NORWAY!

After a couple nights in the city of Oslo, Thea and I headed up to the mountains to celebrate Christmas with her family. 

We drove up winding through the mountains, pine-tree landscape, with old farmsteads dotting the hillside, a light in the darkness, every so often.  We stopped in a small town to fill the small car with gas and bought hot dogs (Weinerpølser) and the store version of a traditional Norwegian dessert to hold us over until dinnertime.  We listened to Thea's old summer mix two times before we switched to Jimmi Hendrix, her brother's favorite. 

The sun set by 4pm over the white snowy landscape and highway, stretched out before us in the distance, creating the most beautiful pink and orange clouds in the sky.  I was reminded a lot of the rural Vermont landscape by Craftsbury, Stowe, and Smuggler's Notch.  With a lot of rural towns and old churches built around the mountains in the cold, harsh winter weather, it makes these homes look that much cozier.

 Three hours later, we drive up a huge hill to get up to the cabin, and have to go back and try again since her small car couldn't make it through the snow that recently fell.  Hard to really comprehend where I was becasue, even though it was 6pm, it was dark without a moon.

First impression of the family cabin: cozy and traditional and well stocked.  Very homey, with pictures everywhere from Thea's childhood.  Furs decorate the couches and chairs, and boney skulls and beautiful animal heads look down at your from up above, forever frozen, shot I later learn by Thea's mother or father.  But it's obvious because there are snapshots of them hunting all over the cabin, guns slung over their shoulders, grinning and enjoying the Norwegian countryside.   

The best fur I found? A polar bear rug in her brother's bedroom, just, ya know, guarding the doorway. There's a buffalo in the living room, and the softest, warmest furs you will ever touch from Argentina on the couches that wrap around the centrally located fireplace.  On her mother's bed is a large fox-fur blanket, with the tails hanging off the edge and where the heads would be, it's sewn in the middle. 

Thea, her mother and I have discussions of Norwegian politics and the tragedy of the Euro over a dinner of Salmon  rice and white wine. So healthy and delicious!   Afterwards, I'm curled up on the couch listening to Thea and her mother speak in Norwegian, half napping and cuddled against the thick, warm fur blankets bought in Argentina, warmed by the crackling fire up in the mountains of Norway.

This. Is. Surreal.