Fluff.
So what have I been up to for the past week? Here are some pictures, because we're all visually stimulated creatures, aren't we?
Pretty, no? This is Røros, Norway, AKA my favorite place on earth. It's an old mining town that has become a UNESCO World Heritage Site. My cousin Arne lives here and used to work for the town as a tour guide, so he knows just about everything imaginable. I have been waiting to go there for three years, and this past weekend I was finally reunited with the only place in the world that actually makes me cry upon seeing it. Seriously. I also cried when I left.
My travel to Røros was by train, at 7:30 AM. I had the International Cultural Evening (ICE) the night before, and I was completely out of it. I'll talk about the ICE on another post because I am too much on a schedule to be thorough. ANYWAYS, this was the first time in my life I've ever been on a commuter train. The US fails at the railways, though this wasn't the case about 100 years ago. Oh well. Norway has railways, and gosh darn it, they use them!
I had a winner of a breakfast when I got to Hamar, my transfer stop before Røros. I was starving and ate whatever sounded satiating at the time. Which was this.
Breakfast of Champions.
I got into Røros at about 1:30 and was greeted by my second cousin Arne and one of his grandchildren Amanda and her friend Camilla. They were cute. Little kids speaking Norwegian, or any foreign language for that matter, makes me go D'AWWWW.
Arne's wife, Ingela, anticipated my arrival and my hunger with a pseudo-frokost, wherein I ate yummy salty ham and gulost and molte (cloudberry, the best thing on the planet. Look it up. They're bright orange and rare and it seems like you shouldn't eat them but then you do and once you realize you won't die from poison they're SOOOOOOOOOOO good). After that they basically ordered me to sleep because I had a long afternoon and evening ahead of me.
So I took a nap. It was the best nap ever.
When I awoke from my nap I walked around with Arne in the city, including the church, where I hadn't been. I found it funny that the church had the company logo because it was paid for by the mining company in Røros.
The company symbol is two hammers and the Venus sign, the sign for copper.
The interior is entirely made out of wood. The marble effect is done on wood, and the pipe organ is made out of wood, giving it a distinct sound. WHAAAAA
In the evening Arne and his son, Øivind, and I went to the main reason I came to Røros: a bilingual play about Røros's history and its role in the Swedish invasion of Norway in 1714. Sweden's king had died in southern Norway, and in its retreat Sweden made a nice stop at Røros and demanded the inhabitants to give them all the copper. The townspeople refused and hid the coper, but the Swedes had this endearing habit of burning Røros whenever it crossed their path. Røros, being made almost entirely out of wooden buildings, is a giant, colorful pyre just waiting to happen. Concluding that quenching the Swede's pyromania was a crappy idea, Røros forked over its copper. The Swedes rejoiced for about five minutes. Then they crossed the mountains right along the border and found a terrible snowstorm. There they all died. Whoops.
I really enjoyed the play, even though half of it was in Røros dialect, which I didn't understand, and the other half was in Swedish, which I REALLY didn't understand. But Arne provided me with translation, and I could tell by their actions onstage what was going on. I mean, when people are shooting each other, you kind of figure it's a war.
Sunday Arne and I went to Olavsgruva, an old mine used by the copper company for 300 years. Arne was also an old tour guide there, and the drive up through the mountain road used to be his daily commute. I was grateful for this, especially when he was going about 70 km/h on it to catch the 10:30 tour. I thought I was gonna die, but he seemed to know what he was doing, so I pretended I was on a roller coaster at EPCOT.
Though I've never been to EPCOT.
After Olavsgruva we went to the Smelhytta, or the smelting hut, another museum in Røros, where they used to smelt the copper from the ore. In it were all of these historically accurate, to scale replicas that ONE MAN made. This was basically his life. He forsook his wife and then died from basically working so much. Regardless, they were spectacular.
We also walked around the mountain terrain where Olavsgruva was, where I admired the treeless landscape and jumped like a little mountain goat on ore piles and cairns. It was fun. I'm not a goat though.
This took me up to the afternoon, wherein I had to leave Røros. Arne and Ingela saw me off, and I sat backwards on the train so I could watch Røros disappear behind me. And I cried. I'm not sure when I'll get back to Røros, and I've never loved a place so much in my life.
END SENTIMENTALITY.
Finals were also this week. My cousin Peder came for ICE, and I went and visited him at Sigrid and Hogne's for dinner on Monday. It was nice to get off campus, see their house again, and chat and NOT eat Blindern food. Because you can only have so many frozen haddock cakes before you realize you just can't do it anymore.
I had my literature final on Wednesday and Norwegian final on Thursday. I wrote ten pages for my literature final and my hand twitched for about 20 minutes afterwards. Whoa nelly.
Then we had our farewell party. The only thing that's really worth mentioning is that I saw Peder again and got free Solo Sitron and chocolate cake. Yum. My friends and I went back to the dorm and spent our last evening together hanging out and talking and being up to the same stupid antics that we always are. It was a good ending.
I left for England in the afternoon, and Gus and I had flights twenty minutes and four gates apart, so we traveled to the airport together and hung out by our gates until I had to go. I had a layover in Stockholm, which has the nicest airport I've ever been in. It had hardwood floors and made me feel like I came from a third world country. Maybe because I do.
I got into Manchester at around six, and my parents and my mother's friend from the university named Lina came to pick me up. Lina lives in this very cute townhouse in Manchester that is ALL vertical. I'm on the top floor, where I am sitting currently on my bed and typing like an Adderall'd up computer programmer. TYPE TYPE TYPE.
Today we spent the afternoon in Chester, a town about 45 miles away from Manchester. They use miles here but also use the metric system. I don't get it. I'm having trouble with it after using kilometers for about 6 weeks. Grrrrrrr. Lina's daughter, Karen, lives in Chester, and she took us on a tour of the city. Chester was first settled by the Romans, and the city is bounded by this retaining wall built by the Romans in AD 100, and the wall was later restored in the 14th century. I say thumbs up.
Chester is a touristy but still quaint town. I really liked that everything was close together and within walking distance. I also liked Bergen for that reason. I enjoy walking places because then you get to know the city way better.
For lunch we ate Thai food, which was heaven-sent for me. I love Norway and Norwegian food, but I was CRAVING something ethnic, and I love Thai food. So that made me happy. Happy face for Cali. :D
From then on we walked around more and stopped at Chester Cathedral. It was beautiful. It started out as a monastery but then stopped when England left the Catholic Church. Henry VIII was very fond of destroying any evidence of Catholicism in England, which meant desecrating any church he got his hands on, but he spared this one because he needed somewhere to start his new church. Hooray! I'm not even going to try to put pictures up. There are way too many and I'm not in any disposition to choose.
Finally, we stopped for coffee. I got a cappuccino. It was £2.25. All I could think about was how I spent 35 kroner for a cappuccino the first weekend I was in Oslo.
Then we returned back here. Today has been a long day, and now I must sleep. This was a beast of a post. See? I can write. I just am too lazy most of the time.
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