Beauties of Barcelona

Dream City

Barcelona - I love you!

In August, some clever friends invited me to go to Spain in February. Cheap tickets! We went. After a week of open-ended scavenger hunts, cheese orgies, wine swims, shopping sprees and pure bliss, I am deeply grateful. Go to Barcelona! Get lost in narrow streets and empty your pockets of Euros! Have a really thick chocolate caliente! Have ham!



I am a little bit sad to be back in Norway, where my red tango shoes with high heels are of no use for another few months. But I look at them once in a while (while keeping close to the fireplace) and remind myself which city to go back to.

Rain, rain, go to Spain (except this week)

Weather report for Bergen:
Strong winds and neverending rain. Felt temperatures down to -5 degrees Celsius.


Weather report for Barcelona:
Sunshine and light afternoon breezes at the most. Temperatures up to 17 degrees Celcius.

The look on my face:
:) :) :)

Peculiar Christmas

Yes, yes, I know it's February, but I just came accross some photos from Christmas, which I spent at home with a black-snouted dog, Daymon and my parents. There was absolutely no snow (but then it made sure to show up later). Still, we went tree-hunting (in legal places) with Sunniva on the day before Christmas.

I hearby withdraw all previous claims that Norway is not cold

Minus ten has been torturing my area for a week. Protruding body parts threaten to fall off, and the icy ground is too freezing to make you slip. Everyone is outrageously cold, but as some of you have already guessed, I am colder.

Skiing would be a great activity if only we didn't freeze our toes off trying to go about it. I'm so cold I don't know what to do but glue myself to the fireplace.

Rumours have it the temperature up in the inland mountains has been down to -30. Minus 30! The one time I experienced minus 20 (not in Norway, but in Freezing Finland), the dampness from my breath made my top and bottom eyelashes freeze together.

I just got myself a place to stay for three months in Sogndal, where I work. However, due to the utter graveness of the current circumstances (i.e. having to heat a whole house by myself), I have sought refuge in my parent's house until the weekend is over.

A Little January Tour

The blog has been out travelling! In one week I was lucky enough to catch Maria and Daymon in London, Jo in Brussels and Margunn in Førde (above). The short visit was a stop-over on the way between Norway and Belgium for work. Most of the time in London was spent consuming old pleasures at Chapel Market and on Upper Street. Maria managed to trap me into entering Gap and French Connection's local stores on the last day of the sales. Apart from this we feasted on Turkish food and Efes beer at Gallipoli Again and gobbled sausage and mash at The Narrow Boat down by the canal. After two heavenly days in London, I travelled to Brussels to attend my meeting (in a new EU project on local biodiesel production), staying in Margunn's old room, now inhabited by Jo, as Margunn is on her way to Sudan. Margunn's and now Jo's house is also inhabited by a lovely group of people and an insane kitten called Camille, whose maniac hobbies included throwing himself against the glass door leading to Jo's bedroom and climbing up my woolen scarf. Brussels was nice, but definitely not the bustling, hyper-international city I had expected to find. What's with the no cash points after work hours? The cobble stones messing up suitcase transportation? The medieval airport bus? And the tiny airport? I really liked it, though. Brussels has definitely found a new friend.

Letter from Ankara

Merhaba!

And now in a brief interlude between Norwegian postings, we bring you the weather from Ankara, Turkey.

Ataturk's Mausoleum, Anit Kabir, Ankara: Saturday

Roman Baths, Ulus, Ankara: Following Saturday

Sizin Turkiye Muhabiri. (or something).

Solo-Silje

Silje plays solo for the first time in the history of mankind.





This unmissable event took place last weekend in a very small clothes and records shop in a very small street called Skostredet. In Bergen, of course (the city of all current musical geniuses). The audience, a good 100 crammed into a room the size of your living room, included celebrities such as Margunn, Sigrun, Ragnar, Sid and Idun. Needless to say, the blog offers its sincerest congratulations!





If you are keen on the details and master Norwegian: http://www.studvest.no/kultur.php?art_id=5776





You could also go to MySpace and type "Silje Nes" for a wee sound snack.

Christmas & New Year

Christmas may be a holiday, but it is certainly a busy one! The blog will be back shortly, it just needs to celebrate New Year first.

Hugs to all who have been good over the past year!

Funny Winter

It's December, and the Russian bears are sleepless. Around here, winter is threatening to arrive,
but we are still waiting. Funny or not? The climate changes we are witnessing have to be real. Even extremist liberalists have started believing so, though they probaby think it ludicrus to demand any change in policy or individual behaviour just to save the planet.

Today, while walking my neighbour's dog with a former classmate, her baby girl and their dog, I witnessed about four kinds of downpour, ranging from hail through snow, sleet and rain. The snow actually stayed on the ground - finally - covering the green, drowning grass for a moment.
I'm not sure this relieves my fears that something very odd is about to begin.

Klimaangst

Eg tel. Dette er minst 3.toreveret på Leikanger i november/desember. No sit eg på jobben, klokka er nesten ti, og det er stupmørkt med lyn ute. Det er ikkje for ingenting at eg har begynt å drøyme om vondsinna torevêr og kulelyn som følgjer etter meg

Beijing

The project on which I am working is about bringing Chinese and European researchers involved with Green Electronics together - through for instance conferences. So, it did make sense that we would go to China. This was my colleague's first time in Asia ever, and my second time in China. Just some quick photos from our even quicker trip

My colleague Otto and I with a very Chinese-looking tower behind, or so we thought



The Beijing Olympics stadions are practically rising out of the sandy ground as we speak! Our hotel was right next to the "Bird's Nest", a marvellous architectural creation in tangled steel



Otto before the presentation he gave of our project. It turns out my name too is now on a conference paper..!



Our "reactionary" logo, designed by a certain Silje (bottom left)



Researchers capturing the moment



Finally, I got to eat proper Chinese food again, in contrast to "Norwegian" Chinese food. Otto was a keen student of this new universe of food&drinks. Here, with a pot of heavenly tea.

Overhanging Dangers

A rock the size of three office blocks falls down on the only road out of my town



After a near death experience last night, flying in from Oslo in something so exceptional and freaky as a winter thunder storm, I decided to dodge danger and declared a day of "home office". This was a smart move as the road authorities decided to secure the mountain side by first making it very dangerous: An immensely huge and risky block had been discovered - and they wanted it down.

Curious as we are, my mum and I snuck out in monstrous rain for an extended home office lunch break to enjoy the wild heralded scenes of explosion and devastation. My mum decided to test a path she remembered having tried in the past (no doubt in bright sunshine and with no previous month of daily rain). Horrendous mudslide was the viscious result, but our shared desire to see the fantastic explosion saved us from another intra-familial quarrel. We got there just in time to have our ear drums shaken from behind a tree a few kilometres away from the spot ("in case of stone splinters"). Guess what: there was fog. But the bang was fun.

The tiny orange spots in the first picture are the wackos whose job it was to climb about 200 m up the vertical mountainside to place dynamite on the danger spot. They were still looking alive when we left. At the foot of the mountain, we ran into a bunch of former journalist colleagues who were also waiting for the horror scenes. My mum managed to get interviewed, while I kept a lower profile.

Summer...

November in Norway. No words can describe the darkness, the cold. Horror.

But luckily we have photos to remind us that life can be different. And then, how we long for the wonderful times when this (photos) was the colour of our skin. And the days when London was too hot to exist indoors, and life along the canal, in an air con building or under a tall tree in the park were the only viable options!

Our PhD Princess

Friends... You are looking at a photo of someone we may now refer to as Dr. Sultana Pavlou! Tania passed her university's grilling session - without having to make a single change - just a few days ago.


This basically means that her PhD is made of gold, as is her brain and entire self. Tania...I'm incredibly proud of you.

Congratulations!

Is Small Ugly?

An example of how small places may simply get too small

I was in a taxi. Not one for just me, but a huge big shared maxi one. The other passengers, like me, had flown in from Oslo and Bergen half an hour earlier. All of us were going to Leikanger [where my parents live], and all 13 of us were employed at some state, region or independent office or institute [Leikanger being something like a mini Brussels, where about 1500 out of 2000 inhabitants are "bueraucrats"].

It was pitch dark as the taxi approached Leikanger, and this is where it gets exciting. In any other case, the young man driving the taxi would have inquired about where the 13 individuals wanted to get off. But not in my teeny-weeny town. This is where the driver simply slows down his vehicle, swithces on the interior car light for about five seconds and scans the back of his taxi. Then - one by one - we politely get dropped off in front of our homes. Directions, [God forbid!] are seen as superflous; after all there is not a soul in town whose life is not to some extent monitored by the silent We.

Incredible as it may sound in our security scandal-haunted times, this mechanism of instant identificaton still allows all 2000 of us to dial the bank's number and ask the clerk to make payments and transfer money between our accounts, based on pure voice recognition. To be honest, I am not sure whether I like it or not, because this also means that news travels fast. The downside: Puke in a person's flower bed today, and (you can be damned sure) you feature in the jungle telegraph tomorrow. (Not that I ever did that).

This is FOOD

You may think I'm joking, but I'm definitely not! My friend Sunniva and I were visiting a farm nearby to have a hundred kilos of apples transformed into pure apple juice, and suddenly found ourselves standing right underneath these poor wooly creatures' former heads...

Grilled sheep's heads are immensely popular as autumn and Christmas food in Western Norway. I've never had one, but friends of mine boast about having swallowed the eyes. Yikes! Whoever wants to have a go is welcome to visit between now and Christmas...

Highlights from work I: I'm a Trainee

(Photo: T.Bickhardt)

My job is not only about research conducted from a tiny office (luckily). The photo shows me rowing a boat with the eight other trainees taking part in this year's trainee programme in my region. On the agenda is personality development and cross-institutional network building. For the purpose of becoming more of a team we spent about two hours rowing an old church boat to a tiny, roadless farm where we ate locally produced goat meat. Being a trainee is not bad!

Postcard from Idun/flying in from outer space

My darlings everywhere - how are you all? Me: busy, too busy to even begin to locate the telephone to phone you. Living is just so demanding right now, or (and this scares me) is this just my first taste of Life After Studying?

That was the excuse. Here comes the news. Or...there is none. Jeez, I am exceptionally scatterbrained today, but at least it made a nice rhyme. Oh, yes: I started my new job. It's great - great colleagues and interesting though sometimes peculiar tasks (nanotechnology). I am being taken care of in a zillion ways - I now have one mentor for every finger on my hand. Two days into my employment I was sent to a conference. Nice, I thought. Then, this week, nanotechnology in Stockholm, and the coming week, a trainee seminar. Also, my first application deadline is coming up. Life IS a deadline; life moves fast. So, I've never slept so little in my own bed before! But still nice.

It's unbelievably pleasant to be home. It feels like a holiday, but one that never ends. The fire place is lit at night, someone bakes an apple cake with Aroma apples from Husabø (it's a farm our ancestors once ran, and the trees remain). It's oh, so silent (No Murphys, Toby, isn't it great?) and you every morning you wake up with the mountains still outside. Examples:





Today is Sunday. I landed in Bergen on Friday, intentionally as a transit point between the work journey and a modified hen's party on Saturday. Somehow, my friend Silje talked me into not going to bed. This always happens, probably because I am weak and she is convincing. At 6 am we texted someone with whom I was to take the train at 8.40 am (for some reason in Finnish) to say that I would have to take the next. After three hours of deep sleep, I travelled to the next party, which began at 11 am on Saturday and ended early this morning. Buenanotte, brainpower! I can feel my body's "no battery" sign flashing...so long, my dears!

Important postscript, all ye foreigners reading this: In ancient times, Nordics believed their Gods, worn down by old age (plus, no doubt, drinking, fighting with swords and having Viking sex) could rejuvenate themselves through eating apples. Not just any apples: The apples of Idun. I am planning to have a bite right now, to see if it works.

Do not despair...

...the blog is only having a little break. It is exhausted after all the partying, and promises to be back any day now.