The only day I did not take a rainjacket to work, for one reason or another, it just had to rain cats and dogs exactly when I was leaving from work and had just signed out past the security guard ‒ what a luck!
First week was really rainy, and we had some thunderstorms as well ‒ which somehow affected our internet connections, as people say here. (Basically they did not work for couple of days). Then the second week it was raining probably every day but at different times. Here the rain just comes and goes, it might be cloudy for a while, but otherwise we have had plenty of sunshine and hot weather. And they say that this summer has been one of the greatest for ages.
But what does the weather has to do with me writing about Norwegians? Well, it seems like they don't think they get enough rain, since almost every backyard around here is being sprinkled by water each afternoon. I keep wondering myself why. Perhaps this mystery will unpuzzle after some weeks.
Another weird thing I witnessed today after work was that I saw a boy, perhaps around 10 years old, washing the wooden facade of the house with a garden water pipe. Do you wash your wooden houses?
And he was not playing, there was a whole infrastructure around this washing action; ladders and such. I was thinking whether this some sort of a step before they would start painting their house?* later edited: It was confirmed to me that people here wash their houses before starting to re-paint. Another step is also to add anti-fungus before painting.
Apparently the wooden houses here are painted approximately every 9 years. It is a long lasting process ‒ we are talking weeks here. Some like it others don't. Perhaps people should think positively about it: after those weeks they definitely know some karate movements! And secondly, perhaps that's why I had received a leaflet on my postbox offering help around the house, where the word painting was bolded.
I had a discussion with the owner of the house last weekend. He was painting the house when I came home from the blueberry forest. As he has been doing for couple of weeks now. I told I had been picking blueberries. He asked "What sort of berries are those?" I immediately realized he had not understood my pronounciation and tried this: "blooberries." And the response was: "aaa, blueberries! Well, soon it is going to be mushroom time. We go every year to pick cantarelle, and last year we picket 50 kg!"
Last week I heard at work how my foreign collegues told their experiences when they were looking for apartments here. A German told, that it was easy for her, since everyone trusts Germans; A Polish told that it was also easy for her since women from Eastern Europe are considered to be good at household chores and keeping the apartment clean. But the overall message of the discussion was that it is really hard to get through the selection of candidates, and sometimes it helps if you belong to these special groups, where the landlady would immediately consider you as the best candidate. I wonder what they say about Finns and Slovenes?
I don't have any appropriate pictures here to add related to this post, so you can enjoy the view which I do every morning and afternoon:
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