Seriously, Where are you Spring?

Thank you, bushes for ignoring the "spring is cancelled this year" memo

As I haven't seen the sun in about a week (give or take, its hard to keep track of the days here as the sky is like a perpetual gray and its cold.  So, yes, Oslo does resemble "The Road" slightly), OSLOst in space may seem a little gloomy this week.

I knew I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up with the 20+ degree weather of March, but, seriously, its almost May (On a side note:  Labor Day here (May Day) is supposed to be cray... we shall see), stop playin', Oslo.  Make with the Spring.

As always, it could be worse.

Last year, it snowed the first week of May.

While that isn't likely (though, This is Norway!, anything poor weather related is possible), the situation isn't completely ruined.  First, there are a serious of pretty, yellow bushes that are springing up virtually all over the city.  Which, is awesome... It at least looks spring-like.  Additionally, there are these funky, little birds that keep popping up everywhere.  They seem like they're ready to get down with the chirping and looking all tough.  While they're no Blue Jay or Oriole, they're definitely way better looking than crows (we don't need a picture of a crow... just think of an ugly bird).  Yes, I just wasted 80 minutes of my life trying to figure out the bird's name.  It's a European Magpie.  Not necessarily the most glamorous of names (but, it does explain why Newcastle is called the magpies... I thought that was just British slang for cake eater.  Yes, I spent another 20 minutes looking up "Mighty Ducks" related stories.  Don't judge).

I don't eat cake!  The Knucklepuck was overrated and the most improbable thing outside of Kennan Thompson passing as an athlete... jus' sayin'

Anyway, the European Magpie, in addition to being a rather common bird, is one of the most intelligent animals.  It's intellect rivals chimpanzees and Boston sports team fans... So, it's reappearance here totally suggests that Spring must be coming soon.  This fowl ain't no fool... it wouldn't stray this far north unless it had figured out that Spring was coming and it was time to pick out the best nesting/pimp pad spots.

Our little hope seizes upon little things...

Another positive is that the sun is staying up later... Well, I assume its staying up later.  The sky is staying light gray longer in the day (8:30!) than it had previous to daylight savings (oh, did you know that Europe and North America have different daylight savings dates?  Me neither!  It seems that there was a fortnight in March where five hours separated the East Coast and Oslo.  It is one of the most inexplicable, odd things that I've come across... which is really saying something.)

Though, the uplifting seems to keep coming.  Over forty thousand people gathered in the Youngstorget Square to sing the Norwegian version of "We are the World" (The song is called "Children of the Rainbow", click on the title for the lyrics.  Then copy and paste in translate.google.com!) as an offering that the nation is more than just the hateful acts and ideas of July 22, 2011.

Despite all of my jokes and irreverence and sheep videos, this truly encapsulates the identity of Norway.  So, I will leave that as my last note for this post.

Alt for Norge