Starting a short series on things I've learned on my Summer 2023 trip to Iceland, Norway, Amsterdam & Paris

Things I’ve learned this summer 2023 trip: # 1 - NORWAY BITS

• There are white snails in Oslo. Perhaps once cultivated by monks. You can eat them. (I did not).

• There is a berry called a Sea Buckthorn. Apparently popular in many cultures but I’d never heard/seen it before. I tasted it as an ice cream flavor, and it was tasty - slight citrus, bright berry tasting, just a bit sweet. 
• There is a delicious traditional Norwegian dish called Finnbiff - kind of a reindeer stroganoff served with mashed potatoes, garnished with cranberry or lingonberry sauce. It’s reason enough in and of itself to go to Norway. Especially if you can find a kind northern Norwegian to make it for you.

• Vigeland was a dude who sculpted in the 1920-40s and you should go checkout his park. It's full of neo-romantic style sculpture - like 100s of pieces. https://www.visitoslo.com/en/product/?TLp=181601  Plus he made wonderful iron art deco gates and fencing and lights. There’s a good reason this is a top tourist spot in Oslo. Recommended. I’d have stayed longer, or gone back, but some things aren’t possible with group travel. Plus my kid, as usual, was bored.

• Some of those large boulders you see in the mountain fields were trolls at one point, before the sun petrified them.
• <contributed by my kid> Shoes are typically removed when entering Norwegian homes.
• Aperol Spritz is a drink and it will be added to my regular rotation.

Just a quick update on my trip to Norway. There is a lot to tell of course; this is just a tidbit.

I've been in Norway for a week, staying outside Oslo with a generous friend who has organized a lovely week of site seeing. Mountains, waterfalls, woods, historic buildings, short hikes, visiting with her family, eating and drinking. It's been a lovely time. My daughter is with me, who would not agree. She's bored with all the adults doing things she finds dull and she misses her home/friends in Delaware. "Sheez mom, do I really have to look at another old church. It's not very interesting to me." Ah well, hope she learns to appreciate the experience when she is older. 

Today we are going into Oslo to see a art exhibit (and shop). But the highlight of this day will be dinner. One of the housemates is from a northern fishing village and has offered to cook up a traditional Norwegian dish -- with Reindeer meat. 

The other highlight of Oslo is Vigeland Park. He was a sculptor the 1910-40s and the park is full of his works and augmented with art deco gates and fencing and the like. There is a reason it is the most popular attraction in Norway. 

Got to run be a tourist now. More later (maybe)

<< part of my continuing series recording memories to assure myself I've actually been to the places I think I've been to. Now no longer in alphabetical order so I can get on with it>>

NJ is a state that borders my homestate of Delaware, so I'm through/in there a bunch.

Just spent 2 days/nights at the Jersey Shore with my little. Who isn't that little anymore, she's 12. And like many other 12 year olds, she didn't particularly want to be at the shore, she wanted to be home & online gaming and chatting with her online friends. The weather being overcast, cool and windy didn't help. Arranging the trip so that another family with a 12 year old girl was also in our group helped nominally. The spotty spotty wifi at our RV campground both helped and didn't help. 

At the beach shore, I told my kid that if she managed to catch a seagull we could go home a day early. So she enlisted the other 12 year old and the 7 year old to help, and they spent a crazy hour or so attempting to capture a seagull. They got crackers and tried building traps. They engaged in flanking maneuvers. At some point army crawling through the sand was employed. No seagulls were caught in this endevor.

I have a few other memories of New Jersey:

• When I was in college the college bowl intercollegiate match was in New Jersey somewhere (Newark maybe?).
• Also in college I dated a guy who's parents had some swank house in NJ. I got to be an akward guest there a few times. I recall having some most excellent grilled steak at his house. His name may or may not have been Ed. (It's been a long time.)
• I've taught a few software classes to guys at a refinery near Newark, and learned that many of them had never been to NYC proper, even though they lived right there.  The horror.
• I've flown in/out of Newark a bunch, but that doesn't really count. I also often park in Hamilton to take NJ Transit trains into Manhatten. Also doesn't really count.
• There was a "burning man inspired" event called Freeform at the Salem County fair grounds back in 2012. I learned there that I couldn't count on my kid's father to watch her, even though we had agreed it was my turn to go off and have fun. Looking back it was just another crack in the trust. I sometimes get annoyed at myself for putting up with him as long as I did. But then I try to give myself grace with the knowledge I was doing the best I could with what I knew/hoped at the time. 
• CM Adams lived there for a year recently and I hung out with him a bit. We hiked a park or two, had excellent pizza, crossed over the boarder to PA and saw Rocky Horror live!  CM & I also went to a cool sculpture garden near Trenton called Grounds for Sculpture. It was cool, I do plan to go back someday.

I could probably dredge up some other New Jersey memories, but yes, I've been to New Jersey.

As I was sitting watching a band last night, I started thinking about Austin. I seem to know a lot of random things about Austin. I'm going to list them, but I didn't fact check anything, so believe at your own risk.

The 11 things I know about Austin:

1. There is a garden south of there by LadyBird Johnson focused on butterflies
2. The have bats under a bridge
3. They are home to Austin Typewriter, Ink - a typewriter collective and podcast group
4. Univ of Texas aka UT is there. It has some big balls sculpture on campus somewhere
5. They like to keep it weird
6. They have a party street whose name escapes me. It isn't Beale. It isn't Burbon.
7. There is that tech conference / music conference there. I forget its name also.
8. They have a small track train you can ride in the park.
9. Willie Nelson has a ranch not to far from Austin. There was a big music fest there last year. Or maybe 2 years ago. Or maybe every year.
10. My lovely friend Bronwen lives there. I haven't seen her in neigh on 10 years. Sad face.
11. The band Stackabones originated there, before they moved to Delaware-ish, so I can hear them on a random Saturday night.

My issue with this site One Post Wonder is that whenever I get the email saying "Your friends have been busy on One Post Wonder!" I stop whatever else I'm doing and go read the posting. 

Which is both awesome and terrible and I love that. 

I should post more but I probably won't. I'm pretending it's a Heisenblogging issue: where I can do all the things or write about all the things, but not both.

So I went to the Philadelphia Art Museum (which is no longer on strike. yay) with a few friends. We saw a cricket cage for cricket fighting, which apparently is a thing. But only for male crickets, which begs the question: how does one tell boy cricks from girls?

Chasing this thread I learned about the Zen-Nippon Chick sexing method, practitioners of which are well paid in the chicken farming world. 

Anyway, go to museums folks. It expands the mind. 

<< part of my continuing series recording memories to assure myself I've actually been to the places I think I've been to>>

Whew, California. I lived there for most of my 30's, so I could fill a book. But instead, this much shorter entry:

When I was a child I recall my father once musing about having met some people that "smiled a LOT". Like so much so you noticed and wondered if they were selling something. When asked, it turned out it was just that they were from California, and smiling a lot was normal for them. So for many years, my concept of California was that it was a place of Hollywood, hippies, and people who smiled a lot. And that it was far away - I could never quite remember the difference between Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego... all were interchangeable in my head.

When I was looking at grad schools, I did apply & get accepted to Stanford and USC. But again, California was far away so I opted for CMU in Pittsburgh instead. Slight regrets on that front. Kinda wish I would have made it to California in the early 90s. I wonder how my life would have been different.

In the mid/late 90s I first visited California and the city identities solidified. SF is the hippies up north, somewhat seasoned by Silicon valley tech. LA is  Hollywood and beaches. San Diego is smaller and warmer and the border town. I had an all expenses paid vacation in the San Diego area (some perk that came with my first husband's job) and got to experience the gas light district, Coronado island, and had an excellent massage from a woman who was the masseuse on staff for the Icelandic olympic team. Around 1995 I started working remotely for a San Francisco Bay Area software company. Though I continued to live in New Orleans, this meant occasional trips to SF. I distinctly recall walking around SF one early visit thinking to myself "I could live here" - which was a rare thought for me: living in New Orleans set my bar pretty high for other places I was willing to live.  I liked how SF was walkable, with good transit, nice climate, and flower vendors on the street.

In 2005, after Katrina devastated New Orleans, I took a job just north of SF in San Rafael. I moved to SF and lived there until 2011. In my years there I was a city girl - goth clubs and sidewalk happy hours, wine tastings and harbor cruises. I had yet to experience the joys of the great wild outdoors - no hiking or camping for me then - unless you count Burning Man. In 2006 I was talked into my first Burning Man by my then roommate. And while I wouldn't call Burning Man "life changing" for me, it certainly has influenced much of my activities in the years since.

SF has this ambient level of zaniness that I love. It was always nice to get home from a trip and to see something like a grown man in a tutu and viking helmet nonchalantly taking his chihuahua out for a walk. No one would even raise an eyebrow. Wish more places vibed like that. 

When I make it back to California these years, I typically go to Los Angeles. I have a good friend there who throws lovely events in his house. Plus a few times I've been to "The Labyrinth of Jareth" masquarade ball held in downtown LA. Two of my favorite things to do in LA is Kura conveyor belt sushi and the Wii Korean day-spa. 

I might add some more detailed memories in the future but for now I'm closing this entry. Yes, I've been to California. I lived California. And I sometime still miss California most desperately.

*placeholder*

It's going to be pretty much the same as my Arizona entry. I.e., I drove through it, ate fast food, slept in a rest stop. Unless I remember anything ANYTHING else. It's very possible I've been to Little Rock for some software training and just don't remember. I think maybe MAYBE as a newly minted graduate in 1993 I stopped in the town of Hot Springs and couldn't figure out how to engage with tourist trap spas. But I'm not sure

So yeah, been to Arkansas. Kinda. 

So it turns out I don't have many memories of Arizona. I've driven through it enough to see just a wee bit of it. 

In May 2021, while driving back from Utah hikes with my brother, we stopped at the Le Fevre Overlook in the Kaibab National Forest and gazed at the Vermillion Cliffs. We stopped and got gas in Tuba City. We drove through Hopi reservation and then in Navajo land. We got McDonalds at Window Rock right before we crossed into New Mexico.

In a similar underwhelming way, in September 2020 driving back from the proto-renegade burn in Nevada, I slept 5 hours in a parking lot behind a closed perhaps abandoned Chevron just off I-40. I remember being aggravated by not being able to find a proper reststop on I-40 after many many hours of driving. In the predawn I started driving again, then got gas & breakfast at 6am at a truckstop an hour down the road, before driving straight through to New Mexico.

I have Monument Valley on my short list, but it was pandemic closed in 2020 and 2021. And yes, I do realize there is a Grand Canyon there, as well as I'm sure other interesting things to see/do. I just haven't done them. 

But it still counts as having been there! I both ate and slept there! So yeah, I've been to (mostly through) Arizona.

So I went to Alaska a fair bit in the 1990/2000s. I went in August when the blueberries and tourists were plentiful, and in midwinter where locals were starved for outsider energy, and many other months along the way.

I visited Anchorage Alaska for my traveling software consultant job, supporting engineering firms that worked the oilfields. 

One of the things I found most impressive were the moose. I first saw one when it was running down the shoulder of the highway. And another a few days later from the window of the building where I was working. But my clearest memory of these massive animals was when I was walking one of the many trails in Anchorage. As I was coming up a gentle slope there it was, this GIANT animal, a mere 10 feet from the trail, munching away at some plant. It looked at me and kept munching. I was stunned, and too scared to walk past. So I just stood there. And stood there. And it just kept on munching. I wasn't scared of being eaten, I was scared of being trampled - this creature was HUGE. It was like 7ft tall and 1000 lbs. So there I stood, transfixed.

But after a while, a cyclist wizzed down past me in the other direction. And then another. And the moose didn't care and didn't move. So I screwed my courage to the sticking point, and heart pounding I walked past it. It just kept munching. 

I have lots of other memories of Alaska - the people there are pretty "cowboy" - lots of radical individualists. People looking for something or running from something. It's the only place that, when I was teaching a software class, when I asked the room to press the "cancel" button, EVERY LAST ONE of the students picked a different button. 

I drove down the Seward one day off, and took the harbor cruise. I bought an excellent windbreaker while there, that I have to this day. I saw a glacier up close and marveled at how the ice is baby-blue. I got annoyed at folks cutting their grass at 11pm, as the sun was still out. I would meet coworkers at "the best Mexican restaurant in Anchorage '' - also the only Mexican restaurant in Anchorage, barely a step up from Taco Bell. I laughed at the story of how a bear kept breaking into the local zoo, because that was where the food was. I planned to but never got around to heading up to Denali. I never saw a whale, which I'm good with since I'm terrified of whales

So yeah, I've been to Alaska.