Merry Christmas!

For all you folks back home who told us we'd freeze to death in Norway - nyah, nyah! It's sunny and warm(ish) this Christmas Eve, here in Bergen. It sounds like the whole US is snowed in, particularly the Puget Sound.

Merry Christmas! We took advantage of our location right next to Germany to visit the Christmas Market in Nuremberg. See pictures and webcam here. It was great - like the Puyallup Fair on steroids. They have 200+ booths selling food and handcrafts all spilling out of the city center. There are miles of cobblestone pedestrian roads. Our absolute favorite sausages are the little bitty ones they sell there. And they had lots of lebkuchen, glühwein , and chocolate-covered fruit booths, too. We also love German beer, as anyone with good taste would.

Christmas food here in Bergen is pinnekjøtt- as a matter of fact, I can smell some cooking out in the hall right now. It is literally "stick meat". It is dried lamb, steamed with sticks in a casserole for several hours. Actually, quite good, if salty! But Ed and I found a smoked ham. We are also going to try to bake a cherry pie. We think we found the ingredients, though cornstarch is quite a foreign thing here. We ran into Keith, the guy who stayed with me when I fell down the mountain, and invited him over for Christmas dinner tomorrow.

Santa Claus is Julenissen here. He's an elf that asks the kids if there are any good kids in this house, and then gives them gifts. The dads at work were sharing how they managed that feat when the kids were getting old enough to be suspicious about their dads disguising themselves as julenissen! This all happens on Christmas Eve, the most important day of the Christmas season. Here's the Norway Post article about Christmas traditions here.

Christmas Day, 1st juledag, is a holiday, but so is the day after, 2nd juledag. In Bergen tradition, everyone goes to the movies to see the new releases that day. I hope you are all having a lovely holiday, wherever you are.