| From: [email protected] (A. Elster)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
Subject: A Norwegian in the US -- Part 1
Date: 27 Sep 90 04:28:18 GMT
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY
A NORWEGIAN IN THE U.S. -- A FEW IMPRESSIONS
Part 1
The first thing that really made me feel like I was now definately in
the US after landing at SEATAC (airport near Seattle, WA) 9 years ago
was all the b-boards along the road side, and all the huge American
cars on the road (an occational Impala could be spotted in Norway back
then, but certainly not as many as here ... ;-)). This was back in 1981
before the Japanese car makers hit the US market `en-masse'. Nowadays,
we all seem to have "Japanese-sized" cars. There also seem to be less
b-board, etc, along the road-side over here these days. This, ofcourse,
may depend on where you are in the US, but even Seattle seem to have
"stripped" down when I visited in August.
After spending a couple of days in Seattle, I flew down to Eugene,
Oregon (the state between Washington and California, along the US's
West Coast -- even I had to look the place up on the map back then --
me who pride myself on my knowledge of geography ...) where I spent my
first year in College at the Univ. of Oregon. There I was met by the
host family the University put me in contact with. I remember being
served very sweet awful-tasting ice cream for dessert my first day
there -- so awful that I refused to try any other ice cream here for
the next 2 months! Only after beeing dragged to a local ice cream
parlor, was I again hooked on the substance. (Such a prime example of
how one shouldn't generalize on a limited sample space ... sigh!)
Another thing that hit me as I moved in to the dorms and was put on the
univ. mealplan, was hunger -- not because of them not serving us enough
of it (they had all-you-can-eat buffets), but they only served 3 meals
a day!! I remember having the same problem in Spain. Granted we (us
Norwegians) no longer have the 7-meals-a-day plan that was common
during the Viking era, but we (at least my family) do still tend to
have about 5 meals a day. No, we are not pigs; we probably consume
fewer calories than the average American family. We just eat less and
more often :
8:00am Breakfast (open-faced whole-grain sandwiches)
noon: Lunch (ditto, yoghurt)
3:00pm Snack (sandwich or cold cereal)
4:30pm Dinner (much like the US, but not as much meat (too
expensive), and heavy on boiled potatoes)
7:30pm Coffee/Tea (w/ cookies/cake/pasteries...)
10pm Supper (see breakfast)
In other words, we eat a lot of whole-grain sandwiches giving us lots
of fiber. Does wonders for your digestion ... :-)
To be continued ...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anne C. Elster
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
(607) 255-2219 [off], (607) 255-4428 [FAX]
e-mail: [email protected]
[email protected]
|
| From: [email protected] (A. Elster)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
Subject: A Norwegian in the US -- Part 2
Date: 27 Sep 90 04:45:55 GMT
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY
A NORWEGIAN IN THE U.S. -- A FEW IMPRESSIONS
Part 2
[incl. comment on washers and large refridgerators! :-)]
As mentioned, in the dorms I had to settle for 3 meal a day!! The
result was sad; I gained over 10 lbs that year as a result of changed
eating habits and reduced excersize level (no longer on the local swim
team). I've sadly never shedded that extra weight, so my mother is
still on my case when I go back to visit. Over here I hear stories of
people going home to their parents and getting stuffed; my mom puts me
on a week's diet of chicked salads! Well, she actually caved in last
x-mas -- guess she figured after 8 years, I wan't going to change
unless I really really wanted to myself ...
Then there was the dorm vacuum cleaner -- one of these upright things
with a bag on the handle -- just like in the Donald Duck & Co. Disney
cartoons I'd been reading as a kid. (I later discovered you indeed do
have the ones that follow you on wheels -- they're generally more
expensive, though.) I discover several other "Disneyism": mailboxes on
poles (even red ones -- just like the ones in the cartoons), and paper
grocery bags with no haddles. The latter, although recyclable (Oregon
is a pioneering state over here on those issues) they seemed very
impractical requiring both hands to handle. I decided they where so
popular since Americans generally tend to drive to huge grocery stores
dumping the bags right in the car from the carts. Plastic bags are now
available (A year or 2 ago they started giving you the choice of either
thin plastic or paper bags) at most grocery stores -- at least here on
the East Coast. This year they started recyling the plastic bags at at
least 2 of our (Ithaca, NY) largest grocery stores. I wonder how the
15cent fee they charge you on plastic bags in most Norwegian grocery
stores, will go over here ... (Granted they are larger and thicker, and
yes, we tend to reuse them.)
And the washers (what a current soc.culture.nordic topic!!!) -- yes,
the washers here seemed funny, but it wasn't until a couple of years
later while back in Norway cleaning out my Grandma's house that the
difference really hit me. There, in her basement I found an old '40s
(or was it older?) washing machine that when I opened the lid looked
identical to the ones you have here in the US. The only major
difference was that this one had to be filled with water from a tube
manually. I ran and got my dad asking why we didn't use that kind
anymore. He explained that sometime in the 50's they started producing
the tumble type and found them to be a lot gentler on the clothes
(guess it didn't hit well off here where a lot of people by short-term
polyester clothes ...). Since then, the old style faded from the market
place. The one we have at home can both be fed with only cold water
(takes a long time, especially on "hot" settings), or a mix (it mixes
water from the hot and cold tap to the right temp). It is what we call
a "halvautomatisk", meaning we have a separate spinner ("sentrifuge")
that we move the wet cloths that takes spinning. One advantage the old
(American) style has over the tumbling ones is that the old ones
feature a cheaper implementation of a good "spinner".
Large refridgerators? Well, the one me an my roomate rented wasn't by
any standard large; nor could it be given the size of our dorm room!).
But, yes, the fridges here do seem large. However, most of them are
desceptive in that almost half of it is actually a freezer. This goes
for both freezer-on-top and side-by-side styles. In Norway, I have seen
several of the former, but the latter seems uncommon and looked to me
like a two-door fridge. Great was my surprise when I opened the
left-hand door of one for the first time and I realized it was a narrow
up-right freezer ("fryseskap"). My parents have both in the kitchen
too, but in separate units (acutually provides more freezer space). The
chest "deep" freezer is hidden in the basement. Ignoring the puny ones
that are standard for my appartment complex, I have to agree, though,
that the average fridge is slightly larger` over here. Most of the
extra space seems to be filled with soft drinks nd the like ... :-)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Anne C. Elster e-mail: [email protected]
Cornell University [email protected]
Ithaca, NY 14853
|
| From: [email protected] (Bj�rn Lisper)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
Subject: Re: Home Appliances
Date: 25 Sep 90 09:03:52 GMT
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista
In-Reply-To: [email protected]'s message of 24 Sep 90 06:17:19 GMT
In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Dave Walden)
writes:
>But on to washing machines. The only Scandinavian washing machines
>that I came to know were in Copenhagen. I could not believe how
>little water they used! They went on and on as if electricity were
>free, but they must have used a gallon of water for the entire
>wash. Rather than agitating them in a tub full of water, they
>tumbled them (like a dryer) with the clothes going "splat", "splat"
>into about a quart of water at the bottom. Colors that bleed a
>little are a real problem in such a machine.
Actually a "Scandinavian type" (i.e. tumbling) washing machine uses
much less energy on the total than the US type (agitating). The little
more electricity used for tumbling the cylinder longer is more than
outweighed by the energy used for heating the larger quantity of water
in the US model.
My experience is that a "tumbling" machine washes the clothes better. I
was never satisfied with my agitating washing machine when I lived in
the US. My clothes never became as clean as I wanted them.
I think US products on the whole are not designed with much thought for
saving resources. You may save when buying them, but the cost comes
back one way or another. The excess of water used by US appliances,
toilets, etc will for instance make the sewage treatment more
expensive, since dirt that is more diluted requires more energy to get
hold of (by the laws of thermodynamics: entropy, you know).
Oh, well. I hope I haven't started another flame war over US vs.
Scandinavian ways of living. The above are just some observations of
mine.
Bj�rn Lisper (Bjoern Lisper)
|