We’ll always have Paris

It’s been a wonderful 7 days in Paris. Thanks to Diana’s college friend, Mary Lewis, we’ve gotten to experience the city through the eyes of a local.

Here are some of the things we loved about Paris, small and large:

- Croissants.

- Visiting the Musée Curie. Maddie has been obsessed with Marie Curie for the past couple of years—she loves reading her story from Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls and asks me about how she won the Nobel Prize all the time. The museum is a wonderful little gem—they’ve left Dr. Curie’s lab and office just as they were when she worked there.

Marie Curie’s office

Maddie writing her name in the guest book at the museum.

- Incredible playgrounds and parks everywhere you turn, each of them with wonderful water spigots for refilling water bottles on warm days.

This is the beautiful Beuttes-Chamount Park, which had this wonderful water feature that ran all the way down a steep hillside to a large pond.

- Having every piece of playground equipment marked with a maximum and minimum age. Maddie and Ada seemed to pay no attention, but I’m glad Paris pays this much attention to detail.

There’s even a playground in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.

- Of course we went to the Louvre, and of course, it was gigantic and overwhelming. It was super hot, and Maddie and Ada weren’t all that excited to explore on this day. You can see our official portrait, with Ada refusing to be photographed in the back.

Numbering the floors of a building starting with 0 (and if you’re the science museum, labeling the basement with negative 1).
The subway—it’s hot and much dirtier than the pristine public transportation system (honestly, most operating rooms are probably dirtier than the Oslo T-Bane), but it goes everywhere, and the trains run on tires, which is just amazing.
Simple lunches—sure, it takes separate trips to the Boulangerie, Fromagerie and the fruit stand, but the result is incredible—a picnic with the best bread, cheese and fruit you’ve ever tasted.
Getting to know a neighborhood: we spent most of our time around Square Saint-Medard near the Latin Quarter in the 5th Arrondissement. This is advice I took from Tyler Cowan, and it was right on the money.
In this square, we found all sorts of fun, including:
- - Dancing in the square on Sunday, when a few local musicians turn out after church to play French classics.
- Eating lunch in the playground in the shade of Saint Medard Church, that dates its origins back to the 7th century.
- Enjoying delicious ice cream and macaroons from a beautiful patisserie across the street from the playground.
- Exploring the wonderful shops along Rue Mouffetard, and finding a favorite Boulangerie and Fromagerie, that we went back to again and again.
Exploding all those stereotypes I’d heard about French people being rude. Every person we met was kind, welcoming and doted heavily on our two Maddie and Ada. It made really wish I’d kept up with my high school French so I could do a better job communicating with people we met.

In the end, Paris felt like a wonderfully livable, enormous city steeped in a deep history composed of layers upon layers. We’ll have to come back sometime.

The horrors of 10 days with no wifi

I’m sorry I haven’t posted anything on the blog in the past few days. Since we moved into the new apartment, we don’t have wifi, and so it’s been a struggle to post stuff to the blog using just my phone. Heck, it’s been a struggle just getting by, when my kids have become addicted to the Wow in the World Podcast and Goodnight Rebel Girls Podcast, and “need” them in order to be able to go to sleep. I’ve listened to the one episode of each that happened to episode on how migratory birds cross the ocean so many times now that I think I’m ready to migrate.

But today, my landlord brought the cable modem by, and after a quick trip to purchase an outlet splitter at the hardware store across the street, we have wifi. We have podcasts. We have Netflix. Google translate works reliably. All seems right in the world again.

I’m also very happy to report the great news that Diana’s mom is doing much better, and will likely move out of the ICU in the next few days. As I write this, Diana is also on a flight back to Oslo—hooray! We’ve then got a couple of days to pack bags and then we are off for a week in Paris, where Maddie is desperate to see Marie Curie’s house.

In the meantime, here are some photos of our adventures over the past week.

The playground at the center of our town is a tremendous hit.

A couple of days ago, we got library cards.

An incredible playground at Frognerparken

Sometimes all this travel is exhausting

A day at the beach

On Saturday, we took the bus to the beach in Sandvika. I later learned that this beach was just opened, and it is gorgeous. The water was cold, and I forgot a towel, but that didn’t stop Maddie and Ada who changed into their swimsuits on the beach and jumped right in.

I think I’m starting to see why this is such a family friendly place.

Here are some cool trash cans we found on the walk to the beach.

The beach! Ada starts by just putting her toes in the water.

But it isn’t long until we are swimming.

And splashing!

In the distance below, you can see a diving structure at the beach where kids would just walk jump and jump into the water—the taller platform seemed like it was about 10m. The other thing that was just awesome was a perimeter of freshly laid sod around the beach. It’s awesome to put your stuff down on the grass, and then walk onto the beach, play around, and walk back to the grass to get all the sand off your feet when you are ready to go.

There was also this awesome play structure we had to check out.

There are mermaids in Norway…of course when she saw this, Maddie asked if we could get her a mermaid tail.

Everything is expensive in Norway…even teeth

Ever since we got on the airplane to Norway a week ago, Maddie has had a wiggly tooth that she has been talking about a lot. For the past few days, it’s been hanging on in her mouth. I’ve tried to convince her to let me pull it out for the last few days with no success. She just keeps wanting to play with and talk about her wiggly tooth.

Today, we went to hang out with Maddie and Ada’s Norwegian friends (the daughters of our AirBnB hosts) and apparently as they were playing the oldest daughter, Nora, told her to pull it out. I’m not exactly sure how she did this, since Nora doesn’t speak much English, but Maddie came running into the room where Eric and I were watching the World Cup to show off her new tooth and the corresponding gap in her smile.

I asked Eric how much the tooth fairy pays for teeth in Norway, and he told me the going rate is 50kr (about $6.19), and has been going up, since the girls talk at school. It was 10 kr when he was a child.

I will add that Norway is as close to a cashless economy as I’ve seen. When I visited in March, I didn’t pay cash once. We visited the ATM earlier this week to get some money to pay for strawberries at the stand, but I later discovered that even they took credit cards.

All this is to say I think the tooth fairy is struggling to find any coinage to pay for teeth around here. So far, all I’ve seen is a small 5 kr coin. Maybe the tooth fairy should leave a note saying that when Maddie gets her Personal Number, she will send her some more money using Vipps (Norwegian Venmo). (The personal number is something like a social security number—it takes a few weeks to get one in the mail after tuning in a ton of paperwork, and is necessary for opening bank accounts, cell phone contracts, internet service and seemingly just about everything we need these days).

My kid is a Norwegian now

One thing I’ve noticed young kids do in Norway is they run around a lot in their underwear or without any clothing at all. It was true of the kids of our AirBnB host, and I’ve also seen kids playing in the fountain the center of town in just their underwear. The weather is beautiful and bordering on hot—who can blame them.

Ada has now decided to join the movement. She stood out on our balcony (in the center of twin) after dinner for 20 minutes talking to herself, and it was only the promise of Norwegian cartoons on the TV that could get her to come back in.

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.