Røros

We finally reached the midpoint of our summer school last Wednesday. In the interest of allowing students to travel and take a break from their studies, classes were not scheduled on Thursday and Friday. I had the pleasure to travel to another town in Norway with a friend from the summer school. Lauren is one of the peace scholars from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. She studied in Norway for a semester, so she knew some people who live here. One of her friends, Marianne, had invited her to stay in Røros with her family for the weekend. I didn't have any plans yet, so she invited me to tag along.

I took my first long-distance train ride on the way to the town. I wish the U.S. had a more extensive passenger railway service because it seems to work pretty well in Europe. The only complaint I have about the journey was that I made the mistake of sitting near the front of the train, and the conductor kept blowing the horn to get animals off the tracks. It wasn't exactly a quiet ride, but it was comfortable.

I was a little nervous to spend the entire weekend with a new friend, in the home of a complete stranger. I had heard that Norwegians tend to be rather private people, and it is uncommon to do this sort of thing. I also felt uncomfortable with my lack of knowledge of the Norwegian language. In large cities, it isn't difficult to find English speakers, but in a small town, you just never know. I was pleasantly surprised by how successful the trip actually became.

Røros is a former copper mining town established by the Danish government in the 17th century. To an outsider, it seems like the town is in the middle of nowhere. Its 5,000 inhabitants live a clearly isolated life, far from the crime and the hustle and bustle of Oslo. Everybody knows everybody, except for the tourists of course. Lauren and I were two of the few foreign tourists in the town. The place was packed with Norwegian and other Scandinavian tourists who were on their three-week holiday. In fact, there were only three people on our English walking tour of the town. Over a dozen went on the Norwegian tour.

As you can see from the photos, Røros still looks like it did centuries ago. The old buildings in the center of town are protected as a UNESCO world heritage site. Many of the old buildings have been turned into stores on the first floor and residences on the second. Some buildings are so small that they have been turned into museum sites. Like many small towns in North Dakota, Røros is not a place where one could get lost. There are just a couple of main streets, and it takes between five and ten minutes to walk from one side to the other. No one looks their door, and some shops don't bring their merchandise in for the night. I felt so comfortable and so distant from the stress that I left in Oslo and, more importantly, in the U.S.

One of the best moments I had while I was in Røros was when I got to sit down and talk to Marianne and her friends. In in the month that I've been in Norway, I had yet to truly have a conversation with a Norwegian. Sure, I've been living here, but I live on a campus with people from 94 other countries. The Norwegians live at home, and I don't talk to them in class. Many of the Marianne's friends were afraid to speak to us because they weren't confident in their ability to speak in English, but they opened up after a couple of drinks. I enjoyed hearing about their lives and their experiences in the United States and other countries. I felt like they treated me like a friend even though we had just met.

Lauren and I did typical tourist activities as well some things the locals do. We did a walking tour of the city as well as a tour of two of the copper mines. Oddly enough, we had the same tour guide for both tours. We also visited the massive sandy area that is left over from the Ice Age. Apparently it is the only "desert" in Northern Europe.

The locals have their own customs. One of them is to travel one hour into Sweden to buy groceries and other necessities (ie. alcohol) because they are much cheaper in Sweden than in Norway. Now, technically I crossed the border without the proper paperwork. I didn't bring my passport because I didn't plan on leaving the country. I fortunately did not have to show my passport on either side of the border. The border between Norway and Sweden is not controlled except for random inspections on the Norwegian side to make sure that people aren't bringing too much alcohol across. I don't know how I would have talked my way out of trouble if I had been checked. Did that make me an illegal immigrant? Oh well. I guess you have to live on the wild side every once in awhile. At the grocery store, Marianne ran into a bunch of people from her town. That store might as well have been the official store for residents of Røros because they made up a large portion of the customer base.

The journey back to Oslo was not as successful as I had hoped. We misread our train tickets and arrived at the train station just as our train took off. Our tickets were non-refundable, and there was not another train until the morning. I needed to make it to my 8 a.m. class since I missed too many days while I was sick. If we boarded the first train, I wouldn't make it to class. So, we had to buy plane tickets for the 6:40 a.m. flight to Oslo. Luckily for me, I got to the second half of class after an hour-long flight and a 40 minute bus ride into the city. My cup of coffee on the flight got me through my morning class, but I crashed afterward. There's nothing like scrambling to get back to campus by any possible method while trying to get that last bit of homework done before class. Before this transportation mishap, my little vacation within a vacation was rather cheap. Now I clearly see the disparity between the cost of the next year at Concordia and my dwindling funds in my bank account.