06 Going to Norway

Going to Norway The summer holidays! Those magic words! The mere mention of them used to send shivers of joy rippling over my skin. All my summer holidays, from when I was four years old to when I was seventeen (1920 to 1932), were totally idyllic. This, I am certain, was because we always went to the same idyllic place and that place was Norway. Except for my ancient half-sister and my not-quite-so-ancient half-brother, the rest of us were all pure Norwegian by blood. We all spoke Norwegian and all our relations

去挪威暑假!那些神奇的话语!过去，只要一提到他们，我就会感到一阵喜悦的寒颤，在我的皮肤上荡漾。 从我四岁到十七岁(1920年到1932年)，我的整个暑假都过得很惬意。 我敢肯定，这是因为我们总是去同一个田园诗般的地方，那个地方就是挪威。 除了我同父异母的古老妹妹和我不太古老的同父异母哥哥，我们其他人都是纯正的挪威血统。 我们都说挪威语，我们所有的亲戚都说挪威语

lived over there. So in a way, going to Norway every summer was like going home. Even the journey was an event. Do not forget that there were no commercial aeroplanes in those times, so it took us four whole days to complete the trip out and another four days to get home again. We were always an enormous party. There were my three sisters and my ancient half-sister (that's four), and my half-brother and me (that's six), and my mother (that's seven), and Nanny (that's eight), and in addition to these, there were never less than two others who were some sort of anonymous ancient friends of the ancient halfsister (that's ten altogether).

住在那里。所以在某种程度上，每年夏天去挪威就像回家一样。 就连这次旅行也成了一件大事。 别忘了，那时候还没有商用飞机，所以我们花了整整四天的时间才完成这次旅行，又花了四天的时间才回到家。 我们总是举办一个盛大的聚会。 我有三个姐妹和我同父异母的姐姐(一共四个)，我和我同父异母的哥哥(一共六个)，我母亲(一共七个)，还有姥姥(一共八个)，除此之外，还有至少两个和我同父异母的姐姐(一共十个)是某种匿名的古代朋友。

Looking back on it now, I don't know how my mother did it. There were all those train bookings and boat bookings and hotel bookings to be made in advance by letter. She had to make sure that we had enough shorts and shirts and sweaters and gymshoes and bathing costumes (you couldn't even buy a shoelace on the island we were going to), and the packing must have been a nightmare. Six huge trunks were carefully packed, as well as countless suitcases, and when the great departure day arrived, the ten of us, together with our mountains of luggage, would set out on the first and easiest step of the journey, the train to London. When we arrived in London, we tumbled into three taxis and went clattering across the great city to King's Cross, where we got on to the train for Newcastle, two hundred miles to the north. The trip to Newcastle took about five hours, and when we arrived there, we needed three more taxis to take us from the station to the docks, where our boat would be waiting. The next stop after that would be Oslo, the capital of Norway.

现在回想起来，我不知道妈妈是怎么做到的。 所有的火车票、船票和酒店都要通过信件提前预订。 她必须确保我们有足够的短裤、衬衫、毛衣、运动鞋和泳衣(在我们要去的岛上，你甚至买不到鞋带)，打包行李肯定是一场噩梦。 六只大箱子和无数的手提箱都被小心地打包好了，当重要的出发日到来时，我们十个人将带着堆积如山的行李，踏上旅程的第一步，也是最容易的一步——去伦敦的火车。 到达伦敦后，我们挤进三辆出租车，咔嗒咔嗒地穿过这座大城市来到国王十字车站，在那里我们登上了开往北面200英里外的纽卡斯尔的火车。 到纽卡斯尔的旅程花了大约五个小时，当我们到达那里时，我们还需要三辆出租车把我们从车站送到码头，我们的船将在那里等候。 之后的下一站是挪威的首都奥斯陆。

When I was young, the capital of Norway was not called Oslo. It was called Christiania. But somewhere along the line, the Norwegians decided to do away with that pretty name and call it Oslo instead. As children, we always knew it as Christiania, but if I call it that here we shall only get confused, so I had better stick to Oslo all the way through. The sea journey from Newcastle to Oslo took two days and a night, and if it was rough, as it often was, all of us got seasick except our dauntless mother. We used to lie in deck-chairs on the promenade deck, within easy reach of the rails, embalmed in rugs, our faces slate-grey and our stomachs churning, refusing the hot soup and ship's biscuits the kindly steward kept offering us. And as for poor Nanny, she began to feel sick the moment she set foot on deck. 'I hate these things!' she used to say. 'I'm sure we'll never get there! Which lifeboat do we go to when it starts to sink?' Then she would retire to her cabin, where she stayed groaning and trembling until the ship was

在我年轻的时候，挪威的首都不叫奥斯陆。 它被称为克里斯蒂安尼亚。 但不知怎的，挪威人决定放弃这个美丽的名字，把它叫做奥斯陆。 当我们还是孩子的时候，我们总是把它叫做克里斯蒂安尼亚，但如果我在这里叫它，我们只会感到困惑，所以我最好一直坚持奥斯陆。 从纽卡斯尔到奥斯陆的海上旅行花了两天一夜，如果航行很艰难的话，除了我们勇敢的母亲，我们所有人都晕船了。 我们常常躺在人行道甲板上的躺椅上，离栏杆很近，身上裹着地毯，脸色灰白，胃里翻来倒去，拒绝好心的乘务员给我们端来的热汤和船上的饼干。 至于可怜的奶奶，她一踏上甲板就开始觉得不舒服了。 “我讨厌这些东西!”她过去常说。 “我敢肯定我们永远也到不了那儿!”船开始下沉时，我们上哪艘救生艇?”然后她会回到她的舱房，在那里她呻吟着，颤抖着，直到船停下来

firmly tied up at the quayside in Oslo harbour the next day. We always stopped off for one night in Oslo so that we could have a grand annual family reunion with Bestemama and Bestepapa, our mother's parents, and with her two maiden sisters (our aunts) who lived in the same house. When we got off the boat, we all went in a cavalcade of taxis straight to the Grand Hotel, where we would sleep one night, to drop off our luggage. Then, keeping the same taxis, we drove on to the grandparents' house, where an emotional welcome awaited us. All of us were embraced and kissed many times and tears flowed down wrinkled old cheeks and suddenly that quiet gloomy house came alive with many children's voices. Ever since I first saw her, Bestemama was terrifically ancient. She was a white-haired wrinkly-faced old bird who seemed always to be sitting in her rocking-chair, rocking away and smiling benignly at this vast influx of

第二天，船被牢牢地拴在奥斯陆港的码头上。 我们总是在奥斯陆停留一晚，这样我们就可以与母亲的父母Bestemama和Bestepapa以及她的两个未婚姐妹(我们的阿姨)举行一年一度的盛大家庭聚会，她们住在同一所房子里。 当我们下船时，我们都坐上了一排出租车，直奔格兰德酒店，我们将在那里过夜，放下我们的行李。 然后，我们乘坐同样的出租车，继续驶向爷爷奶奶的家，在那里我们受到了热烈的欢迎。 我们所有人都被拥抱和亲吻了很多次，泪水顺着布满皱纹的老脸颊流下来，突然间，那座安静阴沉的房子里充满了孩子们的声音。 自从我第一次见到她，Bestemama就变得非常古老。 她是一只白发苍苍、满脸皱纹的老鸟，似乎总是坐在她的摇椅上，不停地摇晃着，对这大批涌入的人和蔼地微笑着

grandchildren who barged in from miles away to take over her house for a few hours every year. Bestepapa was the quiet one. He was a small dignified scholar with a white goatee beard, and as far as I could gather, he was an astrologer, a meteorologist and a speaker of ancient Greek. Like Bestemama, he sat most of the time quietly in a chair, saying very little and totally overwhelmed, I imagine, by the raucous rabble who were destroying his neat and polished home. The two things I remember most about Bestepapa were that he wore black boots and that he smoked an extraordinary pipe. The bowl of his pipe was made of meerschaum clay, and it had a flexible stem about three feet long so that the bowl rested on his lap.

孙子们每年从几英里外闯进来接管她的房子几个小时。 最好的爸爸是一个安静的人。 他是一位身材矮小、仪表堂堂的学者，留着白色的山羊胡。据我所知，他是一位占星家、气象学家，还会说古希腊语。 像贝丝玛一样，他大部分时间都安静地坐在椅子上，很少说话，我想，他完全被那些破坏他整洁整洁的家的喧闹的乌合之众淹没了。 关于最好的爸爸，我记得最深的两件事是他穿着黑色的靴子，他抽着一根特别的烟斗。 他的烟斗的烟斗筒是用墨沙姆粘土做的，它有一个大约三英尺长的可弯曲的柄，所以烟斗筒可以放在他的腿上。