Alta is a town you go through to get somewhere else.  We get a lot of travelers passing through.  Many take the opportunity to fill up on petrol and food before the long trek south.
The town centre is a favorite stop for bikers.  Right in the square there is the most popular cafe-restaurant that has [...]

Norway is really big on recycling.  We have green bags and red bags, yellow bags and inside-out bags.  The easiest to remember is the milk carton recycling.  We open them, wash them out and then fold six into another empty carton.  If you write your name and telephone number on the outside carton you go [...]

No, we are not joking.  Guests actually use this little humble accommodation.  We get a lot of visitors to the farm and when all the beds are taken in the house the trailer is the next best thing.  The kids are always the first ones to throw their hands up to sleep in there as [...]

Nothing to the right and nothing to the left.  This is a usual scene of the main shopping street in downtown Alta.

It may seem that Alta is the role model for ’sleepy town’, but it is all-so very tricky.  Shopping in Alta is done inside.  There are actually two shopping centres in the above pictures [...]

Midsummer’s Eve is a big deal in Norway.  The day is to celebrate the brightest day of the year.  People go camping or have BBQs at the beach.  Midsummer’s Eve is about enjoying the endless sunshine.
However, in Alta, shops close early, people leave work before time and the city becomes like a ghost town as [...]

Sometimes it is very hard to find foods in Norway that are just every day life in your home country.  I recently discovered calamari in the stores.  Calamari is eaten by the bucket loads in Australia and can be found at any fish’n’chip shop.  Here octopus is only used for fish bait and not for [...]

America has Spam.  Norway has Bog.
(Aren’t we glad we don’t get ‘bogged’?)

Some things don’t sound good enough to eat.  I never thought ‘blings’ could be eaten.  I guess with enough mayo anything is possible – even cheap jewelry.  I’m not too sure about the ’smudis’ either.  And I’m a little confused about the ‘wraps’.  I’ve walked past Smud a thousand times and have never thought to [...]

You need to have a certain personality to survive Norway.  I’m lucky, I enjoy my own company and can amuse myself, so the standard isolation as an ‘immigrant’ is quite perfect for me.  However, others who need social interaction have a much harder time of it.  Below are some tips (well, more like humorous tactics) especially [...]

Being a dancer I go to a lot of concerts.  The locals here in Tromsø love to dance and often like to dress up for the occasion.  It was at this Swing dance party that I discovered an odd but ingenious method of dancing the night away without the ringing in your ears the next [...]