Hyttetur!! (Weekend in the Mountains)

Gjesteinnlegg av LINE BERULFSEN!
Hei alle sammen. Nå er vinterferien over, og skolen har begynt igjen. I ferien var Noellen på hyttetur. Det vil si at hun dro på en hytte oppe på fjellet, og ferierte der.
Mange norske familier har hytter, og syns det er veldig koselig. Om vinteren drar mange opp på hyttene sine på fjellet og går på ski. Det er gøy. Så griller vi pølser og spiser kvikklunsj. Om kvelden fyrer vi i peisen på hytta, og koser oss. Hytter er hus som man ikke bor i fast. Hytte er et hus man besøker for å slappe av og feriere.
Takk for meg! (Jeg er veldig glad i Noellen)

Guest Post by LINE BERULFSEN!
Hi everyone.  Now winter vacation is over and school has begun again.  During vacation, Noellen was on a cabin trip.  It means that she went to a cabin up on the mountain and vacationed there.
Many Norwegian families have cabins and think it is very "cozy".  During the winter, many go up to their cabins on the mountain and go skiing.  It is fun.  Then we grill hot dogs and eat kvikklunsj (chocolate).  During the evening we make a fire in the fireplace and make ourselves cozy.  Cabins are houses where people don't actually live in.  A cabin is a house people visit to relax and vacation.
Thanks!  (I really love Noellen) (no perfect translation - in Norway they have two different words for love, one meaning to love your significant other with all of your heart, å elske, and one meaning to love your friends or family, glad)

This weekend, the final weekend of vinterferie, I went with Didrik and Cathrine to their cabin in the mountains!  I left on Thursday morning and arrived at Oslo S around 10:30 or so.  I had to meet up with Helle's oldest daughter, Cathrine, to give her a ticket to a concert that night.  Then I met up with Devin and we went on a GRAND ADVENTURE in Oslo.  We went looking for cafes... 

We ended up at his favorite cafe which is right next to The National Theater.  On the way there, we saw all of the snow sculptures that were made for the Oslo Ski-VM 2011 which is International this year (Rotary kids will all be there next weekend) and we saw the NEWLY OPENED BEN&JERRY'S icecream shop right in the middle of town!!!  That's exciting.  Score one for Vermont!!  We got a pair of Mocha Lattes and sat and talked in the cafe until it was time for Didrik to pick me up.  It was so great to see Devin again!  And we'll all be reunited this weekend at Holmenkollen :) 

Didrik picked me up at the National Theater and then we drove to pick up Cathrine and we were off to the mountains.  It took between two to three hours to get there and when we arrived a tthe base of the mountain, it looked like a slippery drive.  Norwegians are quite (very) good at driving on snow and I've become accustomed to it, so it was an easy drive up (besides when we had to stop because some people were in the road).  The farther we went up the mountain, the less maintained the roads were.  We got up without a problem :)

We had to carry everything about 300 m to the cabin through some deep snow which was entertaining.  Cathrine had some tall boots on but I had my hiking boots... we arrived at the cabin and started to heat it up right away.  It was warm in a matter of only a couple hours.  We ate some great dinner that Cathrine cooked and played some card games until late that night. 

The next morning was KOSELIG and had breakfast and went on a skitur!  We went cross-country skiing nearby, but it was really really foggy.  It was still a lot of fun :)  We went to this rest cabin on the way back and had kvikk lunsj and oranges.  There were a lot of other people there having pølser (hot dogs) among other things.  After we got back, we used the BB gun (which was so much fun!) on some targets and then had a quick nap.  We ended up playing lots of games like A-Å, UNO and some other card games.  We used the grill for dinner and exchanged stories about Rotary Exchange Program.  Then Didrik and I stayed up playing games on his iPhone for another hour or so. xD

The last morning we packed up and carried everything down to the car and left.  It was still foggy so I never got to see what the place actually looked like... But that's okay because next time will be in the summer with The Neisners! :):)  The ride back took significantly longer, but on the way we played lots of games and had more stories and I even made some plans with Lauren, who lives in Bergen (check out her blog, there's a link on the left hand side of the page) to go with her and her family to THEIR cabin and ski.  So I'm leaving in two hours on a train to Geilo, Norway (I'll arrive at about 3AM) and from there on Thursday I will be going from there to Oslo to VM Ski Finals! 

Takk for turen, Didrik og Cathrine :):) <3