Winter Break Part V

It takes two buses to get to Trysil from Hamar. Fortunately, they're relatively short and inexpensive. I arrived on a bus full of ski tourists eager to get to their hotels, trying to jump off at every stop starting in the town before Trysil.

Else and her father met me at the bus station and we piled my luggage into the car. As usual, the Myhr home was full of friendly faces. In addition to the Else, her three siblings, her parents, and me, they were entertaining a visit from an aunt and uncle. While I was there the family received a constant stream of guests.

The Myhr family is extremely good at entertaining guests. Coffee and cookies are always around. Usually there is some kind of game played; we played lots of cards, Fantasi (think charades), a relative of Monopoly, and did I mention, lots of cards.

One evening we went on a road trip to Sømådalen to see a play. Sømådalen is about an hour and a half away from Trysil and is a very small place. From what I could tell, in the middle of the night, it consisted of an intersection with a community building and not much else. The play was put on by the theater club of local kids. They were presenting Trekkspillkrigen (the Accordion War), a rather bizarre story about bad meat and conflict between fiddlers and dance band music.

While in Trysil I made my first outing on skis in Norway. It's almost not worth mentioning, it was so short. We managed three laps around the small field by Else's house. In our defense, it was a delightfully beautiful day, but also a chilly -10C (14F).

We spent New Year's Eve enjoying each other's company in their cozy living room. At midnight we went outside to watch the fireworks the tourists were shooting off the mountain across the river. (It was really cold then -24C/-11F.) Once we were thoroughly frozen we came inside and started the new year with cheese and crackers and a movie.

I spent my New Year's Day on the bus back to Rauland. The moon was an amazing harvest moon that we chased all evening across Southern Norway. I arrived to an empty Studentheim, happy to be home and filled with good memories of my winter break.