AQUAVIT CITY

New Blog

2010-07-25T07:55:00.000-07:00

http://aquavitcity2.blogspot.com/

Den Tapte Hval

2010-07-17T12:55:00.000-07:00

Whale. Morsel of morality. Smoked wisdom. Butter of the Sea. Yet here it sits, weeks past the due date. A pound of this stuff starts at $50, not to mention that it was harvested by harpoon. I left this cube to sit in the fridge too long, and when I finally broke it out, it was covered in a thick, tingly mucous that still triggers my gag reflex when I think about it. What a waste.

The Best of Aquavit

2010-07-17T12:47:00.000-07:00

Here we have the best title pics from the trip.

Part Fjorten

2009-08-17T17:55:00.000-07:00

The western fjords! 'Awesome' in every meaning of the word. I viewed these sights from the back of a ferry while choking on diesel fuel and it felt like making love with two rubbers on. Being that you are now viewing the same sights through a camera and a computer screen, I figure it feels like fucking with four.

Eighteen hundred meters high and waterfalls all over the place. Look how small the villages are!

Part Tretten [ed note: the Norwegian word for thirteen is pronounced exactly like pronouncing Trenton, NJ, with a Trenton accent.]

2009-08-12T06:52:00.000-07:00

Bergen. City of rain. City of assholes.

This is Domkirken, the largest church in Bergen. If you look closely, to the left of the big front window, theres a cannonball still lodged in the wall from some war that happened at some point. I don't really know when. I was only really interested in this place because Sunn O))) recorded a live album there.

Deal or no deal: the jury is still out on this one. This super delicious 'king crab plate' cost me 200 kroner. 200 divided by 6.2 (exchange rate) hrmmm, let's see thats...$32. The beer I bought in a supermarket for five friggin' bucks.

I stumbled [sic] upon this beer hall while lost in this super small city, because they print the tourist map with North actually being East. WTF? I use a compass to get around cities I don't know and that crummy map had me thinking there was some strange magnetic field from the mountains.

This place gets a 10 for atmosphere but the beer selection was dismal. So was the music. Disco remix of 'Another One Bites the Dust'? In this place? Pfff.

Arrrrrrgh!! Fuck you Hansa! You taste like shit and cost me ten dollars! Fuuuuck youuuu!!

Worst street art ever.

Best street art ever.

Being from Brooklyn NY and visiting Bergen is akin to carrying around a light saber. When you boldy strut up to ladies here, you simply state you're from the US for the weekend and looking for fun-- cuz you have no idea where to find it. At this point, they're kinda interested and like "Whats that shiny tube he's carrying?" And then they ask you where you're from... "Uhhh, Brooklyn, NY?", and KEPETCHUUUUUUUUSSHHH--- the lightsaber blazes out and all the girls eyes light up and their guys get nervous. I'm serious here. Guys will pull their girls away from you every chance they get. But the Force is with you, so you can dance your ass off with two super cute Norgies and their boyfriends will just let them do it. I wish to hell I had my camera on me when I was out dancing. I couldn't believe what I was getting away with.
[ed note: I just got back from skybox seats at an international soccer match here in Oslo and the lightsaber works on everyone.]

For example, these girls were down to stand on their heads if I asked them to. But I'm not here to slay Jawas-- I'm lookin' for Leia. [ed note, again: holy shit, the girl on the right puked all over her shoes. THATS what she was doing in the corner before I took this pic. What a trooper.]

Told you it was a city of assholes; both literal and proverbial. I was trying to get the guy on the far right to let me take his picture; he had no pants in sight and blood on his shirt. He thrust himself upon he and loudly stated "If you 61 me!! 61 mee!!!" I was like, "Don't you mean--" "--I mean 69 me!! 69 mee!!!" That's when he dropped his underwear and his friends followed suit. You can't hear it, but the dude second in from the left is slapping his dick between his thighs-- in the center square of Bergen.

Part Tolv

2009-08-12T06:38:00.000-07:00

Sweet ride.

Part Elleve

2009-08-12T06:19:00.000-07:00

So the stay at Sagesund is at an end. Time to fly out and up to Bergen. But before takeoff, just wanted to show you where I put my head to bed.
Know how people who live in the country talk about how they don't lock their front doors because its so safe where they live? Well they don't even have locks here.
One last open-face sandwich and coffee to go along with the view.

Part Ti

2009-08-12T06:12:00.000-07:00

So after visiting the family burial site, I thought it be fitting to also show some of the family land. These few pics represent a plot of land that my father, uncle and aunt inherited from my grandfather. Its filled with a bit of debris, so maybe next year we can clean it up a bit. I hung out here for a little bit, before catching a bus to the airport, as this is the last day in Sagesund.

Part Ni

2009-08-11T03:51:00.001-07:00

Part åtte

2009-08-10T09:27:00.000-07:00

This is my cousin, Dag, who is really fun to hang out with because he's lived in Sagesund his whole life and can tell you so much about the people and history of the region. He took me sailing up the coast a ways to the municipality of Risør. He's going to the annual wooden boat show there. I've been to it before, it's awesome, but this year I wanted to visit the family gravesite.And this is his friend George, who, by the way, is cool as hell. Both of these guys are. George is a mechanical engineer who worked for Shell Oil in Syria. Four weeks on, four weeks off. Anyway, it wasn't very windy that day, so we didn't actually sail, we just cruised with the motor at about five knots. The upside of this is that we could drink beers, munch Cheez Doodles, and chew the fat.

George talked about his time in Syria; the strong loyalty of Arabs once they trust and respect you, the politics of the region, and how things will most likely never be solved there. Dag talked about the island of Sandøya, which we passed on the way to Risør. You see, Sandøya--with a population of 250-- is one of the few islands with no bridges leading to it, yet has a curiously large number of redheaded folk living there. Ummm, yeah. To quote George: "When you're in Sandøya, and you see a ginger hair, you begin to wonder...". Well put, my man.

I know this photo is a bit blurry but check out that kid cold chillin' on the mast. Like what both Dag and George said... its a good life.

Taking this four hour tour left me with a new found desire to learn how to sail. As we were talking along the way, I had the strong urge to pick up a length of rope and start learning how to tie knots. Did you know about the six motions a boat can make? These motions are based on an X-Y-Z axis. Yeah, yeah, and there's two motions for each axis and the... hold on a minute, look at me chatter on here. See what I mean? I wanna learn this stuff! Like this! And ooh, this! And all of these too!

Part Syv

2009-08-08T14:51:00.000-07:00

Down by the fjord, getting sun, diving off the big rock, hanging out with the fam, feeding ducks...

Wait a minute...This frickin' brat kid has his own boat?!

N-haa, I'm just joshin'; actually it's very affordable to own a boat in Norway. The government encourages boat culture very much here. It's very common to see young boys with inflatable motor boats and big life jackets on, tooling around solo. I saw this one kid--not even ten years old I suspect--all puffed up in his vest with a little captain hat on and his hand on the throttle. It was so adorable it made me seasick.

Part Seks

2009-08-08T10:59:00.000-07:00

These delicious spices poke at my white boy guilt a tad too much.

Part Fem

2009-08-08T02:05:00.000-07:00

Ok, so before I write anything further, almost every house in the village has a working lavatory. The cottage I stayed in had a flushing toilet, even though you had to let it chill for ten minutes between discharges. That being said, if the house my grandfather was born in dates from 1890, so does this shit house. That's a century of feces! Let's venture inside shall we?
Ooooh! I like what they did with the place, quite cozy-- besides the strong smack of poo. That painting of a Spanish bomb is very tantalizing. But why are there two evac holes? I know that the cottage that this outhouse is next to used to be a mill, but... ohhh, I guess back in the days of having more then seven kids, there'd be many points in their lives when two or three would have to dunk at the same time. Weird. I've never deffed right next to someone without a door and a divider before. I wonder what the conversation would be like.

Part Fire

2009-08-06T16:12:00.000-07:00

So on the way back from 'the end of the world' as the family here has dubbed the walk through the woods and along the fjord, I found a trail to a spectacularly vast lake; which is also quite secluded.
The sun finally showed the fuck up after some days of rain and clouds, and so I whipped out the picnic I packed...
...squeezed in some hours of naked sunbathing, and took a dip.
Hey there punters! Almost hit you with a full moon there huh?!
Haahaa!!
(pssst...Ladies, pics of my emancipated bottom are available for 200 kroner.)

Part Tre

2009-08-05T16:21:00.000-07:00

--Yawwwn. Strrretch.
"Uggh, what I am I gonna do today? Erff... had a bit too much Aass last night. I guess I'll just hit up some breakfast and take a jaunt."
"Coffee. Word... black like everyone likes it here."
"Let's see here now... slice me some bread, throw on some Jarlsberg, squeeze out some of this Kaviar-in-a-tube stuff... that'll work."
"I think I'll take the road to the 'end of the world' and back."

"Hrrmm, yes, very pleasant. Now it's time to head back for a swim at that lake I saw..."

Part To

2009-08-04T17:48:00.000-07:00

Driving in Norway is way different from the states.

First off, all the speed limits are slow as shit. I think the fastest I've gotten to jam so far is 80kph, which is 49mph. Due to having one of the most sophisticated infrastructures in the world, the police incorporate automated radars and 'distance over time' trackers to send you a ticket in the mail when you do not adhere strictly to the limit. Worse yet, if you get pulled over, you get breathalyzed and have to pay your speeding fine right then and there. Imagine making sure you have a couple hundred bucks on you before running to 7eleven for a gallon of milk... just in case you space out and bust the limit.

Thats another thing: Drunk driving. Norway has a 'No Tolerance' approach to DWI. The legal limit here is 0.01. What? That's almost nothing. It has me wary to gargle Listerine, or pop a Halls effervescent tablet before jumping in the driver's seat for christsake. Hell, I believe if you even look at a can of beer your blood alcohol level rises to 0.01.

Therefore, another way of combating road ponies here is making alcohol the most expensive thing on the planet. See (below) how far fifty bucks of booze got me, in a liquor store no less.
But being the true American I am, I had to push the limits. Here's a video of me driving one handed, on winding narrow back roads, with no seat belt, and a camera in my other hand.

U-S-A.

Naturally, every time you hit a hairpin, there's a car:

Part En

2009-08-04T17:31:00.000-07:00

I promised a few of my friends some of my famous updates from the Fatherland, and the rest of you are included due to the convenience of modern technology; so tough luck. Anyway I'm late with the play by play because I forgot to pack a EU>US power cord adapter and my computer went flat. I then borrowed an ancient adapter from one of the many, many cousins I have here and didn't bother to read the warning label and started a small international fire. Anywho, I'm back on line (online) and ready to fill your eyeballs with (hopefully) lots of traveling monologues and crap.

This being the first of the bunch, I'll keep it short. Below is a then and now of what I see every morning when I wake up. This is the family village:

Then:
Now:
Now see the big white house with five windows on one side? That's where my grandfather was born. The house is so old (119+) that you open that shit with an oldeschool skeleton key a la Super Mario World. You fish for mackerel in the fjord and run up stone steps and fry it up. One of my cousins has in-laws from Switzerland staying there now, so I have to run a bit farther to the frying pan. Also, the definition of a fjord is as follows:

Fjord: er i internasjonalt fagspråk forklart som ei dyp, smal og langstrakt hav- eller innsjørenne med bratt land på tre kanter.

Whoops.

Fjord: a long, narrow, deep inlet of the sea between steep slopes, typically caused by glacial erosion.

PS... And enough already with the old joke about being careful to not hook up with one of my cousins. Am I really that depraved?

(Really though, am I? I'm asking you here.)