Where the Waterfalls Mean Home
Insights from my World Travels
Fifteen years ago, while attending St. Olaf College for my undergrad, I had the opportunity to study Norwegian for two semesters. (St. Olaf, a school founded by Norwegian-American immigrants in the late 1800s, is one of the 21 colleges in the U.S. that offer Norwegian language classes; five of them are in Minnesota.) My professor …
For me, last night was unfortunately a reminder that sometimes your body has a hard time even when your mind is having a great one. Sleep proved elusive and was fragmented when it came at all. Accordingly, finding coffee was especially prudent this morning. The target this time was Supreme Roastworks AS, a company that …
Over breakfast, as we checked in on what had been forecast to be another dreadful day of weather, we were stunned to discover our luck had changed. Apparently, overnight, both the figurative and literal winds had shifted, and we were now due an afternoon of relative sunshine. Even better yet, the elements appear primed to …
As we snaked up the mountain to HaukÃ¥sen airport for our flight to Oslo, a lump formed in my throat, a clear expression of the anxiety I had developed before the flight. Fun story (I apologize that some of you in Sogndal have already heard it): I’ve endured a somewhat forced fandom of the National …
Today's entry will be a little more reflective and less of a play-by-play structure, but I do want to acknowledge that we spent the early afternoon in the company of Bente, Trude, Erik, Jermund, Torvald, Sigrid, Therese, and Bjørn where we were, for the last time on this go around, wined and dined (coffeed and …
I arrived in Norway with little room to spare in my luggage, but one souvenir for which I am always happy to finagle space is coffee. I observed on an earlier trip to MENY, one of the local grocery stores, that Sognefjord Kaffibrenneri keeps a well refreshed stock of recently roasted coffee on the shelves, …
After our arduous circuit yesterday, my dad and I had earned some rest--and we took it, heavily diverting from our normal breakfast schedule this morning. Suspecting I had a day full of food ahead of me, I took it easy on the eggs and bacon. (My premonition would prove correct, as we will later see.) …
Unless the predictions prove untrue, today was our last tango with sunshine in Sogndal. As such, we had reserved the day for a long drive across one of Norway's many scenic roads over the mountains. Our sights were originally set on Gaularfjellet, which branches off from nearby Balestrand, but we changed targets to Vikafjellet after …
Our social meters beginning to redline after some days of back-to-back house visits, my dad and I made the necessary decision to lay a little low this morning and knock off some low stress activities that had been on the backburner. The harbor in Kaupanger is one of the many ports of arrival for visitors …
With just under a week remaining for our stay in Sogndal, we have entered a reality in which time must be thoughtfully budgeted, especially in conjunction with weather predictions. As we attempt to reserve any remaining days of sunshine--a historically limited resource in Sogndal--for road trips and sightseeing, the leftover time quickly fills with appointments …
Where the Waterfalls Mean Home 