Obviously keeping up with this blog has been the least of my priorities over the past 12 months, but to quote that line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “I’m not dead yet!” I’ve recently migrated this site to a different cloud platform, figuring out how to reinstate SSL via Let’s Encrypt along the way. Now comes the hard part of catching up on what actually went on IRL since the last post!

The foam sheet is a bit thicker than the OEM pads, so a bit of creative trimming is required, but it’s a small price to pay for a lesson learned!

A couple of months ago I took and passed the Amazon Web Services Certified Solutions Architect Associate (AWS CSAA for those not in the mood to be verbose) exam.

It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Pass the Test)

It took about 10 months to prepare for this exam, although most of that calendar time was taken up by work, with the lion’s share of studying and cramming happening a week-plus before the exam (we were also leaving for UK/Norway a few days after that, so let’s say it was a bit of a hectic week-plus).

With that said and with the benefit of hindsight, here are the things I used or did on the way to the CSAA exam.

Udemyou? Udemy!

I purchased and completed three CSAA courses, and while there were understandably overlap in content among the three, I found Linux Academy’s offering to have the most focused in terms of lab work (although in order to take full advantage of their hands-on labs one should probably sign up with their “all-you-can-eat” course subscription).

The acloud.guru course, when purchased from Udemy, can be transferred to their proper site where its contents get updated fairly regularly to reflect changes and new features in AWS.

The third course was okay, but I think acloud.guru and Linux Academy were much better. With that said, I purchased all three during Udemy’s frequent sales, so not a huge hit to the wallet (between the study material and the exam cost, I’d probably spent around $200 getting this certification).

Don’t Book ’em, Danno

Of the books I’d read and referred to during all this, I’d guardedly recommend this study guide. It covers the exam materials, but some of the details and what one might regard “minutiae” have changed since the publication date (I found that out through practice tests, FAQ’s, and updated acloud.guru lessons).

I guess it doesn’t help that a new version of the CSAA exam came out since the study guide’s publication. It looks like there is a newer book that covers the 2018 exam, but I haven’t had the time or need to look into it.

GTFO: Get the FAQ’s Out

The one constant of AWS is that it is constantly changing. New features are added, existing features are changed (or sometimes deprecated), and their own documentation, especially their FAQ’s, do keep up with these changes pretty well.

Not that this particular tidbit showed up in the exam, but recently we were looking at FedRAMP compliance of AWS services for a project, and in the span of two weekly meetings, the Elasticache managed service got approved (we noticed the status changing in the middle of the second meeting).

There are better examples of how quickly and constantly things change with the AWS service portfolio, but the time-honored adage of “Read The Fine Manual” (the adage in question masterfully sanitized by George Takei in one of the Starfleet Command game tutorials) definitely applies.

Practice, Practice, Practice

As a coworker so rightly advocates, build your muscle memory. Following along with the videos to provision an EC2, VPC, etc. is great for being introduced to those concepts, but doing these exercises without guidance, repeatedly, and preferably for “real world” projects is critical for internalizing AWS knowledge.

I’m fortunate in that I get to work with AWS for work, and in the months leading up to the exam, I had an opportunity to migrate a million-plus user WordPress site to AWS, launch an ECS Fargate-backed analytics dashboard application, and set up a multi-environment AWS infrastructure. As well as launching regular old EC2 instances that host CMS sites.

While it’s awesome to be able to do this sort of “learn by doing,” one can still do quite a bit of exploring and building with the AWS free tier account (although be prepared to pay a few bucks at least – there is a price for knowledge after all).

Taking Tests to Practice Taking Tests To…

To follow through on another adage about cutting bait or fishing, I booked an appointment to take the CSAA exam, and started hitting the Whiz Labs practice tests. While not as compact as flash cards (nor 100% accurately reflect actual exam questions), the practice tests are a great resource to assess what you think you know and to focus on the bits that you now know you don’t know.

The Big Day

While it is possible to take the certification exam at home, I decided to do what most folks do and scheduled an appointment with PSI, who administer proctored exams for all sorts of things, from aspiring cloud architects to realtors and whoever needs a-testin’ to be a-certified.

The local PSI facility is in a rather unremarkable office building a few minutes from our house, and it is remarkably busy with exam-takers who show up by the half-dozen-plus, sign in, pack away everything (e.g., wallet, keys, and especially phones) in a locked zipper bag, and shuffle away to a room full of booths, each with a workstation ready to test your worthiness to be whatever you’re looking to call yourself.

A couple of hours after checking in for my appointment, I shuffled out of the unremarkable office building with a vague recollection of having passed the exam. Once you submit all your answers, you’re presented with the test results, but you don’t get any actual hard copy of said results. I remembered seeing the word “Congratulations!” on that final screen which would at least imply that I passed, but even the email that arrived immediately after the exam simply stated that I “completed” the test.

The actual results arrived via email the following day, and hey, just as I kinda recalled, I passed!

While I may have taken a lot of calendar time studying, doing, watching, and eventually cramming, I do think that if you do need to take that time to really use AWS in order to learn it. A part of the curriculum does involve a “trivial pursuit” type of memorizing the details of specific AWS services and features, but the exam does require you to understand how the alphabet soup of Amazon cloud offerings (EC2, VPC, ECS, ECR, ELB, ALB, S3, RDS, and on and on) work together, especially in “hybrid” deployments where part of the IT infrastructure remains on-site, while other bits get boosted into the cloud.

And For My Next Trick

What is that they say about potato chips and certifications – that you can’t just have one? I’ll be looking into the Certified Developer Associate exam next, and while once upon a time the CSAA and CDA exams were so similar that you could ace one and pass the other, that “feature” has been nerfed/fixed. So, time to start hitting the videos, clouds, and books again!

Flying Is for the Byrds

I’m not sure who originally said that “getting there is half the fun,” but I don’t think they had flying in mind. Our journey began with awaking at the butt-crack of dawn, making our way to PDX, zipping through security, cooling our heels at the United Club, and realizing that our original adjacent seat reservations were tossed out the window for what looked like random seat assignments that put us 5 rows apart. In middle seats. What the actual hell? Apparently this is a fairly regular practice, which again brings me to ask, “United, why can’t I quit you?” Air miles and club passes. Derp.

One quick flight later, we landed in San Francisco (United doesn’t offer direct flights from PDX to LAX; other airlines (cough Alaska cough) do, but United came up the cheapest in the airfare lottery), again chilled out a tad in the United Club, then embarked on the second flight of the day.

Another quick flight later, we landed Los Angeles where ongoing tarmac construction has forced incoming passengers to use shuttle buses to get from the plane to the terminal. After being herded around on buses, we claimed our rental car, punched in our AirBnB address, and made our way through the LA sprawl.

Nobody Walks in L.A.

Having grown up in Houston, which is an urban sprawl in the guise of a gigantic concrete dish, I’m no stranger to (a) having to drive everywhere and (b) sharing the roads with the hordes of motor peers doing (a). Perhaps it’s having lived in Portland for a bit, but the density of traffic and the sheer concrete-ness of the city took a bit of acclimating (which I’m not sure I did in the 2-1/2 days we were there).

I think one needs motorized transportation go get from point A to B in L.A. Whether it’s via your own set of wheels or a hired set (public transport or Uber/Lyft), the city is just too huge. And probably by extension of that, and by movies, songs, TV shows, etc. set in Los Angeles, the streets themselves become as ubiquitous as celebrities. Sunset, Melrose, Wilshire, Santa Monica, etc.

We drove past a playground that made me think of the scene in Terminator 2 where Sarah Connor has the dream about Judgment Day. I don’t think that was the actual playground where the scene was filmed, but again, it’s as if I’ve already known the city through images and sounds filtered through someone else’s lenses and soundtracks.

Drive, Eat, Repeat, Win

Roughly an hour after leaving the rental car lot, we made our way to the Silver Lake neighborhood, grabbed some mighty fine lunch at Flore Vegan (including a fantastic pumpkin “cheese”cake), did a quick shopping stop at Ragg Mopp Vintage (where Nancy found a couple of Marimekko dresses – we got one of ’em), and checked in at our AirBnb, which incidentally is a bone’s throw from a huge dog park. That required us to go stretch our legs to ogle at floofers, borkers, and puppers (shush, you snickering speakers of Norwegian!).

Later that evening, we met up with our friends and their bandmates at Hyperion Public for drinks and food, nerded out over Peter Hook, The Left Banke, The Mighty Lemon Drops, and Amazon Print-on-Demand. Wonderful conversation and great eats (their fried “rice” – cauliflower – is fantastic), and before yours truly turned into a pumpkin at midnight, we retired for a well-deserved snooze.

A Beach is Life

The next morning, we fortified ourselves with some caffeine and meal bars, and headed out west towards the coast. One amazing breakfast at Lily’s Malibu later, we were strolling along the beach at Point Dume.

It was a delightfully misty morning (not to be confused with the brownish gauze that hung around the hills the previous day) which eventually cleared to a hazy shade of sunny, but I was still inspired to grab these images in black and white. There’s something about southern California that lends one to view things in monochrome. Not sure what exactly it is, and maybe it’s just me.

Even more canine companions to be spotted here, and one of ’em gave us a knowing look. About what, I can’t begin to guess, but we did share a moment in that look.

When You’re a Tourist, Tour Like a Tourist

And what vacation/junket/jaunt would be complete without a bit of retail therapy? We made our way to the Santa Monica Uniqlo store, picked up a few wintry things (which felt a shade odd considering the balmy weather, but hey, fall is a bit cooler and way wetter in Oregon), and headed back into the city, specifically to Little Tokyo.

Our main objective was to visit the church where John Carpenter set his horror classic Prince of Darkness, which we’d just seen in 35mm at the Hollywood Theatre with soundtrack composer Alan Howarth performing a medley of his works afterwards.

And there it was:

The space is now the LA Artcore Union Center for the Arts, but enough of the film-infused ambience is there.

Remember the bit where Alice Cooper’s creepy vagrant skewers the graduate researcher with a bicycle? And the bit where the green goo zombies get tossed out the window? That’s the alley where the magic happened!

The spot where that guy turns into a pile of insects? It’s still a parking lot, but a paid one. Kinda like the spot in East London where Mary Kelly was murdered is now a car park (i.e., parking garage). I seem to recall that the Soviet NKVD had buried Hitler’s remains in an East German parking lot at some point. Death = parking? Anyway….

I’m sure the Union Center folks see people like us skulk around the space on a regular basis, geeking out about John Carpenter, etc. I’m glad they don’t seem to mind.

A bit of wandering around Little Tokyo afterwards…

…and made our way to the Echo Park neighborhood for a bit of delicious Thai food…

…and record shopping…

…and back to the AirBnB, at which point Nancy went over to the Silver Lake Dog Park to witness the dressed-up and put-upon canines of the Howl-o-ween Costume Contest. I took a nap. Yes, I missed out.

Rock Out with the Sox Out

It says a lot about how out of touch I am with the world sports in that I had no idea that (a) the World Series was happening and (b) was happening at Dodger Stadium, which is a long stone’s throw from the AirBnB, but is close enough to see wrecking astronomers’ views with light pollution (not that I saw too many telescope jockeys).

We headed back to Echo Park and witnessed a minor miracle of an open parking spot relatively close to Echoplex (the venue where our friends were playing). On a complete aside, the rear camera in the Kia Soul is a godsend when it comes to parallel parking.

The Ocean Blue and The Luxembourg Signal

Our friend Beth sings with The Luxembourg Signal, and our friend Oed plays guitar and keyboards (and sings) with The Ocean Blue. Both bands don’t play out much as their members are geographically scattered (across continents in case of The Luxembourg Signal). So shows by either band are pretty rare, requiring not a little bit of logistical heavy lifting to make them happen.

It was a fabulous show with both bands in proverbial top form before a full house of enthusiastic fans, and my typically overanalytical brain stopped taking notes to simply enjoy the evening of music and friends.

I got to finally meet in person a music pen pal of sorts from the 90’s who recently relocated to southern California, at least two other social media friends and acquaintances, one very proud parent, and Beth’s beau Bobby whose Chuck Taylors are pictured below along with Nancy’s Fluevogs and my Bogs.

We Had to Leave Los Angeles…

… but not before (a) doing some record shopping and (b) dropping a lame, sideways reference to the title track of X’s debut LP!

The Los Angeles location of Amoeba Music may be almost as large as the San Francisco one, which is pretty freakin’ huge. I suspect once upon a time I could have spent hours picking through the racks upon racks upon racks of CD’s (and emerged achy, but jubilant with a stack of deals, steals, and finds).

This time around, I found myself immediately overwhelmed by the volume of stuff, so I hung out in the parking garage, answering emails, jumping on conference calls, working on Jira tickets – basically the stuff I do normally, but not while parked under a gigantic record store.

Nancy, being more adventurous and tenacious than I, persevered through the record racks and emerged triumphant with a number of awesome finds, including the triple LP reissue of the Zweistein album.

And then, a drive to the airport, a hop on the rental car bus, a crawl through security screening, a couple of short flights that felt way longer than they were, and finally we returned home late that night.

Toot Sweet, Tout Suite

And the following day, being my birthday, we went over to Pip’s for a celebratory dozen donuts and mugs of chai! As that song went, “today was a good day,” and this trip was a good trip.

BUTT First, a Message from Our Sponsors

On Saturday afternoons (4-6PM Pacific Time) Nancy does her DJ magic on Freeform Portland (KFFP-LP 90.3FM and KFFD-LP 98.3FM), and here we see the artist at work in the midst of a broadcast studio that was completely overhauled and rearranged in the past month.

While Nancy did her tuneful thing, I was installing the new streaming source client (i.e., the machine that turns analog output from the mixing board into an MP3 stream which goes to our Icecast server which then goes to the rest of the non-FM-reachable world which is pretty much everywhere). The streaming client is an open source application called Broadcast Using This Tool, or BUTT which has been a goldmine for puerile humor whenever the previous BUTT server kept crapping out (see?).

And with our community radio duties done for the week, we headed to the venue!

Winging It for Dinner

From what I understand the Portland neu-Thai eatery Pok Pok is a world-famous dining destination for tourists (and locals alike), and what I learned this past weekend (and way belatedly so) is that Pok Pok has a satellite location that cranks out its mainstay dishes – spicy chicken wings and papaya salad – with no fuss, less muss, and even less waiting.

Recognizing that I could go into “hangry mode” without nourishment, Nancy bravely held our place in line so that I could go stuff my face.

And Now, On to the Show!

This was the first time I’ve seen Mr. Hitchcock in performance (I did “see” him before, in an upscale vegan restaurant in San Francisco where we were having an anniversary dinner, and I’d mistaken him for Kurt Loder…), and on this particular pass through Portland we were treated to an acoustic solo set and a four-piece electric rock set.

To say that this man has a vivid imagination is a gross understatement. The surreal, yet poetically coherent lyrics of his songs are only the sprinkles on the delicious cupcake that are his between-song monologues, which from I’ve been told, are spontaneous waking-dream expositions. Boy I wish I had a recording of his monologues from that night, as what little I remember is just too damned little (although we’ll be making references to his Queen Victoria on a steam engine busting down folk music peasants’ hovels in Cornwall).

We Often Dream of Trains

With a short interval (i.e., “intermission” for us former Colonials) Mr. Hitchcock (that sounds just so New York Timesy, dunnit?) returned with his backing band, the Nashville Fabs and started the “electric” set with a suitably augmented version of his classic “I Often Dream of Trains.”

I guess when one has about four decades’ of songs to choose from, the set list will consist of the classics, the newer works, as well as the obscure (and beloved) oddballs.

The dedication of the Soft Boys standard “I Wanna Destroy You” to Brett Kavanaugh went off like fireworks with the delighted Portland crowd, and the repeated reference to songs from a “Norwegian album” I took in nodding stride as something else that was made up on the spot (until Nancy looked into it and found that yes, there really is such a thing!).

The very last song of the evening was the fantastic “Airscape,” the “title” track from the equally fantastic Element of Light album. While I’m usually out the door during the cheering for an encore to get a head start on the drive home, thanks to Nancy and her righteous sense of persistence, I got to enjoy that awesome tune.

I found the whole thing extremely inspiring. Mr. Hitchcock remains in top form, playing and singing wonderfully, the backing band was spot on, and the songs were awesome as expected. I’d strongly recommend you catch him, with or without the Nashville Fabs (preferably with), whenever he comes through your neck of the woods.

Completely Unrelated Postscript

The next day, we made our way back to Pok Pok Wing, as the tofu wings that Nancy had bravely foregone to secure a place in line would not be denied. Afterwards was a hop into downtown Portland where I had an appointment with the Geniuses at the Apple Store. Along the way was this bit of signage:

The choice of the bowl icon for the second vowel had me seeing “puke” at first glance. At least it caught my eye? It was kinda like the awning for another Portland eatery, Thai Pod, which used a combination of capital letters and sans serif typeface that made the sign read “Thai Poo” (they’ve since replaced said awning). Evidently my mind churns in childish, scatalogical ways….

Okay Maybe Not THAT Kind of Interesting

Getting up again at the butt-crack of dawn, we headed out of our Oslo AirBnB, took a bus to the nearby rail station, and hopped on the airport shuttle. A stop at the VAT refund desk, the currency exchange (note for the future: Krone bills may not necessarily be needed; everything/one takes credit cards), one security checkpoint (“Yes, ma’am, those are hard drives.”), and two passport inspections later, we were on our way to London. With two screaming kids in the row behind us. Kicking. And screaming. For two plus hours.

Landing in a dour, rainy day in Gatwick we hurried through passport control, spent way more time than we should have to sort out transportation to London, and got on a Gatwick Express train which had to accommodate two train loads of passengers as a lack of crew cut one train out of the schedule. One cozy ride into Victoria Station later, we checked in to our hotel and started looking for lunch to assuage our travel-bruised bodies and souls.

London Crawling

It turned out that the nearest Wagamama was closed on Sundays, but not to be denied my Cha Han (fried rice and miso soup) we trekked on foot and bus to the next nearest location.

One superb lunch later (yeah, no more fried rice, but the ramen is still top notch) we strolled up through town under a welcomingly clear sky and indulged in some wandering and light retail therapy. It’s amazing how one week in Norway makes everything in London seem reasonably priced!

We eventually ended up at the most excellent Treadwell’s Bookshop, picked up a couple of periodicals that contained articles about our friends’ art, and headed back to the hotel for an early evening in.

Do Dead Androids Dream of Dead Sheep?

The following morning I had the unfortunate surprise of finding my Nexus 6P in the dreaded “bootloop” where it would try to boot, crash, and repeat ad infinitum. Fortunately Google Fi support was superbly helpful in getting a replacement device on the way, but I was without a phone. The least I could do was to download offline maps onto my iPad before heading out for the day (fortunately Nancy’s phone worked – unfortunately for her, I kept pestering her to look stuff up).

Don’t Call Me Angel of North London, Baby

A quick breakfast at Pret and one leisurely bus ride later, we arrived in the London Borough of Islington (and in case you’re wondering about the awkward attempt at humor in the above title, Angel is “a locality of Islington in Central and North London, England, within the London Borough of Islington” – thanks, Interwebz!).

A little bit of shopping and a little bit of snacking, and we’re off to Tate Modern!!!

Better Tate Than Never!

Of the numerous museums in London, the Tate Modern is hands-down the go-to place for us. What once was a power station on the south bank of the Thames River is now a power house of modern art, and given the massive size of the building and the equally massive collections of art contained therewithin, it’s probable that one could spend days going through everything with sufficient time devoted to every exhibit. We only had most of an afternoon, but as they (don’t) say: view art while the sun shines!

It’s mindblowing that this collection, with the exception of a handful of exhibits, is free to view. Of particular resonance with me was the Weimar Republic art exhibit:

And there’s a gazillion other works of art what I breezed through, kinda like speed channel-surfing. I’m not proud of doing that, but as I said, we only had an afternoon to spend.

After all the art my heart could handle that day (Nancy would have stayed longer, as her heart is huge!), we headed back to the hotel.

One Last Round Before We Go

Before going gently into our last night in London Town, we met up with Bob from Treasures of Mexico/The Dentists and Beth from The Luxembourg Signal/Jetstream Pony for dinner and drinks at The Windsor Castle pub.

We Took the Long Way Home

Once again getting up at the butt-crack of dawn, we headed out of the hotel towards Paddington Station for the Heathrow Express, but our cabbie made us a deal and dropped us off right at Terminal 2 (“The Queen’s Terminal!” “Oh no, I thought she was healthy!” [drum roll, canned laughter).

Twenty plus some odd hours later, we landed in Portland, Oregon.

A week-plus later, and we’re still getting over jet lag and the 8-9 hour time difference, but regular intake of good tea in these mugs is helping. Now we’re planning our return to Norway with a jaunt to the northern part of the country next time!

Thanks for reading!!!

Saturday in the Park…

…definitely not the Fourth of July. #DadRockJokes #DadJokesRock

Apparently the “Oslo Sculpture Garden” (in quotes, as it’s actually Vigelandsparken or the Vigeland Sculpture Park) is one of the “must see” places in Oslo. I didn’t know this, but Nancy did, and without doing any advanced googling as to not spoil any surprises, we went to the Park!

The Right Keys, the Wrong Trousers

Actually, Nancy went ahead by herself, as I’d mistakenly laundered the AirBnB keys with my trousers, and those single-minded European washing machines will not let you access the wash until the wash has been washed. She swung by the Saturday market at Vestkanttorvet first, and once I’d recovered those keys, I’d followed in her steps.

A Wild EV Has Appeared!

Lame attempt at a Pokémon joke aside, there are a lot of electric vehicles in Oslo; not so many that the roads are full of ’em, but enough to notice the makes and models other than the usual Teslas, Volts, and Leafs one sees in the States. It was pretty darn cool to see an entire street lined with recharging electric cars:

By the time I got to the Saturday market, Nancy had made her way to Frognerparken so off I went as well. But first, here’s what the market looked like:

Vigelandsparken

Gustav Vigeland’s wikipedia page gives all the information that I probably would have copied and pasted, so you might as well as give that a read, but Oh Emm Gee, the sculpture park is a stupendous collection of works by Vigeland, depicting the human form in all sorts of poses and jumbled masses. The literal centerpiece of the sculpture park is the Monolith which is as impressive as the capitalized name suggests.

Not in my camera roll were any photos of the columns atop which a female figure appears to be in various stages of congress with a very fish/reptilian-looking creature. My initial thought was this is how that “Innsmouth Look” came about, although I’d say the denizens of Lovecraft Country got fish-slapped with the ugly stick while these Viglandfolk got the (literally) chiseled cheeks and perfect proportions.

Vegans of the North Take Over

I’d noticed that vegetarian and vegan food weren’t all that easy to find in the supermarkets and restaurants. I suspect that’s because I was looking in the wrong shops and eateries, but despite the observed prevalence of chicken and/or ham in the frozen and prepared foods, I didn’t see much obesity either. Moderation in intake? What an idea!

Anyway, Nancy found a proper vegan restaurant in Oslo, Nordvegan (I immediately thought of Swedish dark ambient demigod Nordvargr – no relation, I presume), and that’s where we headed to for lunch. But first, a stop at a 7-11 for transit passes, soft drinks, and a snack:

Apparently Nordvegan doesn’t have a set menu, per se, but works with freshly sourced produce from local farms and vendors to come up with interesting and delicious things daily. Pictured below was what I ate: the most inventively named enchilada that I’ve see with a not-too-crispy spring roll. Holycrapthatwaseffindelicious.

There Beneath the Blue Urban Skies

After lunch, Nancy went to the National Gallery where Edvard Munch’s The Scream is on display (and from what she told me later, there’s a line of folks waiting to strike that Macaulay Culkin “Home Alone” pose in front of it for snapshots and social media). I wandered around the area, occasionally plunking at my jawharp (and why not?).

Once Nancy got her pre-20th century ya-ya’s out, we meandered back to a bus stop (passed what appeared to be a festival of folk dance and music) and made our way to the Oslo Opera House which features a singular architectural design with a rooftop observation deck that affords a stunning view of the city.

Back and There Again

Despite the step-saving convenience of clockwork public transport, I wondered why my feet hurt. Bad shoes, no doubt. And the following day we started our journey back to Oregon by the way of London Town!

On to the home stretch!

Getting up at the butt-crack of dawn, we had a bit of brekkie, packed, and left for the Bergen railway station where we settled into our seats for a long ride to Oslo on an eight car train, pulled by an electric locomotive.

Railroad Trip, Road Trip, What’s the Difference

About an hour into our journey, we stopped in the town of Voss (I think that’s where those bottles of spring water come from – I can’t be bothered to google to confirm) where we were informed that a power line had fallen in the mountains and that repair crews were on their way to fix it (electric train – electricity = not going anywhere).

Another hour or so later, we’re told that the repair crews aren’t able to fix the problem in time, so we’re getting placed on a bus to Oslo. About eight hours or so later, we arrived at the Oslo railway station (the bus driver introduced our ride as a “train with rubber wheels” – Norwegian humor strikes again).

We briefly wondered if this were the same route that Varg Vikernes drove to murder Euronymous. And then we immediately thought about less dark things.

I couldn’t help but note how everyone took this detour in stride, with nary a complaint or a harrumph. I guess that got me to take all this on an even keel, although by the last hour-and-half of this journey I found that my state of zen has a time limit and that I probably would have kissed the ground once we were off the bus (and given how clean everything is in Norway, I might have just done that… if I weren’t getting the way of everyone else exiting the bus).

After a dazed meal at the railway station Upper Crust (kinda like Panera if that makes sense) and a bit of confused sorting out of transportation options, we arrived at our AirBnB, over the moon to be able to rest after this long day on the road. I guess we did get our road trip after all, so be careful what you wish for?

Vi er alle Vikinger!

The next morning we wandered into the rain to the nearby 7-11, equipped ourselves with bus passes and energy drinks, and headed over to the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History (although Norsk Folkemuseum sounds way cooler, wouldn’t you agree?).

The museum features over 160 buildings representing designs and styles used throughout Norwegian history. It is a massive collection of exhibits and displays, and from what we gather there are re-enactments, and folks in period costumes during the summer season, which we just missed, so some of what we saw looked a bit damp and empty, as if we’d stepped into a Witcher-style video game or an alternate set for ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail.’

The Folkemuseum does feature a Stave Church, this one being originally built in the town of Gol and semi-moved and reconstructed in its current location in the 1880’s. Fortunately no corpse-painted punk came anywhere near setting fire to this one.

Fortunately, unlike the Fantoft Stavekirke, this one was open to visitors. The interior is dark, both spacious and constricting, and very, very impressive.

After a meal at the museum cafe, we headed down the road to Vikingskipshuset, or the Viking Ship Museum.

This museum features viking ships that were buried as funeral vessels (I’m not sure where I got the idea of viking funerals involving fire; I blame the movies), unearthed and pieced together for the public to view and admire. It’s mindblowing to know that folks used to sail between continents in these ships – they’re larger than I thought they’d be, but they’re pretty damned tiny in an ocean, and as far as I can see, there isn’t anywhere to go to hide from the elements.

And every museum has a gift shop, and here’s a purchase I almost made:

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough go Record Shopping

Next we headed into Oslo city center (or sentrum) to visit the Råkk & Rålls music shop.

I’ve no idea what this building used to house, but Råkk & Rålls is a wall-to-wall music heaven full of LPs, CDs, and other bits of tangible music that still thankfully exists despite streaming and whatnot (insert “kids get off my lawn” bit here).

Nancy found an “OG” (vinylists’ way of saying “original pressing”) Scandinavian prog rock LP, while I picked up an older CD by Beak>. While one might have been able to get these through discogs, one would have had to deal with shipping, fret over delivery and potential doorstep package theft, etc.

A bit more retail after this, a visit to the supermarket, and then we returned to the AirBnB for an evening in.

Continued here!

So Expensive, but So What?

Apparently the First Rule of Expensive Norway is that one does not talk about Expensive Norway, definitely not with the locals. Admittedly one of our AirBnB hosts did tell us point blank to avoid Norwegian cuisine as “it’s awful.” However, as much of a cultural punchline lutefisk has become to the natives (from what I gather, the Uff-Dadaists in Minnesota have taken up the burden of tradition on that front, as the Scandinavians themselves have moved onto less gelatinous delights), the state of Norwegian economy and taxation isn’t something for outsiders to gripe about.

From the ‘Murican perspective, what one reads (probably from those sites that kill with fire anything that vaguely resembles Socialism) about the 46% Norwegian income tax would seem rather grievous, and the rumors one hears of the 25% sales tax from fellow tourists limping back like Napoleon’s Russian Expedition from a holiday in Oslo would give one pause. I think we’ve been conditioned that any form of taxation is an unwelcome hand on the piggy bank and that social services are for “you know, those other people” who aren’t working hard and so on.

Yes, on one hand, shopping and dining out are expensive. While I didn’t explore the veracity of the $8 light beer, I did hoist myself on my own petard with an $18 Burger King double bacon cheeseburger combo (medium drink, no refills). And a $42 meal for two at a train station Upper Crust did slap me a like a slab of dried fish (or more like a baguette truncheon).

With that said, Norway is an amazing nation of genuinely friendly people who seem content, healthy, and laid back. The cities are clean, the countryside is cleaner, houses and buildings are well maintained, and everything pretty much runs on time.

And as for the shopping and dining, we proceeded with gentle restraint. There are amazing restaurants (the above Burger King “experiment” should be disregarded) and shops, but instead of the typical tourist mode of rampant consumption, we’d treat ourselves as the occasion saw fit, and (here’s the key to success) made use of our AirBnB’s kitchens for as many meals as we could make. The sales tax on food (of the non-restaurant variety) is a lower 15%, and there are plenty of supermarkets and grocers from which to acquire ready-to-eat, nuke-and-eat, or prepare-and-eat meals.

And at the same time, we’re still on holiday, so a trip to a Juhls Silver Gallery is a special treat, and a stop at the Oslo Fjallraven to get a replacement day pack is as much a necessity as a visit to a cool shop. We did get a VAT refund on these items, so there.

As I’m not an economist (nor do I play one on TV), I won’t pretend that these observations are worth anything more than the pixels on your screen, but I reiterate that it looks like the Norwegians are doing something right.

One more aside: before heading to Norway, Nancy had spent about a month studying Norwegian with the DuoLingo app, and while she humbly professed little knowledge of the language, I sure as heck thought she’d learned quite a lot! Definitely enough for her to navigate us through the rare signage that wasn’t in English and to figure out the labels and directions on the food in the supermarkets. While it does seem that pretty much everyone in Norway speaks English (it’s my understanding that it is an early part of the curriculum to get students up to speed on what is the lingua franca for communicating with non-Norwegians), not everything is in English, and that bit of studying definitely came in handy!

[I was preparing to take the Amazon Web Services Certified Solutions Architect Associate exam at the time, so no DuoLingo for me. I did pass the CSAA exam, so there’s that.]

And now, back to the travelogue.

I’m Bergen, I’m Bergen, I’m Bergen for You

The day after our trip up the fjord and up/down the funicular, we set off to the Fantoft Stave Church. Originally built in the 12th century, this building may be most (in)famous for being torched by those meddling black metal kids in 1994. The whole church burning thing features large in the story of Norwegian black metal (along with a couple of cold blooded murders and a suicide that ended up as an album cover), and having osmosed some of that narrative through books (e.g., Lords of Chaos) and film (e.g., Until the Light Takes Us) we figured we should visit the site.

As an aside, there is such a thing as a “black metal tourist” in Norway – folks from abroad who hit the north to follow in the footsteps of their dark metal heroes… and inevitably come back disappointed after learning that Norway isn’t all corpse paint and nail-studded bats (of the winged or Louisville Slugger varieties). They’re called “blackpackers” [rimshot, canned laughter]. Norwegian humor. Right on.

We’re Going to the Chapel… erm, Stavkirke

It’s pretty easy to get to Fantoft Stavkirke: a bus or a tram will take you to one of two stops (Paradis or Fantoft) from which it’s a brief stroll to the church. We elected to take the Paradis path and hiked a bit up a hill.

In a Word: Whoa

It wasn’t a dark and stormy night, but it was a cloudy and drizzly day with bits of dramatic sun poking through. And it was a darned impressive meteorological backdrop for viewing Fantoft Stavkirke.

These are more “dramatized” shots of the building which conveys a bit of “oomph,” but totally obscures the workmanship, detail, and just the breathtaking majesty of this wooden building.

Since I’ve already soapboxed earlier, I’ll skip another rant about how the burning of this beautiful edifice is nothing more than a crappy act of puerile vandalism, metal horns and whatnot be damned. I’m just glad that (a) it was rebuilt and (b) we got to see it.

It turns out that the building itself is only open for a part of the year to visitors (basically spring and summer), and we missed that window by about a week. That didn’t stop a busload of tourists from mobbing the site, presumably from the Fantoft direction which I assume is an easier walk than the hilly climb from Paradis.

Left to My Own Devices

After backtracking from the Stavkirke, Nancy went exploring the art museums while I stress-tested my wallet and tummy with a combo meal at Burger King (never doing that again, but at least I get to say I did it – yay me). We later regrouped, and wandered a bit more around Bergen, on foot and on bus (since we sprang for the day pass to go to Fantoft, why not make the most of it?).

Then another trip to a grocery store and back to the AirBnB for supper and laundry. Seriously, never underestimate how having access to laundry facilities will lighten your suitcase, as you won’t need to take as much. Also take into account that European washing machines and dryers tend to take hours to do a single load, but them’s the shakes.

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Brighton the Corners

In Brighton, England (or more like Hove, to be precise) we attended the 23rd UK Sacred Harp Convention which was held over two days at the Hove Park School.

I only sang for a couple of hours for each day of the Convention; Nancy sang for the whole thing.

I wasn’t able to find any videos from this particular Convention, but for demonstration purposes, here’s one from Cork, Ireland earlier this year.

There was a “social” (i.e., an after-singing gathering) at the Lord Nelson Inn where food, merriment, and more singing (naturally) went on. This is what it kinda looked like on the way to the Lord Nelson:

The following day was pretty much a repeat of Saturday, with the exception of me heading back to the AirBnB early to do some laundry. I know, it’s supposed to be a vacation, but when one is traveling over two weeks with a carry-on suitcase, a washer/dryer-equipped AirBnB is not only a lifesaver, but a necessity. Anyway, we returned to the Lord Nelson the following evening to hang out with our friend Beth and her band mates in Jetstream Pony.

The following Monday, we left for Bergen, Norway, but first we had to survive the train to Gatwick Airport which also (or more like originally) served as the commuter transport for folks in Sussex working in London.

Norway the (Not So) Hard Way

Having made our way to Gatwick Airport, through airport security, and onboard the Norwegian Air jet, we arrived in Bergen a couple hours later. Here’s an example of the subtle sense of humor at play among Norwegians:

I regret not getting a snapshot of it, but from the airport, one can see a large sign that reads “Bergen?” (yeah, that’s a question mark) bolted onto the side of a rock face. Again, Norwegian humor. I appreciate it.

A shuttle bus dropped us off at the Bergen harbor, and I think this kinda sums up the loveliness of it all (you can mentally add swarms of tourists if you’d like):

After checking into our AirBnB, we wandered around town, gently testing the cultural waters, confirming that yes, everyone does indeed speak English, although they’ll greet you in Norwegian first even if you do look like a bewildered American tourist, as that’s the polite thing to do.

Pining for the Fjords?!

The following day we went on a boat ride into and out of a nearby fjord. Google kindly tracked where we went:

The weather, which was cloudy and rainy the day before, had cleared up majestically for our little cruise. The photos I took do not do justice to the scenery. But I’m posting some anyway.

Nancy took some great photos of the fjord, so I’m including them as well (<3 U, dear).

A Particular Funicular

After this little boat trip, we took a funicular to the top of Mount Fløyen, which despite the “Mount” bit isn’t quite a mountain as a spectacular vantage point to see Bergen from above.

There are goats that live in the park atop Mount Fløyen, but it looked like the “kids” were avoiding us Hoomins that day.

Afterwards we rode down the funicular (what a word that is, say that quickly many times), strolled to the local supermarket, picked up dinner and snacks, and retired to our AirBnB.

Continued here!