Traveler's Prologue

In less than one week, I will be leaving the familiarity of Minneapolis to begin my summer in Norway at the University of Oslo's International Summer School! For the majority of the seven weeks abroad, I will be taking a Scandinavian Government and Politics course and participating in a peace seminar twice a week with nine other peace scholars from the Midwest (we all received the same scholarship to travel to Norway). The ten of us leave from Minneapolis on June 19th and, after a brief layover in Reykjavik, Iceland, travel to Lillehammer (host of the '94 Winter Olympics) to participate in a week long seminar called The Nansen Dialogue. The Nansen Dialogue happens every year one week prior to the start of summer courses in Oslo. It serves as an analysis and healing process for enrolled summer school students that come from the Caucas region that have been impacted by conflicts and wars after the fall of the Soviet Union. The seminar allows students from countries that may have been in previous opposition with each other to talk about their experiences and relate to one another. The goal is to find common ground among the anger and hostility that these students may feel towards each other. Why have myself and nine other Americans been invited to these dialogues? I wish I knew! I suppose that's all for a future blog post.


There are several trips that the summer school offers throughout the term ("excursions" is what the University calls them...cute). I'll have a chance to do hiking, water rafting, and a reindeer safari in Jotunheimen, a visit to the Oslo Fjord, and a trip to see the beautiful landscape of Telemark, a county described as the heart of Norwegian culture. We also have a long four day weekend in the middle of July that students can use to do whatever they wish. My eyes are set on Dublin. More to come on that.


When I traveled to Namibia and South Africa last fall, people there would ask me what I had thought of the two countries before I left and what I believed my experience would be like. And I could never quite give them a satisfying answer. To be honest, I don't like to do much digging into the places that I go to before I leave. An experience without preconceived notions almost always leads to a disappointment-free affair. You can't be let down by something that you had no amount of expectation for. Personally, I feel more open to the things that I see and people I meet if I leave my own judgement at home. Having said that, one must know some background about their destination to avoid becoming that stereotypical image of the annoying American traveler. I hear that Norway's one of the most expensive places in the world that I could go. There's 18 hours of daylight in the summer. The fjords are something like paradise. And if, heaven forbid, I ever need a place to stay besides my own dorm room, I've got the Svanoes, the Ouses, and about 18 other relatives of Minnesota friends that can house me in the greater Scandinavian area.


I'm excited and happy and feel incredibly lucky to have seven weeks to explore a new part of the world. I'll try to be a reliable blogger and friend while I'm gone, so keep checking back for new posts in the coming weeks :)