I was excited to finally be in Norway! A piece of my past, my heritage. I grew up listening to stories about this country, cooking and eating recipes from here and doing traditions from here. And, we were starting the day with shopping!!! I quickly discovered that my heritage is expensive and freezing cold. Walking through the first few shops I quickly got discouraged. Even my mom got discouraged and walked out with nothing (highly abnormal, if you know my mother). The little trolls that I wanted were $50. A thin sweatshirt you can buy in America for twenty bucks, was $100! A nice sweater, that would actually keep me warm, was $600. I choked every time I looked at a price tag and did the math. The cheapest thing I saw all morning was 49 kroner, which is $10. Most things were in the hundreds of kroner.
We decided to give up and go eat lunch. Bad mistake! We showed up at good old McDonalds thinking about the normal prices. We were wrong. A cheeseburger meal was $17. Ouch! I lost my appetite real quick. we ended up at a pizza buffet. I won't tell you how much but the pizza was not even close to worth it. I miss Pizza Pie Cafe :(
We then added to our disappointment by finding out that it cost to much per person to take a tram up the mountain to see the view. Everything was discouraging! My mom wasn't feeling good, so we took her back and while she was asleep, the four others of us headed out of town to find better priced food at a grocery store.
Have you ever noticed how much you actually read the containers your food comes in. I never did until I was trying to decipher Norwegian on a box. Is this soft or hard butter? Skim or Whole Milk? Ham, Bologna, Sausage, Turkey? The best was trying to figure out which of the many different kinds of cheese was closest to cheddar. And imagine doing that all in another language when you cant taste any of it. Well... Success!!! We'll be eating sandwiches the rest of our journey, but at least we can afford to eat.
To make the day even better we found Krunsekake!!! For those of you who don't know what that is, its Norwegian Wedding cake. It was in the freezer section. I know its weird to have wedding cake when not at a wedding but I told my family it served multiple purposes. One, because I missed out tasting my Aunts awesome homemade version at my cousins wedding just a few weeks ago. Two, because we needed dessert after dinner. Three, because it would make me feel better about my life from this past year (my one year anniversary in particular). Four, because it would make my mom feel better. Also, it's just amazing to find it in a grocery store like that!
So we ended the night much better than the rest of the day. Playing Cards and eating Krunsekake :D Yum!
- Me (Elisha)
Location:Bergen, Norway
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