Norway in the Air! Rick in a Uniform!

While being in Norge (Norway) I've been blessed with many unusual opportunities.  Hell, one of my rules to live by seems to be to say yes more than no, or rather force myself to do something different sometimes.
Never underestimate the experience of something new, even if it sucks. :D

While talking to two friends for the Larp community (Networking and friends, remember that!), I was invited to help out as a display actor for lack of better word, running a diorama around a model Spitfire.

Having been a fan of all things WW2 and before since I was a little lad, I couldn't say no.  Actually I was relatively drunk at the time and I may have said something like "Yush!"

Basically Norway has been in the flying of aircraft gig for 100 years and they were celebrating it across the country.  Next would be Oslo's turn as last in the line.  All of the significant era's of Norways airforce history would be celebrated.  Starting with the first flight of Baron Carl Cederström made on 14 October 1910:

http://www.europeanairlines.no/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Timeline-06-01-2011.pd

They won't have any of this flying tom foolery!

Captain Willy English reporting!

One of the most exciting and most cursed displays was the WW2 RAF display of a crashed Spitfire, complete with injured pilot, admin staff, medic crew and engineers.
Guess who was playing the role of the stiff upper lipped RAF officer?
Meeeeee!

But cursed you say?
Well, I'd say so.  The organizers were plagued by all manner of bad luck, which while I had been left with a sense of foreboding, they basically improvised with something akin to genius.

No Spitfire?  Use a fiberglass model.  Model damaged?  Buy a bag of dirt, cover damage and make like the thing crashed.

Don't have all the uniforms?  Get something that looks like it.
The general consensus was anyone who had a problem with the accuracy of such things should be congratulated for noticing and sent on their way.

We were not there for them.  We were there for the kids, the families and everyone who was there to Oooo Aaaa, take photos and generally enjoy themselves.

Pilot to be injured, need bandages.

We ran improvised scenarios starting with everyone in their own vehicles (Jeep, medical truck etc) and running to the injured pilot clambering from his cockpit.  This one we did several times and always seemed to gather people.  I blame the blood.  It got everywhere!  In one of the "scenarios" the pilot was drunk!

Photo by: Ståle Askerød Johansen

Photo by: Ståle Askerød Johansen

Everyone in the team worked damned hard in incredibly hot weather.  I can't speak for anyone else, but at the end I smelt like hard work and had received my first proper sun burn for quite a while!

There was even a magical moment when one of the last surviving pilots of WW2 was chatting with our injured pilot seen below.  I didn't managed to sneak out my mobile for a photo but it was very popular with the visitors.


2 days of acting in character with a very talented team from the Larp community. 
 
For those interested in the Norwegians in the RAF, I humbly recommend research into the 331 squadron, which this diorama was based upon.
http://www.europeanaf.org/history/331.htm

And there were the planes.

http://youtu.be/U9L8XHIPiS0

Thanks for reading!

R

Tick Bites in Norway (Is this country trying to kill me?)

I've had some strangely close calls since being here in Norway.  Within weeks of arriving, jobless and with little more than a suitcase of belongings I was stricken with a tooth that had died inside and become little more than a bacteria factory.
When the Dentist (highly recommended them) says "we need to do this now" and starts without permission, you bloody well let it happen.  Apparently the inside of the offending tooth had been feeding harmful crap into my blood stream (in my head) for the last few months.  Nearly lost an eye.

Of coarse the next shock came when I received the bill.
5000Kr for the lot.  Which apparently is cheap by Norwegian standards.
By by savings... Damn I was missing the NHS...

Anyway, recently I had another scare.

Now I might have mentioned the activity known as Larping.  Live action roleplay.  Now in Norway they generally do this differently than in the west.  Far more emphasis is put on the acting in character than the "fireball!" part that's found everywhere else.

At the end of these Larps (or Laiv) there is usually much drinking.  Now being drunk in a forest is a humbling affair, especially when you wake up the next morning bitten from head to toe by "Mygger" which I believe are mosquitoes.

One of those bites got worse.  Found just above my right ankle, one assortment of little bite marks started getting worse, redder and bigger.  Generally being ignorant of such things I pretty much assumed my awesome immune system would take care of it and tried not to itch.


"Ass" out of "u" and "me?"

A few weeks later, while helping my girlfriends parents with their cellar clean out, they noticed the mark on my leg and were rather alarmed.  Apparently it looked like a Tick bite and apparently I needed to see a Doctor immediately.

This turned out to be an adventure in itself.  In Norway, the health service exists in a private and not so private system.  First I went after convenience: walking to the nearest center, my mind filled with worrying facts about Tick Bites (Flått biter) crippling me at a later age. That first place was closed due to "server issues."

I wasn't impressed.  So I went to the next nearest.  Which after waiting for nearly 3 hours as a "non member" watching "members" go in as priority, I found out a simple look at my leg would cost me around 1000 Kroner (that's about 110 GBP).  Erm... no.  Just no.

Eventually I went to the most public version of the many Doctor's practices in Oslo.
I was seen within an hour, got tested for Lymes disease (which came negative), had my bites even measured for snake bites (I was drunk, but I'd like to think I'd have noticed a snake!), and then promplty got a shrug from the Doctor who gave me a prescription for some wonderful "answer to all problems" antibiotics.  Apparently there was so many bite marks in that region that she hadn't a clue what had happened, but the rash wasn't stopping and I did have the white circle mark.  Total cost including medication? 620 Kr.


Overall, anticlimax.  No problem with that!

Still, it had been a bit of an emotional roller coaster, starting with drunk in the forest, ending in a hospital room with my pants rolled up.  It seems like everyone had an opinion about Tick bites, everything from the "meh" catagory through to the "doomyness."  The local tabloids have regular scary articles about them getting even more dangerous every summer.  Guess I should read the papers more, pinch of salt well prepared.

Two weeks later on medication which stopped me from having milk or cheese (No Tea or cheese on toast, it's like they hate me, bio-terrorism against the English...) the rash had gone, and once again I had survived this harsh deadly environment known as the Path to the North.  Norway.

The lesson here?  Twofold.  Alchohol and forests don't mix and if you see a bite mark which is getting bigger, pay the man and get it checked.

To end the post on a high, here is a storm: Skandinavisk style!  (Sorry about the quality, I'm not an expert and yes, you can here the locals playing football).

Thanks for reading!

R