Hi, peeps! Whatcha doin’? I’m stranded in Haugesund until tomorrow morning and not happy about it one bit. In fact, instead of looking somewhat forward to traveling to a new place, yesterday I was sick to my stomach- leaving Sam and F and missing on our Friday night date made me cringe. As much as I love doing different stuff and escaping routine, I need some predictability and my line of work seldom offers a lot of that. As long as I can stretch my bones at home at the end of the day, I’m happy with all the traveling I have to do. But taking a plane to Western Norway only to realize there’s no flight back until Saturday morning, that’s a bit too much for a Virgo like me, even though I get paid for it.

But let me begin with this morning- I was awaken by the storm at 6 am, thinking the blizzard might take the entire roof with it. I managed to go back to sleep, rocking back and forth like a baby in need of soothing (I’ve been doing this since I was a young girl, when I’m distressed or can’t sleep) until 7:30 when it was time for instant coffee and newspapers in bed.

After breakfast, I had to find out where the Court house was. The rain had ceased, but it was so windy outside I was literally afraid I’d be blown off the sidewalk. My contribution to the trial was minimal and although I felt bad since it’s regular tax payers who cover my fee, I also felt relieved because it was a potentially difficult case and they hadn’t given me access to the documents before.

And so I went to find a hairdresser. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being a freelancer so many years, it’s that you have to do the most with your time away from home- I sometimes find sales, although I’m trying to be good on that department these days- I go to the hairdresser, I take a massage or I read an entire book in a couple of days.  I managed to find a nice and chatty hairdresser, it’s not that easy, you see, they have to be just right, able to talk freely, but not just about the weather and they have to take a real interest, otherwise I never go back. 😉 haha! 😉 And so she dyed my hair and I was done, I had no more patience for the haircut, too. haha! I’ll leave that for my next trip!

If I’ve been in court all day I usually need to take a nap or at least watch a no brain-series, but since today was easy-peasy, I felt ready for the world. So I bought a tiny bottle of red wine- I would have gone with sparkling, but my hotel room doesn’t have a fridge- and a chocolate bar and went home to unwind a bit. A colleague of mine is staying at the same hotel, but although nice and polite, he’s old and dry and I need to be around positive people tonight, so I chose to keep myself company. 😉 Haha! (Grown-up points, as they call it in Norwegian!)

Otherwise I find the town incredibly boring, they only have a tiny main street and everything else in the city center seems to have been left to the kebabs and Good- there’s a Christian bookstore, several Christian meeting houses and so on. They serve “komle” (you’ll have to google it!) on Thursdays here and there and I can imagine some Norwegians might find it a bit nostalgic and cute. But I really can’t grasp why anyone would want to live here. But then again, that applies for much of Northern Europe, to be frank.

As tempting as it is to just have that chocolate bar and red wine for dinner, I think I’ll put on some lipstick and go out for a soup or something. They say the marina is something else. You saw the picture. Stay tuned!

xxx, Alina

Picture source: kayak.no