Vignettes
Little red rental car…. Larry and I had commented on the number of cars and small vans that are covered with advertising. Little did we realize… we are now a member of that group. I had decided to rent a car for the weekend that our friend and colleague, Martin Schoell would be in Stavanger. Then my French friend, neighbor and driver, is away for 2 weeks which makes it difficult for me to get to the Thursday hikes – so I decided to rent a car for a month. That would allow us to explore more on the weekends and give me more mobility during the week. A nearby Suzuki dealer has good rates, so I arranged for the rental and when we went to pick it up there was the little red Citroen with all the ads. I was initially very nervous about driving in Stavanger; there are many round-abouts with drivers on the left having the right of way and not always using blinkers. More of a problem is that drivers coming from the right on some, but not all, side roads onto larger roadways have the right of way. Well, after a few days I’m over the nerves and feel comfortable driving anywhere except the town center. Quite amusing that I left Ithaca, renting a big, red Dodge truck and here in Stavanger am driving a very, very small red Citroen.

We’ve seen a number of wedding receptions. The groom and some attendees wore traditional Norwegian dress at one but all seem to have many children in attendance.. A few Fridays back I watched a group milling about outside the Stavanger courthouse which was right across the street from where I had my hair cut ($70!) The civil ceremony had taken place upstairs and afterwards everyone was standing outside talking, munching on candy and drinking water and soda. There were 30 or so adults and children (better dressed than the adults except for the bride and groom.) The bride wore an unflattering grey satin dress but her hair was beautifully done. Suddenly she came towards the beauty salon. She had been late for her appointment so had rushed to the wedding without paying and so she now paid and then went off….

Stavanger’s gated community. Larry and I walked around a number of hills on Saturday, 10/21. There was one hill I particularly wanted to climb as I see it every time we head south. As we approached I noticed a gate – and said “the first gated community I’ve seen in Stavanger”; as Larry commented on the heft of the gate, out of the gatehouse stepped a soldier holding a gun. It’s a NATO training spot and we were not welcome to walk about (though later heard from a NATO bridge spouse that we could have walked around the back and gotten to the top that way.) The soldier, a Nowegian, was very pleasant and friendly but was especially interested in finding out where we called home.

Open air swimming. Last week I went to the open air swimming pool. Air temperature 11 and pool temperature 28. Steam rising from the pool. Quite crowded, so I couldn’t get a lane to myself to swim backstroke, so swam breaststroke most of the time. Three other PWC’ers were there and we made quite a splash - though in our way of thinking not as much as the 65 year old women who swam, hot-tubbed and saunaed topless – I heard comments about all the Americans when I was the only one. In the sauna everyone - well at least all the women - chatted – and even sang – Beatles and Elvis Presley songs! The swimming was marvelous and my limbs feel loose and limber. I’ve been doing lots of walking but getting almost no upper body exercise so this was great.

The weather turned chilly last week. We had a few wonderful, crisp, sunny, fall days – during the week – and then the rain began and continued unabated all weekend so we weren’t able to hike with Martin.