Learning to live in a neighborhood is one of the ways of getting to know a country. In Oslo, Charlotte and I have been sharing an apartment in Sagene, a neighborhood once devoted to housing workers from near-by factories. Sagene has gentrified and is filled with young people pushing lots of baby carriages (Norway has the highest birthrate of any EU country). The old factories are converted to offices for small companies. Coffee shops abound. Buses and bikes get folks downtown. And while cars do line the streets, they seem to be used infrequently.
Fort Collins, a town built on a north-south, east-west grid, doesn't prepare you for the twists and turns of the streets that cross streams, run down hills, and feed back upon themselves like growing grape vines. Even with the "where am I" function on my Blackberry, it takes days to figure the layout around the apartment. Learning the high price of food (lemons for $1.20 each), learning how to buy the 24 hour bus pass (only $8), figuring out which local restaurant is affordable (less than $100 for two), learning how to get into the local gym for free (they took pity on this poor foreigner), understanding how the newspaper gets delivered to the apartment door (the paper delivery folks have keys to the apartment houses), reading the signs on the local stores (smadyrklinnik = small animal clinic), ordering the morning latte in Norwegian...it's all part of the experience...actually more interesting often then "seeing" the local sights that tourists are supposed to see.
