s a funky little journey to get to our place. You enter a door, climb a set of interior stairs, and then walk along a sort of outdoor garden area to get to our place. I think we can plant things in this garden bed, but I imagine the growing season is going to be quite short.

This is the door to our place.

Maddie pointing out the toy store again.

So that’s the tour. I’ll try to put together a better tour when we’ve unpacked and organized a bit more.

It feels so good to be home and know that I won’t be schlepping around full size suitcases for the next 365 days.

I’m an immigrant, and now I know what that means

I can’t begin to describe how comforting it is to have a home in a foreign land, and be secure in knowing you are safe there. Objectively, we were completely fine before we got to this apartment—we were living in an awesome Airbnb with truly fabulous hosts who couldn’t have been more welcoming, we had plenty of money, a smartphone that kept me in touch with family, translated every sign I couldn’t understand, an iPad to keep Maddie and Ada entertained when I was at a total loss, ready access to food, all the incredible infrastructure of Oslo to take us wherever we wanted, and so much more. Still, all day yesterday, I felt unsettled, on edge, wondering at each moment whether I was doing right thing for my family.

More than that, I’m in a country where I’m clearly wanted. The government welcomes immigrants Everyone is super friendly. All of the immigration officers and officials we’ve met throughout this process could not have been more helpful. Though I doubt anyone mistakes us for Norwegians, our whiteness lets us blend in to this country that I don’t have to worry on the subway whether someone will harass us, or even fear that we are being judged as we go about our day.

Still, this has been hard—Much harder than I expected. Obviously some fo that it due to the Diana’s mom’s illness, and Diana needing to rush home to be with her. But right now, living in a foreign country feels so much different than just being a tourist in one. As I said yesterday, I often feel alone and unsure about how to solve even the simplest of problems (today’s victory: I was able to load all of our remaining bags in a shopping cart that wasn’t locked up and wheel them to the elevator of our apartment, saving us from making multiple trips. Today’s challenge: how the hell do I get internet in this place?).

I often think about Maddie and Ada and what they must be feeling in this adventure. They seem to be having a grand time, thanks in large part to how much fun they had with our host family. Aside from Maddie’s nerves about riding the subway, it’s also clear they feel safe, and I feel so grateful as a parent that I can provide that for them.

All of the experiences over the past couple of days have put the news back home in a much starker perspective, and what it must be like to be unable to provide safety for one’s children. Before I left, I was horrified by the way in which our government is treating immigrants of all types—from the administrations’s efforts to cut back on the legal immigration that has been the heart of so much of our nation’s success, the disdain and indifference we’ve shown toward refugees and asylum seekers that flies in the face of basic decency, to all the ways our administration works to persecute undocumented immigrants and most heartbreakingly, the ways in which our administration is traumatizing the youngest children by tearing them apart from their families. All of this on top of a systematic effort to fear monger the populace against the (non existent) immigration “threat”, stigmatize them as others and create a culture that such a hostile culture that somehow causes immigrants to feel so miserable that they “self-deport.” It’s inhumanity at it’s worst.

Now, I imagine myself, what would I have have done if while we were at the police station, an officer had taken my daughters, and not given me any information about how to contact them? When we just passed customs and were making our way out of the airport, Ada was playing around fell down on a moving walkway and couldn’t get back up, and she was close to the end, so I thought she might hurt herself (I had walked too far ahead with most of our bags). That feeling of panic as your child is screaming in pain—it was searing. Luckily a stranger was very close to her. Luckily, Ada was fine. I can’t imagine what I would do if we had to experience even one millionth of what many of the families crossing our border have been subjected to.

I also think of what separates me from those families—just a series lucky breaks that I had zero control over. I was fortunate enough to be born in the United States. Lucky enough to be born to parents to sacrificed a lot for me and my sister, who prized our educations, and gave us a significant leg up in the world, even though we were solidly working class and neither of our parents attended college. I’ve hit a thousand more lucky breaks along the way that put me here, in a comfy couch in Norway, having breezed through legal immigration, with nothing to fear. And though I certainly feel like I’ve worked hard and suffered some for everything I have, I would be kidding myself to think that my hard work is anything close to what many of the poorest immigrants have endured. Their hard work and suffering make mine pale by comparison. Really, is there any doubt when I’m complaining yesterday about walking a few kilometers through an air conditioned train station, and some immigrants are walking across entire countries, with their children in tow? I can’t begin to imagine the work, determination, resilience and hope it must take to persevere through the challenge of immigrating to the United States and seeking asylum.

If it is just luck that separates us, then we must do everything we can must advocate for an immigration policy that is humane—one that doesn’t go out of its way to add to the suffering of those trying to find a better life in the United States. A policy that doesn’t inflame the worst of out prejudices with talks of rapists, murders and overblown street gangs, and one that doesn’t rip apart families and traumatize children just to discourage more people from trying come here. We must be better than this.

Day 4: You’re never alone…

Today was the day when my kid threw up on a 40 minute bus ride…when we were only halfway through the ride.

Here’s the thing I’ve discovered in the past two days of trying to take care of Maddie and Ada on my own in a foreign land. You always feel like you are on, alone, with decisions coming at you from every direction, requiring brainpower, focus, cultural capital you don’t even begin to possess and all you’ve got is a Google translate and the ability to play the part of a dumb American.

But then I tell myself it’s Norway—right? If I let Maddie and Ada run feral in the middle of the Oslo Bussterminal, they’d probably be picked up by a friendly police officer, given some chocolate, free health care, and then be wonderfully cared for at some dream like police station that likely includes an awesome playground for emergencies just like these.

Here’s how the day started. After going to bed at some ungodly late hour last night, Ada woke up and wasn’t all that pleased with her breakfast.

Still, she managed to eat just about the whole thing over the course of half an hour. Meanwhile, I was packing our bag for the one goal we had for the morning—get to our noon appointment at the Olso Police Station for our residency cards. Passports? check. Water bottles? Check? Snacks? Check. What more could we need? Loaded up we headed out for the short walk to the bus stop near our Airbnb and got on the bus that would take us all the way to the Police Station.

When we got on the bus, Maddie suggested we sit in the back, her favorite spot. About 10 minutes in, Ada said, “my tummy hurts.” Then 10 minutes later, she threw up all over herself, and the dress she wore for our flight and first day Oslo in a row that she insisted was clean and she should be able to wear. She also threw up on to the bus seat. “I ate too much bagel” she said. I know what you’re thinking—throwing up on a city bus, isn’t that like a daily occurrence for most cities? Well, Oslo buses are a bit different.

Oslo transit buses are amazing—they are better than the best coach buses you’ve been in. They are spotless clean. Every seat has an overhead light, your own personal USB power port, and a stop button. There are multiple screens in the bus that tell you the next three stops, and when you will arrive each one. Really, I felt like we had defiled the presidential coach at this point.

Now, I was wondering what in the world I would do—A 3 year old just ruined her favorite dress and the seat of an Oslo bus. Maddie quickly decided it was best to abandon us and moved two seats ahead. I started searching the backpack. I found a couple of tissues which weren’t even remotely up to the task, and thankfully, a change of clothes for Ada that Diana had put in there for just such an emergency. But we still had to weather the next 20 minutes of the trip. Ada was a surprisingly good sport once I was able to clean her up a bit and assured her that we would be able to save the dress.

It’s not my proudest moment, but I must confess when the bus pulled into the terminal, we just hopped out the back door and began searching for the bathroom in the bus terminal. Though it costs $1.40 to enter a bathroom in the bus terminal, and Maddie refused to go into the bathroom with “stinky Ada”, it felt like the best $1.40 we’ve spent when Ada came out in clean clothes and a rinsed off dress stuffed back into the backpack.

Amazingly, we made our appointment and completed our residency applications. We also found out we need to come back in the next couple of days with our rental contract (which we didn’t have at the time) so we can national ID numbers, tax number and start the steps for getting a Norwegian bank account (which is sure to be another blog post).

After a nice lunch at a sushi cafe next door to the police station (Ada swore she felt much better and wanted sushi), I decided it was time to head back—it was near Ada’s nap time. But for some reason, my transit card had expired, and the ticket kiosk kept declining my credit card. Here’s one of those moments where I felt decisions coming at my fast and furiously. I called my credit card company to see why they would decline the charge, and the told me that they hadn’t. So I went to find another ticket machine. Should be an easy task in a bus terminal, but the only one I could find was also broken. No worries—next door is the central train station. There’s got be a ticket machine there, right? At this point, Ada is in such a state exhaustion that she must be carried on my shoulders, and Maddie drags 10 feet behind me telling me I should carry her too. A couple of wrong turns in the central train station has me walking down the path leading to all 29 tracks, not a ticket machine in sight. We wander out the some side exit to a parking lot and only after Maddie is at her most dejected, back in the front entrance and to the main ticket counter of the central train station. Hooray! I think to myself, and remember that I can probably buy one of the fancy 7 day tickets here that might save this ordeal from happening again.

At this point, I decide to speak to an agent, who couldn’t have been more helpful and tells me that 7 day tickets are even cheaper if you buy them at the convenience store across the corridor. And this is when I realized another major lesson of the day—at any point in this ordeal I could have saved us simply by asking one of the dozens of helpful employees for directions, or where to find the nearest ticket dispenser, or how to apologize to the poor bus driver whose bus my daughter defaced with vomit.

Purchasing train tickets at a convenience store also meant Maddie and Ada insisted they needed chocolate, and since my willpower reserves were depleted, I gave in and added a $2 Kvik Lunsk to my order (they’re exactly like Kit Kats).

You’d think we were done, but no. Since we had already walked at least a kilometer through the train station, I proposed that we just take the subway back. Ada said yes, but Maddie for some reason is totally fearful of the subway at the moment, so I decided to save that growth moment for some other day, and since the bus drops us off closer to our Airbnb, we’d be less likely to collapse from fatigue in the afternoon sun.

There’s more to this story—but I think you now see that this was a Shakelton-esqe adventure, and you don’t need to hear about all the craziness that ensued when we had to walk through a shopping mall to get back to the bussterminal and Maddie and Ada saw a toy store on the way.

Needless to say, on the way back, Ada was so exhausted that she fell asleep sitting up, and even passing the Royal Palace was of no interest to her.

You would also think that getting back home and eating dinner would be a good end to the day, but alas, I still needed to meet with our landlord, sign our lease and transfer our 6 suitcases and 2 duffle bags to the new apartment. And here’s the final lesson—you are truly never alone—people are always willing to help, even strangers, even when the asks are way larger than you would imagine. I had no ideas what I would do with 2 little girls while I was doing all of this moving, so I just asked our Airbnb host if Maddie and Ada could play with their daughters, and they happily agreed. My landlord is amazing, and thankfully drives a small SUV and not a tiny electric car like many other Norwegians. It only took us two trips to get all of our luggage to the apartment. I was also exactly right in a previous post about the location of our apartment. We are right next to the train station, above the grocery store and adjacent to a toy store. The apartment is fully furnished and I think it’s going to be perfect. After figuring out some details of international wire transfers (yeah Transferwise), I got this pretty cool looking set of keys and we will move in tomorrow afternoon.

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Oh, and there was a camera in the back of the bus, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the super efficient Norwegian transit service tracks us down and makes us pay to reupholster a bus seat. Should any of them be reading this, I’m really sorry, and will stock my bag with baby wipes once I can locate them at the grocery store.

Day 3: A new beginning

Diana left early this morning for Atlanta. We had a fun time figuring out which of the zillion awesome public transportation options to the airport would be best for her flight, and she settled on the bus that goes straight from our town to the airport in 1 hour and 20 minutes with free wifi and usb charging ports on the bus. As I type this, Diana is somewhere over the Atlantic, and her mom is doing much better–she’s breathing on her own after the doctors managed to remove quite a bit of fluid on her lungs. Please keep your thoughts and prayers coming for her.

By the time Ada and Maddie were up and ready for the day, Diana was halfway to the airport, so they got to chat with mom over FaceTime, while we ate the last bit of food in the house. This meant today would be full of new challenges-we’d need to get groceries for two days, I’d need to figure out how to convince a 3 year old she could really walk down to the town, and much more. I must admit, this morning, I was a bit apprehensive; I’ve taken care of Maddie and Ada for long stretches of time before, but never in a completely new place, without a car, without much in the way of food, and without any understanding of the language. Would we survive the wilds of Norway while Diana is away?

We started off with a visit to Maddie and Ada’s school playground, which put them in a great mood to start the day.

Maddie wanted to make sure I pointed out that she saw her friend’s name here in Norway:

And here’s a video of them on the cutest swing on the preschool playground. HAGS, in addition to being the acronym everyone seems to write in 1st grade yearbooks, is also the name of a Swedish manufacturer of playground equipment.

Just across the street from the kids school is the Bekkestua Public Library, so we decided to stop in and check it out. It’s amazing. Even the simplest of children’s books is beyond my ability to understand at the moment, sadly. But there is a big collection of English language YA fiction, and a modest collection of English language kids books, along with a bunch of wooden trains and other toys that will likely be fun to play with, especially on cold winter afternoons.

After picking up another pint of strawberries from the farmstand in the center of town, we took on my greatest fear, the grocery store. Yesterday, we discovered that all grocery stores in our town (and all of Norway, I think) are closed on Sundays, so we were totally out of food at home. I needed to simultaneously plan out a menu for the next three days, and keep Maddie and Ada from grabbing everything in sight and loading it into the basket. I’m happy to report that we were successful, though a promise of an ice cream cone might have been necessary. $70 in groceries should keep us well fed until we move into our apartment on Wednesday.

After heading home for lunch, Maddie and Ada rediscovered their Norwegian friends, Nora and Julie, the daughters of our AirBnB hosts. Nora and Julie are almost the same ages as Maddie and Ada, and they had a wonderful afternoon jumping on the trampoline, swimming in their kiddie pool, and trying to communicate with each other when they don’t speak the same language. Somehow, they manage to play wonderfully together, playing games on the iPad, building things with Legos, and running all around the backyard.

Here’s a photo of their swim party. The house in the background is our AirBnB rental.

Maddie has developed a real fondness for our Norwegian friends, and I’ve had a few good conversations with our host. The most amazing thing is that when we move, we’ll be less than 2km from them. Nora and Julie’s schools are right next to Oslo International, so hopefully we will find a way to grow a friendship here.

And that’s pretty much the day. Dinner was salads, some French fries and some bacon and onion hot dogs Ada picked out of the freezer case— Bacon in Norwegian is exactly the same as in English, and Maddie and Ada are addicts—we also have bacon cream cheese for our bagels. Tomorrow, we head back to Oslo to get our residency cards, and then in the evening will hopefully sign the lease on our apartment and figure out how to transport all of our stuff from the AirBnB to our apartment. Our landlord has promised to help, but I don’t think she understands just how much stuff we have.

Norway Recycles in a big way

Here’s the sign posted in our AirBnB to explain all of the things Norway recycles and their requirements for sorting.

The large trash can outside of our house is also subdivided, with compost and trash, and then a recycling can that is largest of all.

There’s also some way to take bottles and cans to the local grocery store to get a recycling credit in return, but I haven’t figured that out.

It’s going to take me a while to sort the small pile of trash and recycling we’ve generated already.

As Maddie would say, “Norway is very eco-kiddie.”

The Norwegian sky on a summer night

Sunset tonight was at 10:41 pm, and here’s what the view out our window looked like then:

Here it is a bit later, at 12:41 am (I’m still having a bit of trouble adjusting to Norwegian time):

I really wonder what things are going to look like when we get closer to the winter solstice…