Well hey there everyone – it’s been a while since I’ve rapped at you, but that’s because I’ve been accumulating strange and mildly amusing stories to tell.

For example, since we last spoke, I have traveled the fjords with dozens of Japanese tourists, explored Bergen’s (mostly surrealist) art scene with Megan, graded my first high school and university essays, and travelled to Trondheim for my first Norwegian frisbee tournament. Now don’t get the wrong impression. The vast majority of my time is spent on mundane activities. I estimate that 64% of my time is spent reheating leftovers in my stoveless/microwaveless kitchen, for instance. But, still, I have a couple real winners to tell.

We’ll go in chronological order, beginning with Megan’s visit. Many of you, no doubt, have already perused her facebook album, and so you have the general outlines of the trip. Here’s a one picture summary:

As my Aunt Sara commented, “Gotta love a pretty girl with a big smile! Oh, hi Fas Co.” This from my own flesh and blood.

One of the most interesting moments of her visit was our Norway in a Nutshell tour, specifically the fjord leg which we shared with a large group of Japanese tourists. Because of my crippling self-consciousness and hipsterish fetish for authenticity, I’ve always been terrified of appearing to be a tourist. Even going on the Norway in a Nutshell tour at all is a major test of my ability to act like someone who is on vacation.

Japanese tourists, at least the ones on this fjord cruise, do not share this ethos. Being a tourist is not something to avoid, but rather something to master. Of course, there are different areas of tourism in which to excel. Some focus on camera size. One couple asked me to take their picture, which is a courtesy I am normally happy to provide, but in this case the couple refused my assistance, as it was painfully obvious that my arms were not strong enough to hold his camera. (This story isn’t true in the strictest sense – I did, in fact, take several pictures with the man’s DSLR, but as it was the size of a volkswagen, I was unable to lift my arms for several days.) Others concentrate on maintaining wifi connectivity at all times, regardless of the rugged, UNESCO-World-Heritage-recognized beauty one finds themselves in. Still others focus on baiting, and then photographing, seagulls.

Most shocking was boarding the ferry. Generally boarding a fjord ferry is an exercise in calm, Norwegian efficiency. There is no shouting or pushing, and I believe the last time a Norwegian shoved another human in cold blood was during the resistance to the German occupation. Not so with this fjord cruise, however – the Japanese tourists boarded with a remarkable intensity, causing the Norwegian ticket taker to shout in anger. This, as far as I know, has never before occurred. In summary, here is a picture of a Japanese guy looking at some deer heads which had only just recently been attached to deer bodies. The little fluffy dog, by the way, was travelling with the hunters, and so I can only assume that he is a vicious deer hunting dog.

I also just noticed that the Japanese man seems to be levitating. Huh.

We’ll skip Megan and I’s experiences in art museums, only suggesting that the exhibit on the Bergen 70s avant-garde is well worth seeing. The Munch exhibit, however, is actually really amazing.

We’ll also move quickly by my students’ essays, just noting that in response to the question “What did John Winthrop mean by the phrase ‘a city upon a hill,” one university student responded that “The phrase ‘a city upon a hill’ might refer to a city built on a hill”. Technically speaking, I think it’s hard to find anything wrong with that assertion.

Let’s get down to brass tacks. I spent this last weekend in Trondheim defending the honor of the University of Bergen on the frisbee field. It was a fantastic experience – one of the best weekends I’ve had in a long time.

I arrived in Trondheim just after noon on Friday. I didn’t have anything to do for a while, and so I wandered around blindly. Here’s a couple pictures of things that I saw:

The coolest thing, which I foolishly did not photograph, was Trondheim’s automated bicycle lift. You put your foot on a metal platform that looks kind of like a sprinter’s foot block, and then it starts moving up the hill. You just have to keep your foot behind you and let it push you and your bike up the hill. I didn’t have a bike, but it looked extremely fun.

Eventually, I made my way to a fellow Fulbrighter’s apartment on the outskirts of town. The large distance between this apartment and the city center becomes an important plot point later on, so be sure to note it. We were planning to go to halloween party later, but we didn’t have any costumes, so we bicycled on down to the salvation army to pick something up. The selection was pretty weak, but Hans managed to find a large teddy bear, which he subsequently brutally murdered and converted into a ghoulish bear costume. His plan was to combine that with a witch costume to make the Bear Witch Project, but the witch costume, against my strenuous objections, was determined to be too revealing for the general public, and so he put on an old suit and became a formally dressed bear.

I struggled to find anything resembling a costume, and I was eventually forced to choose between sexy santa (a santa hat and a vinyl tube top with the word ‘ho’ written all over it) (by the way, when I say that the word ho was written on it, I mean in the literal sense) and a old west Mexican cowboy. This costume was a vaguely southwestern tablecloth and a tiny cowboy hat, and I figured it was slightly less offensive than the sexy santa. Anyway, here’s a picture of us:

I now realize that I was actually dressed as a old west Mexican cowboy double amputee.

It was a short bike ride to the forspiel, which means foreplay literally, but in this case means pregame. This is a key translation to understand just in case a Norwegian ever invites you to do something on a weekend evening. Anyway, the only incident that happened on the way there was when Hans’s bike broke, and a bus of people passing by saw a bear and mexican cowboy repairing a bicycle. The pregame was with several of the other fulbrighters, who are awesome, but we soon moved to a second pregame, where I had the unfortunate experience of trying to explain to several mexicans that I was not the kind of American who thinks it’s ok to stereotype Mexican people. This is difficult to do convincingly when you’re wearing a old west Mexican cowboy costume, which (I forgot to mention) included a handmade mustache made out of teddy bear flank.

The actual party itself was extremely fun, but I had to leave early to get some sleep before the frisbee tournament. I woke early, and caught a series of buses to take me to where the tournament was supposed to be. I arrived, and found myself at a satellite campus of the university in what appeared to be the country side. There was no building that even remotely resembled a gym, and so I wandered around blindly (I seem to do that quite a bit). Eventually I found a disk golf disk, and I reasoned that if I followed the holes, I might find the frisbee tournament. This turned out not to be the case, but I eventually found the tournament.

The tournament itself was excellent, although we didn’t win and my performance was inconsistent. We did get second, however. Here’s a picture of the team:

Afterwards, we showered and quickly prepared for the dinner/party. This was exceptionally fun. We went to an Indian restaurant for dinner, which was quite good, and then to a rock club for the drinking. We finished up at the Samfundet, which is a very famous student-run club in Trondheim. It’s a very strange and enormous place with lots of small rooms with different vibes – they have everything from pub-like rooms, to classy wine bars, to a place called ‘the meat market’. We found an oldies room, and had a fantastic time dancing to the B-52s and Van Morrison.

Eventually, the club closed, and we all had to figure out how to get home. It was about 2:30am. The bus to Hans’s apartment (which, you remember, might as well be in Sweden) had stopped running more than two hours earlier, and I was not about to pay for a taxi. I had expected this problem, and so I was planning on firing up google maps on my phone and walking to Hans’s house. I figured it would take 45 minutes, which isn’t so bad when you’re drunk and when you’re in one of the safest countries on earth. I began to set this plan into motion, but I quickly encountered several snags. First, my phone had run out of minutes, and so my data connection wasn’t functioning. Second, I had forgotten what the name of Hans’s apartment complex was.

I had exactly two pieces of information about where Hans lived: the #22 bus goes there and it’s quite far away. I also had this map:

I also was reasonably sure I could recognize it when/if I arrived.

I recently read a book called “We Die Alone” about a man who barely escaped a Nazi attack in Norway and escaped to Sweden, often getting lost in snow storms and trapped in snowbanks/avalanches for extended periods of time. I now have some idea of what this was like. I used the Hansel and Gretel navigation technique, but instead of bread crumbs, I had bus stops. I stopped at each one and checked to see if the 22 line was still among those listed. When it was, I kept going. When it wasn’t, I returned to the previous one and made a different turn.

It was cold, but also beautiful and very quiet. The grass and fallen leaves sparkled with frost, and the frozen puddles shattered beneath my feet. I knew I would eventually find it, and so I did – at 4am. You can imagine my happiness at finding the complex. I literally jumped for joy, snuck into Hans’s apartment, and fell asleep within seconds.

Sunday was a quiet, restful day, as was Sunday night. On Monday morning I flew back to Bergen, and now I am back in my dorm room. It was a great weekend, one not likely to be matched any time soon. Nonetheless, stay tuned for an update later this week – on Friday, I’m going curling. Check that one off the bucket list.

To send you on your way, here is an advertisement someone posted on the door to my dorm: