Fourth of July - Norway Style!

Today is Independence Day, or best known simply as the Fourth of July, in USA.  Gratulerer med dagen!  Happy Fourth of July, USA!!  It's pretty much the American version of 17. mai and if you want to read about the differences between Independence Day in USA and Constitution Day in Norway click here!

Yesterday I drove up to Oslo with my host parents and Toffee because in Vigeland Park was going to be a celebration for the Fourth of July.  On the way there, we stopped at a rest area where there was a STAGE set up (weird, right?) and people were singing and playing instruments and if you waited at the gas station for an hour, you'd have a chance to win a car... That was something I have never seen or heard of before!  We didn't wait at the station, just stopped for about twenty minutes and had boller and coffee and got back on the road. 

I met up with Devin at the staircase to the castle and we walked around for a little while and then got on the trikk to Vigeland Park.  I'd say there were a few thousand people there, and they had some "American-themed" stands.  They were selling sloppy joes, bearington bears, had a batting cage (baseball) and a stage with dancers and singers.  They even had some 18-wheelers...you know, the big scary ones from the US?  One stand had both democrats and republicans voting overseas... that was interesting.

There were many things that didn't feel "right" about it, like the fact that we wouldn't be doing any of this stuff on our Fourth of July at home, but that's not what this was.  This was an area of Vigeland Park that was pretty much just "American-themed" as I said before.  There wasn't NEARLY enough red, white and blue to be a real Fourth of July celebration and the pony rides and hundreds of people wearing cowboy hats threw the "theme" over the top.  But, at the same time, it was very cool to see how Norway thought of the US. 

We ended up leaving after only an hour because there wasn't too much to do, and we took jump pictures with the norsk and amerikansk flags we brought and then went to eat kebab, got slushies in coffee cups and sat on a fountain in a roundabout talking.  From there I met up with Åse Beate, an older host sister of my third host family, and we walked to her apartment were my host parents were. 

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!! :D