Post Depression Exhiliration

Did you know that I am writing this post merely one week after finishing the last one about Norway? That is because I have decided to contribute to this post regularly, so that it is more like a blog and less like a once-every-two-months essay.

Not much has happened since we returned from Norway. I have continued my moving into the new apartment rituals, bumped into Keanu Reeves and bought two novels to read and review. I know you would love to learn more about my Keanu Reeves experience, but it turns he (also) lives in the UWS and he (also) likes pizza places like Carmine's and so this was bound to happen sooner or later. Uma Thurman lives here too... but I haven't bumped into her while shopping for cucumbers at the Gourmet Garage YET. But again, this is bound to happen. I'm told talking about celebrity sightings is so passe...Yaaaawn. ( But because the value of a blog is linked to the blogger's honesty, I will add that I was jumping up and down when I saw Keanu Reeves. Partly because he looks JUST like himself in real life, and partly because I couldn't remember his real name... only 'Neo'. He was smoking and chatting up a girl... I wish I had one of those camera cellphones!)

I really want to host a party at my new apartment. Something about the big open space in the living room, neatly waxed bare floors and and unremarkable views from the living room windows seems to suggest that I should get a rocking party going. Lots of cool people in sequined tanks (or party shirts for the men) crowding the living room, spilling into the kitchen and bedrooms. Half-full bottles of wine on our makeshift dining table at one corner. The unobtrusive starbucks jazz CD playing on the music system. I can see it. I just don't have an excuse to party because the nicest thing that has happened recently is that I bought a completely new bedroom set. This is yet to be delivered, but it is the high point of my day right now. I don't think its appropriate to have a party to celebrate 'my new bedroom' (though Samantha did have a 'I'm still single' party... but that was Sex and the City, and this is my life). I suppose Animesh and I should celebrate the new bedroom ourselves, but we are a staid old couple. Thats not much fun. And we won't use up 1000 sq. ft. of space anyway. So while I continue to consider excuses for throwing my big bash, I am also browsing for deals on a queen size sheet set and pretty ceramic vases to place on top of the matching dresser.

Incidently, I have also taken internet shopping to a new low by visiting ebay.com regularly. I was nervous about my upcoming surgery, and simply wanted to distract myself. I bid on two auctions for paperback romance novels of the kind teenage girls read in school, and won them both. I am now the owner of 47 romances purchased for an unremarkable $4.00! The first 36 arrived quietly the day before my surgery, and I read two between bouts of hunger and diarrhea. Romance novels are like bad TV programs. They don't entertain or stimulate, but like greasy oil spillage they spread out on the ocean surface and protect it from any other rational thought.

In prepration for surgery, I had to restrict myself to a diet of clear fluids (juice, stock, tea) and avoid all dairy and solid foods. I was also given medication to induce heavy diarrhea... presumably to clear out my bowels, and preserve the surgeon's delicate nostrils from taking offense while he hacked into me. Bt the end of the day, my breath smelled of chicken stock, my bums were numb to all sensation and I hated myself.

We arrived for surgery at 6am the next day, emaciated and sleep deprived. Between 6am and 8:30am I was disrobed, placed on an operating table, attached to an IV and made to sign several consent forms stating that I understood the risks of getting Hysteroscopy and Laparascpy done, and that I wanted it done anyway. Mostly I remember waiting in different rooms with other gowned patients. Hospital attire is most unflattering, and designed, I think, to make the doctors look less silly in their scrubs. At one point in the operating room the anesthesiologist bent over me with a syringe and said 'Heres a little appetizer'... shortly thereafter a nurse was saying 'Wake up Gupta, your surgery is all done'. I was allowed to go home in a couple of hours, after I had performed the following tasks; coughed, had a glass of apple juice and urinated, the last of which brought me pain and discomfort, but who was I to complain. I was glad to get out of that place.

At home I promptly fell into deep sleep and had some very vivid dreams. I was walking about in the hospital with my own clothes and the hospital bracelet on. They had a huge auditorium where Rupa Bhajwa (a fairly new Indian author) was doing a signing for her new book, 'Interrupted'. Several people went up on stage and gave testimonials of how profound an impact she had on their lives, at which the whole crowd, Animesh included, broke into thunderous applause and tears of joy. I left the cultish gathering to find myself a bathroom which I remember visiting again and again due to my frequent and painful need to urinate. The toilets were run down, unisex and the stalls didn't close. Finally I was accosted by a large group of med students who demanded to know why I 'just sat there' for so long when so many 'of us need to go'. I pointed to my hospital bracelet and said 'because I am sick. See, I am a patient, please! I can't help it!'. I woke up then, embarrassed and needing to pee.

Velkommen Til Norge

I would call this blog entry 'All you wanted to know about Norway but were afraid to ask', but thats very cocky coming from someone who only spent nine days in Norway. Norway is really too big to cover in a week and a half. To get a flavor of all that the country has to offer, you really need about three weeks and a bottomless coffer. Norway is very expensive... Norwegians have one of the highest per capita income in the world, and poverty is almost non-existant, so hotels, food, travel and just about everything you will need is correspondingly expensive.

So anyway, Norway is definitely on the list of places to visit before you die. Its beautiful, its wild and its mostly untouched. If you are a vegetarian, consider carrying food for your entire trip because eating out in Norway is really not an option for you. Its helps to like fish, because you will be served fish, even for breakfast! (but the fish is good). The wild norwegian salmon is highly recommended cold smoked, warm smoked or marinated (grilled, poached or broiled it tastes very mediocre). They eat a lot of prawn too, and a full norwegian breakfast spread will have some prawn salad thrown in (like egg salad, but with prawn). They also have the traditional salted cod and storkfish. I didn't like that much. I don't think anyone eats that anymore... like yorkshire pudding in England- traditional, but ewww! Apart from fish, they also eat reindeer, elk and whale meat (though its probably one of those quaint things only served to tourists). I had assumed that Norwegian cuisine would be super bland, but it turns out that curry spice is a real big hit. My veggies were smothered in so much it was bordering on curry-abuse. But animesh loved curry marinated prawn on his pizza (pizza topped with prawn-- imagine that!).

Enough about food, everything else is easy for the tourist. They speak perfect english. I didn't get much of a chance to practice Norsk, but 'Whats up?' is 'Hvordan gOr det?' (the sound should come out of the pit of your stomach and sound like a throaty rumble) to which the polite response is 'Det gOr Bra!' 'Bra' being 'good'. Kylling was chicken, Fiske fish, Vann water, peanOtter peanuts, Toallett the toilet and 'Jeg ForstAr ikke' is 'I don't understand'. 'Ikke' is don't... so you have ikke to smoking and ikke for trespassing and such. They usually write everything in english as well, but when they didn't, possible translations were... umm interesting? (See picture where a road bump is preceded by the sign 'farts dempere' :-)

Now we stayed in Oslo for a day when we arrived and a couple of days on the way out. Oslo has a lively city center, where we stayed at the lovely Hotell Bondeheimen (say 'boon-deh -high-men'). They had nice touches like heated tiles in the bathroom, a tiny 'extra bed' near the window etc. The hotel was on Rosenkrantz gate (gah-tuh, meaning lane, I think) which lead into Karl Johann's Gate, the central nerve of the city. At one end of Karl Johann's gate is the palace of King Harald of Norway, and at the other end is a busy plaza with the Domkirke (cathedral), the Stortiget (parliament building) and train station. The amazing thing about the palace is that you can walk right up to the steps and no one will stop you. There were several guards all over, and we watched the Oslo version of the 'change of guards', which was fun. I know we saw the Stortinget from the outside and went into the domkirke, but I cannot remember enough about either now. Karl Johann's gate is the place to see and be seen. Everyone dressed well (as they always do in europe) and generally walked up and down smoking their cigarettes. Animesh and I walked up and down looking for cheap eats ... which we found at a kabab stand, but enough about food already. We checked out the bar/club scene a little and agreed that it was no New York City :-)

Beyond Karl Johann is the dock area called Aker Brygge (brig-guh, meaning dock). Aker Brygge gives you a stunning view of Oslofjorden (translates to 'The Fjord of Oslo'). It is flanked by an old fortress at one end (we climbed to the top of the fortress and got some great views of the Brygge too) and has a lot of cruise boats and sailboats docked all around it. On a two hour ferry cruise of Oslofjorden, we saw some pretty fishing villages with little cottages in bright red, blue and green colors. We also saw the Viking Ship museum in BigDoy Peninsula. Apart from Aker Brygge, I also liked the National Gallery and Vigenlandsparken. The national gallery has an extensive collection of Norwegian art. The most impressive were the works of Edvard Munch ( like 'monk'). It reminded me a lot of the paintings of Goya that we saw on an earlier trip to Barcelona. They were similarly dark and intense, and Munch even suffered insanity for several years before coming back with more dark paintings. Unfortunately, the national gallery did not have the famous 'Scream' painting, which lives in the Munch Museum. Apart from Munch, and to my untrained eye, all other norwegian artists seemed to be deeply influenced by their (more famous) french and italian contemporaries. We had recently seen a cezanne-pissaro exhibition at MoMa (Museum of Mordern Art, NYC), and all the landscapes at the national gallery seemed to fit that approximate style and timeframe, except that they were paintings of fjords and glaciers instead of rolling meadows.

Oslo is full of museums, and many of them are closed on weekends and certain weekdays. The Vikingskiphuset (Viking ship museum) has three viking burial ships retrieved from land excavations. Though we didn't visit them, the BigDoy peninsula also houses the Frammuseet (Fram was the sealing ship used to make the first human voyage to the south pole), the Kon-tiki museet (shows Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl's Balsawood raft which he used to traverse the pacific from peru to polynesia -- in a bid to prove that pre-inca peruvians were the first polynesian settlers), and the Norskfolkmuseet (as the name suggests, the Norwegian Folk Museum). Other museums in Oslo are: Ibsenmuseet, vigelandsmuseet, munch museet, the nobel peace prize -museet, every little thing has its own museet!

Vigelandsparken (Vee-hey-land, The park of Vigeland) is located in central Oslo, a short bus-ride away from Karl Johann's gate. But because public transportation, like everything else in Norway, is so expensive, we wanted to save our return fare by rushing back within the hour. Vigenlandsparken certainly deserves more than an hour of your time. In the 1920s, the city of Oslo commissioned Gustav Vigeland to create what is now Vigelandsparken. Vigeland lived and worked in the park for the next twenty years producing over a hundred sculptures in bronze and stone. The sculptures, that line the walkways in the park, show men, women and children and their relationships with each other. They are simple and beautiful. According to the literature, Vigeland was deeply influenced by Rodin at this time. At the center of the park is a huge obelisk with human figurines (?) clambering all over each other as if to get on top. I regret not having any good pictures to show from that day... I really need to update my travel gear with a new digital camera... Hmmm.

We went over to Bergen by train and the passing landscape was so beautiful I thought I was in the heart of Montana. Bergen used to be the capital of Norway at one time. The prominently located tourist office bills Bergen as the cultural capital of Norway (it was home to famous norwegian composer Edvard Grieg) and tries to sell you deals to see 'Bergen in a Nutshell'. I didn't think there was that much to see in Bergen other than the historic dock area, Bryggen. The Bryggen has rows of old timber buildings where all-male communities of Hanseatic Merchants operated trading stations in the early 1700s. The gloomy narrow buildings, with their oppressive regularity and pervading smell of fish actually gives an eerie sense of a time gone by. The Bryggen now houses souvenier shops and was the most charming part of Bergen... or maybe a close second to the nearby Torget.

The Torget is the area at the end of the Brygge , and every morning the area becomes a bustling fish market, with loud and colorful fishmongers pushing smoked salmon and boiled prawns on passing tourists. The fishmongers were mostly european students, and they claimed to do business fluently in Italian, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Dutch. I could only verify that they spoke english, actually, and as a reward for my chattiness, I was offered a free can of caviar. You can smell the fish blocks away, and hours after the fish market has adjourned. I'm not a big fish lover myself, but I was happy to partake of the spicy smoked salmon served on a piece of fish wrapping paper, with no cutlery and no napkins. In 1890, Lilian Leland described Bergen like this: "Everything is Fishy. You eat fish and drink fish and smell fish and breathe fish". Over a millenium later, I would have to agree.

From Bergen, we took a day trip through Sognefjorden (Sone-ye-fyord-en, the fjord of Sogne), the largest and deepest Fjord in the world. Before leaving for Norway, I read a travel blog which said about Sognefjord ".. from bergen you can visit hardangerfjord, eidfjord, nordfjord and they are all beautiful. But once you've seen Sognefjord, everything else is mere foreplay". Sognefjord overwhelms your senses in every way. Its waters are cold and deep, the ridges are high and covered with mist, occasional waterfalls come down the ridges soundlessly and the villages at the ledge are remote and unreacheable by land. I only regret making the trip on a fast moving Hurtingbat ferry. It cut across the fjord so fast (well, it still took 4 hours to reach Mundal, our destination), the wind made it impossible to stand on deck for more than a few minutes at a time.

Our first stop, Balestrand, was a picture perfect little town. There were colorful cottages in the traditional red, blue and green colors with cultivated grass on the roof (in pre-modern Norway, grass was grown on the rooftops to offer some insulation in winter). Beyond the cluster of houses, the mountain ridge of the fjord was completely unoccupied and wild. At the very tips, you could see the whites of a distant glacier, probably an offshoot of the nearby Jostedalsbreen (yusta-dals-bree-en. Bre = glacier in norsk. Breen = the glacier). After Balestrand, we stopped at Vik, Hella and finally at Mundal. Mundal is located at the very end of fjaerlandsfjorden (fair-lands-fyord-en), a narrow and steep inlet in Sognefjorden. We had changed to a slower (and quieter) ferry from Balestrand to Mundal, and could really appreciate the cold quietness of fjaerlandsfjord. From Mundal, we took a bus to Fjaerland, where there is a Glacier Museum (norsk bre museet). There I learned more about glaciers than I ever wanted to know. Having just come through the massive fjords, I could appreciate that glaciers must exert a tremendoes force to carve out the fjord valleys.

The same bus then took us further north, to the bottom of BOyabreen. Boyabreen is such a tiny offshoot of Jostedalsbreen (which is the largest glacier in europe, by the way), that it didn't even feature on my trusty tourist map. But looking at it up close, it was still bigger than Grinnel Glacier (one of the largest surviving glaciers in glacier national park in Montana, and a 5 hour hike from the closest parking lot) and much more dangerous looking. I love looking at extreme weather phenomenon (especially after spending 45 mins in a museum devoted to said phenomenon) so I went right up to the edge of the glacial lake and took over a dozen pictures. Sadly, none of them turned out, and I really must change my camera. But being an enthusiast, I do remember what I saw. The bottom of the glacier is under a lot more pressure than the top and hence the ice behaves fluid-like and flows down the ridge. So at the top, the visible parts of the glacier have deep crevasses to accomodate their brittleness. Each crevasse was large enough to completely swallow a big tall norwegian man. It was frightening just to look at. At the bottom, the melting ice came down as a milky white stream through a glacial cave (the ice was carved out in the shape of a cave) and into the glacial lake. The lake prevented us from getting too close to the glacier, and once again, as in Grinnel Glacier, I was unable to do the 'glacier walk'.

We left Bergen a day earler than planned; mostly because our accomodations were so unsatisfactory. We stayed far from the Bryggen, we were paying top dollar for a 'hostel' room with an en-suite toilet, and midway through our stay the ceiling of the toilet fell down all around the pot. If you still wanted to use the pot (and its difficult not to if thats where you live!), you had to cover yourself with a towel so that the water dripping from above didn't bother you. It was completely gross. When we mentioned this to the receptionist, he didn't offer to change the room (there probably wasn't an unoccupied room in all of Bergen that weekend) but a token discount. So we threw in the towel (well literally too) and took the train to Voss.

Voss is a little town between Bergen and Oslo and on the same train line. Whatever unpleasant events lead to us finding our way to Voss were quickly forgotten; Voss is a truly magical place. From our room at the Park Hotel, you could see all of Voss spreading out on the surrounding mountains and their undisturbed reflection in the glacial lake ahead. We attempted two short hikes around Voss, both of which were recommended by the lady in the tourist office. One started at the top of the moutain above the hotel (you went up on a ski lift, to what is obviously a ski slope in winter) and wound through the wilderness in a circuitous route. We gave up on this hike very quickly... not only did it start raining, the best aerial views of Voss and the lake were from the ski lift area, which was the starting point! We walked around the neighbourhood instead, on cobbled and paved roads. People live in large, beautifully kept homes, with plum and apple trees growing wild in their gardens. They were returning home (from work?) in nice SUVs at 4pm in the evening. Animesh and I walked about wondering what it would be like to live like this. All the comfort, and none of the effort, thats what happens when your country has excess oil reserves! Before dinner, we took a hike up the mountain across the lake, to the gorge of a nearby river. The Bromdal gorge was fascinating, but after Sognofjord we were a little jaded.

The next day, we left Voss to do the famous 'Norway in a nutshell' tour(or as Animesh called it in his version of Norske: Norge i nOtter-shell). We took the bus from Voss to Gudvagen. The bus ride was quite an adventure; we went over the mountain at Vossenstrand and came all the way down to the dock at Gudvagen. At some places the road inclined to about 18 degrees and the bus had to descend in a crawl. From Gudvagen, we took a ferry through NaerOyfjorden and Aurlandsfjorden to Flam. NaerOyfjorden has been designated a world heritage center. It is one of the narrowest fjords, and unlike Sognefjord which is gigantic, it seems to close in on you from all sides. The ferry made a few stops along the way. Once to pick up (and drop off) mail at a village dock from a withered old man in a shiny all-terrain vehicle. The obvious wealth of the people despite the sheer remoteness of the villages is my most lasting impression of Norway. We made another stop by a waterfall. The ferry crew stuck a hollowed pipe into waterfall, and the water started gushing into buckets in the ferry. We each got a drink of glacial spring water in little plastic glasses.

Later that day, when we landed in FlAm, Animesh and I decided to walk around and explore the town. We took a circular route along a river and saw that FlAm, like Voss and the other villages we passed, was a rich little town, with manicured lawns, plum and apple trees, large houses in cheery colors and almost no people anywhere about. From FlAm, we took the FlAmsbana (a train from FlAm almost straight up the mountain to Myrdal. The train is touted as an engineering marvel, with five sets of breaks, each capable of bringing the train to a full stop). The views from the FlAmsbana are everything that the hype would suggest. Deep valleys, thundering waterfalls and lots and lots of tunnels later, we reached Myrdal. Myrdal is a stop on the road to Oslo. We had finished the famous 'Norway in a Nutshell', which I highly recommend, by the way, and took the night train back to Oslo. At Oslo, the next evening, we lounged about in Aker Brygge. I was feeling vaguely sad and tired. Animesh picked up the Oslo guide and browsed the current events section for something interesting to do. We learned that Shahrukh Khan was scheduled to make an appearance somewhere in Oslo that evening ( I imagine my best chance of bumping into a bollywood celebrity was that night in Karl Johan's Gate!)

If I could do it over, I would spend more time in the 'off the beaten path' places, like Balestrand, Roros or Alesund. I would remember that the 'rough guide to Norway' isn't rough enough... it mostly caters to retired American tourists. I would plan on booking my own routes, avoiding day-trips and allowing for independant hikes along a fjord. I would plan on walking on a glaciar or paddling in a glacial lake. I would also pack my bags differently... with two sets of clothes. One with a heavy sweater, raincoat, jeans, walking shoes and lots of tees. And one with a nice jacket, nicer jeans, fancy shirts and heeled shoes. Because europe is beautiful, and you have to be able to walk... but europeans are fashionable, and you want to look nice at dinner. If I had more time, or decided not to visit the western Fjords (on my next trip), I would try to make a trip to the Lofoten islands and devote a whole day to whale watching. I would visit Trondheim and take a train to the land of the midnight sun, Tromso. In Tromso (and this would have to be in late autumn or early spring), I would sit it out till I saw the northern lights. So will I go back to Norway? Yes, because there is too much I couldn't do this time around!