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Three Months in Norway, Oct. 15, 2002

We have been here three months now, I realized yesterday as I was discussing the finer points of studded verses stud-free tires in my halting Norwegian with the local Subaru dealership. The conversation, as much as anything, reminded me of how fast the time has gone and how very much has changed.

It's only mid-October, but winter is bearing down on us full force. Last night the kids were building snowmen in the backyard in our first real snowstorm, under the orange glow of streetlights -- at 6:30 p.m. Three months ago our welcome to Trondheim was marked by 20-hour summer days. The light bored through curtains and burned through sunglasses; it was so insistently light we felt compelled to stay up late and wake early so our bodies could to make sense of the day length. It was a life lived constantly in overdrive, sleep-deprived and exhausted. Now the sun doesn't rise until 8:30 a.m and sets at 6. We cozy into flannel sheets and struggle to stay awake until 11.

In three months, we've made a lot of adjustments and gotten used to a lot of things.

We no longer trip over the six-inch-high thresholds in the bathrooms, built that way to accommodate the weird plumbing system here. Sinks and showers drain to a common floor drain and the linoleum on the floor climbs seamlessly up the first few inches of wall. The design turns the bathroom floor into the equivalent of a giant bathtub that catches the overflow of wash water if the volume overwhelms the floor drain's capacity.

We've stopped remarking on the weirdness of light switches big as a deck of cards, toilets that flush when you push or pull a button on the toilet tank top, and milk that comes, alas, only in liter cartons.

We figured out why Norwegians are so ungodly skinny: their food isn't that great, and they also eat off of plates that are about 30 percent smaller, on average, than American plates.

I've perfected endless substitutions for commonplace cooking and baking items. I make chocolate chunk cookies now out of chopped-up bits of baking chocolate bars, instead of chocolate chip cookies out of Nestle's finest. I use Jarlsberg cheese instead of mozzarella on pizzas and in lasagne. We eat sandwiches smørbrød style, with only one slice of bread, spread with butter not mayonaise, and wrapped in brown paper instead of in plastic lunch bags. We eat creamy brown sweet goat cheese in paper-thin slices for breakfast and lunch, but lament the loss of bagels and breakfast cereal as two American food staples we loved. I've learned to cook more with salmon (relatively cheap) than chicken (at about $9 a pound, only slightly less expensive than meat, which runs $10-$12 a pound for weird cuts that I haven't quite figured out how to cook yet.)

And we've all gotten used to seeing what were once pretty shocking items in the supermarket: whale meat, for one, big dark bloody hunks of the stuff, and big cuts of beef that frequently looks like it has come from a cow on a serious steroid regime. Plus the supermarket meat departments really look like butcher shops, with beef and pig slabs the size of night tables on display in their glass cases. In a land where meat and potatoes are definitely the norm, we eat a lot of pasta, seafood and stews. Somehow piles of whole dead salmon snuggled into a bed of ice chips doesn't bother me the way those big waxy slabs of meat do.

We're also adjusting to life in a social democracy where there's a state religion -- both kids take religion as a required class in school -- and where government sets social policy that's enforced with taxes and a pay-as-you-go system that makes you think twice before doing a lot of things -- like driving your car.

Cars are definitely the most obvious aspect of this kind of society, but there are others. In fact, the most striking example has come from a place where you'd least expect it: the school music corps. Both kids are playing instruments with the school band, and there are endless activities organized by the band's parent volunteers. But two weeks ago I got a hand-out that informed me I had been signed up for "voluntary community work."

Here's how voluntary it is: Either I show up to do what I've been signed up for, which in this case is to paint little gee-gaws that will be sold at a Christmas fair fundraiser, or I have to pay $75. I guess the voluntary part relates to whether you part with your time or your money.

I talked about this to an American parent whose daughter is a year older than Zoe and who has lived here for nine years. She laughed at my bewilderment, almost like I'd reminded her of a paradox that is so widespread in this society she's stopped thinking about it. "Oh, yes, Julemessa," she said, using the Norwegian word for the omnipresent fundraising Christmas fairs. "Your voluntary obligatory contribution. Welcome to Norway."

I think, though, that the biggest shocker for us as Americans is society's attitude toward the automobile.

For instance, in Trondheim, about half of all cars come from Hell. I mean this both literally and figuratively. Hell happens to be the name of the town where one of the region's largest car dealerships is located. Even after three months we still snicker at the sight of white window decals proclaiming that the car in question has come from Hell.

But decal or no, cars from Hell describes perfectly the Norwegian attititude toward the automobile. Like many Europeans, Norwegians have an incredible love-hate relationship with their cars. Actually, the more that I think of it, it's mostly a hate relationship.

Take gasoline prices. By American standards, Norwegian gasoline prices are in the stratosphere -- about $5.50 a gallon, last time I filled my tank. No surprise there, you say, I'm in Europe, where gasoline is uniformly expensive. But Norway, a country of 4.5 million people with an area the size of California, is the third largest oil exporter in the world, with only Saudi Arabia and Russia bigger on the world export market. Oil exports were responsible for about half of the country's total export revenue in 2000.

If they wanted to, Norwegians could drive around in big SUVs and flood the tanks with cheap gasoline. But not to worry. Cars, as nearly every Norwegian will gladly tell you, are bad. They are the death of small communities. They pollute the air, add to the carbon dioxide burden in the atmosphere, and make people fat. People who drive don't get exercise on their way to work. People who walk or ride their bicycles, like many Norwegians in all kinds of ghastly weather, do.

Norwegians talk this talk, but they also walk the walk. Bicycle accessories, from tire patches to studded tires for winter travel (Rick just bought some), are as easily available here as motor oil is in the United States. Gas is expensive as a government policy to discourage car use, and every aspect of car use is heavily taxed. It's a policy I endorse, even as I hate paying for it.

Parking downtown runs about $1 for 15 minutes; there's a $2 toll to go in and out of the city and periodic $5 and $10 tolls on the E-6, the anemic two-lane road that passes for the country's major north-south highway but which looks alarmingly like US 2 outside of Montpelier, except without shoulders.

Big cities and small towns have at their heart the same design premise; bicycle and walking paths are integral to the overall transportation network. This very often includes underpasses to allow pedestrians and bicycles to cross major arteries without taking their lives into their hands. Big cities like Trondheim are built in clusters of small neighborhoods, so that everyone in the 'hood can walk or ride a bicycle to small shopping centers and neighborhood schools.

The flip side of this is what seems to an American mind as a total disdain for allowing cars to move in a logical manner. More than once I've driven a secondary street in downtown Trondheim only to find barricades that halt traffic, even though the road continues to my destination, tantalizingly close on the other side of the blockade. Oh, but the barricades are spaced perfectly so that -- you guessed it -- bicycles can pass through with ease.

Then there are these things called "rundkjøring," literally, round-driving, or roundabouts, where the laws of physics and traffic safety are routinely violated. I know my blood pressure goes up whenever I have to drive through one of these things. It's almost like being in a country where people drive on the wrong side of the road: you never know if you are looking in the right direction.

And then there are "fartshumpen," or speed bumps, everywhere. The worst thing about these speed bumps is that they are almost never painted so you can see them. The consequence, clearly intended, is that you will drive slowly wherever you are because you can never be certain where those damn humps are. These are not just little wrinkles in the road; they are huge great honking things that do in your front end if you go too fast. Last week a bus going over newly constructed speed bumps on a major thoroughfare hit them too fast and two passengers in the back were bounced so violently out of their seats that they broke their backs. As Dave Barry says, I am not making this up. It was front-page news.

And that gets me back to my conversation with the Subaru guy about studded tires. Once again, the Norwegian language supplies us anglophones with a bit of amusement: studs are called "pigg," and tires are called "dekks." So studded tires are "piggdekks" --- I defy you to say that in Norwegian without giggling. But I digress.

Trondheim doesn't adhere to the bare pavement policy that has saltshakers out on Vermont roads whenever the weatherman says snow. Driving the hills around the city, and getting to the mountains where we plan to spend lots of time this winter will be tricky, even with four-wheel drive. So yesterday, after spending the last week watching people queuing up at the local gas stations to have their snow tires put on, I decided to consult the oracle: should I go for studded tires? My quest for enlightenment brought me to the Subaru dealership.

The service guy was clear on this one: buy "piggfri." Why? Well, Subarus are good for Trondheim driving, he said, as long as I had good snow tires. But the most compelling reason for piggfri, he said, is the decision by Trondheim kommune to impose a tax on studded tire use. You buy studded tires, typically about 900 kroner or about $120 each, and you have to pay a 1,000 kroner tax to put them on your car. Another one of those voluntary obligatory choices, I guess. We're getting studless tires. And chains.

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