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Hello listeners, here's a podcast episode about my summer holiday.
I'm going to ramble about where I went, what I did, what I saw, but it's more than that.
It's also a chance to give your English a big boost by learning some vocabulary in context.
First of all, there is a PDF for this.
You can find the link for it in the episode description, wherever you are listening to this or watching this.
The PDF contains these things.
First of all, there's a full episode transcript of everything I'm saying during the episode.
So you could read it before you listen to the episode or while you listen to this, or you could read it afterwards, if you want to check things.
And that's a very good idea.
Good way to make sure that you learn more English from this is to use the transcript either before, during or after you actually listen to the episode.
The PDF also contains a vocabulary list with loads of words and phrases that I'm using during the episode, plus definitions and example sentences and other stuff.
And also there's a vocabulary quiz on the PDF so you can check what you've learned from the episode.
OK, and using those things is recommended if you want to push your English with this podcast.
But if you're not really in the mood to do any extra stuff, don't worry.
You can just relax and listen.
And that is also a great idea.
If you're on YouTube, if you're watching this on YouTube hello, you will see that there are full English subtitles available.
Just switch them on if you'd like to see the words I'm saying while I say them.
On YouTube, there's always the option to switch on subtitles.
And I've added subtitles to this episode.
So you can just switch them on in YouTube.
If you're listening to me using a podcast app on your phone, hello.
You're listening to this podcast as it is intended to be listened to.
Actually, I've been doing this for a long time and it's always been an audio podcast first and foremost.
So if you're just listening to this, you can simply follow my words, while your eyes remain free to do something else.
Like maybe look at a mountain or watch the road while you're driving, which is generally a good idea.
Or look at the lovely dog which you're taking for a walk or whatever else you're doing while listening.
That's the idea.
Just join me while you get English input into your life through your ears.
It's a great way to get plenty of English into your brain.
Listen to Luke's English podcast regularly and you will see plenty of benefits to your English.
And if you want to take things further with me I mean in terms of your English then you could sign up to my premium podcast to get plenty of episodes from me with a specific focus on grammar vocabulary pronunciation practice, and each one has a PDF worksheet full of exercises to help you.
So in this episode, I'm going to chat to you about my holiday and I'm going to use various bits of natural and descriptive vocabulary while I'm doing it.
Words and phrases.
See if you can notice it all.
In fact...
Before I start, here is a long list of words and phrases which will come up during the episode.
I'm gonna read through, very quickly read through a list of lots of different words and phrases.
See if you could notice any of these things while you listen.
So this is a little heads up. listen out for these words and phrases during the rest of the episode.
And this is actually a great way to push your acquisition of vocabulary while listening, just to be mindful and just to notice certain new words and phrases as you're listening.
Now don't worry if you don't understand or notice all of this stuff, because simply pushing yourself a little bit more in this way can make a significant difference to your ability to expand your vocabulary with this podcast.
So doing that, but also, you know, check the PDF and do the vocab quiz and stuff as well.
So right, try to notice these words and phrases while you listen to the rest of the episode and check the PDF afterwards to see a comprehensive list of this vocabulary with definitions and example sentences and a vocab quiz which you can use to test yourself.
And someone is outside um playing the piano, but i don't know if they're doing it outside.
In one of the one of the other apartments here.
Someone is playing the piano, which is quite a nice accompaniment to this.
So Here's some vocab for you to spot during the episode.
This is also going to give you a preview of some of the things I'm going to talk about.
So you could maybe guess what I will be saying.
What do you think I'm going to be talking about based on these words and phrases?
And that is actually another good skill for your English predicting what you will hear or read based on a bit of evidence, like the subject or the title or other little bits of info.
Predicting, thinking ahead.
That's a good skill for reading and listening sections in Cambridge exams as well.
So, here are some words and phrases.
So a serial compulsive podcaster?
To have something in check, to cope with something.
Headspace to blow off steam, to be in the shade, to have heat stroke, to be sticky, to potter around to save on something, to be lush, to make the most of something, a breath of fresh air to be seafaring glaciers.
To scrape something out to be sparkling wrought iron, an obelisk to be crammed in, to not know what to make of something.
To slope up or slope down.
Existential dread.
Turmoil to resonate with someone to shriek, to be profound a panic attack, anguish to ripple, to dissolve, to swirl, fiery chaos, instability.
Sounds like a great holiday, doesn't it, already?
Rigid, linear, to be upright, to be oblivious to something.
A protagonist alienation, the human condition, a harbour, vessels to date back to a certain time, charging stations, teething problems to get the hang of something to ooze bubbling, for example.
A bubbling stream to roam around, to be remote, to be cut off, to be a far cry from something to be snug, to be chilly, to be cosy, to be desolate.
An antidote to something to fluctuate, to be robust, social cohesion, to be deeply ingrained in something and a national pastime.
So that was just a selection or an overview of vocab items that you could pick up from this, and there's more as well in my list.
So keep listening, try to spot those things in context and try to notice and work them out.
Then check the pdf at the end and you'll see full definitions, example sentences and a vocab quiz you can use to test yourself.
Right, so let's get started properly.
Hello then.
I'm actually back on the podcast today after a fairly long break, in fact.
Maybe you didn't realise it, but I've been away from this podcast for five weeks.
Now you might not have known that I was away for over a month because this year I used my head, you see, and I worked extra hard during June and July to record tons of episodes, including plenty of premium ones, which I then scheduled to be automatically published in August and the beginning of September while I was away.
And I was away for five weeks.
So I've not been here in my podcasting room for about five weeks, but you probably didn't notice my absence because of all the episodes which were automatically published while I was away.
You see, I'm a pro podcaster.
I'm a professional.
I do this for a living.
I've got a particular set of skills.
I use my head, you see.
I'm even podcasting while I'm not even in the room.
So I just lived five weeks of non-podcast life which, to be fair, doesn't happen to me all that often, because I am a serial, compulsive podcaster and I've been, and I have been for years.
I'm always podcasting and rarely go more than a few days without recording and podcasting something.
It sounds like I've got some sort of compulsive obsession, but I think it's okay.
I think I've got it in check.
Now I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, Luke, how did you cope with no podcasting for five weeks?
Did your entire world fall apart?
Did your brain explode?
Did your brain fall out of your head or something?
Well, actually, no, it was fine.
And it was a welcome bit of headspace for me.
In fact, every time I found myself thinking about the podcast or doing some podcasting in my head And thinking about what I would say.
When I came back and did my first episode, which is actually this one, I just told myself Luke, you're on holiday.
Empty your brain.
Just be like water.
Just be.
And I tried to just let my brain rest, basically as much as that is possible when you've got two kids and one French wife.
And one of those kids is two years old and he's my son and he's very intense.
So the first week before we actually went away on our holiday, the first week I was looking after my son in Paris while my wife worked.
And my daughter went to play school and my son had no daycare.
So I had to look after him the whole time.
And this mainly involved me running after him in various parks all around Paris.
Staying at home with him is not really an option.
I mean, you can do it, but eventually he starts climbing the walls.
I mean, not literally, that's just an expression to mean.
If you start climbing the walls, it just means you you can't quite contain yourself within a certain space or you start to perhaps lose control.
Anyway, so he starts climbing the walls, not literally, and sort of tearing the place apart.
So going outside and visiting parks is really the only way.
He never stays in one place for long.
So I'm constantly chasing after him.
But it's OK.
It's a good way to let him blow off steam.
To be fair, it is lovely being with him and he's adorable.
He's starting to speak now and it's just amazing.
But sometimes it is a bit stressful when you're in a dodgy park in central Paris which probably, or let's say definitely has rats living in it.
And sometimes you see them.
You might see one running across the path or you see them in the bushes, which is not very nice.
Not to mention bird poo on the floor and the occasional homeless person.
But it's OK.
It was good quality time with my little boy.
And then after a week of that, we then went off on our summer holiday.
And in this episode, I just want to tell you about where I went and what happened.
I hope you find this interesting.
I've done this sort of episode lots of times before.
It's sort of a tradition after I've been away on holiday to come back and talk to you about it.
Give you a little holiday episode.
Long-term lepsters might remember my accounts of traveling to different places, including india vietnam indonesia thailand california, new york, japan and other spots.
There are episodes all about those places and more in the episode archive teacherlukecouk slash episodes.
But anyway, this time we decided that we would go to Norway.
Yes, Norway.
My wife had never been there.
My kids certainly had never been there.
I went to Norway once.
How long ago was it?
Must have been nearly 20 years ago.
And I went there to teach in Oslo.
I spent about a week in Oslo in winter.
And of course, everything was completely frozen because Norway is quite far north.
Parts of the country stretch up into the Arctic Circle.
But even the sort of southern end of Norway, the bottom part where you find Oslo.
It does get very cold there during the winter.
So I remember it was minus something degrees and everything was covered in snow and ice.
But I was teaching diplomats.
I was teaching government state secretaries how to deal with international meetings of international delegations.
So very formal English.
It was a really interesting experience.
So anyway, I did that and I spent a few days walking around Norway.
But anyway, we decided to go to Norway this year.
I know what you might be thinking.
You might be thinking, but Luke, why did you choose Norway?
Why didn't you come to my country of Fredonia to visit the industrial salt mines, the muskrat petting zoo, the old flooded fish market, the famous jails and torture chambers or the infamous oily swamp pits?
Why didn't you come to my country, which has so many things to offer?
Well, we chose Norway this time because we wanted to go north, basically.
Now it seems, especially in my part of the world, that the natural thing to do in summer is to go south in search of hot, sunny weather and probably a beach.
So to go for a beach holiday, maybe in the Mediterranean, somewhere like that, that seems to be the common sense thing to do for your summer holiday, right.
But it's not really my cup of tea.
I don't mind a beach.
I don't mind having a beach holiday.
But it's not my favourite thing.
In fact, sometimes I don't really understand the appeal of going to the beach because...
What do you want?
I mean, you go to the beach, you want the sun, right?
You're looking for the sun.
You go out in search of the sun.
But then you seem to spend most of the time trying to escape from the sun, trying to avoid it.
So you go out to the beach and then you're like, right, we need to find a shaded spot.
We need to find an umbrella, you know, a sunshade.
Is there a free one anywhere?
Why didn't we bring a sunshade?
What were we thinking?
So you go out to the beach and then immediately you're trying to escape from the sun.
You're putting on hats.
You're covering yourself in suntan lotion.
Everything you're doing is to avoid escape from or protect yourself from the sun.
I don't really understand it.
The weather's too hot.
It's boiling hot.
Um, it's uncomfortably hot.
It becomes like some sort of survival situation.
You know, um you're desperately trying to find the right spot on the beach, which is so crowded there are virtually no places to to lie down.
Um yeah, you're hoping for the sun.
Then you end up escaping the sun and doing everything you can to avoid it.
You're trying to find shade.
You're wearing hats.
You're wearing shades, That's sunglasses, putting on sunscreen.
If you get too hot, you're worrying that you're going to get heat stroke.
You don't want the children to be exposed to the sun too much.
You're trying to avoid dehydration.
You've brought a book with you, but you can't read it because it's just too bright.
You know, you're squinting.
You can't actually see the words on the page because it's so damn bright, because you chose to have your holiday in some sort of survival situation.
If there wasn't the ocean, the sea there, just next to the beach, you'd be basically lying in the middle of a desert.
You know, it's more or less the same thing.
Sand burning hot. sunshine.
You've basically chosen to have your holiday lying on the ground in a desert.
You've put suntan lotion on your face and then you start sweating and the suntan lotion goes into your eyes and it stings your eyes.
You feel sticky all day long.
You end up with sand everywhere.
There's sand between your toes.
There's sand in your hair.
There's sand in your phone.
It's stuck to your feet when you leave the beach, Then you have to try and get the sand off your feet before you get in the car.
Your rental car ends up filled with sand.
These are the reasons why we decided to go north this year.
Right even in.
In some cases, when you're in a very hot place, you can't actually leave the house in the middle of the day.
If you need to go out at midday in a very hot place, you basically need to be bare grills.
It's a survival situation.
Everything might be on fire.
There's always the chance that everything's just going to be on fire where you choose to have your holiday.
There are mosquitoes, so you can't actually even comfortably spend an evening outside because insects are trying to drink your blood.
So let's go north.
Right, let's go north.
That was our thinking.
Lovely sunshine.
Yes, the sun shines up north as well.
The air is fresh.
It's not too hot.
If it gets chilly, just put on another layer, right?
You just wear layers.
You go for long walks.
Fresh grass, the sound of seagulls, overhead sandwich picnics on the grass with chocolate bars and cups of hot coffee, swimming in beautiful clear waters, pottering around, looking in rock pools, crabbing fishing.
So initially we looked at Wales, Ireland, Scotland.
These were the locations we looked at first.
And there are some lovely places to go in those areas, too.
But then my wife tends to do the holiday planning.
For some reason, she veered east across the North Sea to Norway, where there is incredible scenery.
I think maybe that was the thing.
It was the scenery, the pictures she saw on the Internet.
And I don't know, what is it that stops people going from Norway?
I suppose it's two things.
One is that we know it's expensive.
It's a very expensive place.
But if you do a bit of careful planning, you can sort of mitigate the cost.
And the other thing maybe is the weather.
People think that it might be rainy or maybe chilly or something.
But really, there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.
You've heard that before, right?
There's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.
So if you're wearing the right gear, then it doesn't matter.
You can have a fantastic time, even if it rains a little bit.
And this is speaking as someone who used to go on holiday in Britain.
We used to spend family holidays in Wales, in the Lake District in England, in Scotland, in Cumbria, in other parts of the country.
And if you've got the right shoes, if you've got a nice rainproof jacket, then you can still have a lovely time.
And there is something very cozy and wonderful about going for a walk.
Sure, you get a bit wet, but if you're protected from the rain, you're okay.
And when you come home, you feel all cozy and dry.
You have a nice hot drink.
It is lovely.
But yeah, Norway can be expensive.
So part of our plan was to save money by choosing food very carefully, because that's maybe where things are the most expensive.
And you can see in supermarkets, some things are outrageously expensive, especially alcohol.
So no beer for me this holiday.
Beer and other alcohol is taxed very highly.
So one can one can of Carlsberg like a 500 milliliter can of Carlsberg cost about five or six euros, which is really a lot.
Not worth it.
Not worth it for Carlsberg.
They say it's probably the best lager in the world, but it's not worth paying six euros for a can of the stuff.
And I thought, well, why not?
Why not have a break from beer?
And it was a refreshing break.
It was nice.
And also we chose to cook for ourselves rather than eating out in restaurants.
We rented an electric car in Norway, which helped us to save on petrol money.
So our itinerary was basically, we started with a trip to the UK in the Midlands to see my parents.
And then we went to London and spent a few days there.
Then we flew to Oslo.
Then from Oslo, we spent a few days in Oslo.
Then we flew to Bergen.
And the second city further to the to the west, which is surrounded by mountains and fields.
We spent a few days there and then we drove.
We rented a car and drove inland into the mountains near the fields there, spent about a week there staying in several cabins, very basic cabins that didn't have any hot water, that didn't have much electricity, that didn't have a shower or washing machine.
Very simple, basic life.
Then back to Bergen, and then back to Paris again.
So that was the itinerary.
Basically, it involved me chasing my son around different international locations, especially different international airports.
Chasing my son around Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, chasing him around Birmingham International Airport, then Gatwick Airport in London, chasing him around Oslo and Bergen airports.
A lot of chasing my son around.
And, you know, I used to be a goalkeeper.
I used to play in goal when I played football.
And those skills that I acquired as a goalkeeper have not been wasted.
I'm still using them to essentially grab and catch my son as he attempts to run through airport security.
You know.
And he kind of runs through like a rugby player or something.
Anyway, we started our trip in Warwick in England, which is where my parents live.
Warwick is a great destination if you are on holiday in England.
There's a famous castle, one of the best castles in the country.
And it's an interesting town to visit.
And what I'm always struck by when going to England is the fact that England is so green and lush, right.
Lots of lush greenery everywhere.
So it was great to just go to the park and just enjoy running on the grass and playing in the playground, feeding the ducks.
We spent quite a lot of time with my parents because...
I think that's very important now.
They are in their 70s, approaching their late 70s.
So I think it's very important to spend plenty of time with them.
I don't know about you.
I don't know if your parents are still alive, what age they are, but they get to a certain age.
And you realize that you really do have to make the most of them.
You've got to try to take time to spend time with them, you know.
And also I want my kids to have plenty of contact with them, too.
I think that's really important.
And yeah, going to Warwick is lovely.
It's a breath of fresh air, literally.
And yes, there are plenty of things to do.
There are activities for kids.
There's a wonderful garden and lots of nice things to do.
So that was Warwick.
And after that we went to London and stayed just for a few days in Kensington High Street Kensington, right next to Hyde Park.
And basically, we spent almost the entire time in Hyde Park, which is an amazing thing.
This big green area right in the heart of West London.
And you've got Kensington Palace, which is where Prince William and Kate live.
And that's surrounded by large gardens and a big green sprawling park.
And then to the east of that, you've got the rest of Hyde Park.
And it's just a wonderful park.
It's amazing.
My favourite area of the park is between a thing called the Speak Monument and the Italian gardens, and also the Diana Memorial Playground.
Yes, Princess Diana is remembered with the Memorial Playground, which is an interesting way to remember her.
It's quite nice, but the playground itself is just a very crowded kids' play area.
I suppose it's what she would have wanted, right, to be remembered by...
Lots of screaming children running around and stuff.
But yeah, Hyde Park is fantastic.
Loads of good grass shade from trees, even fairly wild areas in the middle of the park with bushes and trees.
It makes you forget that you're in the heart of a huge city.
So, after that, we then flew to Oslo and started our Norwegian trip properly.
Here are just a few basics about Norway.
So, of course, Norway is one of the Scandinavian countries, along with Denmark and Sweden.
So, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, that is Scandinavia.
It's also known as one of the Nordic countries, and that includes Denmark and Sweden, and also Iceland and Finland.
So those are the Nordic countries as well.
It's on the western side of the Scandinavian peninsula.
And this is where the Vikings came from.
The Vikings, of course, were these seafaring people from the area that we now call Norway.
They were a number of things.
They were warriors and raiders, as we know.
And they were famous for their round wooden shields, their helmets with horns on them and their long boats with dragon heads at the front.
But they were more than that.
They were also explorers.
And the Vikings explored all over the world, as far as I know.
They were settlers, so where they went, they settled and built communities.
They were farmers, they were tradespeople, they were craftsmen and they left a huge legacy on Europe, especially the UK.
They travelled all around the world in the Middle Ages and populated the north of Britain, Large parts of the North.
A lot of people there have Viking or Nordic roots.
I actually have Viking and Saxon roots, in fact, as my family comes from Yorkshire.
So a lot of my genetic roots are from...
Scandinavia and Northern Europe.
Norway is famous for its fjords.
Fjords are these long, narrow sea inlets where the sea comes into the land, into these long sort of lakes, fjords.
They were created by glaciers, these huge frozen masses of water which slowly move down the side of mountains out towards the sea.
And as they do that, as they did that, they scraped out these channels in the ground millions of years ago, scraped out the earth into these big valleys with these now large pools of water where the sea has come in.
So these long sort of complex lake systems, They come all the way into the land and they're connected to the sea and surrounded by mountains and they're very beautiful.
People travel from all over the world to come and see the fjords.
That's one of the main attractions.
It's the natural environment.
In winter, Norway is often covered in snow and ice, but in summer it all melts, revealing lush green mountains and sparkling fjords everywhere with waterfalls, and charming towns and cities with wooden cabins painted in characteristic red paint.
Norway is also a very happy country.
It's one of the happiest countries in the world.
It often ranks in the top ten most happy countries in the world.
I'll explore this later, but the place does have a lovely atmosphere.
There is something...
Calm, peaceful.
It's clean.
Everything seems to work well.
People are friendly.
There's just a good vibe there.
But yes, it is expensive.
So in Norway, in Oslo, which is the capital city of Norway, we stayed in a part of town called Frogner, the Frogner district, which is a very impressive place with large, elegant houses, and Some of those buildings are used as embassies, so you'd see different country flags flying in front of some of these buildings.
But there's so much space.
It's very elegant, wide avenues with these lovely, elegant-looking buildings.
Very quiet, very calm, even in this...
You know, the city with the cars going up and down the roads, it felt very calm.
A lot of those cars are electric cars, so they don't make so much noise.
There's a famous park in that area called Frogner Park.
It is wonderful, but it has some very strange statues.
Specifically the part of the park known as the Vigeland Sculpture Park, which is the world's largest sculpture park dedicated to the work of a single artist, Gustav Vigeland.
So this park features over 200 of his sculptures made of bronze, granite and wrought iron.
And now, most of these sculptures are a bit odd.
They're of...
Mainly they are of naked people of various ages in various different states, showing these people in states of joy sorrow anger fear love, dotted around lining the sides of a large bridge, all leading up to the top of a hill.
And at the top of that hill there's a very large tower made of stone of some kind.
It's a kind of obelisk in the centre.
And the weird thing about it is that this obelisk, this large tower, is actually made up of the bodies of various naked people, all tightly crammed up against each other.
It's made of stone.
It's very strange, though.
It looks a bit like they've all been squeezed into an invisible tube and they are trying to climb over each other to reach the top.
Now, I don't think it's meant to be erotic or anything, but it does seem...
A bit creepy and a bit weird and somehow rather phallic.
We were not sure what to make of it, to be honest.
By the way, listeners, are you noticing bits of vocab?
I've used the words obelisk to be crammed up against each other, to be phallic, to not know what to make of it.
As I said before, you can check the PDF for all of these things.
Those are some things that I mentioned at the beginning.
Let's continue, though.
We also visited the Opera House, which is a thing that you do down in the main bay, the main harbour area.
There is the famous Opera House, which is a very characteristic thing about Oslo.
It looks like an iceberg.
It's been designed in a specific way with it.
So it looks like a big iceberg emerging or rising out of the water of the fjord, and one of the things about the opera house is that you can actually walk up the roof, so the roof slopes all the way down to the ground, so you can just walk all the way up to the top of the opera house and walk around the roof with these.
Is it made of marble?
It looks like marble, this kind of white stone covering the surface of it.
Very interesting and a great way to look at the view from the top.
And I swam in the fjord in Oslo.
In the Oslo fjord there's an area round the side where there's a little beach for swimming and they've got these wooden platforms, the water and there are little ladders and you lot of people just sort of go into the water and swim around.
We had our lunch there, we had some sandwiches and we saw people swimming around and I thought oh, that must be cold.
But I really wanted to give it a try and I'm very glad I did, because what a fantastic experience that was.
That was one of the best things.
It was quite cold, but it wasn't as cold as I expected actually.
And I was able to swim around a bit and I was kind of bobbing up and down in the little waves of the fjord.
But it's not like the sea.
You don't get these waves coming in and currents pulling you around.
You just bob up and down.
And it's a funny feeling.
You know that feeling when you're swimming in a large body of water like a lake, and you look down and you can see your feet under the water and they seem very pale in comparison to the darkness of the water.
And you think to yourself, how deep is this?
It must be incredibly deep and you get this sense of so much depth underneath your feet.
And it's a little bit...
A bit weird and a bit scary at times because you think, what is underneath me?
I don't know.
There's just a void underneath me.
But it was so refreshing and so lovely to swim in the fjord.
And I really felt like I'd sort of I don't know washed away the stresses of my normal life and really had become sort of inducted into Norwegian life by doing that.
That's kind of a thing that people like to do in Norway.
They like to get out into nature and it's a very sort of Scandinavian thing.
I feel like to go swimming in a cold fjord.
It's the sort of thing they do.
And it was it's understandable because it does make you feel all refreshed and lovely.
Another famous thing in Oslo is the the Monk Museum, which is a museum dedicated to the artwork of Edward Monk, who was a Norwegian painter and printmaker who is widely regarded as a pivotal figure in the development of modern art, particularly for his contributions to symbolism and expressionism.
His most famous painting is The Scream.
Do you know The Scream?
There are various versions of it.
It even has its own emoji.
So The Scream...
It depicts a man standing next to the Oslo Fjord, I think, and it's very I think it's expressionist.
So it's sort of doesn't look realistic.
For example, the man's face is very simplified and it's quite scary.
He's holding his hands up to his face and his mouth is open as if he is screaming, and the sky is a sort of blood red color and the shape of the fjord twists around and there's a contrast with the wooden walkway that he's standing on.
But he's basically standing in front of a fjord with a blood-red sky, with his hands on his face, and he appears to be screaming.
Actually, he's not screaming.
He's just experiencing a moment of existential dread, having a sort of panic attack.
It's supposed to represent how Edvard Munch himself felt one day when he was walking next to the fjord and the sun started to go down, and he described in his diary something about experiencing a sort of scream that went all the way through nature itself.
It's a bit odd.
Do you know the painting I'm talking about?
Now, this painting is not just a painting.
It's also an icon of modern art and a powerful expression of existential dread.
Its fame comes from its ability to capture and convey a deep sense of anxiety and turmoil that resonates with people universally.
This is why it's such a famous and iconic picture, because it does resonate with people, people.
You look at it and you think this does tell us something about the human condition, or it captures a feeling that no other work of art has managed to capture before, which is that some moment when you might feel a sense of panic or dread or fear, sort of go through you.
I don't know if that's something you've ever felt, but we're all capable of having that experience sometimes.
Let me tell you about the elements that explain the scream.
So there's the autobiographical inspiration for the work.
Munch himself provided the most direct explanation for his work, the scream, in a diary entry.
He recounted a walk he took with two friends at sunset.
So he went for a walk with a couple of friends as the sun was going down.
And he said...
I was walking along a path with two friends.
The sun was setting.
Suddenly the sky turned blood red and I felt a great and infinite scream passing through nature.
I felt tired and ill.
I stopped and looked out over the fjord.
The sun was setting and the clouds turning blood red.
I sensed a scream passing through nature.
It seemed to me that I heard the scream.
I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood.
The colour shrieked.
This became the scream.
So this description reveals a crucial detail about this painting.
The scream is not actually coming from the figure himself, but it is a scream of nature that the figure is hearing.
The central figure is shown covering its ears, recoiling in a moment of overwhelming sensory and psychological distress.
This suggests that the figure is a representation of Monk himself and the painting is a visual record of a profound internal panic attack.
Yeah, I wonder what his friends thought while they were on that walk.
Like, where's Edward gone?
Oh, look, he's over there, standing with his hands over his ears.
He's doing it again.
Oh, poor Edward.
He's having another one of his moments.
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Let me talk about it a little bit more.
I like this sort of thing.
I like these descriptions or explanations of works of art.
I find it interesting to explore interpretations or explanations of what the artist is trying to capture.
So, in terms of the symbolism and visual language of the painting, its power lies in its masterful use of visual elements to convey emotion.
So first of all, there is the distorted figure.
This figure, this person is simplified.
The person's features are simplified.
His head is almost like a skull. with a gaping mouth and wide eyes.
And it does make you think of that mask from the movie Scream.
You know, that famous white mask with the gaping mouth, the wide eyes.
Surely it was partly influenced by this painting.
This distortion removes the specific identity of the main figure, making it a universal symbol of human anguish.
Its body seems to ripple and dissolve in the same way that the landscape does, suggesting that the figure is being consumed by the overwhelming feeling which is coming to him through nature.
There's also the turbulent landscape.
The background of swirling fiery colours is a direct visual representation of the sound that Munch described.
This scream through nature as the sun went down.
The blood red sky and the blue black fjord are not just a description of a sunset.
They're an emotional landscape.
The swirling curving lines, creating a sense of chaos and instability, a direct contrast to the rigid, linear bridge which he is walking along, which represents the rational world that the figure has left behind.
There are also two other figures in the distance.
In the background, you see two straight, upright figures, two people who are continuing to walk, seemingly oblivious to the sensory and emotional breakdown happening in the foreground.
They represent the friends who went on.
They continued walking, further emphasizing the protagonist's isolation and profound alienation.
So, in summary, Monk's The Scream is a powerful and enduring masterpiece because it moves beyond a simple portrait to express a universal feeling of anxiety, fear and alienation.
It's an internal scream made visible, a terrifying moment of psychological insight that speaks directly to the human condition.
Have you ever seen this picture?
Do you know?
It's famous, right?
I remember when I was a student, people used to have a picture of the scream on the wall, but it was like a funny version.
It was a picture of the scream, but he was blowing smoke rings like he was smoking something and blowing smoke rings from his mouth.
It's quite a funny picture, but it's a famous one.
And yes, there is an emoji.
There's an emoji for it.
You know, you've seen the little emoji of the character with his hands on his face screaming.
The fact that there is an emoji based on Edward Monk's painting.
Speaks to the work's cultural ubiquity, meaning it's kind of everywhere, right?
And the fact that it's such a powerful and simple expression of a universal emotion.
I love the scream.
I think it's a fascinating picture.
But I actually prefer one of his other works, which I discovered in the museum.
The other one is called The Murderer, which depicts a very scary looking man with a green face walking towards you on a country lane, probably at sunset.
He appears to be walking out of the frame of the picture and his face is painted a very vivid green for some reason, and it almost looks like he's got a mask over his face.
His hands hang down at his sides, giving him the impression of being almost like some kind of zombie, walking directly towards you.
It's cheerful stuff, isn't it?
This lovely, perfect for a family holiday.
But anyway, the murderer, this other painting, it reminded me of something from Resident Evil 4.
I don't know if you've ever played that game, but that's the one where Leon is.
It goes to a creepy village to investigate something.
And he's met with some very unfriendly villagers who kind of walk towards him down a country path.
And yeah, this painting reminded me of that.
So The Murderer is another one that I kind of enjoyed in a weird way.
So anyway, that was an overview of some of the things we did in Oslo.
After that, we went to Bergen, which is Norway's second city.
It's located on the west coast, as I said before.
It's smaller.
It's very hilly.
So it's surrounded by these hills.
It's very charming.
It's actually the rainiest city in Europe.
And yeah, we did get wet when we were there, but it didn't matter because, as I said before, we had the right clothing.
It is full of lovely coffee shops, old wooden fishing houses, boats in the harbour, including massive cruise ships and fishing vessels like these vast ships.
Very impressive.
Parts of it reminded me of British places on the coast, sort of towns and villages and cities on the coast of Britain.
It's very familiar.
The most touristy spot is called the Brigham, which is a row of cute wooden houses of different colours that used to be the centre of the fishing trade and that area and those buildings date back to medieval times.
But you might have seen pictures of this row of wooden houses of different colours very sort of recognisable.
The suburban hills around bergen reminded me strangely of parts of japan that i'm familiar with, especially the zushi hayama area which, is it just, had a very similar vibe to me hills And lots of little houses surrounded by green areas, trees and things.
Very clean, very peaceful, but modern, hilly, charming, not far from the sea.
Very similar atmosphere.
So we had a rainy but lovely time walking around the streets, including a stop in a cosy coffee shop to escape the rain.
And it was generally very lovely from there.
Then we went into the mountains and explored the fjords and stayed in uh, in several cabins, as I mentioned before, and to get out there we rented a car and we rented an electronic, an electric vehicle, an EV.
And, um, The company that I use to rent cars in Paris is called Getaround.
And the way that works is that there are basically cars parked all around the city.
And you open up your app and you search for cars and you can choose cars that are just parked in different places.
And it works well.
And they have that in Norway as well.
So that's what we chose to use.
But of course, all the cars that I found when I was searching...
All the cars were all these very smart, fancy, electronic cars.
So there were all these Teslas and Polestars and other cars.
These were just like the normal cars that I could rent.
And I ended up with a Jaguar, in fact. which is a really nice car.
It was the Jaguar I-Pace EV400, if you're interested, which is an electric Jaguar.
And I guess it's sort of around the same size but just slightly bigger than a Volkswagen Golf, something like that.
A bit bigger than that, like a Renault Megane, but it's a Jaguar, so it's like a nice driving experience quite fast, but electric.
And as I said before, Norway is full of electric cars.
I don't know what your experience is of driving an electric car.
Maybe you have an electric car.
Maybe electric cars are just like totally normal now in your country.
And it's just like the normal thing.
But I wasn't that experienced with electric cars.
I'd driven EVs before. in Paris, but only on short trips, really.
So I was a little bit nervous about it because you know it's different to driving a petrol car because of the way you have to charge the battery.
You have to plan your trips to include stops for charging.
You need to find charging stations where you can stop.
And different stations have different charging times.
It seemed a bit complex with these different charging times at different stations.
So after some teething problems at the first spot that we found to charge the car in the middle of the mountains, we eventually got the hang of it.
And once I'd understood that you can charge it at certain speeds, You can do super fast charging in certain spots and you can find them in advance and plan your trip around these things.
Once I got the hang of that, then I was free to enjoy this fantastic car.
And it was a really great car to drive around this wonderful landscape on these beautiful curving roads.
It was like something out of a car commercial on TV.
It really was.
So what's it like driving an EV compared to driving a traditional petrol driven car?
Well, first of all, EVs are always automatic.
So that's one thing.
You know, you don't have to change gears.
It's just done automatically.
But even with an automatic petrol-driven car, you can feel the car going through the gears as you accelerate.
You can feel the gears changing.
But with an EV, there are no gears.
I don't really understand how it works.
But it's got this amazing drivetrain, I think they call it, where it's just one single gear but it adapts as it goes.
Also, acceleration is very, very fast.
You can zip forwards 0 to 60 in I don't know how many seconds.
But if you want to, you can slam your foot down and zip.
The car will accelerate really fast, which is useful for like leaving junctions and going onto main roads and things like that.
There's also this function where you can kind of charge the engine while you're driving it.
So when you look at the dashboard, if you put your foot down on the accelerator, it goes into the drive side.
There's like a little meter, right?
There's a meter.
On the left side of the meter, it says charge.
And on the right side of the meter, it says drive or power.
The meter, you either go into the drive side or into the charge side.
So if you put your foot down on the accelerator and use power to drive the car, you go into the power or drive side which which takes power from the battery.
But then if you're rolling, if the car is rolling down a hill, for example, you take your foot off the accelerator, you actually charge the engine a bit.
So it's a bit like a game when you're driving an electric car.
You kind of manage this balance between using power and charging the battery and driving around the hilly terrain, mountains and stuff.
It's actually great because a lot of the journeys we took were downhill and so i could just take my foot off the accelerator and it would kind of top up the the power in the battery as we went down the hill.
So that's, it's a kind of a different experience where you're managing using power and topping it up a little bit.
Also, because it's electric, it doesn't really make a lot of noise.
So it's a very kind of smooth, peaceful, fun experience driving an EV.
Have you driven an EV?
Do you drive an electric vehicle?
What do you think about it compared to driving a petrol car?
Could you drive a petrol-driven car again?
Yeah.
So we drove uh, i don't know how many kilometers was it about 300 kilometers, something like that inland from bergen to an area, a very remote area up in the mountains, to stay in our first cabin.
So let me describe the first cabin that we stayed in.
It was a small rectangular wooden cabin, painted red, so one of these characteristic norwegian cabins in the mountains.
There was a small kitchen, a living room, two bedrooms, a bathroom on the side, a small upstairs area, no central heating, no shower, no heated water, no conveniences like a washing machine or a dishwasher.
But it was owned by a family who seemed to have had it for several generations.
And it was clear that they really loved the place.
They'd put a lot of love and attention into it.
We rented it through Airbnb, but it oozed cozy, comforting and welcoming vibes.
It was a lovely place to stay.
There were two large iron stoves one in a room just next to the kitchen, one in the main sitting room.
These large iron stoves which you burn logs of wood in beds with plenty of warm covers and blankets, incredibly comfortable and cosy beds.
There was a gas cooker fed by a large gas canister on the floor.
The only electricity in the house came from a solar panel on the side of the house which supplied a couple of electric lights, basically.
There was a sink, a single sink with a tap which brought water in from the nearby stream I think.
There was a nearby bubbling mountain stream that just went down the hill next to the cabin and a large lake about 15 minutes walk away.
There was a small grassy garden with boulders and a picnic table and grass.
It was surrounded by a fence to keep out the various sheep and goats which were roaming around the surrounding countryside around this cabin.
It was very remote.
There were a few other cabins dotted around, but mainly it was just mountains, the sides of valleys covered in large boulders, lots of grass heather, some walking paths, and generally it was very, very remote, cut off and a far cry from the life that we normally would lead in the center of paris.
The nearest shops were an hour's drive away, so it was very remote and cut off.
At night obviously it got dark, although the sun went down late, because up in that area in the middle of the year, In the middle of summer I mean, it's daylight all year round, but we were there in August and so the sun did go down, but the sky would remain a pale blue colour quite late into the night.
We would go to bed and look out the window and you couldn't really see the stars in the sky because the sky was still kind of a pale blue colour. but you'd have to light the the cabin with candles and there was there were a couple of oil lamps in the cabin so we had to use candles in there it was very rustic and charming yeah no shower and no hot water so we had to wash either in the nearby stream you kind of sit in the stream and just wash yourself with the water from the stream, which is very cold, because that water is coming down from the mountain.
Or you wash in the nearby lake, which is also pretty cold.
And I swam in that lake as well, but that was much colder than the fjord and it was kind of take-your-breath-away cold.
I went into the water and...
You know you end up doing that.
Or you wash with a large jug of water and you boil water on the stove and put it into the jug and top it up and you take that large jug out and a bowl and you kind of wash yourself with that in the old fashioned way in the garden.
I did the washing up, that means washing the dishes and stuff, knives and forks and cups and things.
I did all the washing up by sitting on a rock in the middle of the stream with my feet in the water and all the dishes piled up in a bucket with soap and a sponge, and just doing everything in the stream, which was actually a wonderful experience.
My feet got cold, but it did feel like I was reconnecting with nature in some way and reminded me of trips that I went on as a kid, including a school trip that I did once to a remote island in Scotland where we learnt survival techniques and we did washing up in the local stream and and washed using lake water and stuff like that.
We had to do laundry by hand and we let it dry out in the sun.
It was really a back to basics experience in the most wonderful way.
The air was very fresh and most of the time the sun shone and it was hot in the sun.
It was really hot.
You could lie down on the grass, do some sunbathing.
There were a couple of colder days, but that was okay because we could wrap up warm.
You know, we just wore different layers.
You could add layers, remove layers of clothing depending on the temperature.
In the evening, we kept the place warm by lighting fires in the stoves.
No TV or anything like that.
You just watch the fire.
No drinking water on tap.
So every time we boiled water for tea or coffee, we kept some and put it in a jug as our drinking water.
So it was actually it felt like a very good mental experience of having to plan ahead and having to think about the basics.
Just do we have enough water?
You know, how are we going to wash?
How are we going to plan by doing all the washing up at the right time and all these things?
It was a very healthy, it felt like a very mentally and physically healthy experience.
It did get chilly at night, but it was fine because the warm stoves kept the place cozy.
And Norway is generally very well prepared for cold weather.
So all the blankets and duvets on the beds were very snug.
And we had brought woolen socks, thick woolen socks that we bought in a nearby sports outlet.
And we had all the necessary layers.
So we were nice and cozy and warm.
We took trips to the local lake, 15 minutes walk across the countryside.
There was this lovely big lake with no one there, almost no one there.
We saw a couple of fishermen there. on a little boat going around, doing some fishing.
But we swam and washed in the lake and played next to the water.
There were no mosquitoes.
We didn't get bitten once.
My skin was not violated at any point by any insects.
I tried to fish in the lake.
So we bought a basic fishing rod.
OK, so here's my chance to teach you some vocab for fishing.
So trying to catch fish with a fishing rod.
So it's called a fishing rod.
OK, this long thing attached to the fishing rod is a line, a fishing line, very thin kind of string made of plastic, I think, thin but strong and flexible string.
On the end of that line you need a hook and you can either use bait or you use a lure.
A lure, that's l-u-r-e.
Bait, would be a little worm or a maggot or something like that, a little wriggly thing.
Or you use a lure.
And we used a lure because we were trying to catch trout and they are attracted by the shining spinning lure which you can put on the end of your line.
So a spinning lure is what we got little metal shiny thing that spins round as it moves through the water.
And on the end of that lure, there are three hooks.
So that's on the end of the line.
The line goes through the loops of the rod and is then attached to the reel at the bottom, near the handle.
The reel is the complicated bit that's R-E-E-L, because you've got to learn how to reel the line in and let the line out as you cast your line out into the water.
So you've got to kind of flip open the reel, hold the line, throw the lure out and as it flies through the air you let the line go out and it hits the water.
You flip the reel closed and start to reel the line in by winding the handle forwards and the lure is pulled through the water.
As it moves through the water, it spins and shines and this attracts certain fish that try and grab it, and in theory that's how you catch them.
And then you reel them in and bring them into a net and remove the hook, and then there you are, you've got your fish.
But i hadn't fished for a long time and It took me a lot of time before I managed to actually catch anything.
And the first couple of times were a total disaster.
The first time I managed to attach the lure to the end of the line, took it down to the water's edge, tried to flip open the thing and realised I had no idea how to cast the line or how to deal with the reel or anything.
I flipped it open, the line all flew out and then almost instantly it got completely tangled.
It was a total mess, a tangled mess of line everywhere and I couldn't make it work and it was all tangled up and a total failure.
The next day we tried again.
I found a better spot and i did actually manage to get the uh the line out and cast the uh line into the water, but almost instantly got the hooks caught under a rock under the water surface and spent an hour trying to unhook the thing um.
And then when I finally did unhook it, then of course I got the line all tangled up as well.
So it took me loads of times before I eventually actually caught something, which I'll tell you about in a moment.
The place was surrounded by sheep.
And my son became obsessed with these sheep.
He was like, oh, where are the sheep?
Trying to find the sheep.
He calls them ma.
So he's obsessed with the ma of the sheep.
But the kids were just happy hanging around on the grass, climbing the rocks.
I love birdwatching, but up there there weren't really many birds.
It was actually quite a desolate place, not a lot of life.
There were a few birds, but not as many as i'd hoped.
But august is a quiet month for birds anyway.
Maybe because well, maybe because that the whole area is frozen half of the year anyway.
Maybe that makes a difference.
Also, perhaps migrating birds that come from other parts of the world, up from the south.
Maybe they probably stop in the uk.
Maybe this is why Britain is such a bird watching hotspot, because it catches so many of the migrating birds as they travel north in the summer and maybe they don't make their way up to Norway.
But we were very happy living this very simple life.
And it was a huge antidote to the things we don't like about living in Paris, namely the noise, the pollution, being so close to other people, the lack of space, the stress.
We managed to escape all of that.
We ate lots of salmon that we bought from shops because it was comparatively cheap compared to other food.
So lots of delicious salmon dinners.
And after a few days in this cabin, we moved to another cabin and we we visited some famous spots in the area, towns like flam, which is a famous spot where you can do a cruise through the fjords, and we did that.
And then then the second cabin, which was also up in the mountains, right next to a lake, much closer to a lake this time.
Um, We had a similar situation another wooden cabin with a wooden terrace surrounded by a fence to keep out the various animals that sort of roamed around.
There were herds of cows this time that came and surrounded our cabin, huge cows.
There was a nearby lake with a small rowing boat that we could use.
Again, no shower, but it did have electricity this time and a kettle and just beautiful views, lovely sunny days.
So on this occasion, I did manage to catch a fish.
I worked out how to do it.
And with the boat, my daughter and I we went out onto the lake every day and cast the line out into the water and reeled it back in.
But...
You know, again and again, we fail to catch anything.
Then one day it was all very misty.
These clouds rolled over from the nearby valley.
They rolled over the top of the mountain and into our area.
And we found ourselves in this misty, mysterious place situation and my daughter and i went out on the lake anyway in the boat and it was all misty.
We couldn't see the edge of the lake, so it was very atmospheric and weird and we carried on fishing and finally we caught something.
My daughter was there with the net.
It was her job to land the fish.
So if i caught something i would have to try and bring it in and she would get it into the net.
That's called landing the fish.
So she was there with the net and i was casting and she was kind of going oh, we're never going to catch anything.
And then i said oh, i've got something.
And i did.
I could feel it pulling the line and i reeled it in and i could see it in the water and then bam, there it was wriggling at the end of the line and my daughter lost it and she got all scared.
She's like like that, giving me the net like oh, you do it.
So i had to land the fish And of course I got the hook completely caught up in the net and it took me ages to remove the hook from the poor fish's mouth and then to remove it from the net.
But we got it.
We brought this trout.
It was a lovely brown trout.
We brought it home and that evening we ate it.
We fried it in butter and salt, which made me feel a little bit better about catching it and pulling it out of the water.
And that's the only fish we caught the entire time.
The rest of the time was a complete failure.
I think it's because trout actually, in the summer, avoid the bright light.
They don't like the bright light.
And so they probably stayed way down deep in the bottom of the lake to avoid all the light.
And the only time we caught something was when it was relatively dark because of all this mist.
So another couple of great days in this spot, with lovely walks in the countryside and so much fresh air.
And then another fairly long drive through stunning scenery and back to Bergen for a night and a taste of suburban life in the hills.
And what a lovely quality of life they have there.
And then from there we flew back to Paris via Oslo and that was the end of our holiday.
And now we're back in Paris and it is working its way back into our heads, back into our skin, being infected again by Paris itself.
The kids are getting ready for what they call in France la rentrée, in an English accent otherwise known as back to school, as it's called in England.
And in fact, by the time you listen to this, they will already have gone back to school and back to creche.
Yes, they're growing up very fast.
Our daughter is really quite grown up now.
She's only seven, seven and a half.
But we can you can sort of see the teenager in her, you know.
In fact, I recorded a podcast with her just the other day and you'll be able to listen to it soon.
It might be the next episode of this podcast.
A fun conversation with my daughter will be coming soon.
So there you go.
That's an overview of my Norwegian holiday.
I hope you found that interesting.
I want to end the episode by talking about why Norwegians are happier.
I mentioned at the beginning of the episode that they are among the happiest people in the world.
Norway consistently ranks among the happiest countries in Europe and in the world, often placing in the top 10 of the World Happiness Report.
While its exact ranking may fluctuate slightly from year to year, it is always a top performer, along with other Scandinavian countries.
Compared to other European countries, Norway's high happiness levels are part of a broader trend among the other Nordic nations, including Finland Denmark, Iceland and Sweden, which regularly dominates the top spots in happiness rankings.
Other european countries like the netherlands and luxembourg also rank highly.
Why is this?
Well, several factors contribute to norway's high levels of happiness, which are shared by its nordic neighbors.
First of all, there is a strong social safety net, a social safety net.
By this We mean a welfare system.
There is a robust welfare system in Norway that provides universal health care for free, free education, including higher education.
That means university and generous social benefits.
We talk about benefits.
We talk about things that you can get from the state.
Right.
Social benefits.
So usually that's health care and education.
But this generally reduces financial stress and provides a sense of security for all citizens, which is so important in education, giving you that general sense of well-being in your life.
So the social safety net, that there is a net as if, if you fall somehow, in some way, there is a net to catch you in terms of, you know, if you lose your job, there is a social system that will protect you.
If you become sick, there's a health care system to protect you.
Right.
That's the social safety net, the welfare system, a robust welfare system, sort of strong welfare system in Norway like in other Scandinavian countries.
Also, there's a high level of trust in Norway, trust in the government and also a sense of social cohesion.
Cohesion means people are together.
There's a sense that people are not divided, that people feel that they are close to each other.
It's a cohesive unit.
So there's a high level of trust in government and institutions, as well as among citizens.
And I certainly felt that while I was there.
You get the sense that people are generally trustworthy.
In some countries you get the feeling that I don't know people, other people perhaps don't have your best interests at heart.
Or if you ask other people for help, that they don't care, that people are self-interested.
Whereas in Norway I felt like I could talk to anyone and they would be really helpful and friendly.
In fact, several people who owned the Airbnbs where we were staying were extraordinarily helpful.
The guy who I rented the car from was incredibly helpful, like way beyond what I would expect.
And that was true of everyone we we met and dealt with.
People were very trustworthy, Helpful and you got the sense that they would give you the benefit of the doubt, Which is basically like if they don't know something about you.
They're going to assume that you're a good person and People generally are good people as far as I can see.
So high levels of trust in government and institutions, but also trust between citizens and this sense of community and security.
It's interesting.
It's a bit mysterious.
I don't know why you get that there compared to other places where that's less of a thing.
What do you think?
How do you account for this?
Also work-life balance.
Norwegian culture places a high value on balancing work with personal life, and they are quite successful at managing these things.
And this is reflected in shorter work weeks.
Flexible working hours and generous parental leave policies.
Parental leave.
This includes maternity leave and paternity leave.
That's when you have a baby and you're given time off work, but with full pay.
So maternity leave for the mother, paternity leave for the father, generally known as parental leave.
So they've got a generous parental leave policy in Norway and general economic stability and equality.
Now, of course, it helps that they have access to oil and natural gas, which means, of course, that generally, the country is quite well off.
It's a rich country.
That always is a huge factor.
You know, access to financial security is a massive factor in these things.
So that probably has a lot to do with it.
But I wonder if other countries in the region who don't have as much wealth they also tend to rank very highly, in fact often higher even than Norway.
So it's not just about that.
But yes, they do have economic stability and equality, which is obviously a massive thing.
Norway has a high GDP per capita, gross domestic product, economic production level per person per capita and a relatively small gap between the rich and poor.
This surely is a massive thing, that sense of general equality.
When you've got a large gap between the rich and the poor, then you have large disparities in everything across the board and a sense that you might even see on record that a country might be rich but that wealth might be in the hands of relatively few people, which creates a huge imbalance which is not good for cohesion.
But in Norway there's a fairly small gap between the rich and the poor, which must be a very significant thing.
This promotes a sense of fairness and ensures that a large portion of the population has a good quality of life, that everyone has a reasonably good quality of life, not just a few people.
And also the connection to nature, which is a thing that we really experience.
They have in Norway a concept of open air living.
They call it friluftsliv, friluftsliv, I think, otherwise known as open air living.
This is deeply ingrained in Norwegian culture and basically it means that spending time outdoors, regardless of the weather, is a national pastime and is considered to have, it's believed to have a very positive impact on both physical and mental well-being.
And we saw that a lot.
You know just the outdoor activities.
Walking, being outside in the fresh air and enjoying the environment is a really important thing.
And you could sense that It makes people happier.
So Norway's consistently high happiness levels are not an accident.
They stem from a combination of deliberate social policies and cultural values that prioritize well-being.
These positive factors are often attributed to the Nordic model, which is a socio-economic system characterized by a strong safety net, a high degree of income equality and an emphasis on collective welfare.
Norway's success in achieving high happiness levels is a testament to the belief that collective well-being meaning making sure everyone is OK and social support are just as important as economic prosperity.
It's a society built on the principles of equality, trust and a deep appreciation for both human and natural resources.
And it seems to me that they're getting it right.
But I still wonder why other nations...
Can't quite copy this formula so successfully.
We're all aware of the Nordic model, but why can't other countries kind of replicate it?
I don't know.
What do you think?
I'd love to know what you think.
What about your country?
How would you describe the happiness level of your country and how do you account for that?
How can you explain that?
Right, so that's it, basically.
That's pretty much the end of the episode.
I want to just mention the things that we took away from the experience.
It's always good to reflect on things you've learned and things you've gained from any experience.
Learned to enjoy simplicity, to enjoy this, being self-sufficient, to enjoy nature, going out into nature and breathing in the nature, the fresh air, but also connecting with the basics of the natural world friendliness and trust in others, giving people the benefit of the doubt, which is always a good thing to uphold, and also going back to norway and other similar destinations, and that thing about no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing, which is always good to remember.
Be prepared, bring the right clothes.
So um, A couple of questions for you to reflect on.
What is one thing in your country that makes people happy?
Have you been to Norway or one of those similar nations?
And what did you do for your summer holiday if indeed it is summer where you live?
Because I know that some people listening to this are in the southern hemisphere and it's not been summer for you.
But anyway, if you had a summer holiday, what did you do?
Where did you go?
What was it like?
Tell us about it in the comments section.
That is basically the end of the episode.
I just want to remind you that on the PDF you will find a full vocabulary list with in the region of nearly 90 different bits of vocabulary with the example sentence from the episode, a definition of what I said, a definition of the phrase, the part of speech to help you recognise if it was a verb phrase or a noun phrase or an adjective or something.
Another example just to give you a little bit of extra context, and then a comment to help you remember or clarify something.
For example, if I just go into the into the list of random spot, I talked about lush.
I said England is very green and lush.
So lush means when you describe like trees or natural things, the green stuff.
We talk about things being rich, healthy and abundant.
So England's very lush.
You mean you get a lot of green trees, lots of rich grass.
It's very rich and healthy and there's lots of greenery.
It's very lush.
It's an adjective.
Another example would be the rainforest was full of lush greenery.
It can also mean luxurious or very enjoyable in informal speech.
So there's a full list of all this kind of thing.
Loads of stuff.
To shriek, to be profound, a panic attack.
All that stuff.
And there was a range of different things.
Obviously, I talked about Norway and described the things we did and things we saw.
But also there was all that stuff about Edvard Munch and describing his artwork.
There was the stuff about Norway's social model and economic model, describing economic and social factors.
So there's a good range of vocabulary that you could pick up from this episode.
So do check out the PDF.
You can download it absolutely free.
I'm still not even requesting your email address or anything to get the PDF.
A lot of people understandably, will put their download, their PDF behind a kind of wall where you have to give your email address in order to get it.
I'm still not doing that.
I still haven't got my marketing things sorted out yet.
So you can just have the PDF free.
You don't even need to enter your email address.
It's just a direct download link.
Do check it out.
Check out the list.
What you'll find is a vocab list, vocab quiz, then the full transcript.
That's what you'll see on the PDF.
So we've got things like to wrap up.
What's the best word to complete the collocation?
To wrap up tall, to wrap up green, to wrap up warm, to wrap up cold.
Well, it's to wrap up warm.
That means wear warm clothing.
A bubbling...
Museum, is it a bubbling sunshine, a bubbling stream, a bubbling timetable?
It's a bubbling stream.
This is like a little river of water that comes down.
We call it bubbling because often it makes a bubbling sound as it runs over the rocks and things robust, a robust holiday plan, a robust welfare system, a robust water bottle, a robust computer password.
To be honest, I think you could use the word robust with a water bottle.
If a water bottle is robust, it means it's strong and doesn't break easily.
A robust computer password would be one that would be strong and difficult for people to discover.
But a robust welfare system is what I said, meaning they've got a strong welfare system to help people if they're in need.
Generous.
Generous parental leave.
Generous walking boots.
Generous glaciers.
Well, it was generous parental leave, meaning that people in Norway are given a lot of time off to look after their newborn baby and they're given full pay while they are off work.
So that's generous parental leave.
Leave is a word that means time off work.
You can have parental leave, holiday leave, sick leave.
OK, so check out the vocab quiz.
It will definitely help you as well.
So a lot to learn from the episode.
I hope you've enjoyed listening to me rambling on about my holiday.
Maybe it was a bit self-indulgent just to talk to you about all the things I did, as if that's important at all.
But hopefully you've seen it as a good way to learn vocabulary in context with me today.
It's great to be back on the podcast.
The next episode will probably be that conversation with my daughter.
And people have requested more episodes with her ever since I did that animal vocabulary quiz earlier this year.
So, yes, you'll get a good episode with her probably in the next one.
And then I've got loads of other ideas coming up.
Thank you for listening.
Remember you can sign up to LEP Premium to get loads of dedicated teaching content from me vocab grammar pronunciation practice, where I focus all my attention on teaching you stuff.
I don't do really much rambling.
It's all focused on getting English into your head and out of your mouth.
That is the idea, teacherluke.co.uk slash premium.
If you want more information about it, teacherluke.co.uk slash premium info.
All right.
Thank you so much.
Leave your comments in the comments section.
I would love to know what you did during your holiday, why you think Norway is a happy country, how you would describe the happiness level in your country and any other comment that you would like to give.
Let us know that you're not a skeleton.
OK.
And you could use the word leave in your comment, maybe even saying something like I just wanted to leave a comment, or anything.
If you want, use the word leave, L-E-A-V-E.
That could be your key word, your secret password, to show that you listened all the way to the end without becoming a skeleton.
Thank you for listening to Luke's English Podcast, everyone.
I will speak to you in the next episode.
But for now, it's time to say goodbye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Thanks for listening to Luke's English Podcast.
For more information, visit teachaluke.co.uk.
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