Goodbye FabLab, Hello Family

Set off from the FabLab for the last time on Wednesday; Haakon very kindly drove me to the airport to catch my flight to Oslo. Unfortunately, I forgot my smoked salmon, my USB drive, a t-shirt, and a book at the lab. Good thing I'll be meeting up with Haakon again in Amsterdam; he doesn't seem to mind serving as a courier for my forgotten stuff.

I'll miss the FabLab, the Arctic, and all the people I've spent so much time with. It was a pretty magical few weeks, and I hope to make it back someday.

I'll also miss my trusty bicycle, the Nakamura. Here it is in front of the rest of the fleet that Beau and I fixed up.

Once I got to Oslo, I checked into my 8-bed room at the hostel, where I was joined by a rotating cast of Romanians, Spaniards, Swedes, Norwegians, and Italians. The first couple of days, started getting to know the city by wandering around on foot. Spent some time working in a few libraries, but they close wicked early in the summer, so I was forced to also get to know the local bars, most of which have free wifi. And stupid expensive beer. Every bar only has 1 beer on tap, always a fairly tasteless pilsener, which costs between 8-10 dollars per half liter. Highway robbery.

See a lot of these tiny cars around Oslo. Note to Europe: this is why Americans think you're ridiculous:

On Saturday, Peter and Jen showed up with their Scandinavia Summer Studio class, so I hitched up with them for a coupla days of sightseeing and ARCHITECTURE.

We went to the Viking Ship Museum...

And saw some Sverre Fehn. Which was awesome. We also made it to the Hedmarksmuseum in Hamar, but I'm sure I'll cover that one again with the family in a few weeks. Too much to digest in a couple of hours.

Spent a sleepless night Monday, worrying about missing my 7am flight to London and excited about seeing the family. Fortunately, my morning of transport went famously, and I met my little sister Emily in the airport with time to spare before the wife and little man got in.

The reunion was the best; Samuel greeted me with a HUGE smile, and I'm pretty sure Jessica was thrilled to see me, too, but she might have just been relieved to no longer be a single parent. Not sure. Regardless, I'm happy that we're a family again.

For the next few days, we're staying with Em's husband Alisdair's family, Kate and Kevin, in their sweet thatched cottage in Teynham, Kent. It's ancient, very lovely, and has no street number, just a name. Orchard Thatch (isn't that adorable).

Kate and Kevin have 3 dogs: a huge mastiff named Archibald, a darling old boxer named Jasper, and Eddie, the bulldog.

Also, goats. Samuel couldn't be more happy to be surrounded by all the animals. It's pretty wonderful.

We went into Canterbury yesterday for some sightseeing. Samuel was very taken with the ducks paddling down the river Stour.

We packed a lunch, which we ate under a really great maple tree on the grounds of the cathedral.

Samuel seems to know instinctively that he has his Auntie Em wrapped around his little finger, so he spends a lot of time turning on the charm for her benefit.

We toured the cathedral for a little culture and ARCHITECTURE. It's a fascinating accretion, thanks to England's complex and violent religious history.

In the evening, we put Samuel to bed and left him in the care of his auntie while we went to a local pub for Jessica's birthday dinner. Real flat, warm English ale; cottage pie; and bangers and mash. Perfect. Almost made up for all that expensive Scandinavian pilsener. Something to look forward to in Oslo, I guess.

We brought transformers and adaptors for NL and NO, but not for the UK, so to hook up the baby monitor we ganged up a Europe/UK plug adaptor, an international/Europe plug adaptor, a 110/220 transformer, and the 12V DC transformer. All shimmed into place by a rubber penguin. Totally safe, I swear.