Le Bise, le biatch

I returned to France on a Winds-day....remember Disney's Winnie-the-Pooh movie? In it, lovable Pooh is getting blown around the Hundred Acre Woods wishing everybody a Happy Winds-day!

We had our own version here this week. Le Bise, a cold northerly wind that blows from the north of Switzerland, gathers strength as it makes it way down through the Alps and Juras, creating a giant wind tunnel through our region. Le Bise is present year round but is especially strong during the winter months. Sometimes it's associated with hail..which left tiny white pellets everywhere, but didn't cause any damage. For 2 days Le Bise swirled around the house, making extremely loud and scary swooshing noises, rattling the copper gutter pipes. Despite wedging ear plugs in my ears, I had a hard time falling and staying asleep. The next morning R surveyed the damage - a cracked birch tree, lots of branches strewn all over the grounds, and 2 broken terracotta tiles. R climbed atop the roof after the winds had died down, replacing the broken tiles and re-aligning/re-gluing others that had shifted and become loose. Le Bise also blew 2 patio chairs and the trash barrel down the street. Though bad, this past storm apparently was not the first worse R's ever experienced. Eight years ago, after a particularly strong storm, R found much of his roof tiles strewn all over the garden.

On Friday, feeling fed up with the winds, we headed o Annecy which is located in the nearby département of Haute-Savoie. We had a great day walking around Annecy - France has 2 major sales a year, and the first one is happening right now in January.
Friday night R and I attended a dinner party hosted by a new Dutch friend we met a few months ago. The guests were mostly Dutch, with 4 Norwegians, une Francaise, et moi, une Americaine. There I learned a few things...about what is NOT Norwegian. For instance, Iittala (loving their Taika mugs), Lapland, Marimekko, Nokia? All Finnish, not Norwegian! In case you didn't already know, Santa Claus lives in Lapland, way the hell up in northern Finland. If you think Boston is cold......Lapland should be called Freezing Your Ass Off land, unless you bundle yourself up like the Michelin man. Anyways, at the dinner, I felt very uneducated about Norway. The only thing I know is that Norway has the fjords and Norwegians like their fish petrified.

Some things I've learned about Norway, grace au Wikipedia:

• Norway became independent from Sweden in 1905.
• The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway by the Norwegian Nobel Committee while the Nobel Prizes for Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Economic Sciences, and Literature are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden. N.B. Alfred Nobel was Swedish. In 2009, Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize!
• The first king of a newly independent king was actually Danish!
• Norway is very sparsely populated with only 4.5 million people but is very rich in natural resources including petroleum, natural gas, minerals, fish, forest, and hydropower.
• The artist of "The Scream", Edvard Munch, is Norwegian.
• A Norwegian company is the first to harness osmotic power (when fresh water meets seawater) to create electricity - smart and sustainable!
  
• Norwegian smoked salmon...yum! My Dutch dinner mate said that the more north you get, the stinkier the people like their fish. In the NL (as well as Norway) they eat herring which I love. I love my Mom's Bún nước lèo (a stinky fish noodle soup made from fermented mắm fish), so maybe I would like Norwegian petrified fish too.
• If want to add your 2 cents about Norway, please comment!

P.S. Ogle Finnish design to your heart's content at Finnish Design Shop, starting with their collection of mugs!