Fishing

On Saturday we had beautiful weather, perfect for fishing on the fjørd! We picked up our friend Halvor and headed to the edge of town. View from a cove.
Getting the lines ready.
There were so many mussels, which we would have been tempted to take if Jeff hadn't caught a fish.
Showing Avery the ropes.

Reeling in a fish. At first Jeff thought he had lost another lure (he had lost two already) he even cussed out his luck until Halvor said he thought he had a fish.
View off the pier.
Jeff grabbing Halvor's fish. The pier was pretty high off the water so when a fish was caught the catcher would pull it over to the side where the other man waited to grab it and take it off the hook.
Halvor's first fish, he ended up catching two.
Jeff's first cod. This guy was a monster compared to what we are used to catching in Montana.
Victory!! We ate this guy for dinner last night and have enough for another meal. He was very tasty ;) Good job Jeff I can't wait to get out fishing again!

More sprig bar-b-ques

It rains a lot in Tronhiem in both the fall and the spring. We have discovered that Norwegians have gotten pretty keen on how to dress for all types of weather as they do not let the rain stop them. Here's a pic of Avery outfitted in her rain gear. She even has rain gloves that are insulated and completely water proof.Not sure why she looks so mad?
We decided to bar-b-que on Thursday even though it rained all day. Jeff set up some umbrellas and we even all sat outside for awhile. Not sure if this was better than the barbie in the snow but at least it cleared up later in the evening and we have had wonderful warm sunny spring weather ever since.

åre Sweden

On Wednesday we drove with my Mom to Åre Sweden. It is pronounced something similar to ooorrah and is a small skiing village just across the border from Norway. It took us around 2.5 hours to get there and it was a very scenic drive. With the exception of the small one getting car sick and throwing up the trip was really enjoyable. Once in Åre we ate lunch at a great little bakery and then did some grocery and alcohol shopping. Sweden has much cheaper prices for certain products such as beer and meats. Jeff got beer for about half the price and we picked up a ham, cheese, capri suns all for much less than we would pay in Norway. Since it is Easter week Åre was crazy busy with tourists and locals trying to get their last runs on the slopes. It was a very quant town and we will plan to visit it again. A pull off we stopped at on the way back to Trondheim.

Little munchkin on the way home, this lag we did not allow ipod playing and made sure to make frequent stops. It worked she did not get carsick once on the journey back.
Avery likes to poise.

Åre
A view of the slopes.
We had such a nice day and it was so much fun to share it with my Mom!

Back online

Last week our internet died. We'd been waiting for it to happen for months yet, once it actually got turned off it was still a shock or more of an, oh shit now we have to deal with getting something else hooked up, moment. The reason we'd expected it to happen is that we had been using the internet that existed in the apartment, which I'm pretty sure should have been turned off, and we had not moved it into our name. We figured one day someone would discover they had forgot to turn the internet off when the old tenants left but in the meantime... So last week, much to our disdain, the plug was finally pulled. Now in the States, no big deal, call the company and whella new internet within a short amount of time. Getting anything done in Norway, however, can be somewhat of a challenge. This country does not have the same notion of customer service as the States and we have been told many times that things just take time. Back home when internet goes down you have to wait at most a couple of days to get someone to fix the problem or hook up new internet. When a person calls customer service they expect a call back the same day; this is not the case in Norway. It took us four calls, speaking to one rep who had no clue what the hell he was doing and then two reps that promised our "case worker" would call back plus another two days after the case worker finally called before we got internet back up an running. The funny thing is that we have the wiring and the modem and were essentially just changing over the name on the account to our own which one would think could be done in a day. Not so much. Yet I am not going to complain, it's back up and running and I am loving my new connection to the outside world.

Ironically the day after we got internet connected our online bank went down. By down I mean we could not draw out any funds or use our debit or credit card anywhere until the problem got fixed. When I contacted customer service I was told they were working on it and hoped to have it fixed soon. Did I mention this happened on the Wednesday before the country shuts down for Easter for five days or that it was the day we planned on driving my Mom to Sweden or the fact that Jeff had just ran to get our car out of the shop where when he went to pay the card reader said, "can not connect to bank." Uuuggghhh. Luckily we still have cards from the States. Jeff put the car's bill on the Visa, we then pooled all our available Kroner together and decided we had enough for gas and lunch in Sweden and then got the awesome idea to use our Glacier Bank debit card to pull more money out once we got to Sweden. The plan worked and we were able to have an adventure in Sweden and buy what groceries we needed to get through the Easter holiday. Now how pissed off would you be if your bank "went down" in the States and when you called you were told it would be fixed, soon, and then no apologies were made about the inconvenience. Only in Norway - ha ha. A post will be coming soon about my Mom's visit and our trip to Sweden.