The little things
There are certain things that you can only learn by experience - the little things that make a place unique. Here's a list of interesting details I've discovered so far in Stavanger:
1) Brown cheese. It's made from whey, and the lactose (milk sugar) is caramelized, making the resulting product sweet. It looks like cheese; it has the texture of cheese, but it doesn't taste like cheese. It goes best on fresh, hot waffles.
2) Another food item: fish on bread. And eggs on bread. In fact, anything on bread. I've seen many of my colleagues do this at lunch: you take a piece of nice bread, then layer it with any sort of animal product you like. Slices of cheese, brown cheese, sliced hard-boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, mackerel in tomato sauce. I tried that last one a few days ago, and I must admit, it's actually pretty good. You have to have a dark bread to complement the slight sweetness of the tomato. My favorite combination so far is smoked salmon on bread - now that is a good lunch.
3) I've become accustomed to industrial noise around me. It's certainly not obnoxious or constant, but especially at my institute, there's quite a lot of noise caused by the surrounding industry. I kept hearing a high-pitched tone followed by a couple beeps. The sound would last for about a minute and then stop. As it turns out, this is the warning sound for detonation of dynamite. Whenever you hear the high-pitched tone, don't go towards it, because someone is about to set off their dynamite. Once the sound ceases, all is clear. I think I'm usually just too far away to hear the actual boom of the dynamite, but when they used the same signal at a construction site near my house, I figured out the pattern. By the way: urban construction projects impress the heck out of me. How do you keep your mess contained within the confines of a narrow, populated street? Yeah, they do somehow. Keep it up, guys.
4) I learned today that rather than having a word for "the," Norwegians change the ending of a noun. They add either "-en" or "-et," so for example, my street, Kirkebakken, can be translated "the church hill." If it was just Kirkebakke, it'd be just "Church Hill." Make sense? Lots of streets end in "-veien," which means "the way," so for example, Ulaveien can be translated "the ula way." Very interesting.
Here's to learning by experience!
1) Brown cheese. It's made from whey, and the lactose (milk sugar) is caramelized, making the resulting product sweet. It looks like cheese; it has the texture of cheese, but it doesn't taste like cheese. It goes best on fresh, hot waffles.
2) Another food item: fish on bread. And eggs on bread. In fact, anything on bread. I've seen many of my colleagues do this at lunch: you take a piece of nice bread, then layer it with any sort of animal product you like. Slices of cheese, brown cheese, sliced hard-boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, mackerel in tomato sauce. I tried that last one a few days ago, and I must admit, it's actually pretty good. You have to have a dark bread to complement the slight sweetness of the tomato. My favorite combination so far is smoked salmon on bread - now that is a good lunch.
3) I've become accustomed to industrial noise around me. It's certainly not obnoxious or constant, but especially at my institute, there's quite a lot of noise caused by the surrounding industry. I kept hearing a high-pitched tone followed by a couple beeps. The sound would last for about a minute and then stop. As it turns out, this is the warning sound for detonation of dynamite. Whenever you hear the high-pitched tone, don't go towards it, because someone is about to set off their dynamite. Once the sound ceases, all is clear. I think I'm usually just too far away to hear the actual boom of the dynamite, but when they used the same signal at a construction site near my house, I figured out the pattern. By the way: urban construction projects impress the heck out of me. How do you keep your mess contained within the confines of a narrow, populated street? Yeah, they do somehow. Keep it up, guys.
4) I learned today that rather than having a word for "the," Norwegians change the ending of a noun. They add either "-en" or "-et," so for example, my street, Kirkebakken, can be translated "the church hill." If it was just Kirkebakke, it'd be just "Church Hill." Make sense? Lots of streets end in "-veien," which means "the way," so for example, Ulaveien can be translated "the ula way." Very interesting.
Here's to learning by experience!
Comments
Post a Comment