Rica Victoria Hotel Lillehammer

... it will be hard to get a meal that is below $20 anywhere. I think that I've fallen in love with almost every aspect of Norway. I love the beauty. I love the culture. I love the people. I love the city. I love the country. I love the snow. I love the mountains. It's wonderful. Don't worry, though....I still love all of you more than that. :) Take care and write to me! I love to hear what everyone is up to at home. God Bless! xoxo

... flavored mayo. It was just kind of a weird texture. Here is a picture of the meal. Yes! I took a picture! I couldn't believe I was going to eat FISH, let alone a FISH PANCAKE!!! :) For everyday meals we eat a lot of grains and dairy. The bread comes in fresh loaves you cut yourself. We eat a lot of granola, wasa, sandwiches, lefse, cheese, yogurt, milk, juice ...

... and delight that summer has arrived is infectious to all. No wonder summer is the busiest tourist season in Scandinavia!! After quickly packing up our luggage and checking out of the Munch Hotel in the morning, Claudia and I boarded the Oslo S-Lillehammer train on track 11, my most favorite and well-known route. I took this train many, many times (at least 20 times!) to and from Oslo, and I still firmly believe that the train is by far the best ...

... they really enjoyed dancing around the Christmas tree with everyone else while the Norwegians sang loud drunken Christmas songs. Just before the night was over I manged to get in some Norwegian swing dancing (I don't know where this style of swing comes from, but it's certainly not west-coast or lindy like we dance at home!), but it was the perfect end to the evening.

... it turned out to be a great crowd. We had a full turkey complete with stove top stuffing, veggeterian stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, green beans, rolls, baked brussels sprouts, and sweet potatoes. I completely forgot that the sweet potatoes had to be baked first to soften them, so they took extra long and were not finished cooking until half-way through dinner, and I added 3x the cinnamon and vanilla required in the recipe I ...

... to see a group of four comedians who call themselves Team Eckbo. They are absolutely hillarious. I had seen a DVD of 3 of the comedians plus one other guy in a group called Team Antonsen over the summer, so I recognized some of the stuff they brought up. It was all in Norwegian, so I didn't understand a good portion of it, but I still enjoyed it a lot. I think I understood maybe 55-65%, then just laughed at 25% of the things I didn't get because the ...

... are from the same general region. Finally, we were able to convince them to make the trip back up the long, icy road to the train station so we could make our train back to Hamar. We caught it with two minutes to spare, and laughed and laughed with tears in our eyes the entire way back to Hamar. Now really, how many other times in life do you get to say, "Yeah, I hung out with Serbian and Albanian politicians who are my dad's age in Norway when I studied ...

... the title is 15 stories about crossing borders. It's all about Norwegian identity and it addresses how that identity has changed or perhaps not changed over the years. Norway has only been an independent country for 101 years, so you might see how such a young country (relatively speaking) value identity quite highly. I mean, of all the Scandinavian countries, what makes Norway think it is so different, so unique from the others...especially culture-wise? I have to ...

... because most of our food was frozen, and for some reason the charcoal didn't catch very thoroughly. In any case, we had a fun time chatting and watching all the little kids running around the play area near our picnic table. NOTHING is open on Sundays, so everyone goes out walking or riding their bikes, and the parks are full of kids and their parents. I don't enjoy having to remember to buy extra food on Saturday, but I really like the atmosphere on Sundays.

... scared. We were in safe hands. Apparently our driver has never crashed or gone off the tracks. The track is 1.7km long and 110 metres high. We travelled at about 120 kms an hour with a g-force of 4.5 and finished in about 60 seconds. A few guys pushed us to get us going, at first it wasn't to bad, then it was really fast. I kept hitting my head on the cage, side to side and above- good thing for ...