It's only fitting that I close my chapter on Norway by writing about the man who truly made it all possible, James.


The way I see it, James owed me one, plus interest. As a high school junior back in December 2000, I worked as a day laborer on a Humphries Construction job site out in BFE, Texas. The job? Erecting a huge Stolt-Nielsen building -- the same Norwegian shipping line that James worked for when he and his family lived in Houston. (By "erecting," I mean "cleaning up after the people actually doing the real construction").

Once this fact was established -- about an hour after James picked me up at the Oslo station -- all shame about being a mooch was thrown to the wind.

"Man, I cleaned up trash on that site for two weeks, AND I did a lot of sweeping and wheel-barrowing. This guy owes me one, big time."

Say, two nights at your crib in Oslo and a week at your summer home on the west coast?

Throw in some free ferry rides, three meals a day and a new toothbrush, and we're even ... oh, and can I have a ride back to Oslo in the Houston-mobile?

Thanks, man.

Next to Murray Brasseux, I don't know if I've met a bigger history buff than James. This, too, we established early on.

"So, do you know much about Norway's role in WW2?" I asked right after we talked about Stolt-Nielsen. "I'm always fascinated to hear about the specifics of Nazi occupation in all these countries, and I've got to admit, we don't learn too much about Norway in school -- no offense."

He smiled and gave me a quick look.

"That time period is actually my specialty. You're in luck."

Right he was.

James and I had a lot of time to talk that week -- there ain't much else to do other than read, eat and fish when you're out there. I heard his take on Castro, the Japanese and German reactions to post-war reconstruction, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Soviet de-occupation of Norway following the war, etc. etc. etc. Seriously, I couldn't list all the topics of history which we discussed -- or topics which I asked about, and then listened to his response, at least.

(Did you know that Hitler pioneered the idea of sending common folks on cruises as a lesiure activity?)


The capper came on the last day and night of my time mooching off the Lorentzens. During the seven-hour drive back from Bergen, it was effectively just us two in the Suburban together, as Didrik was getting caught up on some much needed sleep that he had opted out on the night before.

There wasn't a pause in conversation longer than a minute long nearly the entire way -- and something tells me the same would have held true had we been driving from Bergen to Berlin.

When we stopped at a video store to rent some movies back in Oslo, I saw a documentary on Stalingrad.

"Didrik," I asked, "will there be English subtitles in this?"

"Definitely."

So I bought it.

And guess what? There weren't English subtitles.

Thanks, Didrik.

But it turned out fine, because instead, James and I finished off my trip by watching a movie about German U-Boats during WW2. And as a parting gift, I gave James my DVD.


After all, I owed him one this time around.


He did take this picture and all. I guess you could say we're even.

It may be as cold as the Astros' offense, but Norway is an absolutely beautiful country.

The mountains, the fjords, the waterfalls, the incredible diversity in landscape ... if there's anyone on earth besides George Bush and Joe American who is less concerned about the long-term effects of global warming, it's the head of Norway's tourism industry, which is primed for a BIG windfall about fifty years down the road. In terms of panoramic grandeur, I'd go so far as to place this oil-rich nation of just over four million -- not 50 million, as Josefine guessed when I asked a group of Danes over coffee in Copenhagen -- in a dead heat with Switzerland, which I'm not sure could ever be beat outright.

(Could it work out any better for me? There are families in both countries -- who happen to be very good friends with one another, yet are independently friends of ours through Houstonian roots -- that are willing to take me in for days on end without complaining [too much] that I snore.)

But for all its natural beauty, Norway is probably the last place on earth you'd want to live if your name was Nemo.


It's too bad for Mitchell & Ness that there are only about five black people in all of Scandinavia (Somalis do not count, because Muslim culture is just a tad different than hip-hop-ya-don't-stop). If there were just a handful more, and a throwback industry was able to gain traction among the youths, the 1983 Carlton Fisk jersey would rake in kroners.

The reason for that is simple: "Fisk" means "fish" in Norwegian. And until they discovered the immense offshore oil deposits that have made pensions here the envy of each and every GM employee rubbing his lucky Lotto ticket, I'm pretty sure Norwegians bought and sold goods using actual fish as hard currency.


The Chinese have rice. The Germans have liquid bread. The Mexicans have tortillas. The Americans have Big Macs. And according to James, the North Vietnamese have turtles and porcupines. But the Norwegians, they have fisk.

And as a special treat, this is one of the few countries in the world with a bountiful enough supply of whales in its waters that they're allowed to hunt them. The occasional sea mammal snack is a nice diversion from the monotony of fish soup, fish fillets and fish sandwiches.


Looks like liver, tastes like deer.

While in Bergen, James took us to the Hanseatic League museum -- an experience which will surely benefit me if I ever make it onto Jeopardy! and there's a category on the northern European medieval fishing industry. With the Bergen fisk trade effectively controlled by German merchants as far back as 1360, I get the feeling that Norwegian hostility towards Germans can be traced back just a little farther than the whole "getting invaded during WW2" thing.


But you get the sense, from talking to James, that places like this -- the outdoor fish market in Bergen -- may be in decline. Increasingly enforced health standards mean that much of the fresh fish which used to be sold here on a daily basis, from time immemorial, have been replaced by cheesy Norway t-shirts and stuffed animals.

And with the rise of kebab shops on every street corner, not to mention the fact that frozen pizza has just recently become the most-consumed food in Norway, Carlton Fisk may be in the twilight of its career. But just like Pudge, who played for over 20 years, it sure had a long run. 

I wondered what Christiana was plotting during the afternoon...


...Until I realized, she and her cousins, Michelina and Atilla, must be planning on teaching me a bunch of dirty Norwegian phrases under the guise of helping me ingratiate myself with the family.


Let me just give you the following list of the sentences I asked how to say in Norwegian, followed by the Norwegian itself, and capped off by what I had actually been taught.

"I am in Bergen."

Jeg ma baesje veldig i Bergen.

I must poop hard in Bergen.


"Where are you?"

Har du diaré?

Do you have diarrhea?


"This mosquito is killing me."

Myggene suger all dritten ut av meg.

The mosquitoes are sucking the s**t out of me.


"You are nice."

Jeg ar sar i raeva.

My butt is sore.


And, my personal favorite, the only one I can still remember how to say in Norwegian at this point because of how incredibly uncouth it is:

"Let's go fishing."

Jeg har voondt i tissen.

My penis hurts.

I knew these teenage girls were up to something. I mean, my accent clearly wasn't good, but it couldn't have been THAT funny to hear me try to say various pleasantries in their language. And if it takes thirty seconds for someone to "think" of how to say "Where are you?", that means they're "thinking" of how to say "Do you have diarrhea?"

But at least they didn't record me saying all of this stuff before teaching me the real things.


No wait, they did.

Don't even give me that smile. It's not working with me. Du er NOT snill.

Miriam just looks like a painfully nice person.


And she is.

About as nice as a person could be before offering to give you one of their kidneys. This kid sister of Sissi (I have recently been informed that Sissi's name has no 'y' in it) grew up, married a Dutchman, eventually moved to the south of Spain and became what has to be the first flamenco instructor in the history of Scandinavia.

Flamenco? Norway? Is anyone else staring into the Crawford Boxes to look out for anything else that may come out of left field?

And to think that Miriam has been coming to this island her entire life -- she grew up in Moss, near Oslo, but this was her father's birthplace and childhood home.


One word to describe this swimming hole James, Sissi, Lambiek and Miriam brought me to: REFRESHING.

And another word, this one to describe Sissi and Miriam's father's old-school boat: PIMP.
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In the distance is the boat house I took so many siestas in, read so much of my book, Berlin: The Downfall, 1945 in on those lazy Norwegian days, and ate so many amazing meals in.

But the rock that today serves as a glorified hot dog grill? The future site of Miriam and Lambiek's own summer home ... as well as the site of a place for the Kleppe brother, JanPeder.


Basically, I wish I never had to leave this place.

But that's not just because of how alive the water was, or the baaaaaahh'ing sheep, or the incredibly nice and welcoming people.

It was the food, too.

A rule of thumb: It's never a bad thing to fall in with an aspiring nutritionist who is NOT a vegetarian.


Why?

Because you get to eat nothing but dank meals; dank meals that are actually good, too. Not to say that all vegetarian meals are bad, but it's definitely the difference between Triple-A and The Show. This coming from the guy who would be 18 years away from being a real life 40-Year-Old Virgin had he never dated a vegetarian.

Sissi, who recently went back to university to get her master's in nutrition, has combined her maternal nagging skills with her newfound knowledge base to perpetually irritate the two kids who I got to meet, Didrik and Christiana.

"Do you get annoyed with your mom constantly telling you what is okay to eat and what is bad for you?"

"YES."

One day, they'll be glad they had some guidance -- until I met Sissi, I honestly ate fruit with the idea that I could ascribe one "fruit point" to every apple, banana, peach, etc. that I consumed. And the more fruit points I amassed, the healthier I would be. All fruits carried the same amount of points per kg. Seemed to be a pretty good system, until Sissi sent it crashing down.

"You can't eat an APPLE right before a meal!!" she exclaimed in shock when she caught me, red-handed, in the kitchen right before dinner one night. "How are the nutrients going to be properly dispersed into your system? You are only supposed to eat fruit x hours before a meal, or x hours afterward."

Gosh, Bayless. No doiiiiiiiiiiii.

(Sissi, for Christmas, can you please send me a nutritional day-by-day plan of what I should be eating? Thanks, I miss you.) 

I know I left Norway a long time ago -- I'd say it's been about 10 days now -- but I can't forget to write about little Odin and his crazy Dutchman dad, Lambiek.
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"¿Hablas español?"

It was just a joke -- clearly, this little blond Norwegian kid who was speaking Martian to me as he nestled into my lap in front of the computer wasn't going to speak Spanish. It was my own little way of saying "There's no way we're gonna be able to communicate, buddy, but I may as well toss up a Hail Mary that you aren't going to catch."

But guess what? He pulled it in for the TD.


"¡Claro!" Odin's eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. He had found someone who "spoke his language," and so out came the Spanish like a rapid-fire submachine gun.

I could not believe what I had just heard ... nor could I really understand it all; partly because the kid has the thickest south of Spain accent you can have, and partly because my español comes out more like a one-at-a-time-and-I-hope-it-doesn't-rain-on-my-gunpowder Spanish conquístador musket.

"¿Por qué tú sabes este idioma?" I asked in bewilderment.

That's easy. Odin is from Spain.


And that's in large part due to his father, Lambiek -- who, judging by the male capri pants he's rocking, has given whole new meaning to the phrase "wearing the pants in the family."

Lambiek is from Bergen. But not that Bergen. The Dutch one. Miriam, his wife, is the Norwegian connection. She is Sissi's little sister. Lambiek, Miriam, Atilla, Michelina and Odin used to live in the south of France, in a marbled-out behemoth of a house, living the high life, until Lambiek had a life-changing epiphany that this was not the way he wanted to raise his children. So he quit his job. Sold his possessions. Sold it all. Picked up the family and moved 'em from a house on a hill to a house on a street with muchos vecinos. Far from the pomp and circumstance of their former elite neighbors, Lambiek and his family now reside in Gerez, a town right next to Cadiz.

And you couldn't meet a man happier with his life than Lambiek.

"Let me tell you something," he said to me in the computer room my second night on the island, volunteering some of his own personal words of wisdom for a 22-year-old kid, full of confusion and obviously at a crossroads in his life. "I used to think, 'Oh, I get a lot of money, I get a big house, nice things, expensive wine, all these things,' and I will be happy. And I got all of these things. I had everything. And you know what? I wasn't happy. I was not happy. So I sold everything, moved my family to Spain, where the people are more real, and decided that this was how I wanted to raise my children. You said earlier that many of your friends like to joke that all they want to do when they get older is 'make a lot of money.' Well, here is what I know: If you can't be happy right now, in this moment -- if you're waiting for something that is going to make you happy -- then you will never be happy my friend."


He disdains the business world, which is ironic, because it was the money he made in his previous life through his business world savvy that has allowed him to adopt such a Bohemian attitude in his new one.

"I don't know what this word 'efficiency' means," Lambiek told me early in the week as we were putting up the fishing nets, cleaning them of the ew-and-goo that loves to stick to the wet pieces of nylon that remain in the water all night. "Everything has to be 'efficient.' Why? Tell me that. Why? We need a faster boat or a faster car, so that we can get home earlier and have an extra thirty minutes to watch television. Me? I'll take my little sail boat, thankyou very much. I'd rather go and fix a fence or something than go and work in this business world.

"All of this technology, all of this knowledge," he continued. "What good does it do unless you are learning the right things? Unless you know how to use this knowledge? My kids, they speak a lot of languages [Dutch, Spanish, English and Norwegian]. But I don't care so much what they speak as I care what they speak about. That is what I am focused on with my kids."

It goes without saying that his thoughts on the war in Lebanon were anything but realpolitik.


Little Odin, however -- quite possibly my closest companion throughout the entire week -- seems to be too focused on how AMAZING every little thing around him on the earth seems to be to realize the unique vantage point his father maintains. When they speak about "seeing things through a child's eyes," they're talking about Odin's take on life.

A FISH!!!! ... A CRAB!!!!! THAT CRAB IS ALIVE!!!! IT'S ALIVE!!!!! OH MY GOD THAT CRAB IS ALIVE!!!!! .... LET'S GO KILL A SHEEP!!!!!! A BIG ONE!!!!!!! ... WE HAVE A CAR!!!!! IT'S FAST!!!!! A FAST ONE!!!!!!

His eyes seem to add at least two exclamation points to every sentence he says, while his high-octane Spanish adds another two. Little Odin most likely forgot all about his friend Bahíamenos (TU NOMBRE ES BAHÍAMENOS!!! BAHÍAMENOS!!! HAHAHAHAH! BAHÍAMENOS!!!!) the second I walked out the door. But I haven't forgotten about him. And I haven't forgotten the words of wisdom uttered by his father.

This is an old picture that I just happened to come across while browsing through random photos this afternoon.

It has absolutely nothing to do with my trip -- or with travel in general -- but I thought I'd put it up just to keep the flame burning between my sister, Eli, and my assistant captain from my lacrosse team at Strake (and also the mere "Defensive MVP" to my "State Championship MVP" from our Final Four victory in 2002), Miguel.

This plays perfectly into my "All Brothers Should Sell Their Sisters Off To Their Best Friends So You Can 'Go Golfing One Weekend As Friends, And Another As Family!'" theory.


Miguel is taken, and has been taken, for a looooong time now. And I really like his girlfriend. But I just have three words in regards to his admittance to the Parsley Patch: You Never Know.

(Haley, this is only if something goes down between you guys, don't worry). 

C'est fou, mon Dieu.

My mother believes in angels. Al Michaels believes in miracles. Hunter Flint simply believes that Jah, or whoever He is, works in mysterious ways.

My philosophy isn't that much different. I just believe in signs, sent to us by something larger than ourselves. Et mon Dieu m’a envoyé un signe ce matin.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

My stomach wasn't happy. It was early, real early. Like six, seven in the morning I think -- my brain was too disoriented to truly take note. As I listened to and felt the growls rumbling from within, I already knew: A lot of veal and boiled rice was about to end up in Chez Knapp's upstairs toilet.

What a helpless feeling. Nothing can save you once you reach that point. I was a dead man walking.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I tried in vain to sleep it off. But you can't pull one over on your own body like that. If it wants to hurl, it's gonna hurl.

As soon as that feeling of warm saliva began to massage my jaw bones, I knew it was time to move. "Eight a.m.," I remember registering from the midst of the early morning haze. "Should be a wonderful day."

My semi-sleepwalk from the bed to the toilet was brisque. The fuse had been lit, and there was no telling how much time I had before it blew.

"Here we go again..." I had made it to the big hunk of porcelain and plastic with plenty of time to position myself comfortably in front of it, the feeling of the cold tile floor on my knees somewhat thinning the fog in my brain.

T-Minus five, four, three, two, one...

And I mean lift off.

Ask any of my former roomates about the "loud throw-upper." They'll cringe. They will most definitely cringe.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

You remember Bibi, don't you? The Catholic matriarch of my European surrogate family, which in turn makes her either my surrogate Euro mother, or my surrogate Euro godmother. I can't decide which one just yet.

Bibi is fully aware of my story: Seven years of Catholic schooling in lower school followed by four years of Jesuit education for high school, which in turn has been followed by four-plus years of detachment from the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

The first time I ever met the Knapps -- in August 2004 -- was on a Sunday. I was hooping it up with Letitia and Toots -- the two Knapp girls -- when Bibi drove up in her minivan to pick them up. She asked me if I would like to go to Mass with them. I politely declined, something I wouldn't have dared to do had Breck -- the non-Catholic patriarch of Chez Knapp -- not held out himself. Power in numbers, after all, is a very comforting thing.

I meant no disrespect, but I was always afraid it was taken as such.

The battle to bring me back into the Vatican fold has been going on ever since. In other words, I get the feeling that in Bibi's eyes, I am a prime candidate for a Return of the Prodigal Son.

That was in August 2004, before I became eternally indebted to this family for the truckloads of hopsitality it has bestowed upon me.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's why, last night, I made a decision.

"I really should go to Mass tomorrow with Bibi and the kids," I conceded. It was the least I could do. "It would be a nice gesture -- I owe her one, after all."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Eight hours later, I'm down on my knees in front of the toilet, feeling like absolute caca.

The search for an explanation was an exercise in futility. I didn't eat anything different from the rest of the family. I didn't drink out of a river like Hunter decided was perfectly fine when he and Chase went to Freiburg. I didn't booze. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary. All I did was go to bed, and when I woke up, my stomach was letting me know that Mass was not in the cards on this particular Sunday.

"Are you ready to get up?" Letitia -- the Knapp's oldest daughter -- asked when she came into my room to wake me at nine.

I groaned.

"I feel terrible. I'm not going. Tell your mom my vomit was a sign from God that He didn't want me to go to Mass today."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I did my best to sleep off the agony, but did a shoddy job of it. I was either being punished for eating a poor, defensless baby cow the night before, or I was being warned that, after such a long sojourn from the Sunday pews, I was unworthy for admittance into God's house.

In other words, the Lord agreed that I was not worthy to receive Him, rather than saying the word. It's 5:30 in the afternoon, after all, and I still have not been healed.

(Only Catholics will understand that last paragraph).

I meandered downstairs around midday, hungry, groggy and unenthused about being alive. A few minutes later, Bibi entered.

"How do you feel?" she inquired, still unaware of my original plans to end my hold-out that very morning.

"Awful. I had even planned on going with you guys, today. But I guess me throwing up was just a sign from God that He didn't want me to attend."

I don't know if "skeptical" is explicit enough to describe the look Bibi shot back my way. The way she stared at me -- with no words coming forth from her lips -- told me that Letitia, Toots and Tomas would have had a better chance of convincing her that Spot had eaten their homework than the crappola I was serving up.

"See, Bibi?? It's just like you always say! GOD is in control!"

She wasn't moved.

"Well," Bibi said, a smirk beginning to develop. "That's fine. There are many more Masses today."

I smiled, busted like my last name was Douglas, waiting for the punch line that I could see about to come forth.

"So in fact, I am in control! Hahahaha!"

The struggle continues.

My mom loves me.

http://www.examinernews.com/articles/2006/08/16/columns/to_wit/wit01.txt

FYI, Germany never played France. I did make the comment to some Germans about being wary of getting too confident, because "after all, we all know what happens when Germany gets really nationalistic," but this just goes to show that Mr. Springmeyer is right ... and then some. Not only does my mom not know s**t about baseball, she doesn't know anything about sports in general.

That being said, she was right about Brad Lidge. And she is giving me a lot of pub. So Mom, I still love you. Even if your teeth are falling out.

"I think I'm just going to go to Berkshire and try to Europeanize them."

That's the gameplan Didrik -- James and Sissy's youngest son -- is taking with him to Massachusetts this fall, where he will be spending the next year of his life at boarding school.

Good luck, buddy.


As you can see, Didrik is about as Euro as they come. The hair, the headband, the bike, the hood when it's not cold, the total package. He is fashionable. He listens to house, techno, trance. He loves to go to clubs and dance until the sun comes up. He is from Europe.

I had a feeling that I had met him before when I first shook his hand. He looked like someone I knew, someone I hadn't seen for a few years ...



He looked like Sunshine Bass from Remember The Titans. I realized it about four days into the trip. Maybe not as filled out, but certainly has the core elements. (If you saw Didrik's hair, you'd understand). This of course turned out to be an amazing connection, because of a story Didrik told me about his recent trip to Greece.

"My friends and I were walking down the street, and these Greek guys, they all started yelling at us. They were saying we're gay, or something," he told me, clearly confused as to how someone like himself could ever be labelled in such a way. "So we just walked up to their table and said, 'In your dreams,' and walked away. It was great."

Do you remember the scene when Sunshine was called gay? And he went up to the guy and just planted one on him? Kind of close? No?

Well, I was truly amazed at how long Didrik was able to sleep on the car ride back from Bergen to Oslo. About six out of the seven hours, he layed there, in the back of the Houston-mobile.

I wonder if he was dreaming about Sunshine. 

"Ah, we're out of food," James said, the sudden realization entering his head around five in the afternoon, dinner time rapidly approaching. "Well, let's just go catch some fish."

Let's just go catch some fish? Simple as that? This guy must be crazy, I thought.

"It's that easy?" I asked, knowing full well that you don't just catch fish whenever you feel like catching fish.

James began to smirk -- I was obviously the new kid in town.

"In Norway," he explained, "going to the store for food is a sign of shame.".

In Texas, I explained in turn, it's a sign of hunger.

Where I come from, "Do you wanna go fishing?" means "Do you want to go cast into the water, sit there for four hours hoping we get a bite, all the while not talking for fear of scaring the fish away?"

In Norway, "Do you wanna go fishing?" means "Do you wanna go out on the boat for ten minutes, cast your pole five times and reel a fish back in four of those times?"

No wonder I hated fishing as a kid. I didn't realize you were actually supposed to catch something every single time you went.

Rather than avoiding your hook like The Plague -- as the fish in Texas lakes and rivers like to do -- the little guys under Norwegian waters race for that hook like a brigade of sperm going after that egg. It is truly a thing of beauty to watch as every single person on the boat just keeps reeling 'em in. For Christiana -- James and Sissy's daughter -- and her cousin Atilla, this is how fishing has always been.

You can even catch crabs without a problem if you've got snorkel gear, like Miriam -- Atilla's mother and Sissy's flamenco instructor little sister.

No wonder Miriam's youngest daughter, Michelina, is all smiles. Not only do you catch fish, but you can also talk while doing it. We Texans could learn a thing of two from the Norwegians.
 

I am devoting four pictures to this little kid, James and Sissy's nephew, because he was that cute.

How do you spell his name? No clue. Fifty percent of National Spelling Bee Champions wouldn't, either. So we're gonna go phonetically: O-LEE-AH-CUB. Oleacob is how we'll spell it, which is guarnteed to be wrong.


His older brother, Mathias, just looks like he's up to something.


Sure, the kid appears to be all sweet and innocent. But he's way smarter than most children his age (3, I think?). Every single time he saw me, I received the same greeting: "Hallo doo-mmay!" (Again,we're going phonetically with the Norwegian). Translation? Pretty obvious. "Hello dummy!"
 

Sheep: Norwegian for "lawnmower."

Who needs to throw down a few hundred bucks at Home Depot when you can just buy some sheep to do the job for you? They really do keep the place looking sharp -- the yard is the Augusta National of Bergen island homes. If I was running the place, I would definitely want sheep as well....but not for aesthetic purposes so much as another reason.

From the second I layed eyes on the herd of 40, maybe 50, I felt an uncontrollable urge start to brew in my gut. Similar to that feeling you get when you just have to move your legs on a crowded airplane. It was an urge to just .... ahhh, I just wanted to RUN AROUND those things and scare the living bejeezus out of them. I LOVE doing stuff like that to stupid animals -- and sheep are pretty stupid. I don't know why it's so irresistable! It's probably Top Five Funniest Things in the World to me. To see how scared they get, and then to hear their impassioned pleas of "Baaaaahhhh! Baaaaaaahhhhhh!" like it's going to save them ... how can you NOT laugh at that? Even the board of PETA, or Les Alexander's wife even, would crack a smile. I know those baaaaahhhh's make me start giggling uncontrollably, and I bet they do the same to you.

But the problem with acting like a five-year-old child is that I'm actually 22. Running around trying to scare a field full of sheep while giggling like a school girl is not very tactful, especially if you're trying to make a good impression. But by the second-to-last day, the urge had crossed the Tipping Point.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was out by the fence, walking back from the boat house, when I saw what was milling around in front of me: A mass of sheep, mowing away.

"It's now or never," I said, looking around to scope the scene, trying to look casual.

All clear. Time to make my move.

I'll translate for you what the sheep were saying as I began to stalk them as stealthily as possible.

"Yo, guys, that dude is coming dangerously close to us."
"Ah, shut up, Bubba. You always cry wolf like that. He's probably just gonna go swimming or something."

"Naw, man. I'm serious. He's got a really weird look in his eyes."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Guys, he's getting closer."
"I think Bubba may be right, you guys. I'm starting to get a little sketched."

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"HOLY SHIT! RUN, FORREST! RUN FOR IT!"
"OH MY GOD! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE, BUBBA! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE! BAAAAAAHHHH! BAAAHHHHH! BAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"YOU IDIOT, FORREST! DON'T YOU KNOW WHAT THEY ALWAYS SAY! DON'T YELL 'BAAAHHH' WHEN YOU'RE IN DANGER! YELL 'FIRE' IF YOU WANT SOMEONE TO SAVE US! FIRE! FIRE!"

Hahahahahaha. I could play this game until the sheep come home. 

NORWAY.
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Dear Lorentzen family & Co.,

Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your island home off the west coast of Bergen is phat. That means "good." All I want to do is go back there and spend another week of doing absolutely nothing but sleeping, eating, reading Berlin, fishing and speaking Spanish with little Odin. Not to mention that I am having withdrawal symptoms from having to quit my afternoon siesta habit, cold turkey.

And oh, how I miss those bugs. You can't call them "mosquitoes," really -- they're much too small for that. But I hesitate to use the word "flea," as well -- the herds of those insects were way too far away from the other animals to go under that heading. I prefer the phrase, "Bugs that make you want to jump off a cliff without a parachute." I lasted about two minutes reading in the grass below before I just couldn't take it anymore. And that last night I was there, when we had to unscrew the engine from the boat ... at times I thought I was reliving the Exodus plague sequence. I've heard of people inhaling bugs through their nose, or even yawning and allowing entry through the mouth, but I have never, ever heard of someone blinking and getting one caught in their eye! There's a first time for everything, I guess.


But all jokes aside, you really made me feel at home. It wasn't just your hospitality, or all the fresh meals, or the free ferry rides, or the new toothbrush James bought for me when we got stuck in town without our bags that first night.

It was your Suburban, too -- the "Houston-mobile," as you called it. It makes my heart warm to know that a part of my culture has stayed with you for all those years since you left H-Town.


All is well here in Switzerland. Your friends, the Knapps, say hello. And FYI, the water is actually colder in Lake Geneva than the "warm" 17 degrees Celsius stuff you had during that beautiful week in Bergen (I can't remember the name of your island....which actually means that I never knew the name of your island).


P.S. Did you know Oslo is Spanish for "Do it" or "Make it"?