Today, I overslept. I’ve been getting used to the sunlight, and our room has no windows and stayed dark. Must have slept through my alarm until 11:05 or so. Little did I know that they kick you out of this hostel from 11-1 for cleaning! It was posted on some bulletin boards, but no one at reception mentioned it to me. Sheesh! I also only had the first night booked, so I had to rush to the desk to extend myself a few nights. Asked the dude if they are pretty strict with the kick out and if I could grab a shower, he basically just said no to that. Thanks buddy! I rushed back to the room to grab some laundry and toiletries… I usually need a shower to wake up, so I was a little out of it.
After a short search for the laundromat, I found it with a “Be back soon” sign on the door, sweet! Went to tourist info to check out some… tourist info. Mainly fjord tours, I read in my Frommers about a tour called Norway in a Nutshell that was supposed to be pretty awesome. There’s a few tours, but I am considering taking one that starts in Bergen, then a train to Voss, then a bus to a mountain town called Gudvangen, then a ferry ride through the fjords to a town called Flaam at the end of one of the fjords, then a train back to Bergen via a mountain town called Myrdal. I already saw the last leg, and Flaam was my next place to stay, so I thought I’d see if I could just skip the last two train rides. Didn’t have time, but grabbed a booklet about the tour.
Got the laundry going, ate some kebab and walked around… they have a pretty famous fish market there in Bergen so I checked that out. All the people working there had these neon orange overalls with navy blue hoodies, pretty fisherman looking. It’s kind of pandemonium there, lots of old folks meandering around looking at the fish. I had heard whale meat is easy to get in Bergen, but everything looked so expensive. I didn’t see salmon prices, but I figured there was so much it would be reasonable… would buy some later.
That evening, some Scottish girls I was rooming with came back and I ended up taking a walk around town with them. They were sisters and had grown up on a sheep farm in Shetland… as they said, they don’t have that many sheep, just about a thousand. Whoa! I don’t know, sounds like a ton to me! I guess everything is relative. One of them is studying environmental chemistry in Glasgow and the other happily works in a bakery in Shetland. They were homeschooled for the second half of the education, I guess they were getting homework that they weren’t taught, so their parents decided to try to do a better job with them and their 4 siblings. That must have been fun!
They didn’t have any money, but they said that the farm life was a great life… their parents were hard-working, positive, and always around. This trip has only reinforced my opinion that kids don’t need material things, just time with their folks, to have a good life. Growing up in Libertyville, the ultimate suburb, I became very cynical about suburban life. Basically my view is this: The parents grew up with very little and vowed that their kids would have a better life and not know the same kind of hardship. So, many of them ended up at jobs they didn’t really want because they were paid the right amount. Many had a long commute because the good job and the good schools/houses/communities aren’t always near each other.
So what you end up with is strung out parents that aren’t happy with their job and they come home to these spoiled kids that are all messed up because they don’t see their parents enough. But, they have plenty of toys and stuff to distract them. So they become focused on the material stuff… it’s an ugly cycle! I mean, in my high school, there were so many brilliant kids that were just conflicted and messed up. Well no wonder. It’s like the kids don’t have the monetary hardship, but they are burdened with an emotional one instead. Yeesh! And the parents too, I think so many feel frustrated with their kids and part of this is an element of resentment. They are working so hard to give the kids a good life, but the kids don’t appreciate it enough. It just doesn’t work for either party!
Now, I’m just saying that this is the norm that I’ve observed. I’ve known some parents who work hard and still manage to spend time and energy with their kids. I’m not saying that suburban life doesn’t produce good peoples… I mean, this was the environment that produced yours truly, the most humble and amazing person I know. But seriously, I’m not trying to toot my own horn or anything, but I think one of the reasons I turned out well was because my parents made a conscious decision that one parent would stay home with the kids until they were old enough to be independent. It’s like the simplest thing in the world. All kids need is love and time, and maybe parents that don’t bring anger and stress home from work. Gah!
So yeah, if I ever have my own family, I’ll make sure I can provide this kind of positive environment and if I can’t, then I won’t have them. It is a choice to have kids or not, especially these days. I mean, I’m young yet, but we’ll see. I guess it’s a moot point since I’m missing half of the equipment required to have kids at this point 🙂 Maybe even more than half 🙂
Ok enough parent ranting, I just will say that the place that I’m at in life is due in no small part to what my parents did with me. There was a lot of kicking and screaming along the way, but I am happy to be who I am, happy to be where I am in my life, and I owe that to them. Maybe I’ve figured out a lot of things on my own and from my bro and sis, friends, people I’ve met… but I had a strong foundation to build from and stand on. Thanks mom and dad! Mush mush!
Anyway, the first place I went with the Scots was a nice round fountain in the main part of town, and the other park we found was an awesome park full of druggies! Just inside the park, we found a couple of benches to hang out on and chat, when one of the girls noticed the discarded syringes on the ground! When we continued through the park, we took a turn and there were some younger dudes that said something in Norwegian to me, not that threatening or anything just sounded like a “What’s up”. I just said hey and continued walking with the girls… same thing happened again about 100 meters later. I didn’t feel worried about it at all, at the time I just figured they were hanging out, maybe something was going down but I didn’t get any danger signals from them.
So don’t worry mom! It was like 4 oclock in the afternoon anyway. The rest of the park was lovely as well, there were some college kids juggling a soccerball and some others just laying out. Nice and relaxing. We ended up walking back through town and the girls decided to do some reading, so I headed back to the fish market! Hello salmon, I am coming for you! I walked boldly to the fish lady, and said I just want a small cut of salmon… she had me point to the spot I wanted her to cut and she cut me maybe a 5 ounce portion. She weighed it and told me it cost 70, which is like 9-10 dollars. Whoa! At home I get 6 oz salmon fillets for 4. I thought a second and decided this opportunity to have fresh salmon from the fish market in Bergen might not come again so quickly and told her to wrap it up.
She replied by asking, “Do you know what this is?” I said no, and I am kicking myself for not being a smartass and saying something like, “Ummmm i’m pretty sure it’s salmon.” She explained that it was the best wild salmon in the place, and it’s like some 450 krona per kg, which is about 35 per pound or something crazy. But she said it’s the best salmon in the world and I’d know that when I tasted it, yeah yeah just wrap it up. It turns out she meant 79, not 70. I could tell it was an honest mistake in the English, but asked her about it and she seemed to think I was really upset with the price. She was like, “If I came to the market to buy a little fish and then it was that price, I would be very upset.” So she told me to come back the next day and she would give me a little fish. I took my expensive salmon to the hostel and looked up a good simple way to cook it.
I had some free corn from the hostel and some pasta as well, the internet explained that I could just put a little oil, lemon, salt and pepper on the salmon and in the pan and cook it up that way. So I prepared my little feast… some other people in the hostel were a little interested by some real cooking effort going down in the hostel and made some encouraging comments. My favorite part was the lemon, I’ve never cut up a lemon before and the internet told me to cut a hole in the bottom. Basically I cut it up in a few different places before I got some juice out of it. Chefmaster Mike in the hizzy yall! In the end, I put just a little too much salt on it, but eating it with my bland noodles kind of balanced it out. The salmon itself was in fact the best salmon I’ve ever had. It tasted like salmon, but the flavor was somehow just more… flavorful. The consistency was different as well… a little firmer or something. Oh mommy was it nice! The best part is, at 79 krona, it still was cheaper than any restaurant out here. Meals run at 100 or more, it’s sick. A kebab and a drink cost me 55 krona, 8 dollars. Sheesh!
After dinner, grabbed a beer with the chemist Scot and some other roommate from England. He was a social worker that basically sets people up with housing. Interesting chat, he said his work is both inspiring and making him cynical. On the one hand, some good people that need a hand up get some help. On the other hand, there’s corruption and people taking advantage. He said the more memorable situation is where there’s a single mom with a kid that gets knocked up again and then asks for a bigger house. And she gets it over honest, hard-working people that need it. He said one woman did this all the way up to 5 kids. Sheesh! But it was nice to throw back a couple of beers. Oh and they were about 9-10 dollars each. My kronas are flying away!
Tomorrow will be a 4 hour fjord starting at 10:30 and then maybe I’ll finally get to do some playing in the mountains! I have a feeling that the Bergen hiking will beat out the Oslo stuff I did… the view of the sea here is just amazing!