On the perfect Oslo day, the air is warm. The sun, up since 3:30am, swings slowly overhead. Trees sway gently in manicured rows. The air is sweet with the scent of freshly clipped lawns and flowers blooming in window-boxes. Today was just such a day. After writing at a…
33 Posts
All posts tagged Summer Stuff
Radio Silence Above the Arctic Circle
Things will be quiet behind the red door for a few days. In April, I gave Jonathan his birthday gift of plane tickets to a dream destination, and now we finally get to realize that dream. For the next ten days, we'll be trekking and tramping around the Lofoten Islands,…
Oslo in Motion: 12,000 photos in 5 minutes
Opening with one of the eternal sunsets for which Scandinavia is so well known, just behind Gustav Vigeland's infamously Angry Baby, this video from Kristian Larsen captures the true, modern personality of Oslo. Oslo in Motion from Kristian Larsen on Vimeo . All the city's landmarks are here, from the Opera…
The Delights of Midsummer
I could smell smoke. Cigarettes, wood fires, weed. The music and rhythm of parties echoed up and down our street. A group of twenty young people gathered across the street. I leaned over the railing from my apartment balcony to see them. Smart phones twinkled in their hands. Their voices…
Besiding: One Basically Epic Week in Oslo (in just 10 steps!)
Four and a half days. That was all. And some of that time must be spent sleeping. Sleeping instead of laughing, embracing, catching-up. Three times Audrey counted it. Four and a half days. And tomorrow her guests would arrive. I'm being dramatic, and I'm cheating a little, too. There's nothing…
If you must leave a place...
"I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you…
The Common Lilac
Oslo waxed lilac overnight. Fat and elegantly bunched, they waited until we were asleep to arrive, to place themselves in the trees and bloom. Where one week ago there were only the wet, black branches and sharply-new green leaves of a tardy spring, suddenly blossoms appeared. Purple and white. Immaculate…
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,…