ten years in

I realized that this week marks two anniversaries: ten years since I moved abroad, and eight years since my first visit to Oslo. Now, I live with a view of that hotel where I dined with M, and a five minute walk from the microbrewery where we had beers that night. That crazy Icelandic weather I wrote about missing then is something I now take great joy in not having to deal with though. Tonight, for example, I came back from a meeting by bike, passing through Frogner park just as the slanting spring light filtered through the spray of Vigeland's majestic fountain.This is my neighborhood, my city, and it's already full of wonderful friends and favorite secret corners.

My neighborhood has also proved to be full of even more unexpected delights, much of which I can witness from the bay of unbroken windows along the front of my living room. Today the local school's marching band was out rehearsing for the high point of the Norwegian holiday calendar, the 17th of May. For three hours, a battalion of sailor-suited children marched in tight ranks around the streets of my neighborhood. They ended by marching up my street with a collection of small flag-waving children trailing along behind, to collect in front of the fire station I can see from my window. The firemen opened all the engine bays and came out to applaud the band, who then played the national anthem before smartly marching off to their school again.

It reminds me of a phrase my dad used to toss around, "an attitude of gratitude", something I feel almost every day here. How lucky I am to live in such a beautiful place, to be part of such a community! Springtime in Oslo is glorious, a furze of lurid green that mellows into delightfully bosky corners in parks and lanes. Lanes! This is a proper city, the largest population of the country, and yet yesterday I found myself on a potholed dirt lane just minutes from home. This is the city where I can take a 15 minute subway ride from my closest metro station and step off into proper forest. It's difficult to explain just how immediate the transition is from train platform to babbling brook lined with early spring flowers- I still can't quite believe it myself.

I also joined a choir recently in my local church, an elegant early 20th century pile with magnificent stained glass windows and vaguely Viking themed details along the choir loft. Just like my early experiences in Iceland, it's an exhausting and exhilarating few hours of my week. We're going to Hungary later this year and I already expect I'll come back having learned a lot of new Norwegian vocabulary.

And finally, there's this fella... a navy blue eyed Norwegian with a Sunnmøre accent who's been teaching me useful phrases like "there's hope in a hanging snore". Trust me, it makes way more sense in Norwegian.