I wanted to do this post just so I could show a few of the simple things that are different between Norway and the USA. These are things that you would encounter in your every day life and very possibly might not even think twice about. The first will be the difference in electricity and the second will be the difference in bathroom facilities.

Electricity:

USA - 120V line to neutral rms at 60Hz. This is the standard voltage on your typical house outlet and is what you use to run most of your appliances on.

Norway - 230V line to neutral rms at 50Hz. This is the standard voltage that is used in the household outlets in Norway. This runs all of their appliances and uses a different plug and outlet than what is used in the US.

When in a country like Norway, or most other European countries, it is not required to use a power converter for devices like a cell phone charger or a laptop charger. This is because these devices are already designed to use either the American 120V, 60Hz power or the European range of 220V-240V, 50Hz power. The only thing you need to use is a plug adapter so it will go into the outlet. Surprisingly, the only device that I need to use with my power converter is my beard trimmer. For some reason it is not designed for anything other than the American voltages.

Toaletter (Norwegian for toilet):

In Norway all of the toilets I have seen so far have flushed differently than those in the US. Instead of having the typical flipper lever on the side of the tank there is a round handle that you need to pull straight up. I have included an example of this in the gallery below.

I have had this post in the works for a while now and I finally thought it was time to get it out here. This post contains pictures of some of the interesting vehicles that I have come across so far in my time in Norway. I took some of these pictures to show how things are the same and also to show how they are different.

Some things that are the same would include:

* Harleys are a very popular motorcycle here

* People with families like to drive minivans

* People do like to drive cars that are similar in size to what we have in the U.S…. they are not all micro machines

* The hells angels are in Trondheim

* People like to cruise in their classic cars. These are mostly American, but, there are some old Volvos and Opels around too

Some things that are different:

* Even the American vehicles have different available options, for example, a diesel powered Chrysler minivan or a Chrysler minivan with a 5 speed manual transmission. Neither have been offered in the U.S. to my knowledge

* Some people drive extremely small cars

* There are small wooden ferry boats that cross the narrow part of the harbor between two or three different restaurants/pubs

* Gas costs around $10.02 per gallon

* There is a sweet bike lift in old town for people to use. You put in your money and a small metal peddle comes out of the dispenser. While sitting on your bike you then place your foot against the peddle and get pushed up the steep hill. This is a beast of a hill so it might come in handy. I haven’t seen any one use it yet though.

Check the pictures to see for your self! As always, click on them to get the full view.

UPDATED: Details added so check it out

On Sunday, we had an amazing experience learning about Norwegian family farms and visiting the island of Ytterøy. Nils, a MTU student in Adam’s research team who is also in Trondheim for the summer, went to the farmer’s market several weeks ago and met Karl Laugsand, a farmer in the Trondelag area. Karl had many pictures of his farm, Med Svin på skogen, (pigs in the woods) displayed at his marketplace stand and Nils starting asking him about the farm. This led to the opportunity to go visit the farm and Nils was even able to bring friends along. We were excited to take the train ride along the coast and see a family farm and an island. However, the day was so much more than we had anticipated. Karl and his family welcomed us to the island with so much kindness and hospitality. While we had thought we would have a quick tour of the farm, they had actually a day full of activities for us despite the busy schedule running a farm entails. Here is what our day included:

We got on the first bus that was leaving from our apartment complex and headed into town. In Trondheim we had a casual walk to the train station getting a coffee along the way. We took the 11:10am train from Trondheim central station and headed about 1.5 hours north to Levanger where we then boarded the 1pm ferry to Ytterøy Island.

When we got off the ferry, we were greeted by Karl, his daughter Lisa, and her boyfriend Christopher. After we were introduced to every one and chatted for a bit they took us sightseeing around the island where we saw ancient viking burial sites and went inside an old sulfur mine and at the same time taught us some history of the island.

The first stop was the sulfer mine which was just a short hike from the ferry landing. This mine was originally created by people looking for copper. They had no luck in the search for copper but did find a good source of sulfur which was mined and shipped to England for use in the chemical plants there. Karl told us that many of these mines were dug before dynamite was created. To bust the rocks the miners would build large wood fires and heat the rocks up. As the rocks cooled they would crack and could be hauled away. This process was repeated many times at both this and other mines on the island. We were also told that the island was completely logged off at one point due to this process. The mine we toured went further underground but we did not dare to go there as it really wasn’t safe and was partially flooded and filled with water.

Danger: Open Mine

After the mine tour and short hike in the woods we all packed into Karl’s minivan and got a tour of the island. This is when we were driven by several ancient Viking burial sites and other neat areas of the island. Unfortunately, since we were sitting in the rear seats of the van we were not able to get any good pictures of the graves as we drove by. The roads on the island were typically narrow and winding as they made their way through the country side and between farms. An interesting practice on the older farms is to have the road pass through directly in the middle of the barnyard between the house and the barn. At the time this helped the farm as it made things easier to move and haul, but, today it seems like a nuisance and hassle (at least to me) but has not been changed.

Then we went to their beautiful farm.

Karl is a very busy farmer. He milks cows…

…raises happy pigs in a cage free environment

…. turns happy pigs into sausage and other products

….and somehow fit in the time to show his farm and island to three happy visitors.

We enjoyed going out in the woods and seeing the pigs, while taking a coffee and lefsa break on this boulder.

We mingled with the pigs.

They like to bite your shoes.

After our visit with the pigs we made our way back to the house and had tea on the front deck with the family. We chatted about where we are from and showed them on a map. They were not very familiar with the upper Midwestern area and seemed to find it interesting about how much snow we get in Houghton and how cold it can be in northern Minnesota. Both of which are MUCH more severe than what is experienced in this part of Norway. Karl’s wife, Anne Marie, was not able to stay much longer after the visit over tea as she was dressed up and preparing to play in a concert that evening. She plays saxophone for a local organization.

Later we were even treated to an excellent dinner, featuring some of the farm raised meat. Pork steaks along with marinated pork pieces were the main feature and were both excellent. Lisa was returning to NTNU that evening, so she gave us a ride back into town. It was the perfect day and we feel really lucky to have this insider view of island and farming life on Ytterøy. We were told only a handful of Americans have visited this island with a population of 500.

In total Karl has 50 pigs and approximately 30 to 40 milking cows - we are not sure on the cows though. Another interesting bit of trivia - the island at one time had over 1100 people living there but at the turn of the century approximately 600 immigrated to the US. Karl said many people on the island like to believe that they have a rich uncle somewhere in the states.

Below is a gallery of more photos from the day and as always, click to enlarge. Be warned, we took many pig pictures and couldn’t really delete any.

Today was also the Corvette Club of Norway’s rally in Trondheim. We got to see many different cars ranging from some of the very first to the latest Z06 models. Check out the pictures in the gallery below for a taste of what we saw and click on the pictures to get the full size view.

Today we went to the market, located at the city centre, Torget.   We:

saw dancing:

sampled lefsa:

tried moldy goat cheese:

stopped at my favorite bakery for a coffee:

saw a corvette show:

We also heard many bands play, tried sausage of an unknown origin, and soaked up the sun.

Here are a few pictures from our dinner Thursday night. We decided this seemed like a fun way to spend some time and that it would definitely be tasty. We bought the grill at the Bunnpris next door for about 10 Kroner (2 dollars). These grills are very popular in Norway, as you see many younger people taking them to the beach or anywhere they are not near their standard home weber. For 2 dollars, it comes loaded with charcoal and ready to roll, just drop a match in it.

We marinated the cubed chicken breasts along with the peppers, mushrooms and tomatoes in a packaged marinade that we bought. Karen gets a lot of credit for chopping vegetables and assembling everything onto the skewers while I processed the chicken, washed dishes, and grilled the food.

Interesting notes:

1.65 lbs of chicken costs $19.00 US dollars

regular carton of cherry tomatoes costs $5 USD

package of 1 green pepper, 1 red pepper, and 1 yellow pepper costs about $3.50 USD

Gallon of milk costs about $9.03 USD

The meat and milk are by far the most expensive cost of the meal.

As usual, click the pictures to enlarge them!

We are using stat counter, a web tracker that shows the last 500 page loads of our website. With our traffic volume, this usually includes two to three days worth of visits. One of the things we enjoy is seeing who visits our site. This map below represents the locations of our last few days of visitors.

Note: Not every visitor gets their own pin; often one pin represents several visitors from the same area.

Click to enlarge the map.

I love the painted wooden buildings and homes around Trondheim.  Their colors make a wonderful palette for a future project. They also remind me of the paint my dad uses to paint the Shaker boxes he makes. Here’s the inspiration images and the palette in RGB.

On Saturday afternoon, we took the short ferry ride over to Munkholmen - an island with a storied past including execution grounds, prison fort, and monastery. Our guide book reinforced the island’s not so innocent past: King (and later, Saint) Olav displayed the head of one of his enemies on a stake on the island (clearly, saint material).

Even the monastery was not without problems. In fact, complaints were received regarding the amount of noise the monks made on the island, and reports included heavy drinking and womanizing.

Later, the island became a prison fortress. During World War II, the Germans used the island for gun emplacement, as pictured below.

Despite this past, today the island is a popular spot for visitors and locals alike, who enjoy sunning, swimming, and visiting the grounds.

Click on pictures to see larger view.

Some of you have asked what I’ve been up to while Adam is at work. I have had no problems filling up my time! I usually spend about half of my day working on projects, including freelance projects, my graphic design portfolio, or learning new techniques for Illustrator and Photoshop. I may even learn PHP, but I am a little intimidated right now, and having way too much fun with Illustrator and Photoshop to start coding. Usually the second half of the day, I spend downtown or hiking around. I am enjoying being able to spend several hours each day being outside and walking around, especially now that it stopped raining!

I really treasure the luxury of time that I have right now - deciding what to do, having time to learn new skills, and having time to discover Trondheim. It is especially welcome after an extremely busy/stressful final semester of graduate school! Looking back at it now I cannot believe I finished everything I did - two jobs, my master’s project, and designed several publications. Knowing I had this summer in Norway coming up was certainly good motivation to finish everything on time!

I thought I would share one of my freelance projects with you. It is in draft stage, so some tweaking will be required. As you’ll see in the image below, the letter “t” is a bit hard to read, so I will be reworking that. This project is for an upcoming nonprofit, Sustainable Trail Design. Let me know what your favorite logo mockup is!