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greetings from loen, my new favorite small town.

loen basically consists of 3 hotels, 2 campgrounds, and the strongest wi-fi signal i have ever encounted. i’m sitting in the 3rd floor lounge of our hotel, and as far as i can tell, this signal is coming from across the street at the other hotel (which is about 800ft.). i’ve come up here to just relax, unwind, catch up with the world and post some pictures and things to the internet so that y’all can see what i saw today.

we’re here in loen simply because after 8 hours of driving, it’s a good place to stop before another 8 hours of driving. regardless of the reason, loen is absolutely beautiful. we’re less that 100ft from the mouth of a glacier-fed river which feeds into the fjord, and we’re surrounded by mountains which just absolutely take your breath away.

tonight’s dinner was fabulous. it was a buffet that had pretty much everything that everyone has been craving over the last 12 days: fresh vegetables, pasta, french fries, potato salad – you name it, it was there. i ate my fill, came up here, and got a fantastic wireless signal.

i then went out to take some pictures and just revel in the beauty that surrounded me. i came in to discover a hardanger fiddle player and norwegian folk dancers, and enjoyed that very greatly.

after the dancing was done, i went and jumped into the fjord with 5 other people and got the breath shocked out of me. it was cold as hell, but i’m glad i did it. after all, how often do you get to say that you jumped into a glacier-fed fjord?

this town is absolutely stunning. bj did good by us in stopping here for the night. i for one am quite pleased. too bad i have to load the bus at 7:00 tomorrow morning.

anyway, i’m going to go call my girlfriend and go to bed. peace, and behave.

(note: this post was done 24 hours after the events in question had actually taken place. caveat emptor.)

hi there. let’s start with the morning.

rehearsal was quite good, surprisingly. we weren’t cranky or tired, and the music actually started to come together today. we rehearsed in a lobby at the concert hall, but other than that quirk, everything else went as well as could be expected.

after the rehearsal, i went back to the hotel, had a quick sandwich, and climbed back on my rented bike to explore the city and get some good pictures. i rode out to the edge of the city and took a picture of the harbor looking in, and then rode back to the harbor again to take a picture from the harbor looking out. it was quite nice.

i am so glad i rented that bike. there is absolutely nothing like being on a bicycle. the feeling of flight and the freedom one has of being under one’s own power is absolutely incredible. it also gave me the ability to do something i haven’t really felt on this tour: it allowed me to stretch out and go as fast or as slow as i wanted to go, exactly when i wanted to do it. if you’re ever in bergen, bicycle is the way to get around.

i returned the bike, bought myself a cucumber to resupply my traveling pantry, and then went back to the hotel to change for the concert. that rehearsal went well, and dinner was awesome. there was actually a vegetarian meal this time.

my one gripe about the concert tonight was one i’ve never complained about before: we got a standing ovation. this may seem odd, but i’m actually a bigger fan of the unified clap. i think the reason we got a standing ovation tonight was because there were a lot of americans in the audience.

anyway, that’s all i’ve got for bergen. peace, and behave.

i’m here in my hotel room, watching bbc world and digesting my dinner of fresh shrimp and irish beer. today was a very, very good day, and here’s why:

today started out with a bit of exercise at 7:30, followed by breakfast, the folding of my dry laundry, and a shower. then, i (along with the rest of the band, choir, and orchestra) went on a tour that took us to troldhaugen and a stave church.

troldhaugen – the home of, museum about, and concert hall dedicated to edvard grieg – was absolutely amazing. i could have spent the entire day there, if not more time. the composer’s cabin was probably my favorite part, but i also loved being surrounded by all of the natural life and just walking through all of the thick forestry. i did grab a small flower from along the path, which is now being pressed in my computer science textbook.

the stave church was beautiful, but i wasn’t nearly as impressed by it as i was by troldhaugen. the architecture was very beautiful, and seemed very similar to asian architecture and design in my mind.

anyway, after the guided tour was over, i sat around for a little bit and put some clothing back into my suitcase before trying to find a bicycle rental shop. i found one, rented a bike, and covered quite a bit of ground before going to the other hotel (the bandies, orchies, and some of the la-las are in another hotel about 10-12 blocks away from the one i’m in) to spend some time with lauren and catch up with my friends in the other organizations. i also managed to visit a grocery store to obtain more bread, buy a new phone card and an extra plug adapter, and get my hands on some fresh shrimp.

after coming back here to add some songs to my iPod, i went back to the other hotel to visit with lauren, and ended going out to a pub to have a couple of beers with a few friends before coming back here. i returned, had some shrimp, and i’m now getting ready for bed.

well, i’m going to brush my teeth and go to sleep now; after all, i have a rehearsal tomorrow morning at 10am and that comes awfully early. peace, and behave.

greetings from bergen, where it apparently rains all the friggin’ time. i haven’t been sleeping as much as i should, and i am so incredibly tired right now that even though it’s only 6pm, i’m tempted to go straight to bed. before i make that decision, however, i think i’ll record my thoughts from the day and some more observations about norway.

today started at about 7:30, with a shower, some breakfast, and a great deal of wet laundry. the dryer at our host family’s house simply couldn’t handle everything we threw at it, so george and i wrung everything out, packed up everything in plastic bags, and put it in our suitcases so that we could at least move it easily.

after we left our host’s house, we waited around at the cathedral for a while before loading the buses and leaving for bergen. we drove through a very diverse area of norway, with scenery ranging from farms and fjords to stuff that looks like it came out of middle earth, and also drove under several large bodies of water by means of roadway tunnels in addition to crossing a couple large bodies of water on ferries. all in all, we ended up having a 5 ½ hour drive, which oddly enough didn’t feel like 5 ½ hours for whatever reason.

and now we’re here. this hotel is a lot like oslo, in that everything is tiny, everything costs something, and nothing is given to you. this hotel does have one up on oslo, however, in that it at least has an exercise room and a jacuzzi. i may end up paying for internet access later, but i’m going to try and find a cafe with free internet before i let it come to that.

one interesting thing about all of these hotel rooms, oddly enough, is their bathrooms. they all share one thing in common: heated floors. and they aren’t just heated, either; they come with a complete thermostat for controlling the floor heat. only the bathroom floor is heated, which seems a little odd, but it is incredibly nice when you first get up in the morning.

a couple of the other la-las figured out a unique usage for the heated floors. if you do your laundry, lay the wet laundry on the bathroom floor, and crank the thermostat up as high as it will go, your laundry will be dry by morning. quite genius, really. i’ve laid out all of my wettest laundry to dry, and some of it already is.

well, i’m going to go sit in the jacuzzi for a little while before i call it a night. peace, and behave.

this post is going to be a culmination of the previous two days. i didn’t post anything last night because i was exhausted and because i used some of my time packing. sorry for those of you who are now regular readers. anyway, let’s start with yesterday.

the best word to describe yesterday is probably “taxing”. the day started out with a 9:30am rehearsal for the christmas program we’ll be filming at the end of the tour, and it was very stressful to say the least. people were still tired/hungover from the night before, and the last thing that any of us wanted to be doing was sitting in the kristiansand domkirken for two hours rehearsing for something that none of us want to do in the first place. i will say, however, that for all the lecturing we received and all of the tension there was in the group, it was certainly a productive rehearsal.

after our rehearsal, we went up to the fortress to observe the official ceremonies for the 100th anniversary of norwegian independence from sweden. we also sang a 30 minute concert in commemoration of that anniversary before being turned loose to run errands and basically explore the city for a few hours. i spent that time exercising, showering, and catching up on email.

at about 4:00, we had another hour and a half of rehearsal, this time for the concert in the domkirken. this rehearsal was significantly better than the first one, and was a bit more fun. after we finished rehearsing, we went back to the hotel, had dinner, crashed for a little bit, and then sang the two-and-a-half-hour concert. after that concluded, i came back to the hotel, packed my suitcase, talked to nicole for entirely too short a period of time, and then crashed into bed.

today’s events started at the wonderfully early time of 7:35am, when i got up and got george into the shower. i finished packing my things, got dressed, loaded my things onto the bus, and got some breakfast before leaving at 9:00. after a 4 hour bus ride, we arrived in stavanger. i wandered around with some people for a while, exchanged some money, and meditated for about 15 minutes before we actually started rehearsing. after our rehearsal, we had pizza for dinner, and i wandered around a bit after having my fill of cheese and vegetable pizza. i bought myself a nice cardigan-style sweatshirt, and then went for a short walk before coming back to the church for the concert.

and here i am now, sitting on a bed in a homestay cataloging my thoughts before they leave my drafty brain. one observation i have been meaning to record is related to norwegian audiences and their applause. when they clap, they clap similarly to an american audience. however, when they really appreciate something or want an encore, they don’t stand or yell “encore!”. what they do is unify their applause from being a sort of pink/white noise to one unified rhythmic clap. it was a bit disconcerting at first, but the more i hear it, the cooler it becomes.

anyway, now that i’m fully caught up in my observations and record of my days in norway, i’m going to go to bed. peace, and behave.