Well, not really the sun, but there is still residual sunlight after midnight. This picture was taken this morning at a few minutes past midnight, and you can see how bright it still is. The sun rises in the Northeast, moves around to the south and sets in the Northwest. While it is below the horizon, it moves around the North, the whole while providing residual light, almost as much as a "false dawn", before re-emerging above the horizon. We are fortunate here, as just a bit further North the sun doesn't set from mid-May to mid-August.
The sun does not, however, correspond to daily life here. Almost everything is closed on Sunday. The exception are gas stations and most restaurants. The hours for everything else are also pretty short. Most grocery stores close at hours at 9-9 during the week at 10-6 on Saturday. Most regular stores are only open from 10 until 7 during the week. This is mostly because the Norwegians respect family time. It is also because there are very strict laws regarding overtime and working hours. While it isn't all bad as long as you plan appropriately, it does seem a bit strange for a city of this size to be completely "shut down" for such long periods.
Yesterday we did a little biking. We rode across the peninsula (from the fjord to the North Sea) and back. It was a very pleasant ride, and we did not push ourselves hard. Along the way we stopped at the memorial to the Alexander Kielland, a rig that sank in the North Sea in 1980. Several people were lost in the incident, and many of them were from here in Stavanger. The memorial consists of three massive links of chain, on of which is broken with the open part being to the sea, representing the lives torn away and lost there. There are also two plaques embedded on the rock below with the names of those lost.
After the hike, Sidney and I did a little fishing off the dock in front of our building. I have regularly seen people catching mackerel and cod there, so I wanted to give it a try. No license is required to fish in the fjord or the sea, and the preferred "bait" are lures, so it is a pretty cheap form of entertainment. We caught five mackerel (I threw the first back for good measure.) The largest was a female and was much larger that the males. We have looked up some mackerel recipes and will give them a try this week. If they are good, it could cut down on the grocery bill a little!
We were planning on doing the "Seven Nuts" hike this weekend, but decided not to try it. If you refer to an earlier blog entry, you see that we did Dalsnuten, which is one of the mountains across the fjord from us. There are actually seven peaks (nuts, pronounced NOOTS) on the other side, and there was an organized event this weekend to hike all seven in a row. The entire hike is about 18 kilometers. We decided we would take it a little easier this weekend, as we have been pretty busy almost every other weekend. We went to church this morning (we are attending the Anglican church here) and came home to rest this afternoon. We will, at some point, hike the seven nuts, but will probably enjoy it more when there aren't a bunch of other nuts trying it at the same time as us.
No comments:
Post a Comment