Rest & Recovery
Well, we’ve settled into our post flight routine of a lot of
sleep on our new schedule. John had to
rouse Mary at 9:00 AM this morning which puts the overnight at a healthy 12
hours of sleep. Nina is out walking Thilde
when we appear leaving us some time to get our senses about us and read up a
bit about Stavanger.
Stavanger is the oil capital of Norway and the home of
Statoil, the government owned oil company as well as several other American oil
companies. Fifty years ago Norway was
one of the poorest countries in Europe and the weak little brother of
Sweden. Now, after finding oil in the
North Sea it is one of the richest and Swedes are migrating to Norway to find
their fortunes. Nina is a contract
relationship manager for Statoil working with independent contractors worldwide
(although now on a one year maternity leave).
There is a large office complex near us which houses offices
of 2500 companies and 40,000 employees.
Patrick works for one of them as a project manager for a worldwide
information management company. He
travels internationally a lot. There is
also a large NATO installation where they think big thoughts about world peace
or not.
Nina and Thilde return from their walk and we make some
plans to find lunch. There is a cute
sandwich and coffee shop about a 45 minute walk from “home” and near an office
complex along the fjord. We love this
type of travel where we are mingling in neighborhoods and sticking our noses
into the way other people live, right down to the self-propelled lawn mower
working all by itself in one of the yards.
It is a great morning for a walk with temps in the 60’s and
off and on clouds. We grab an outside
table at the café (like last night restaurants are unwelcoming to strollers)
and order at the bar. John and Mary each
get a smoked salmon sandwich on Danish rye with cucumbers and horseradish cream
and svelte Nina gets a coffee. Nina is a
lifelong soccer player (including one semester at Augsburg in Minneapolis—guess
where she met Patrick) and now her conditioning program involves pushing a
stroller up and down hills for miles at a time.
She eventually relents and shares Mary’s sandwich—John was not sharing.
We took the short cut home so Nina could deal with her
Polish painters who are refinishing their deck and front porch. There are some issues but one of the guys
remains to start sanding with small portions of sheets of sandpaper by
hand. We refuse to engage in Polish
jokes at this time but jeez, you would think they would have something they
could plug in.
Patrick got off work a bit early and while the girls nap he
takes us on a tour of the beaches just to the west of Stavanger. This is beautiful country dotted with small
farms and miles of shoreline. We take a
nice walk along one of the beaches into a small village with a protected
marina. There are a couple fellows
loading up lobster traps for an evening on the water and Patrick says, “hey, I
know that guy.” It is one of their
neighbors who is the local supplier of fresh seafood when the catch is
good. John and Patrick climb a pretty
steep hill to investigate a large black and white structure that we decide is
just a visual guide for boats returning to the marina below.
Back home it is Friday night tacos. This is a tradition at their house and
Norwegian tacos might seem a little unusual but there are homemade tortillas
and all the fixin’s. One upside of not
eating out much is that these two have become very good cooks. Tacos, beers, Friday night and a Polish guy
still out sanding—it doesn’t get any better than this.
Thilde is having issues with brand new teeth and Nina and
Patrick tag team comforting her but she is obviously in pain. Patrick takes the later shift while Nina
teaches us the game of Skip-Bo, a Norwegian strategic card game. John wins with a great deal of coaching from
Nina and we are toast. It’s off to bed,
a little later than last night but not much.
Maybe only 11 hours tonight.
What did we learn today: A lawn mower doesn't need a person.
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