Driving along California's endless freeways you're bound to see a memorial. Heaps of fabric flowers, ragged under the hot sun, ragged in the windy backwash of speeding cars, clinging to chain link fences and sign posts. A simple cross. Faded plastic icons. Candles that can't hold a flame. How long…
Publication News: North of the Sun, South of the Moon
Holland House and The Oslo International Writers' Group are proud to present the group's first anthology, North of the Sun, South of the Moon: New Voices from Norway . My nonfiction essay, Orientation, will appear alongside the fiction, nonfiction, and poetry of seven of my talented fellow OIWG members: Zoe Harris…
Our Third Dugnad
Each spring, the tenants in our apartment building in Oslo come together for an afternoon of unpaid, voluntary, organized community work. This is a dugnad , a Norwegian tradition in which a bunch of people, in this case neighbors, join forces to spruce up their public, shared spaces. In my opinion,…
ÆØÅ Size Matters: The Funniest Norwegian Video
Warning: This video is probably not work safe. It's crude and rude and unbelievably hilarious. Last week, I blogged about the Russian language and how it threw me during our recent trip to St. Petersburg. I did have a positive revelation, though. Suddenly, Norwegian looked comfortingly familiar to this happy…
Wishing I could read Russian
It took less than a minute after the plane landed on the tarmac in St. Petersburg for me to realize that this vacation was going to be drastically different than the rest. All I had to do was get through passport control. I froze. My eyes flicked wildly from wall…
My Birthday Wish: Ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre
Photo: St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre. Photo via RussianTourism.com. Sometimes I'm such a girl. When Jonathan asked me what I wanted to do for my 30th birthday, I told him the truth, even though it felt like a pipe dream. I wanted to attend a ballet at St. Petersburg's legendary…
A Look Inside Oslo's Rådhuset (City Hall)
On Sunday, City of Oslo, VisitOSLO , and Ruter hosted Turist i Egen By , an annual event which, in English, translates to Tourist in Your Own City . Free Oslo Passes for everyone! I'm a huge fan of the Oslo Pass, and I always recommend it to people visiting for more than…
Unfriended: Enough is enough
I've been accused of cowardice. Yesterday, I reached out and told someone that I didn't agree with him. Not a shocker. We don't agree on much. But I also told him, via a Private Message (PM), that he ought to be more careful of the kinds of things he posts…