Home Sweet Home

Well, we are now a part of overseas apartment living. Our apartment is about 75 square meters or 700 square feet, roughly 1/3 the size of our home. It does not feel quite that small, but then again we don’t have any luggage or personal belongings yet. Our apartment is long and skinny. When you walk in there is an entry hall with a place to hang your coats and put your shoes and there is a wardrobe. To the left is a bathroom with a small shower, toilet and sink as well as the washer and dryer. I will have to get out my Norwegian-English dictionary to figure out what the settings are so I don’t ruin our clothes. (update, we just got our dictionary and only 1 word on the washer and dryer is in it. I guess I will have to ask for help.) If you go straight, you enter the common room, which includes one wall of kitchen, the eating area and fridge (cross between a dorm fridge and a normal one) and the den.

Our Kitchen - not much counter space!

The fridge and eating area.

The den, complete with sleeping baby.


Another view of the den.

Continuing back, you have a small hallway with a tiny bedroom, which will belong to Katherine and a decent sized bedroom, which is the master. Katherine’s room has a twin sized bed that barely fits and a wardrobe.

Our bedroom has 4 wardrobes and a bed. The wardrobes throughout the house are the same and what they use as closets. Our bed is smaller than a double. We are not sure how we are going to handle sleeping. So far, since we still do not have our baggage and therefore no bed for Katherine we moved the twin bed into our room. Katherine and I sleep on the “double” and Sam sleep on the twin. After her pack and play comes we still may keep the twin in our room just so we have enough space for Sam and I to sleep. We have not actually tried to both lay down on our bed but it felt just right with me by myself.

Our room with both beds

When I walk into our apartment it reminds me of IKEA. Everything is minimal and modern. Except for our dining area and that is more of an antique Scandanavian look. It also reminds me of someone’s vacation home where they take all of their leftover items that they don’t want in their main house anymore. The decorations are not at all thought out. There are cheap posters of everything from a 1950’s diner, flowers and sailboats in the den. There was a bookcase with a ton of candles, vases and cheap stuff that has been put away. The kitchen especially is randomly supplied. There is one complete set of dishes but then there are also a lot of random dishes. There are a ton of glasses from about 8 different sets. And there is a random variety of utensils. We have already started a list of things to buy as it lacks items like a cookie sheet or casserole dishes. We have an oven but nothing to go in an oven, only 4 pots.

My favorite decoration of the apartment, over our bed.

We did have sheets and towels but they are a little old and scratchy so we may buy more of those as well. The apartment is furnished but not supplied so there was no toilet paper. Luckily we realized that in time to make a quick run to the grocery store. We also will need to get paper towels, soap, cleaning supplies, etc.

We live on a pretty cool looking street. It is apparently a main shopping street in Oslo with a lot of shops, boutiques and restaurants. That will be helpful. It is a bit louder than we are used to. The temperature is in the 70’s but there is no air conditioning so everyone leaves their windows open to keep the air flowing. That means that you hear all of your neighbors and street sounds. We could hear other people watching TV, listening to music and talking. We probably will not notice much in the future but last night we went to bed really early.

We are frustrated right now because it seems that we were dumped in Norway with no assistance. I guess it seems that way because that is exactly what happened. I am surprised that no one from Sam’s work has been available to help us navigate our way through things like setting up the phone or internet. Apparently there was some miscommunication and that should have happened. We are also frustrated with our landlord. He does not have very good English skills and we have no Norwegian skills so it is challenging. Yesterday he left to go get another card to open the front door. Apparently he did not know there would be more than one person living here. Our impression was that he was coming right back. We have not seen or heard from him since. We have a long list of questions for him like: which button on the front of the building pages our apartment so we can let someone in (important for baggage and Fed Ex delivery), how do we set up a phone, how do we set up internet (that is supposedly included), and where do we take out the trash? We also have no idea where we are in the city. We have no map and don’t know where the nearest subway station or bus stop it.

Sam has gone to get a cell phone and to try to find an internet café or coffee shop so we can at least start finding answers and getting connected. Tomorrow we are going to try out a church. The pastor and I communicated by email and they are probably going to come pick us up. That would be so helpful. As soon as Sam gets back, I guess we are going to need to go shopping for some clothes since our baggage has still not arrived and shops are closing soon and not open tomorrow.