Morgan Family Travels - 15

Sunday October 31st saw us at Laura and Daniel's church. Their service is in the evenings, and includes the Swedish equivalent to 'afternoon tea' - called Fika - which includes bread, cheese, Swedish cavier (very different from Russian cavier), eggs, vegetables, coffee, tea, juice. We loved the very Swedish elements that they had encorporated into their worship space - especially the pulpit that was made out of the bottom section of a large tree ... root humps and all! It was stunningly beautiful.

Monday November 1st we went to visit friends of Laura and Daniel's from their church. The wife is also a Swedish immigrant, and they have children just slightly older than Laura and Daniel's daughter, so it was wonderful to know that our friends have some good friends nearby. We had a wonderful time with them, and got to see the inside of another Swedish home, which is always helpful in understanding the culture.

Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty quiet days - mostly spent just talking and looking after the children. Oh, and battling a terrific head cold for Heather that turned into larengitis on Wednesday just for fun.

Thursday November 4th in the morning we left for the train station to head for Oslo. Just before the train arrived we realised that Hannah had taken her bottle out of the bag and left it somewhere in the house. We had thought it was packed, so we had it, and had left it behind. As we had confirmed seats on two trains that connected one to the other, we couldn't really go back to get it, so this particular 'comfort' for Hannah had to be abandoned. Much to her distress. Our first train was from Båstad to Gothenburg, a two-hour journey, and from there we got on another train to Oslo, which is a four-hour journey. It rained most of the day, but the visibility wasn't too bad. We got into Oslo just before five o'clock, finally found our hotel and we glad to get our things in and get settled. The challenge was to find some supper that Hannah could eat, and in the end we went with Burger King, which made the girls happy, and gave Hannah a salad. The hotel had a dry sauna in the basement and I spent most of the rest of the evening in there, and it made SUCH a difference to my lungs that I was actually able to talk some by the next day.

Friday November 5th we left on the 08:11 train from Oslo to Bergen. It is a stunning 7 hour trip from one end of Norway to the other, and it goes all the way up and all the way back down again! The land is beatiful - full of mountains and fjords, and lots of brightly coloured houses scattered all over the place, so nowhere feels completely barren and nowhere feels too crowded. We arrived in Bergen mid-afternoon and had an easy walk to our apartment - an 8th-floor penthouse one-bedroom apartment. The shock of grocery store prices was great, especially as we unwittingly went to about the most expensive store in town, but such is the life of the international traveller - not all cheap grocery stores are called 'no frills' nor are all expensive stores called 'marks and spencers'.

Saturday November 6th we walked around Bergen for an hour or so in the morning - it wasn't raining and we wanted to get some pictures while we had the chance! Then we caught the 11:00 bus to Knarvik, a 45-minute bus ride from down-town Bergen which goes along a windy road, through a tunnel, along another windy road, through another tunnel and up over a terrific bridge, down into another tunnel before hurtling across yet another stunning bridge. As Trevor says, not only did the Norwegians have cause to invent dynamite, but having done so they expect to be able to have fun using it. They also appear to be stunning bridge-engineers!

We were met at Knarvik bus station by Nils Seim, my third cousin, and taken the rest of the way by car to Seim Fjord. What a stunning experience.

I learned a lot about my Seim family that day. We had lunch in the house that my great-grandfather had been born in. We saw the farm as it was in 1903 when he left - it made a lot of sense then that the younger sons couldn't stay as the farm is not really enough for a livelihood even for one individual. The cousin who owns the farm (Olav Seim) right now uses it as a side-income, but its not enough for his family. He's a carpenter, and his brother works on the off-shore oil rig. Their father (also Nils Karlsson Seim) is an incredible cross between my grandpa Edward Seim and his brother Harvey Seim. Quite odd to find someone you've never met that looks so much like your own family. I learned that my father's knack of drinking extremely full cups of completely black, very strong coffee is not weird - its just Norwegian. That whether my parents knew it or not the tortilla dessert we grew up with as children of butter and cinnamon sugar is very similar to the Vestlands Lefsa with butter and suger I was served in Nils Karlsson Seim's house. I learned that a love of the mountains and lakes and trees in myself that I always thought was because I was born in BC actually goes a lot further back than that - Seim is surrounded by mountains and has a beautiful fjord at its base. I saw that having a carpentry hobby is a very Norwegian thing to do, as is making beautiful, colourful things with your hands - whether its knitting or sewing or beadwork or furtniture design, or anything really, it is all very beautiful.

We also spent some time at Seim Kirke. Although the hamlet of Seim has been around for almost a thousand years, the church has actually only been their since the early nineteenth century. Nevertheless, it was very cool to sit in it - it is covered with beautiful hand-painted designs and the accoustics are fantastic. This was the church my great-grandfather was baptised in as a baby, and where most of his family that remained in Norway was buried.

Before heading back for the evening Kaitlyn played with her Norwegian-speaking fourth-cousins, and we went down to the edge of the fjord and wondered whether Edvard had also come down here to say goodbye before he left. It must have been a very difficult place to leave.