Local Forrays

Aaron’s first few days here in Norway have been full of activity.  He’s been conscripted to lab work with me, but when we’re finished for the day, we get to head out on explorations of the local sights.

Thursday we decided to go see Drøbak, and we decided to walk there.  It was a two hour trip to get to this charming town of the fjord, but we made some neat discoveries along the way.  First, we found this great old, wooden ski jump.  Then we came upon several of the large burial mounds dating back to the Viking ages.

"No sledding allowed" reads the paint on the side.

These were BIG! And dated from ~1000 AD.

In Drøbak, we sat on the wharf to eat our picnic lunch of sandwiches with boiled eggs, cheese, and reindeer salami.  Then we explored the cool streets in the town before making the two hour trek back to my place.

The wharf is so colorful and fun!

Ice cream is for all seasons.

Friday we decided to go to Ski, but we used the local bus to get there.  We walked around the town center and the large shopping mall there.  We laughed and snickered at all the funny things we saw at the mall, like adult-sized one-piece zip-up sweat suits.  And a formal man’s suit that was bright red and striped with blue and white like the Norwegian flag.  We did buy some of my favorite cheese from The Blind Cow, a local dairy that makes excellent cheeses.  And there was a neat toy store that had a giant Lego tiger.  We took a picture of that for Evan. 🙂

Legos are toys for big kids too, right?

Saturday, we met up with a friend of mine who is an American girl here doing a high school exchange.  She’s graduating in a week or two, so she was wearing the Russ pants of the Norwegian seniors!  We hiked in the Kroer forest that’s just outside of Ås.

Saturday was quite rainy off and on, and we had talked about going camping in the woods overnight.  In the last minute, we decided to camp in spite of the rain.  We packed our sleeping bags, tarps, cook stove, rain gear, and food for dinner and lunch.  We headed in the direction of an cool little hut I had once seen in the woods.  I had only found this place once, and had not been able to find it since, but we headed out in search of it again.  After looking for a while, we came upon a nice camp spot and decided just to set up camp there.  As we fanned out in search of firewood, we found that hut I had originally been looking for, just a few hundred yards away!  The location of the hut wasn’t so great for overnighting though, so we stayed put at our original camp spot.

Setting up camp.

Secret, hard-to-find hut in the woods.

We got a nice little campfire started and roasted hot dogs and potato wraps (pølser & lømper) over the coals.  Then for dessert we had foil wrapped packages of apples with cinnamon and sugar.  It might just be us, but we think everything tastes better cooked over a campfire!

Right as we finished dinner, a thunderstorm rolled in, and we took shelter under our tarp.  It rained pretty hard all night long, and by morning our gear was beginning to get a bit damp.  We managed to stay dry and warm though.  Being outdoors overnight was so nice.  The songbirds in the forest created quite a symphony in between rain showers, and exploring the woods is always fun.

So, tomorrow is the 17th of May, Norway’s independence day.  There are quite big celebrations planned, so I’m excited to don my bunad and experience a REAL 17th of May!

~ by brookeinnorway on May 16, 2010.