Here I am, back from an exiting road-trip with my mother.We planned on travelling north to Nordfjord, and then into the middle of Norway, and then down to Halsnøy were our family comes from. On our first day a thing broke on our car, can you spot it? (click pictures for bigger versions)( Under the cut )

So, my trip to Marrakesh. Unlike our trip to Istanbul we really didn't have much of an idea what we wanted to see and do. The tickets where bought mostly on whim. I wanted to listen to the storytellers at the Djemma el-Fna*, which I heard about a couple of years ago when I attended a course in storytelling. Hilde wanted to smoke waterpipe, and these were our plans at arrival.
*Djemma el-Fna, also known as Djemaa el Fna, or Jemma/Jami/Jeema/Jema/Jmma/Djmma/Djema el Fna. I follow the age-old Norwegian tradition by writing it the way I think it should be written based on how I pronounce it.
( Pictures ahoy! )

I just made a bid for a house - well a flat to be precise. It's really scary.
But I am totally fed up with sharing a flat, so it is about time.

In other news, Monday next week I'm going to Marrakesh with three of my friends, two of those I was in Konstantinopolis Byzantium Istanbul Miklagard The City with, and another friend of us.
So, if you think there is anything I must see and do there, this is the time to tell me. Also, if you really long to tell me about the book I ought to bring, no time better than the present.

ETA: Urk, if the seller/broker calls me one more time now, urging me to raise my bid I will scream. Don't they learn in broker school that some people don't like aggressive sellers and reacts negatively when wheedled, urged, - pressed - into decision? I suck at this house buying business.

This time to Miklagard Istanbul Byzantium Konstantinopolis - the City.

To-do list:
Hagia Sofia
Hamam
Eat

Back on Sunday! (The flying schedule is totally crazy, I'm leaving in the middle of the night and will be returning early in the morning - yay!)

I arrived back home in Bergen last night. Tired, gritty and dehydrated and with a hangover. (Although the party was worth the hangover. Great, great party.) In the taxi I was chatting with the driver about the weather and how I worried about my neighbours having a party, since I just wanted to sleep, and as I stepped out of the taxi I realised it was worse - there was a party in my own flat... Per was having a 70's pimp party (he'll be leaving early next week for Afghanistan where he'll be cooking for the Norwegian troops) and there was people, booze and quite good music - but really not what I was looking for just then. I watched a couple of stupid tv-films until the party dissolved (except the courting couple at the balcony) and headed for bed.

Now I'm lounging on my bed, waiting for my soul to catch up or something. After almost four weeks where I've been seeing the same (or some of them) 30 people every day, it feels weird, strange and quite luxurious to be lounging here, not doing anything, not having to read Faroese language or another short story for the literature classes. But most of all not having to interact with anybody.

Although I could unpack...
But I can also leave it till tomorrow...
And I need to repack, since I'm leaving for Istanbul Tuesday...

Hello dear listeners, this is Radio Mummimamma, reporting from Argir, just outside Tórshavn.

I am staying with a Faroese family, consisting of father, mother, occasionally their oldest daughter and her daughter, a Danish house-guest and now, also me. They are very nice, trying to talk to me in Faroese, and patient with me and my questions about everything remotely Faroese. They also feed me Faroese food, rye bread and skerpikjøt (dried mutton) for breakfast and for dinner eplir (potatoes), leyk (onion) and kjøt (meat) of some kind. Despite being the one living the furthest from school (all the others live in the towncentre of Tórshavn, I live outside it), I think I have been very lucky with my family. Some of the other students haven't even seen their hosts, just given a key, and asked to put some the rent in a envelope that vanished one day when they where at school.

The people on the course are, as these courses tend to be, a bunch of language nerds in one way or other. Aside from people from the Nordic countries, there are also people from the Baltic states, Poland and several from Germany here, all speaking one of the Scandinavian languages, and eager to learn another one (those crazy, crazy people). I haven't gotten to know all of them, but most seem nice - one thing with living privately as we do now, not in a school-dorm as last time, is that we don't see each other all the time, we don't get to know each other as intensely as last year, but personally I think that is a good thing. Not to forget the fact that staying in a local family is a good thing for language immersion.

The language is totally crazy. Well, the orthography is crazy. It's reconstructed in the around the 1900 to how they imagined it was written in the Middle Ages. Of course, there has been a lot of sound changes.If we see a g or an edd we have to stop and think whether it's supposed to be pronounced as j, v, w or perhaps not at all, but certainly not as it's written (except I think if the g is in a combination with a v, because that seems to be a later development). And all the vowels seems to have morphed into some kind of diphthongs that I find rather tricky to pronounce. So reading Faroese is possible with a little imagination and a fair knowledge of Norwegian and Western Norwegian dialects and some old Norse. But understanding it when spoken? Now that will take some time! Although I think it went well yesterday during dinner where we spoke Faroese all the way through. Well, I spoke "find an obscure word that my grandfather would have used and pronounce it in something that sounds Faroese" and my hosts spoke Faroese. I think we talked about he same things...

The country has showed itself from it's best side while we've been here. Sunshine and temperatures almost up to 20°, almost no wind, the sea has been falt and clear as a mirror most days, and when there has been fog in the mornings it has disappeared during the day. The air is crisp and clear, and is all very wonderful. But I can't quite understand how people have managed to eke out a living here through the centuries. Yes, there is fish and birds (lots and lots of pretty seabirds), and the sheep seems to thrive here inside their shaggy wool coats. But the earth is full of stones, wet and heavy, and the winds are constantly blowing, winterstorms do their best to tear down the trees that the people here in Tórshavn are trying to nurture (the city council gives every household an allotment of free seedlings every year to plant).

So far we've been on two day trips; Saturday we hiked from Tórshavn to Kyrkjebø, Sunday we took the boat to Nolsø and walked a bit around. My knees was too tired from walking the day before so I very far. Today is actually the first day I have had time to myself, well - have taken time to have time to myself, I could join the others in looking around in Havn (as Tórshavn seems to be commonly called here) to see if there are any other cafés than Café Natur where we have been hanging out this last week.

Hmmm, that was lots of generalities. But stay tuned to Radio Mummimamma where we will go deeper into the personal lives of the people on these windswept isles.

Oh, and in case you really wondered, black tea of decent quality is readily available here. I am rather happy. Now if I could only find some mint tea...

ETA: First batch of pictures are up here. Unannotated as of yet.

All right, then I will be leaving for the Faroe Islands in 20 minutes. This year I bring my computer, and I will probably be able to connect to the internet occasionally, but I'm not quite sure.

Also I hope that the family I will be lodged with are nice! *crosses fingers*
And that there will be enough tea!

And not to that the weather in Torshavn will be nice!

It is time for the important "mummimamma is going on a holiday"-poll!
In case you wonder what the tea-question is all about, you can read this.

Poll #996943 Faroe-poll
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

First: The important tea question

Which shoes do I need?

Recommend a book (or two). Any and all subjects.

Do you want a postcard (in case I get around to write some)

If you want a postcard, I need your address here. Remember name! And country! And all the things inbetween

Have an extra line :)

What have I forgotten now?

We got ambushed by summer here in Bergen. Yesterday we woke up to 20° and sunshine. I spent much of the morning trying to locate my left sandal, and the much of the day on my sofa, reading and breathing in the sweet smell of the lilacs in the gardens. I went for beer in the evening with a couple of friends. This morning was equally warm, until coffee break when it started raining, and now it's back to 12° and rain again. Nice to have met you, Summer!

In totally other news my subconscious and about of my third of my actual consciousness is busy planning the upcoming trip to the Faroe Islands. I'll have to pack for fours weeks. Four weeks of 11° and rain if I read the statistics right, so basically everything from full rain gear to my clubbing clothes a nice pair of trousers and a shirt. And twenty pairs of shoes. And my laptop. And books of course, I haven't quite decided which to bring yet. My new friend T2 is recommending me books by the sack load, so I have enough to choose from. Since there is the 400 pages of Faroese literature I'll be reading as a part of the course I will have to choose something that is fun. And something about something else. I bought a book about Bulgarian folk music in the last century. That might be just the thing to read.

But as the subject line indicate, it is the tea that worries me the most.

Since I am picturing the Faroes as a kind of South-Western Norway, only with more sheep I will need to bring some decent tea. If nothing I learned that last year in Finland: most tea bags consist of dried dust and whatever dustbunnies are made of. With a couple of twigs thrown in for good measure. And if it's like anything the parts of South-Western Norway I know (with less sheep) they freely sell it years after the "best before" date. So I decided to look the cruel truth in the eyes, admit my addiction and bring my own stash. Well until I read the guide book that is. Bringing tea into the Faroe Islands is restricted to 100 grams per person.

I AM A JUNKIE.
I have an average consumption of tea around 6 grams per day, and I will be gone almost four weeks. so I will be needing more than my allotted 100 grams to keep me going for that time. And there are days when tea is what keeps me going I admit. I can live with out alcohol, chocolate and coffee, but don't dare take my tea away from me! (You wouldn't dare anyway, I tend to become rather short tempered without my tea.)

So, should I become an evil TEA-smuggler or should I guilt everyone into sending me little tea-care-packages in my exile?
I am currently a bit conflicted whether I should make a reference to Ovid and his Letters from Pontos where he tells how bad everything is and they don't even have grapes there or to the Boston tea party.

Or I could get around to write that bloody abstract to the conference that I have postponed for a month now, and which is due tomorrow. Yeah.

Well, in case you're wondering I'm postponing the boring review (or was it read for the first time?) for my own exam. Second language didactics is is amazingly boring, but that is a whien for another time, now it's time for for me to recap my trip to Vienna.

As you know, I went with my choir to participate in the Schubert choir competition.

We arrived late Wednesday evening, so we got some time to spent walking around Vienna.( Here be pictures! Strangely many of them strangely fuzzy. I blame it upon the cold and the misty weather. )

...or where have I gone?

Hello! I'm back in Norway, well I've been back a couple of days now, but have been busy cultivating solitude (after three + weeks of people all around me I needed it).

First of all, niora Thanks for letting me stay, I had a great fun time! And if you don't want to wait until I get around to write about it, here is her tale about my stay.

Also a huge thank you to teap for entertainment in Helsinki!

But more about that later, and more about me now.

1) I had my last day at the cemetery. I was supposed to work for another 3 weeks, but due to 2) I I quit my job.

2) I got the position as a teacher at the University! Whee!! Until the end of the year for now. Not a full position though, about 80% I think. Sadly, since I am the youngest and most junior teacher- and have no children, all my classes are in the afternoon and evening. Scared! Worried about everything from lack of faith in my abilities as a Norwegian teacher to whether my clothes are teachery enough...

Now well, this just to keep you entertained while I locate my life.

About to leave the southeastern shore of Finland and head for teh interior. My course is over, and to recap the last week just to keep you entertained (or tease you) until I have time to write it down properly.

* Trip to the islands, strange people, rowing contests and drunk, drunk finns dancing. Singing for cider.

* Karaoke on Zilton. Which was a weirder experience than this should indicate.

* Writing, writing, writing paper. Presented yesterday. Horrible...

And now, off to civilasation again. And hopefully I can aquire postcards there because in Loviisa there are none!

...in fact the school I'm staying at has computers, and internet and stuff, so I'm not suffering so badly from my internet withdrawal as I feared.

So I am well and the other people on my course are mostly nice (of course I can't like everybody all the time, but I haven't gotten into any fistfights yet, so...). On the other hand I have a theory that the cafeteria staff here suffer form some kind of illusion that we are attending some kind of "Fat Camp" and need to eat every 2 hours. So aside from the breakfast, hot lunch with dessert and dinner there's two or three coffee breaks with some kind of buns or other baked stuff and an evening meal of some kind... I am really worried about my weight since the food is rather tasty and I just can't stay away...

Else we have lectures and excursions every day and by the end of this course we will be thoroughly filled with propaganda of the wonder that is Finland-Swedes. Personally I am more interested in finding the militant Swedish-speaking Finns, but they seems to be mostly absent, something I find a bit curious considering the at times rather heated Norwegian language debate...

Now it's time for some food again...

Not there yet, but soon. My plane leaves in seven hours and I have packed, and have probably forgotten something, but there really isn't room for anything more in my backpack. I have totally forgotten how to pack. If I have ever known... I have kept reminding myself that, no, Finland isn't some far off third world country, so the only things you really need to remember are contact lenses and VISA card, although both may be possible to get even in Finland. It's not a wasteland after all. But there are a couple of things I'd like to bring which I haven't, namely my fishing rod, my yoga mat and my laptop (whiiine), since they all took up too much space and/or weight. Instead I have probably packed way too many clothes, but only one (1 - ONE!) fiction book (plus two dictionaries and a stack of papers and whatnots for the course)(and my written diary. And a new blank diary since the old one is almost full).

But even though I will not drink my dear laptop I guess that I'll be able to connect to the internet a couple of times, since Finland isn't a total technological wasteland (although I can't say anything for sure about the place I'm going too), so I'm putting up my usual postcard poll. You know the drill, name, address and country separated by a |

Poll #777228 Postcard?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None

Postcard?

And your address?

Need an extra line?

Right, I'd better get a couple of hours of beauty sleep before leaving.

The thing I miss most about not living at home is the balcony we had at home. It's a huge balcony, partly shadowed by the balcony to the flat upstairs.Whenever the temperature was over 15° C I used to sleep outside. I can't do that here - because the mattress will not fit on the balcony floor, and since it's an old type balcony everybody walking past or working at the faculty of science and the junkies in the park can enjoy the vista of my snoring form through the wrought iron railing. But I still miss it, so when I become filthy rich enough to buy my own flat I want a balcony with room for a mattress. I have strange priorities.

Hmm, I think the heat is starting to denaturate my brain. And yes, 25°C is hot. At least when I'm not used to it. Had a couple of beers with some of Hilde's anthropologist-friends the other day, all of us was sweating and swearing at the heat, despite that all of us have spent at least a year in some country where 25°C is balmy. I've been out drinking with those people exactly one time before and that time we ended up talking about The City, and how we all wanted to visit Miklagard - for various reasons, but most of all because none of us had ever been there and none of us spoke the language. So last week I got a text message that I had to come drink beers and talk about our upcoming trip to Konstantinopolis. Which is to take place in early September. Now if I could only remember the names of my travel mates...

And speaking of mates, friend and old fellow Greek student (one of two) is coming for a visit this weekend. Am looking forward to a weekend of drunken debauchery reminiscences.

And I really oughtn't replenish my water loss by drinking copious amounts of beer.

At last my trip to Finland is in order and next month at this time I am *peering at the plan* discussing the day's lecture in a group it seems. Anyhow, For those interested, I arrive in Helsinki Tuesday 25th at 1210 and am almost instantly whisked away to Pernå. After two weeks of ice cream, beer and sauna lectures and studying I arrive in Helsinki again Wednesday 9th of August around noon. The plane back to Bergen is leaving Friday evening. During that time I plan a trip to Joensuu where niora has offered me the use of her couch, but aside from that I have no specific plans, feel free to nudge me if happen to be somewhere in the vicinity at that time. Or tell me about the things I must not miss when I'm there.

Else my life is rather quiet, there's work and more work. I have started doing some consultant work at a second-hand bookshop; All the books written dead languages and with funny alphabets are set aside for me to look through and decide what they are about. Lots of strange stuff, one thing is the lurid copies of the normal classics - after all if the poetry is in Greek or Latin naked people are not porn it's art. One of the owners had felt inspired to make his own pen-drawings, with a pertinent quote underneath. Art. Really... And then there are the collections from the more religiously inclined. One million Bibles from the 1700s and a gazillion commentaries from the 1800s. So far my absolute favourite is a edition of Wulfila's Bible translation into Gothic, or particularly Paul's letter to the Romans. On one page there's the Gothic text with a pronunciation guide underneath and a direct translation (into Latin of course) underneath on one page. On the opposite page there's the established Greek and Latin text to the lines on the other side. And lots and lots of commentaries in Latin underneath. How have I lived all my life without the knowledge of this book? It's a fun job, and I have encountered a couple of ancient writers I have never even heard of before. Exciting! Well, not the writers, but the books.

And since we are in the literary world, these last weeks I have gotten more spam than usual, and almost all these emails have a paragraph from The Hobbit tacked at the end, kind of amusing actually. But it makes me wonder - how can anybody actually be fooled by spam? If someone offers you V 1 A G R 4 and a quote from The Hobbit, my first thought is Huh? not Must buy!. I much prefer the Russian girls who writes me telling me that they're sorry they haven't written me before, but they've had an unfortunate computer crash, but I can contact them at www.somephoneywebsite.com.

Yup, I'm alive and rather well. Spent Friday at my doctor's office trying to convince him that the tonsils must go! (and got some heavy duty pills to take away any infection before further tests). And yesterday trying to localise my backpack, which arrived midday. Someone had been looking through it (after the Israeli security hordes), because my someone had helped themselves to my back-up money (250NOK and 20 euro), the gift I bought to my mother and for reasons unknown - my membership card in UgleZ, the university GLB society.

Now well, the trip? I shall not bore you with rewriting the 45 pages I wrote during the trip. But is lengthy, over 3000 words, that is the problem with being away too much to say!

( I arrived in Tel Aviv in the middle of the night )

( The Wall must fall )

( NGOs, people with to many passports and a party with no water )

( Bethlehem )

( Jerusalem )

( The bathing nymph / the big white whale )

( Last day in Ramallah )

( To Tel Aviv, meeting LJers )

( Strip please! )

And that was the lengthy tale of my trip, although I might write some summary thoughts at a later date.

Oh, yes I have sent cards, but I'm not quite sure they'll arrive, since the box I put them in might quite possibly be a trash can. Also forgive me for the slightly dated selection of cards, but Ramallah doesn't seem to have had many card-writing tourists.

And tomorrow it's back to work.