Do you think dragons on the ends of my roof would be over the top in Eugene?

It's a rainy day here in Balestrand so I'm sitting at the bar/lounge at the Kvinke's Hotel drinking coffee (yes, still $4 a cup, no free refills), answering emails and reading up on Bergen in the Lonely Planet guide. My mom and I took a rather wet walk around town this morning. We have completely opposite views on what is a cute looking house. She likes the more modern houses and I like to older slightly run down ones. My houses (how posessive is that?!!) are beautiful. The ends of the roofs have dragon heads carved into them and bizzare faces in the edges of the windows. Their ornate paint job is flaking, but it must take months to repaint one of these houses in detail. Did I get pictures for you...um, no. Ok, I have this phobia about taking pictures of other people's houses. Somehow I start to feel weird about it...invasion of privacy kind of thing. I know they are probably use to it, but I'm just a bit too empathetic. I did get some nice pictures of the small church here. You'll see those later. When I'm a wealthy man and ready to build my own house, I think I'll take my architect on a tour of all my favorite style houses around the world and show her what roof lines make me drool. Dragons definitely fit in that category. Do you think dragons on the ends of my roof would be over the top in Eugene?

I like the great orange/yellow paint job on many of the houses here. My mom can't stand the color. The color seems to match the landscape for me, especially as the leaves turn color into their own shade of oranges, yellows and reds. I also figure that when the homes are 6 feet under snow, it makes it a bit easier to find. After all, in the depth of winter they get only four hours of light. It probably helps to cheer up the neighbors to look out at such a bright house. Red is another favorite color for houses. There are white houses, but they are rarer. Maybe it is natural selection as the owners get caught out all night when they can't find their house in a snow storm. This color orange, well, that would be over the top in Eugene.

Finally, I just want to make a quick comment about the sizes of the houses here. They are huge! I mean really really large. I can understand needing to be tall since you have to enter them through the second story in winter, but they are wide too. I've heard Norway has the highest birth rate in the EU (which you know must be due to the endless winter nights), so maybe they have lots of children to house.

I've put a few pictures of waterfalls up. There are so many waterfalls everywhere, but not very good pictures. Some were taken out of the train window and you can see the reflection. They are pretty darn high, especially the ones that start at the top of the fjords and work their way down...which would be just about every one. The landscape is full of them. It's almost like a virtual shower.