You say tomato…
Mrs P and I are in Norway. Land of vikings, red barns and snow. We are here for the snow, though we have seen plenty of red barns and the descendants of vikings abound at every turn. We are also here to teach Mrs P everything I know about Nordic skiing (a short lesson then?).
Thor’s hammer (though Beatles fans would be forgiven for believing it belongs to Maxwell Edison)
We spent our first half a day in Oslo and wandered around the docks observing local fools bathing in the frigid waters of the Inner Oslofjord. This required the ice to be broken before their foolhardy dip in the water, with a reported not terribly balmy 6.7 degrees centigrade.
I have one thing to say, “Brrrrrrrrrrr!”
Maybe I will don my speedos and have a go myself when we are back in Oslo. If I do, you may hear a scream (anywhere up to 2,000 miles away) when a certain delicate part of my anatomy makes first contact with the water.
Me and Mrs P posing on the dock of the bay, Oslo
Day 2 we climbed aboard a train, found our seats and pinned our faces to the window, like two car window suction cup plush toys, in readiness for our three-and-a-half hour journey through the snowy wonderland that is the Viken region of Norway. (My what a long sentence that was!)
A beautiful day for a train ride.
Our destination was Geilo. Pronounced Yie-lo. The ‘yie’ is pronounced as in ‘die.’
Geilo is the closest town of any size to where David and I trained for our attempt last year to ski Norge på langs. It is also the place that it turns out I have been mispronouncing for more than a year. A big shout out to the announcer on the train for correcting me. (Sings) You say Yailo, I say Yaylo, Geilo, Gilo, Yilo, Yailo, let’s call the whole thing off. 🎵
Mrs P and I observed some strange goings on on the train. Three young men in their early twenties were chatting away. Nothing unusual there you might think, but one of the three always spoke in English despite the others always speaking Norwegian. It’s not like it was a simple conversation. It went something like this…
Youth 1: “Gobbledygook, gobbledygook Norweigian gobbledygook.”
Youth 2: “Ah, gobbledygook, more Norweigian gobbledygook.”
Youth 3: “Yes, but don’t you think that the efficiency of the Supersort algorithm very much depends on the selection of the pivot element?”
And so it went on. Never did youth 3 speak Norwegian, never did the others speak English. How does that even work!?
I thought we should try it, so I asked Mrs P if she wanted a drink, in German (showing off with the only three words of German I know), but she spoiled it by replying in German. What must our neighbours have thought?
Youth 1: Whispered while indicating the two idiots across the aisle with his eyes: “Norweigian gobbledygook.”
Youth two: “Gobbledygook in Norwegian.”
Youth 3: “Exactly.”
Mrs P pretending she doesn’t know me. In German.
