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Ok, I just have to get this off my chest. I moved to Norway from Charlotte NC a year and a half ago to marry my wife who is British/Norwegian. We met on the net, and one thing led to another after a few trips back and forth we got married. We have a baby on the way, and I have adopted her 6 year old daughter. What I have to get off my chest is a list of the top 10 things I miss about the US.
1. My Harley
2. Pop tarts
3. Warm summers
4. Good pizza
5. SCIFI channel.
6. Good sausage, and  bratwursts
7. Beer that is over 3.5%
8. 4th of July
9. Waffle House/ IHOP
10. TV without subtext

For the most part it is ok here, but I keep finding myself being homesick for some of this stuff. Well, I feel better…. LOL
Oh, yeah the gas here is like 8.00 a gallon here, and the taxes are high as hell here too. The medical system is great (free), but everything else is really expensive. Pack of cigs cost about 10.00 a pack.
Ok, now let me know how big an idiot I am for posting this…. :)

Just a simple question for you: why did you move there rather than have her move here?

Some of those things in that list would be too much for me to live without.

Thad,

Good to know that you're (used to be) a fellow North Carolinian.....there seems to be a few on this board.

I can't imagine paying 8.00 a gallon for gas.  I b***hed enough when it was 2.70 and 2.80 a gallon.  The price of the cigs wouldn't bother me, as I'm a non-smoker.

No Harleys or warm summers!?

No pop tarts!?

Communists!

(Although a free medical system is kick ass.)

You need to come visit Oregon during the summer it's just plain beautiful.

What about Godzilla movies! Please tell me they have Godzilla movies!

Greetings from Greensboro, NC.

Sucks you miss all the trashy little things about this country that make it fun. Greasy breakfast bars and restaurants, hard liquor, Harleys, and bad TV.

Is there a care package we can send to you? Maybe a pack of Ramen, the DVD series of Firefly, and coupons to Pizza Hut. You can call from Norway and order a pizza and see if they deliver. If we can we could smuggle some fireworks, gasoline, and a couple of 40 oz. malt beers for you if you like.

How's the landscape over there? Do you miss having a dusty southwest, humid south east, frigid northeast, and foggy northwest, as well as mountain ranges on both sides of the country and neighboring countries that are easy to make fun of? Are Sweden of Finland easy pickings? Do you get to visit these guys often? Can we come to visit? Do you have a couch for about 30 bad movie lovers to come crash on our random journey through Europe? Where do you work? How do you live, man?!

Scottie,

I'll take that Firefly DVD set if Thad doesn't want it.  

;o)

When I lived  in Europe (10+ years ago) my biggies were:
1) 24 Hour/7 day shopping, or at least ONE store open on Sunday.
2) Peanut Butter Cups.
3) Beseball- and I wasn't much of a fan then.
4) Ice Cream stores open in winter
5) Turkey- the Dutch didn't eat much of it.

Still and all, I miss stuff from there more.  On my trips over I try and get my fill.  
Enjoy it, I'm kinda jealous!
-Ed

I'll chip in a copy of "Hot August Night" by Neil Diamond.   It's super-Vegas style.  He actually sings something that comes out like, "forever in BLEEEE  jeans, yeah!"    It's awesome.

So you moved to Norge, and your picture is that one on the Frappr that says "I hate snow," I presume...?  

I'll include "Heartlight" in that CD.  You'll feel a lot better.

No. Beer. Over. 3.5%.?  And it's dark for, like, half the year?  How the hell do they survive?

I lived in Scotland for two years back the 70's and here's a few things I missed.

Real ice cream

Real hamburgers (went to a place called Wimpy's once, but it was nothing like the good old Tastee Freeze)

I remember watching an episode of Harry O.  with David Jansen where he ordered a chili-dog with onions and cheese. Man was I salivating.

I had no problems with the beer there though. My preference was something called Younger's Tartan Special.

TV wasn't so bad, Monty Python, Stanley Baxter, Benny Hill, and Tommy Cooper.

Not to mention on BBC (Euro television in general) they show boobies.

Mmmm, Younger's Tartan Special.

Have you tried this stuff Salmiakki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmiakki)?  A jar of these candies with cyrillic writing on it mysteriously showed up in the break room at my work one day.  On the side was a picture of a man with flames shooting from his mouth.  Inside were black, diamond shaped hard candies.  The fumes smelled of liquorice.

Being the adventurous sort, I popped one into my mouth.  Imagine a strong liquorice taste with a really strong citric acid type burn going for it.  Now imagine you got tired of tasting this horrible crap and bit into the candy to get it all over with.  Imagine you are instantly awarded with a mouthful of ammonia.

Yes, one of the ingedients was ammonium chloride, which tastes exactly like it smelled.  I looked it up online to make sure I didn't poison myself, which lead me to the wikipedia entry above.  Says Norweigans, among others, eat it for fun.

Funniest part, nobody claimed responsibility for the jar for several days.  I have yet to be able to convince anybody else to try it.  We get some weird stuff at my work.  Remind you to tell you about the canned water sometime.

Odin7... The reason I came here instead of her coming to US is because of her daughter, she does not speak English yet, and it would be real hard to get her in a school. We plan to move to the US in a couple of years.

Skaboi… Charlotte was pretty cool, I actually grew up in Indiana, and moved to NC when I was 18. I went there to join the police, and made it to the Charlotte version of SWAT. I was a sniper.

Daveblackeye15... They have Harleys here, but I had to sell mine before I came here.. Too expensive to ship here. I might take a trip to Oregon  some time. I hear it is really nice. Godzilla movies are on sometimes on satellite, but not very often.

Scottie… I can get hard liquor, but it is expensive as s**t, and the liquor store is only open for about 4 hours, and we have to drive to Sweden to get it. The care package sounds great, but the cost of shipping is high. I don’t think I have seen Firefly, and I don’t think Pizza Hut delivers across oceans. Maybe you could send me some Krispy Cream doughnuts. Man I miss those too!!!
The landscape is beautiful here. It is rocky, and lakes all over the place. In the summer it doesn’t get dark till about midnight, and in the winter it is dark around 3 in the afternoon. Sweden, and Finland are about the same, but on the ferry to Denmark they have a tax free shop that you can get stuff real cheep. We try to go to Sweden about once a month to get meat, and cigs… 1/3 the price. We are moving into a bigger place next month, so if you guys want to come freeze your ass off with me, why not pay a visit if you are ever in the Scandinavian area. To answer the question of where I work, and how do I live question… I do some odd jobs here, and there. Some mechanic work mostly. I have a friend named Espen Lee who is kind of famous in Norway who wants me to work for him in a group called the Omega Group. Private soldier stuff, and personal security work. I kind of wanted to get away from that since I have a family now. Not good to get my ass shot off, and leave a widow.

Ed… I hear you about the stores. Everything closes at 9 here, and it sucks to get a late night munchy when there are no 24 hour 7 eleven. I am not much of a sports fan unless it is boxing, or UFC. People around here are nuts about soccer, and I can’t stand it.

Zapranoth… Your music selection is a bit off the wall, but for some reason does not surprise me at all. The pic on Frapper is one from here. It was last year , and around -25c Like I said I hate snow, but the cold is the worst. -35c is about the coldest it gets here, and that is cold enough to freeze spit before it hit’s the ground.

Raj… How I survive is by drinking more beer. p**s more too. The dark doesn’t really bother me too much though, it’s the sun in the summer that gets on my nerves.

trek_geezer… The ice-cream here is pretty good, but not much variety. The hamburgers suck too, but at least there is Burger King, and Mc Donald’s. The main beer here is called Ringnes, and Tuborge. One of my friends here is a Scottish guy. He is always b***hing about the beer.

Mofo Rising… Salmiakki is nasty. Another nasty thing they eat here is Lutefisk, and Smala Hove. Its fish in lye, and sheep head. They also eat some nasty fish cakes here too… think about chewing up a mouthful of fish sticks, spit them out, freeze it, then refry it up the next day. For the most part, I stay away from traditional Scandinavian food as a rule of thumb.

I changed my pic on frapper. I am the one with the bald head, and long beard.



Post Edited (11-29-05 15:50)

Thad:

I feel your pain, but to a lesser degree.  For most of my career, I have had jobs that required travel - - often outside the U.S.  While I am away, I always miss things like pizza, steak that isn't over cooked, TV shows in English, good hotdogs and hamburgers, etc.  My longest overseas stint was a 4 month project in Portugal back in the mid 1990s.  I really missed a lot of the day-to-day things that we take for granted here in the U.S.

My most recent trip out of the country was a 10 day project in Belgium a couple of months ago.  I really liked it there, and the beer was great (a lot of it was 9% - 9.5% alcohol).  Even though I had a good time there, I was still more than happy to come home after 10 days.

Thad,
 You just made my vote for the most polite post ever.

oh yeah...big fluffy towels, but thats a hotel thing, not a foreign thing.
-Ed

Thanks Ed. My mom will be proud... :)

that's pretty cool thad- usually it's the woman who moves for the man. Do you think you'll live there the rest of your lives? Life is a journey. Some of the food you miss you can order online, don't you think? Or have family/friends send you a goodie box and you can turn around and do the same for them.

Susan... I dont know how long we will stay here. We talk about moving to the US, but it is just too hard on our 6 year old right now. We are trying to teach her English, and she is picking it up pretty fast. Just do not want to cause her any problems by moving too soon. My mother tries to send me stuff once in a while, but she is on a real tight budget, and so are we for the most part. It is hard to get food items shiped here because if it is fresh stuff by the time it gets here it is stale. We do send some things back and forth... like this brown cheese my mom likes, and ranch dressing packets I cant get here.

Thad - kids adjust. Take it from a military brat who lived overseas in various countries until I was 8. I hated saying goodbye to friends and switching schools as any kid does, but i wouldn't trade those experiences for the world. I think it made me the person I am today and quite a bit more appreciative of the world as a whole, as well as my own country moreso than i feel other people tend to be.  But it's always a judgement call, some kids really need stability.

Well missing home will make you appreciate it all the more whenever you return to visit or live. Nobody really knows where they'll be in 5 years. I remember the first time I saw a mall I said "Wow, this is like the airport!". America had a different feel to it, lots of junk food i'd never seen before and fast food places and all these recreational places. People take it for granted just being able to go to the video store and renting a good b-movie, stopping by wendy's to get a frosty to put in the freezer for later and ordering in pizza with beer. We're really the land of junk food. Are there stores open 24 hours there? I know when i was in germany everything closed at a specific time. It was even like that here just over 10 years ago, now you can go shopping and get food anytime you want.

You decided to move there because you wanted to make it easy on the kid? Very admirable. That was quite a thing to do.
Good luck to you.

Over all it was just easier on her daughter for me to come here. I have moved around alot, and my family has gotten used to me being away for years at a time. Her family is real close, and would have been hard for all of them for my wife to go to the states. I have adjusted a bit to Norway, but still miss little things. No big deal. We were on our way back from the store a few minutes ago, and a big ass moos was in the road. They have to be the goofiest looking things.

I lived in Alaska (near Anchorage) for years, and I've got to say that moose are so homely that they're adorable.  Quite the mournful look they have, though.  Saw a moose almost walk into the Wal-Mart in downtown Anchorage one day.

Also like Anchorage, you're in the land of serious seasonal light variation.  It's hard to take, or at least it was for me; in Anchorage, days get as short as 5 hrs and change, and as long as 19 hours.   During the wintertime it's hard to get out of bed, and in the summertime it's hard not to paint your garage at midnight...

And my mom's side of the family is all Norwegian, and I must agree with you about the Scandinavian ethnic food comment.  Avoid!  I've never tried sheep's head or the fish cakes, but I think we've all had lutefisk forced on us once in our lives in my family.

It's admirable, I agree, that you have moved to make it easier for your little girl.

ThadC wrote:

> Susan... I dont know how long we will stay here. We talk about
> moving to the US, but it is just too hard on our 6 year old
> right now. We are trying to teach her English, and she is
> picking it up pretty fast. Just do not want to cause her any
> problems by moving too soon.

Well, kids pick up new languages much faster than adults.  The older one gets, the harder it is to pick up a new language.  So I wouldn't worry about her being able to pick up English, she'll learn it in no time flat.

Of course, there are a multitude of other problems with moving children.  If there's one thing kids really don't like, it's change.

Man. Now i'm thinkin' of the great B-movie " Terror in the midnight sun." A great cheese fest ( As Andrew can tell ya), with one of the greatest lookin brunetts this side of Betti Page...Yowsa!

Hope the tran-atlantic problim gets solved to everyone satisfaction.

well congrats ThadC. it seems the net is becoming the new dating/meeting ground of the future. i've been hearing about a lot of people who have met their wives or girlfriends online. i think it has it's advantages and disadvantages like everything else. it can help shy people meet, or people who live a ways from each other but are extremely compatible.

however it can also be a little wierd meeting someone for the first time when you already know their underwear color. guess everything's a risk!

Waitaminuit,waitaminuit...he said he misses the Sci-Fi channel...he MISSES THE SCI-FI CHANNEL!.....if that statment is not based on the need for riffable movies, ala MST3K...i weep for your one proud mind....( Shudders )...

LOL, yeah they don't even air MST3K here either.

ThadC, I lived in Charlotte back in the early 80's.  I worked in LE in York County (City of Rock Hill, then York Co. SO, including doing some training with the marksman teams) in the 90's.  I have several family members and friends on the PD in Charlotte.  You like the long rifle, eh?  My personal longest shot is 1200 yds.

I spend a couple of days in Norway in 1979.  I was not there very long, but I have always remembered it as a very friendly place.

Sorry I did not post earlier, but I've been repairing the old 'puter.  Small world, 'eh?

Hey ulthar.. it is a small world sometimes. I think my distance varied depending on the choice of weapon I was using. Most of the time I was using a FR-F2 (600 meters) or a L96 Accuracy International also (600 meters), but on a few rare trips I got to use a Barrett 82a1 (1000 meters)... that sucker kicked like a mule even with recoil compensation.