Sommerferie

SUMMER HOLIDAY WAHOOO!!!

So tomorrow my dear lady and I begin our three week Summer holiday, for the Americans out there I'm using the word holiday in the British sense, where you would say vacation, I'm not talking about some crazy Summer religious festival. Now I will talk all about the different places were going when we are back and instead here want to talk about general Norwegian Summer holiday period, known as Sommerferie. Now as I have mentioned more than once, Norwegians love there free time, these are a people that work to live and this is never more obvious than around the summer time.

Warning, some of the following information will cause major jealousy!!

Firstly, summer working hours. The usual working hours in Norway are 8-16 (4pm) which in my opinion already kicks the ass of the 9-5/6 in England. Being home by 16 is awesome and still leaves so much of the day. However in summer they go one further and nearly everyone as far as I can tell finishes one hour earlier. Thats right, while my friends and family are back in England slaving away until all hours, by 15:30 everyone in Norway is already half naked sunbathing in their gardens and heating up the barbecue. One thing I found really strange about Norway when arriving last summer was how tanned people were, especially those aged about 40 and up. This is because by that age they have gardens and as soon as its over 15 degrees, will be outside sunning themselves. Also it only needs to be about again that 15 degree mark before the idea of eating indoors becomes insane. This may just be my Norwegian family, but I'm under the impression its quite wide spread. Now the English love a barbecue as much as the next nation but Jesus I had no idea the Norwegians were so into it, although being massive carnivores and loving simple pure food (meat, potato veg) it should have hardly surprised me.

Now a lot of you will be asking the exact same question I did when I first discovered about summer working hours, do they get paid for that hour? Well I've only asked a few people and after knowing the culture so well after a year I was fairly unsurprised to discover they had no idea and didn't seem to even slightly care. A state of affairs that says so much about Norwegians really. Those who work hourly rates will almost certainly not get paid, and as so often they will probably need it the most and of course my heart goes out to all those who are probably losing 20 odd hours a month wages. But for the average Norwegian all they care about is more time to do the things that really matter in life, which is anything but working.

To go back a little, you may think that my taking a three week holiday is a little extreme, and I would agree with you. I have only been on two holidays longer than a week in my life that I recall. But once again this is common in Norway. Norwegians get 5 days more holiday a year than most other countries so they still have loads left after three weeks anyway and when the weather is at its best, its time to travel. This undoubtedly stretches back to when many people would travel to there cottages. If your going to make the trek and take everything with you, you might as well drag it out. The big change here now though is not everyone goes to cottages, a lot still do, but the most important thing is to head south. The Norwegians refer to the Spain and Portugal area as "Syden" which is where 90% of Norwegians (as far as I can tell) spend there holidays, mostly Spain though.

Ok so with everyone working an hour less and huge amounts of people taking weeks off at a time, there must be some knock on affects right? Now I'm half tempted to lie and just say "No Norway is so awesome that things just go on exactly as they normally do despite all this". That would be a stone cold lie, in fact everything is effected, massively! Ok lots of it may not seem that big, and in many ways it isnt, but I still find it shocking. Basically every company in the country weither its state or private is running on a skeleton crew so just don't expect anything to get done. The effected areas are so massive its difficult to truly explain so I will stick to the simple things I have encountered personally. Public transport is far less frequent so my 40 minute journey home from work is now at least an hour. Every job I have applied for in the last month has emailed me saying that now its "sommerferie" no further progress will be made until August. Finally almost no houses are up for sale.

As I say many of these are small things, but it can all get rather tedious, I'm starting to believe the whole country is in a catch 22 and everyone goes on long holidays because everyone else is and therefore nothing can get done. I should probably stop there though as I have spent most of this post being positive and I wouldn't like to ruin it, after all I so often use this blog as a place to vent frustration that its about time I stacked the deck in Norway's favour.

The Gentry Troll

Ok so the insanely observant among you may notice I have a new profile picture which is the little fella above. Now Im not at all happy with how this turned out in terms of quality as its very clearly a few pictures plopped together not very cleverly using adobe illustrator (a program I had never used before creating this), but its something I've wanted to depict since coming up with the name of this blog and I couldn't resist showing it.

So here it is, the pretty feeble first attempt to give you an idea of what I had pictured in my head when I came up with the idea of a "Gent Turning Troll". Im aware its in fact a troll with some gentry clothing and therefore sounds like the wrong way around, but in my head it works, and let me explain. I may one day transform into a full blown Norwegian (the troll) but I have no doubt I will always hold my own culture, beliefs and all the many facets of myself that culminated from growing up on the shores of Britain. So where as I may appear Norwegian to many and blend in well with great Norwegian and live in a wooden painted house and own a cabin in the county, I will still very clearly be something else. I will not be an English gent carrying skis and wearing a Norwegian wool jumper like a tourist, I will be a Norwegian Troll dressed in British Black Tie attire very clearly reminding the Norwegians that I am still me, and reminding those back home that I always will be. Its a strange metaphor and I really hope it makes some sense to others as I have made it do so in my head

I should say that I will be working on a much better version of this at some point but essentially the basic idea is very much there, a troll in a bowtie, tophat and a monacle. One day, if my assimilation goes as planned and I can either create or have someone create one for me, I may even get this as a tattoo. Anyone who thinks that is strange please follow the link below to a pots about my first tattoo for some context.
http://gent-turning-troll.blogspot.no/2012/02/mario-bros.html

Et år I Norge (One year in Norway)

So once again I disappeared into the wilderness and for this I can only apologise. It all started after I took a short week back in England which messed with my rhythm. I then came back planning to write loads about the trip and even wrote two posts, only to then decide I was waffling on far too much about unimportant or irrelevant stuff and so just deleted them. To then make it worse shortly after my laptop officially gave in, I did almost immediately go out and buy myself a lovely new machine but sadly, never got back on the horse. This is particularly annoying as I missed my one year anniversary in these fine lands which was on June 10th.

Here I am though, back in the saddle and I am going to try and slip in two or three posts in the next couple of days before I begin my summer holiday. Firstly there is the usual house keeping subjects to address which are; employment, language and living. None have actually had the dramatic catalyst just yet but all have moved on notably in the last couple of months and while I may be still far behind where Id hoped I would be after a year when I arrived, things have never looked more positive.

So employment, its a quick one so lets get it out the way. I'm still in my temporary job, I have grown to enjoy it more as time as passed, particularly as of late where I have had a wider variety of things to do. That being said of course I am still desperate to find a more permanent and relevant position but alas that is still yet to happen, one lives in hope.

The living situation is also still the same with Marianne and I still lurking in the basement of her parents. This area however has developed very interestingly now though as we have had multiple meetings with the bank and now have our figure to start bidding when we find the right place. Its a massive massive step and it feels great to be ready to go. We have looked at a few places and I will probably right a whole post on this when I return but suffice to say its a tough choice so may be a little more time before we finally get out own home. Everything is ready to go though and I'm really excited/nervous about finding the place we will eventually call out home.

Language as always is the big one to discuss and as is often the case I can say Im pleased with my progress. I went away recently for a cabin trip with a load of my guy mates, now this is the same trip I made just a week or so after arriving in Norway regular readers may remember and it was a nice milestone for assessing just how far Id come in a year. True, when people spoke to me directly we spoke English and this is still always the case generally. That being said however it was amazing to realise just how much I understood and it really made a difference. Its the simple things like someone making a joke at the dinner table, overhearing an interesting conversation between the two guys sitting next to you and being able to join in that was really amazing.

As much as I want to practice more and get over my shyness of talking Norwegian, understanding really is the key. I find myself keeping up with basically everything these days and even though I switch the conversation to English when I speak which still makes me feel rather like a burden, being able to get involved, understand the passing jokes being made in Norwegian make for such an amazingly increased feeling of inclusion. I still have a long way to go of course, but the cabin trip especially was a really nice way for me to see just how far I'd come, something that is so often hard to quantify.

Finally I will say both on the language topic and it being the only other thing of note really happening recently is that I have finally gotten on a Norsk Kors, a Norwegian language course. To get this sorted has been a nightmare, one I will probably re-live in its own post when I start the course, but starting one I am. It begins in late August and I'm really looking forward to it.