Maja’s relatives are in South Tyrol but her new family lives on the far side of the village of Fåvang in Oppland. She summarize her life this way:
- So it is that I will always have to miss someone, either my original family or my partner. I like my life in Norway; it’s closer to nature than I experienced in Tyrol - though I find the Norwegian climate a little hard and could be glad with more sun and warmth. It’s become a bit of traveling back and forth!

Maria (called Maja) Tschimben comes from the Tyrol province lying in the north of Italy on the border with Austria. She came to Norway as an intern in agriculture, starting in 2007 as a dairy worker at Vesleseter, a collection of summer farms. Since then she has been in the small town of Fåvang. She met a farm worker at Vårheim, namely Engebret Pallsveen. Now they together run a farm with 80 milk goats and 60 sheep. Maja’s goal is for them to be as self- sufficient as possible. She makes preserves and a traditional Norwegian drink from berries, has learned how to slaughter, taken the test for a hunting license and gone to a course on making cheese so she can do it for their own use. Under the auspices of WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) they voluntarily welcome the whole world to their farm.

She has also learned to speak Norwegian with the Fåvang dialect, and has found that people in the Gudbrandsdal valley are cautious and not so direct.
- We South Tyroleans are more direct, livelier and clearer in what we say. Here it’s such that folks talk around a subject. You have to be careful about the way you say things and use expressions like, ”I don’t know, maybe, I’ll look at it …”.…”.

She thinks she has it good in Norway because she’s involved in what she wants to be doing. She feels welcome and accepted and is enthusiastic about how much room there is and all the berries she can pick in the forest. But sometimes she wishes winter was only a third as long as it is, and she misses liveliness, sun and warmth.

Now Maja and Engbret have become parents and what is someone to do to honor the naming traditions of two different cultures? Maja wrote this about her daughter’s name, Flora Anna:
- To choose a name wasn’t so difficult. Flora is a very ordinary name in the south, but not in the north. Finally we agreed to choose two names, one for the south and one for the north. In the meantime we’re just calling her “Flora “.