Norwegian Saga

I spent Friday evening at dinner and a concert, kindly provided by Anne’s family. It was the first time I had heard Mozart’s requiem in fact and I highly recommend that piece of work, it’s incredible. Before the concert we had a wonderful dinner at Agra, a superb restaurant serving delicious Indian food that comes to you on sizzling iron skillets. Monika knows all about it because we took her there when she visited. If anyone else comes to visit you’re guaranteed at least one dinner at Agra. Not only is the restaurant in a nice part of town, it’s just darn good food.

About a week ago Anne and I went to see a film at Gimle Kino, The Reader with Ralph Fiennes. The movie was alright but that wasn’t a problem because the theater itself made it all worthwhile. The seats were huge and comfortable AND they reclined. Between every two seats there was a small table to put your drinks on. The establishment allowed your to take your beer, wine, brandy etc., into the theater as well so you could enjoy it while watching. But how do you know that you won’t have to be sharing a table with a stranger you ask… Norway uses numbered cinema seating so you select which seats you want when you buy them. The plush red seats were also spaced far enough apart that even fully reclined I could just barely touch the seat in front of me with legs fully extended, ideal for tall people I would think.

In other news the paper I’m writing about language is teaching me all sorts of neat things. For instance: The Old English pipor (pepper) was adopted into English before the Vulgar Latin change of the intervocalic p to a b (and later v) which is why English has pepper and the French (which adopted the word after the shift) has poivre.

The Norwegian word for nation, rike, Latin word for king, rex, and English word rich all share a root, obviously somewhere in Latin. There are loads more of such trivia facts, it’s great.

Being in Norway, knowing Polish and English, and doing the education I’m doing has really made me perceive language very differently. I can’t really look at a word, in any language, the same way any more. There are histories and connotations to every word and syntactic (as well as grammatical) function.

So that’s about it I suppose. I don’t have any of those long-promised city photos because the weather just isn’t here yet. It’s much warmer, about 5°C but still steely gray. As it’s Easter holiday here now (Norwegians love their holidays) Oslo is quite empty, the European students have all returned home and the locals have headed for the mountains so this upcoming week should be nice and quiet. I’m off school for a week and hopefully there will be some nice weather in which to get those photos.

*****UPDATE (07 April 2009)*****

It just occurred to me that I didn’t mention a thing about the French Revolution, as I had planned. (C.f. the title of the last post).

I’ve been playing quite a few board/card games. Some of the students from my English class have introduced me to a variety of them. One in particular that’s very enjoyable and that I recommend highly is called Guillotine. You win by collecting the heads (cards actually) of French aristocracy. The art on the cards is fantastic. So if you’re bored and tired of watching TV give it, or any game, a try.

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