It’s time to head out for the US and we’re at the airport waiting for our flight. Flying through Dublin is great since you go through US border control and customs before you even get on the plane – so when we land in New Jersey, it’s treated as a domestic flight. The last time we flew home from France, we got stuck in a long, slow-moving line to get through border control. Today it was super quick and painless.
I have a few photos from our evening in Oslo that I forgot to upload. It’s not a super consumer-driven place, compared to some of the other cities we’ve visited. The stores closed pretty early on Saturday night and while there were people walking around and going out to eat or drink, there were a lot of people just hanging out. We saw the Parliament building and a park with a fountain – that had frozen over and was being used as a skating rink. There was nobody selling tickets, no skate rental booth – just a frozen block of ice that people could choose to skate on.
The funny thing was that watching the skaters for a few minutes, we realized that none of them were “regular” skaters – they were all pretty wobbly on their feet and would have held on to the walls (if there had been any!). And yet, they had skates of their own. I would guess that most Americans who skate have their own skates, and you wouldn’t have your own unless you went frequently enough to feel comfortable.
We found a memorial to the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As the bombs are flying all over the middle east, it seems that nothing has changed. Powerful men make decisions that affect those who aren’t powerful, but rarely pay a personal price. It’s a story as old as time, sadly.
