Water, water everywhere....

...and plenty of (free) water to drink in Norway.  Tonight's our last night in the fjord areas where we've been on boats, hiked to glaciers, waded in a glacial lake, seen waterfalls, had the delightful experience of walking close enough to a glacial waterfall to catch the spray, and (mostly) managed not to be rained upon.  We've also driven through countless tunnels -- some as long as 7km -- found a few caches and enjoyed many berries (yes, we bought some strawberries and a fruit stand, though not for 50 pence).  If a picture is worth a thousand words and we've taken some number of hundreds of pictures....well, I'm not going to write that many words, but suffice it to say we're having a great time!

We unintentionally provided some entertainment for some nearby laborers the one time we refueled the car.  Step one: guess which side of the car has the gas tank; guess wrong, and invert the car.  Step two: figure out how to pay.  Many credit cards here require pins and since we never use our Visa pins at home we've found the path of least resistance is to use our ATM card for some things.  Each failed attempt with the cards added to the receipt which approached a meter long.  Step three: figure out how to open the gas cap.  Step four: figure out how to use the pump.  Oh wait, that nozzle is too big, what about the other nozzle, oh good, it fits.  Step five: realize that it's taken so long that our payment "expired" so repeat step two (much more efficiently this time).  Step six: pump, retrieve receipt, and beat a hasty retreat in a vain attempt to preserve our dignity. Did I mention that the only info for steps 3 and 4 was in Norwegian?

At the glacial waterfall, we proved that we are outliers with respect to dignity, sanity, intelligence and/or something else, though some might argue that it's not clear which way.  We went through the spray twice -- once going toward the glacier and once returning to the car.  Many other tourists put on coats and just about all other tourists walked through quickly to stay dry.  In contrast, the two Oregonians rolled up our sleeves, held our arms out (to maximize our surface area), rotated (making sure the water reached us on all sides) loitered, and thoroughly enjoyed getting wet.

Meanwhile, we're managing to butcher various languages, though not intentionally.  In context, many Norwegian questions are answerable with our extremely limited vocabulary (nae = no, takk = thank you, tussen takk = thank you very much).  Both of us have noticed more tourists speaking Japanese than French, which is a bit of a surprise. But we would never have guessed that the first non-English conversation we would have with another tourist would be in Spanish, a language neither of us has ever studied.  The person sitting next to us on the boat today was curious about the GPS and we sort of talked about it in fractured Spanish (with a bit of French thrown in, some intentional and some accidental), used the GPS maps to show each other where "home" is (Guadalajara, Spain; they were impressed with how far away we live), and also chatted about our respective vacations....I asked if they spoke either English or French and they said no, though later they did speak a few words of English.  It's amazing with can be communicated with a limited mutual vocabulary! 

On a more somber note, every Norwegian flag we've noticed is still at half mast.  But it hasn't been a topic of conversation with anyone we've encountered since Oslo.