Friday, February 10, 2006

End Fauske Chapter 3; End Skellefteå Chapter 2

Hmmm, before I get into things, a word about the last post. I guess there has been some confusion as to why it's here. And, for the last time, no, I am not the father! Devin is a friend of mine from Nova Scotia. Once upon a time we were high school sweethearts, she was my first girlfriend, in fact. Very innocent, very dear times, and I am glad we have kept in touch over the years. Although, admittedly, we don't talk as much as I would like for us to. She just had her baby and I'm quite excited for her and Jamie, and of course, for Auna. Welcome to the world, little one!

And back to my tale...

I stayed in Fauske for 4 weeks after watching the whole town explode with fireworks on New Year's Eve (which was awesome, by the way). I guess there were a number of fires started that night from misused or misfired works. Right now I am writing from Wayne's Coffee in Skellefteå, Sweden. I came to visit my brother for a couple of weeks to take his mind off things. More on that later.

I should start by telling what I've been up to whilst in Fauske. I have been going to a full-time Norwegian language course at a school for refugees, foreign wives of Norwegian men, and other immigrants. It's a pretty interesting place, as there are people attending from all over the globe. Yet I am the only native english speaking person at this school, and one of the very few white people there - also the first Canadian ever to attend this school. In my class there are around ten people, although five or six show up on a regular basis, so I don't know for sure - although I do know that when we had a test they had to pull in extra desks from other rooms to accommodate the full class. There is a woman from Thailand, another from South America, a married couple from Iran, a man from Iraq, another from Somalia, and I can't remember where everyone else hails from, but suffice it to say that the feel is very international. I have met people in the school from Mongolia, Arabia, and several other African regions. I have been learning a lot, both about Norway and other countries. It's been very interesting. On the down side, I have also been learning a lot about the prejudices felt by and towards these people. Some of the refugees and immigrants get very lonely because the Norwegian locals ignore them on the street and turn away when spoken to. There is a lot of racism in Norway, especially the north.

That being said, I haven't really been going to many classes. I keep getting pulled away. For example, the first week I discovered a lump in my ass. Yeah, you read that right, I had a lump in my ass. It started out small, and I just hoped it would go away, but after a couple of days of growing larger and more uncomfortable I decided it was time to visit a doctor. I had no idea what it was. I worried about everything from sitting on the wrong toilet seat to perhaps having some sort of bum cancer. A very unpleasant time for me, to say the least. I think it was on Wednesday that it started to hurt right from the moment I awoke. After visiting the children's hospital and being told to go away (stupid illiteracy), I went to the local sick-house (literal translation of the norwegian word for hospital) but they required an appointment - the next free time they had was in a couple of days. Not good enough for me, so I got the address of a clinic in the next town that accepted drop-ins. Unfortunately this meant borrowing the car from Grethe... Not wanting to tell why I needed the car made borrowing it an uncomfortable conversation, on top of the discomfort in my bottom it made for an unpleasant afternoon. After driving the 15 agonizing minutes to the clinic, I had to wait around for a doctor for an hour and a half. When finally there was a doctor free I was called into a small room. And there I had as close to a cheesy porn moment as I've ever had... This beautiful blonde Swedish woman strolled in, said she was my doctor, told me to remove my pants and get on the table. I blinked a couple of times, almost not believing what had just happened, before pulling off my trousers and getting up on the table. Porn-moment over. She snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and mechanically plied my cheeks apart to poke my new ass-nub. "Ah, it's just a hemorrhoid!" I breathed a sigh of relief as she prescribed some pain-killing suppositories. Mmm-hmm, my first suppositories. There really is nothing quite like the feeling of shoving a smooth, cold, rounded pill up your anus, past a grisly hemorrhoid. Gross! I hope to never have to endure that again...

The second week I had a mental health day on Tuesday, long story. And another doctor appointment for a tuberculosis test, missing another half day. It was required for my visa.

Week three I skipped a full day to get an x-ray in Bodø, continuation of the tuberculosis test - I was very happy to find out that my lungs were free and clear of the tuberculosis! Also that week I had two vaccination needles in one session with the local vaccination doctor, one in one arm for tuberculosis and the other in the other arm for Hep-A and B. Both arms were sore for a couple of days.

Week three was also the first week I went to "sports wednesday". Every wednesday afternoon the guys go play sports at one hall, and the gals go to another building and dance. The first week I was feeling a little shy or something, and the second week I decided that staying home was cooler. Anyway, I went the third week. For the first hour we played some indoor football (or soccer for you North Americans reading) which was pretty great. Good sportsmanship abounded! I slapped a couple of shoulders, shook a couple of hands. And then we played volleyball and all hell broke loose! In the middle of our game I guess someone mistook someone else's HEAD for the ball because dude got his head smacked. Now I don't speak Norwegian, and they were all shouting with different accents and perhaps even different languages. I didn't know what the heck was going on. I just saw these two start in with the fisticuffs. Two others started grabbing them from behind to pull them apart. All very normal, that is until one of the guys separating the two started whacking him in the face! Before I could believe it there were five guys getting a piece of the action! There was fighting all around me! All I could do was watch. I internally debated getting in and breaking things up a little, but forgot about that foolishness when I saw a foot connect with a guy's chin and he went down. Unconscious. Blammo. Gone. K.O. The teacher guy came in at that point and started yelling and pulling people apart. When some semblance of sanity was restored, and unconscious guy was helped up and started stumbling about, two were ordered to leave before anyone else. I left around that point, went to the change room to pack my shit and git, only to see unconscious guy and the dude that helped him up. I asked if he was alright - he probably had a concussion. I hope he got the proper medical help.

Then I skipped thursday and friday to show a friend from England around Fauske and Lofoten for the weekend. Pictures should be posted of that someday. Lofoten is a lovely province in Norway, one of the more famous, and some say the most beautiful - lots of mountains and nature and lovely little sea towns, also there is a world-renowned climbing school there, one I might attend someday. Anki hails from this area and has offered to show me some of the sights someday. There really is nothing like being shown around an area by a local... Our timing was unfortunate because this particular weekend a huge storm rolled over the area. The week before we went, a house in the area was actually swallowed by the sea! Crazy! Weather seems to be pretty unpredictable, and rather harsh, in this part of the world; especially in the winter. We rented a car for one of the days in Lofoten and drove around the province. The funny thing about the rental was the only cars available were of the standard transmission sort, and I was the only one of us who could drive, and I have never driven standard before. The man who rented us the car gave me a five minute lesson in shifting gears. He had a very worried look on his face when the car stuttered and stalled its way off the lot, me at the helm. There's a bit of a trick to getting into first gear from stopped that I could never quite master, once the damned thing was moving I was fine though. Also, I'm crap at getting it into reverse. At one point we were trying to leave a parking lot and it took us 15 minutes to move without stalling. We rented the car because the sea was too stormy for our original plan of whale watching. Although we didn't see any whales in Lofoten, we did eat one! That's right, hippies, I ate WHALE MEAT! And it was GOOD! The man of the elderly couple who ran the lodging where we stayed (a really beautiful converted fishing house called a rorbu, the fabulous Skarheim Seahouse) is a retired whale fisherman. They had many stories, and many whale steaks in the freezer. Being very hospitable hosts, in typical Norwegian fashion, they offered to make us what turned out to be a delicious dinner of whale steaks, potatoes and salad. The whale was so good I brought the leftovers to my room for later consumption!

Well, I have now switched location from Wayne's Coffee (or as it's called by my brother, Wayne's Office - because I spend so much time there with my computer) to onboard a train from Bastuträsk (near Skellefteå) to Södertälje Syd (near Stockholm). I'm currently on my way to Germany, flying out of Skavsta, which is near Stockholm. How exciting! I get there tomorrow, and am there for the weekend, after which I head to England once more. Gosh, I love my life sometimes.

Enough of the present, back to the past.

Oh yes, while we were off enjoying ourselves in Lofoten, life continued in Fauske. Camilla had her abortion. I guess the operation went very well, and only took 45 minutes or so. She seems to be alright physically, but worries about the emotional repercussions in the future. I do too. My poor, lovely, little sister. I know she'll be alright in the long run. She is a strong one. She just needs caring and understanding people around her.

The weekend after that, my brother's wife was taking off to Oslo to look for a job and a place to live. So he asked if I could come and stay with him for a while. Of course I said yes, and headed over by bus, missing yet another day of school. Now the bus ride to Skellefteå is a hellious 8 hours long, so instead of coming straight back after spending a couple weeks in Sweden I decided to take the "long way" back. You know, through Germany and Britain and wherever else is cheap to fly to from there. I have embarked on yet another great adventure! I am starting to get used to all the excitement. I wonder what returning to normal life will do to me, whenever the heck I get around to doing that...

These past two weeks with Kenneth and Emily have been great. As with my last visit, Kenneth wanted to play some sports. This time it was badminton, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Even though I had my ass handed to me in all but our final game last night. It was tied at 17-17 at one time, before I got the upper hand and won. Woot. We are pretty evenly matched, so the games can get very aerobic. Also this past weekend we took the dog for a walk on Saturday. It was a nice walk, very calming, through a snowy wood. That is, until Kenneth decided it was high time I ate some snow, so he tossed me off the trail and into a snow bank. Once I struggled out, and after a few steps I decided it was his turn, so I ran at him from behind, only to find that the man is a wall! Once more I was tossed off the path and into the deep snow. We continued in such a manner for at least a couple of hours, I was able to toss him a couple of times as well. Once I actually pulled him down and flipped him in such a way that he was momentarily standing on his head! A number of his tosses resulted in my arching through the air before making fresh body-prints in deep snow. We had a great time. It reminded me both of a Kung Fu movie, and of Leif and I tossing each other into the snow at Mom's place back in good old Nova Scotia. I miss tossing Leif in the snow. It was our annual tradition for some time; I think it served as a great tension breaker for us. This time the tables were turned for me because I was the smaller brother, spending most of the time on the ground with snow being kicked into my face. Nice. After some time we sat in the snow, exhausted, and spoke as only exhausted people speak. Good times.

Many of the weekdays, while Kenneth was at work, I would take the bus to town and wander around, or just sit at Wayne's Coffee with my laptop. Inevitably someone would come around to disturb whatever it was I was doing, but that's okay. Part of the joy of sitting in a coffee shop and staring at a computer is being interrupted. Many times it was by my half-step-neice Ida or one or two of her many friends. Yesterday I talked for quite a while with one of the hockey superstars of the Skellefteå AIK, the city's hockey team in Sweden's version of the NHL. I think this dude was formerly an NHL player, actually, and he hails from Boston. The last time I was in Sweden I was hanging with another AIK player from Boston, as well as the team's strength and fighting coach, Palle. I ran into Palle again this time as well - he's pretty full on. We hung out at the bar on Saturday night as well. He is a hard man to describe so I won't even try, I don't think I've ever known anyone like him. The dude certainly enjoys himself. He was going to take me out snowmobiling before I took off, but weather prevented it before I took off. Snowmobiling at 35 below zero just doesn't sound comfortable or fun.

Both friday and saturday evenings were spent clubbing. Before going out, though, we went to see friends of Kenneth who fed us scotch and beer and Swedish moonshine. The first night the moonshine was relatively tame, at only 50% alcohol. I drank a couple of seriously strong drinks before we hit the clubs - I was still drunk waking up the next morning. Much fun was had that evening. We went out to Station 8 (or "Ståt" [pronounced "Stot"] as it's affectionately referred to by the locals) for another "Club 27" night. They had tried this the last time I was in town - restricting the people who entered to being of the age 27 or above. Sounds like a great idea to me, in theory. After being there for some time Kenneth renamed it to "Jurassic Park". I was basically molested on the dance floor by a woman who must have been in her fifties. This time was much more fun. And, as always, after a night on the town in Skellefteå, we headed to Max for far too much hamburger meat and french fries... Mmmmmm, drunked up grease fest... We ran into Palle there, which always ends up being entertaining. He is totally infatuated with the manager of the burger joint. I guess he has a thing for hard-working blonde women with pig-tails.

The second night another group of Kenneth's friends brought out the big guns - moonshine with ninety fucking percent alcohol! They joked that what I was drinking could blind me. I don't think it did. Not more than I'm usually blind, anyhow. My glasses are still of the same prescription. This night we went to a number of different places, gambled a little on cards, drank some beers, listened to possibly one of the worst guitarist/singers I have ever heard making a fool of himself onstage, and finally ended up back at Ståt until the wee hours of the morning. Where we met up with Palle again. We talked and laughed with him for a while before heading back to Max for more greasy burgery goodness.

I see now that this post is far, far too long. Congratulations to all who have read the whole post! I admire your stamina.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Okay, so I finally read a blog and you talk about your hemmroids?!? Thanks Shaun, I appreciate the images. And you wonder why I avoid these things...

Thursday, February 16, 2006 3:09:00 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Awsome post, it is soo good to hear of your journeys, buyt you really do have to learn how to post pictures IN your post :P

Sorry to hear about the 'roids. But your adventures sound like alot of fun :)

Hope to talk/type to you soon, we still have yet to meet up on Skype ;)

*hugs*

/c

Thursday, February 16, 2006 1:39:00 p.m.  
Blogger Shaun said...

For the record, it was only ONE 'roid! And with this posting I figured the mental images were enough. But, if you REALLY want, I could post a picture of my bum-hole... Although that may mean I have to change the "adult-rating" of this blog. On second thought, no I won't do that.

Thursday, February 16, 2006 5:01:00 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Post more!

:)

I love reading your posts. You're very descriptive and it's an enjoyable read.

Sounds like you're having a fantastic time over there. :-D

Tuesday, February 21, 2006 2:33:00 p.m.  

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