On Thursday it was the 17th of May (Syttende Mai) which is Norway's National Day. The whole country gets together to celebrate its independence and the writing of the constitution on that day all those years ago in 1814 :)
All the schools and kindergardens walk in their local parade (tog), followed by the Russ (Norwegian youth soon graduating from high school, usually decorated colourfully and crazily in red or blue and newly black!), and often other groups from the local community. Everybody is dressed in Norway's national dress which is called a 'bunad' and everybody has a Norwegian flag to wave. Each region of Norway has its own style of bunad and they're usually passed down from generation to generation. The parade in Oslo goes up by the Royal Palace (Slottet), where the Royal Family of Norway sit and wave to everybody :) It really is the children's day :) Its also traditional to eat sausages (pølser) in a kind of potato pancake (lompe) and eat lots of ice cream (is)! Unfortunately the parade in our town had to be moved this year and seeing as neither of us drive (yet!) we decided to stay at home and watch everything on the tv :) Because of this I don't have any pictures... :(
On Wednesday after work I found a 'note' in our post box saying that my new things I'd ordered were ready to be picked up at the post office! (in Norway unless you have a special, big post box any larger parcels are delivered to the local post office and you have to pick it up from there. You usually get a note with a picture of the parcel on it and information on how to collect it!) However the post office closes at 17.00 so it was too late to collect my parcel, and everything was closed on May 17th, so I had to wait until Friday! Yesterday before swimming we popped to the post office to get my parcel! And here are its contents:
The package came really fast (dispatched on Monday and arrived on Wednesday) and everything seems to be of great quality! I'm so happy to have a new backpack seeing as the one I was using up until now had been previously owned and a few weeks ago the metal zip broke off a little bit making it really sharp and a bit dangerous. I suppose I could have repaired it somehow and didn't need a new one, but its nice to have :)
The Southwest (Sydvest) will really come in handy when I'm cycling to work in the rain! I really find I need something to protect my face so I can see where I'm cycling and also to protect my hair because if it gets wet it becomes really curly! :P
The last part of my Norwegian rain-defence will include my Viking wellington boots! I'm waiting to hear back from the company that they've received my return package so I can re-order a bigger size! Then I should be all set! Its funny since living in Norway that you have to think so much about the weather. I guess its because we're outside a lot more here, so its important to have the right clothes!
And oh yes, the farmers! I've decided I'm very much on the side of the farmers. I think they are undervalued and that we need to take care of them more. Farms are a huge part of Norwegian culture and I think that with the EU (Norway is not a member) we lost a lot of farms in other European countries, which is such a shame :( We need to protect our farmers and our farms! And as one spray painted hay bale stated 'Ingen bonde ingen mat' - 'No farmer no food'.
The farmers are planning a 'protest' of sorts in Oslo Center on Monday. They're going to drive their tractors in there and disrupt traffic and cause all kinds of chaos! More power to them :)
No comments:
Post a Comment