20230626 Grandmas Hytte

Amanda wanted a rest day but I told her to save it for when we were dead. Ja, Sine, and Lukas also could have used a rest day. Lukas vomited in his bed so they moved him to sleep theirs but he vomited there too. When we saw them in the morning Ja and Sine looked exhausted but Lukas was bouncy and laughing, shooting spiderman web and jumping on the couch.

We started a load of laundry and Amanda and I walked up the hill into the Damplassen. The damplassen is a collection of nouveau baroque houses and little shops around a pond designed as a 'hagby' or a garden city designed to get working class people out of unhealthy living arrangements in the city. The houses were surrounded by large beautiful gardens, and the buildings were so fancy I had to ask ja if they were part of the university. This is the Damplassen bakery where we bought a few loaves of bread.

Eating delicious bread and reading Ja's flour, water, salt, yeast book on the shelf had me itching to make another starter and make some experimental loaves.

That afternoon we borrowed grandmas car to drive out to Jeløya to stay at her hytte (family cabin). Sine agreed to watch the kid so it was just Amanda, Jason, and I. On the way in we stopped in the town to buy groceries. At a fish market we bought salmon (pronouncing the 'L') and a white fish that had a firm flesh that the fishmonger called 'kalt' or 'iskalt'. Looking it up later we discovered it was a type of deep sea cod also known as isgalt, iskaldt, and iskalt and pictures of the fish made me sad because they were all lumpy and misshaped from being pulled up from the deep sea. Amanda bought a bag of dried fish and Ja got some salty licorice.

Afterwards we walked around the corner to the Rema 1000 (rematoosen) for tomatoes, carrots, cheese, and sausage and we stopped again at a farm where you could pick up random produce and pay with a credit card reader mounted on the wall. They didn't have much selection and we only bought some lettuce.

Jeløya is a beautiful wooded island with steep cliffs overlooking the coast and reminds me of the views of the Mediterranean we had in southern France. The hytte was built on a steep rock face with tall supports beneath to support the deck. The back window looked out at the cliff face few feet away with ferns growing out of mossy crevices in the walls. The walls of the hytte were painted white and each room was packed with beds though ja said usually only a single family occupied the shared space at a time.

We took pictures of the building and explored the yard and then settled in, messing with the stereo system until we got it working and Amanda put on an Edith Piaf CD. I set up a container of mint green sun tea on the deck. After a while Ja and I decided to go out on a swim while Amanda napped.

We walked out to the end of the heavily wooded island. Many of the trees had ripe cherries in red, black, and yellow but we also saw hazelnut. The underbrush was filled with wild strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and rip berries. At the tip of the island we disrobed and jumped into the ocean. The tide was strong in the narrow straight between the islands and ja decided to swim across to see how far it would suck him into the bay. On the way back he had to wait for some boats to pass.

I mentioned how we should be looking for cool rocks for mom and we found one with an attached oyster shell and shards of what appeared to be a geode.

Back at the house we sampled the other CDs in the small collection. Three were from guy name Evert Taube, an older dude with a guitar wearing a captains hat and standing on boats with his legs wide apart. The music was interminable, the same tune repeated with different Norwegian words and they went on so long I thought I might have accidentally put the player on repeat. Then we listened to a CD of traditional Norwegian lullabies and Enrio Morricone.

Ja barbecued the fish, I made a salad with tomatoes, we distributed the rest of the bakery loaf, and I brought in the chilled mint green tea. Afterwards we had a chocolate tasting party and loafed around. When it rained that evening the colors of the trees, rocks, and ferns deepened and the birds came out to forage.

I read the Norwegian comic books in the magazine rack. They had some Calvin and Hobbes comics but he was called Tommy and Tigern. They'd colored the black and white cartoons with offensively wrong hues.

We relaxed, reading and listening to music until 10:00. With perpetual daylight it's hard to know when to stop.