Viking Weddings & a "Tessa Fiesta"

October 30, 2012:

Early Tuesday morning, Danielle and I packed our bags and said goodbye to Andreas in the metro. In just a few short days, we felt like we had made a really great friend, so it was sad to say goodbye, but we were excited to continue our journey to Bergen. Keeping with the trend of being on time for our flights, we made sure to be at the train station ridiculously early to get to the airport.

We asked helped from the information desk and the man there was very serious about his job. He pulled out a map and wrote down the time the next train left. Then he wrote down the times of all the following trains in case we missed the first one. We had to transfer to a bus at a certain point and so he drew the bus, the trajectory and a stick-man onto the map as well as all the times that we could catch the bus. And then, he spent a long time doing math trying to figure out what times that meant we would arrive at the airport. He forgot to tell us how to get to the proper train platform, so naturally, we got lost, but we made it to the airport with plenty of time in the end.

On the train, we remembered that it was my birthday.

Our flight to Bergen was delayed by an hour due to the weather in Stockholm, but we occupied our time by sending our postcards (and not eating Pizza Hut). Our flight was really spacious and comfortable compared to Ryanair. However, when welcoming us onto the plane in English, our pilot sounded like he was about to collapse.... comforting. Regardless, I slept through the flight until the descent, when we got our first glimpses of Norway.

We were so excited because the weather had been predicted as being really terrible, and all we saw was sunshine. Our first stop once we got off the transfer bus in Bergen was the tourist office. We decided to walk along the tramline to get to our meeting point with our host, rather than pay a ridiculously high price for public transit. The city is beautiful. We had some issues contacting our host, (my phone wasn't receiving his responses apparently), so we found a restaurant with wi-fi where he eventually found us. The first thing he said was "Congratulations!". I was so confused, until he gave me cookies and I remembered once again that it was my birthday. All of his roommates also said "Congratulations", so I imagine that is what you say in Norwegian on someone's birthday.

We went to the grocery store and bought ingredients for fajitas, which Danielle and I were planning to cook again, because they had been so delicious the night before. Also, starting last year, my birthday was coined as a "Tessa Fiesta" by my friend Kerri, so we were keeping with the theme. Danielle insisted on baking me a cake, so we also bought Disney Princess candles (I felt special). When we actually ate the cake, I was presented with the Princess ring that was included in the candle package which I had to wear for the remainder of my stay in Bergen... and according to Daniel (our host) for all of my birthdays from now on. It has also become a Tessa Fiesta tradition.

While we Danielle cooked (in my defense, I tried to help, but I am notoriously slow at chopping vegetables), Daniel (our host) showered, and we met his roommate Eirik (like Eric, but pronounced with a hard "I" sound at the beggining). One of the first things he did was smell my sweater, which was ill-advised, and then he told us he was a Viking. From then on, practically until we left Bergen, he entertained us with stories about Vikings, Norway's history, the time he spent after being conscripted to His Royal Majesty the King's Guard and dealing with tourists, and also educated us about more serious things like economics and social policies in Norway. He loved referring to Norwegians as "those evil socialists", jokingly.

 

He taught me a bit about my own family history. People often asked why we chose to go to Norway and Sweden (especially at this time of year). A number of years ago, my Dad and Grandpa had been looking at a website that outlined our family tree. For fun, they traced it back as far as they could go, from the time my family lived in Pennsylvania (I attribute my love of the Pittsburgh Penguins to this!), to the migration through the Netherlands, England, Germany, Denmark all the way back to Norway in the 1700s. See my genealogy here. I had a friend who once lived in a town called Lofthus (which translates to Lofthouse) in Norway and who had asked me about the possible connection saying that families were often named after the villages where they lived.

I mentioned this to Eirik, who said that the village of Lofthus is not far from where he is from in Sognefjord. After explaining that Lofthus was a style for building houses involving wooden beams, or something, he suggested that we might be distant cousins, then proposed marriage with the hope of having crazy Viking children. Bring it on....

He had us believing that "Norwegians" was a politically incorrect way to refer to citizens of Norway and that they had better be called "Norsemen". He liked to add to his jokes by saying "You see, it's funny because...." and simply repeating the joke. We had missed the rough-around-the-edges sense of humour that was so familiar in Canada, and welcomed the opportunity to use innuendo and other things that are not as common in France. We felt as though we were old friends ... and engaged to be married.

Update: Apparently Lofthus is not that close to Sognefjord, making our Vikin marriage more legitimate?