Ulsteinvik - "A prospering community facing south-west"

The Ulstein kommune ("kommune" can be translated roughly as "municipality" - the entire country is divided into 430 of them - some geographically small, but urban, some big and rural) webpage (www.ulstein.kommune.no) has an "in English" section which is pretty informative. Before I came here, I thought that their title, "Ulstein - a prospering community facing south-west" was sort of quaint. You know, someone with a good-but-not-great knowledge of English put it there, because it seems sort of basic, no "dynamic" or "on the move" or "steeped in history". Just "facing south-west".

However, it clicked in over the last couple of days just how valuable "facing south-west" is. Where is the sun? South. Now, that's true everywhere in the northern hemisphere, of course, but it's really true at 62 degrees north latitude! As we travel back and forth between Ålesund and Ulsteinvik, we pass a couple of communities that face north - notably Hareid and Branda (both in Hareid kommune). They are dark and cold compared to Ulsteinvik, because they hug the northern coast of this island (Hareidlandet). Of course, like many islands in Norway, it's really a big hill sticking up out of the fjord, meaning that they lose the sun long before we do.

It's certainly something to keep in mind as we figure out where to live - not really unlike buying property in the Bella Coola valley - do you get the sun through a side-valley, or not?

Ulsteinvik is generally very "happening" for a town of it's size. It has a population of 6,800 (well, that's technically the entire kommune, but it's the service centre for the area anyway), yet it has two full-spectrum malls (indoor, not strip malls), a middle-eastern take-out fast food place (on the side of their delivery van, they advertise "Du Ringer, Vi Bringer") a "jazz & blues klubb", a "kaffebarren" (coffee shop by day, live music by night), a good bookstore, a bowling alley, a gym and, the gem in the crown, their "Kulturhus" - a two-stage theatre that shows mostly movies on the one side, and live theatre on the other. That last is called "Sjøborg" (initial translation seems to be "sea-castle", but it might just be someone's last name, or a sponsoring company...) That website is www.sjoborg.no, so you can see what's on offer, if you're really that interested. Currently, my options seem to be "Asterix and the Olympic Games" (dubbed entirely in Norwegian), "Charlie Wilson's War" (subtitled in Norwegian), or a live performance by "The Twelve Irish Tenors". Hmmm...

In the meantime, however, we're hung up waiting for my work visa to process, because we can't get a bank account without a "D-number", and we can't do many other things (buy a car, get a Norwegian driver's license, rent an apartment, transfer money from Canada, ...) without a bank account.

Cheers,

Ashley