The food was excellent, with a mix of local seafood and Norwegian traditional "Julemat" (Christmas food.) We got to try the pinnekjot and ribbe mentioned in a previous post, and they were very good. As we live on the coast, the seafood was excellent, though I did not venture for the lutefisk.
There were some entertaining presentations, as well as some awards given out. The office had a competition to see which team could have the most minutes of exercise daily (averaged) this past summer. Kimber's team won, and they were each given a medal and a bottle of champagne. As Kimber does not like bubbles, I thanked her for her hard work as she presented the bottle to me. As I was there participating in many of the bike rides and hikes that gave her the minutes (her team averaged 65 minutes a day), I did help to earn it.
We put up our Christmas tree this weekend. We did not bring our tree from home with us, as it is pre-lit and would not work with the electrical system here. We bought an unlit artificial tree and some lights, then had to go back to the store three times to get the correct lights for the tree. Unlike light sets in the U.S. that all have the same plug on the end and all work on the same voltage, lights here are “systems” and vary in plug sizes and voltages. Oh, and our two 100-LED light strings cost around $60 (after the 40% off sale.) But the tree is up and decorated! We used our ornaments we brought with us as well as some local ornaments purchased here that we will add to our growing collection.
The sun is rising much later and setting much earlier here. Sunrise occurs after 9 a.m. and sunset is before 4 p.m. We are losing about 3 minutes a day right now, and by December 21st, we will have 6 hours and 11 minutes of sunlight during the day. The sun also is pretty low in the sky, not getting any higher than about “10 o’clock” and staying southerly the whole time. This panorama was of a lake this past weekend, and was taken about 3:30 p.m. You can see how dark it seems.
The temperatures have also dropped quite a bit in the last few days. I noticed the mountains in the distance on the other side of the fjord are snow-capped now. The Tuesday temperature is not supposed to get above freezing, and Thursday calls for near-gale winds.
Wind is another thing that involves some interesting translation. All wind below near-gale force is called a “breeze"- gentle, fresh, moderate or strong. I don’t think we would have identified a 30 mph wind as a “breeze” back home!
Finally, we went to Kongeparken last night for their annual children’s Christmas party. For those that didn’t see the previous Kongeparken post, it is a local amusement park, similar to Six Flags in idea but more on scale with a good county fair. There were several activities, including building a bird feeder, making some Christmas decorations and decorating a big gingerbread cookie. There was also an all-you-can-eat buffet, which in Norway is well worth the $25 admission fee! Some rides were open, such as the bumper cars (seen here), but the temperatures were at or below freezing (which is why we are all bundled up!) It was a nice treat and certainly a little taste of local Norwegian Christmas culture.
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