Cabin weekend

Hi, friends! Missed me? I don’t know what I do with my time, it flies so fast! I’ve been trying hard to learn how to drive responsively and it seems to be such a big task for a wooly-headed person like me. I keep driving 20 km under the speed limit on a highway and 20 km over in the city! Plus I get really impatient with bikes and people who cross the street when they shouldn’t. Not to mention that I can’t concentrate for two hours in a row for the life of me, I probably have some undiagnosed ADD, ’cause I’ve always been like that. Haha!

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Rhubarb and Strawberry Compote

The perfect summer dessert for me is fruit, preferably with a little twist- be it some vanilla sugar, chocolate coating or a simple dash of rosé. And since rhubarb is in season, what better way to treat yourself than putting together a compote to chill you down in the evening hours. We’re experiencing full summer in Norway, almost a heat wave, I’d say. And as it always is when you’d rather be at the beach, I’ve been working in court these days and so I had to dress accordingly. However, when I finally get home, it’s off with all the office clothes, on with the bikini, sparkling wine in hand and dessert on my mind. 😉

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Gothenburg

17th of May, Norway’s national day, fell on a Thursday this year and since it’s Pentecost on Monday, yippie yay for yet a long bank holiday! And given we’re not into crowds, flags or loud intoxicated youths and we don’t have children who play in a band, we thought we’d skip the whole shebang and escape to Sweden! And it turned out Gothenburg was a hidden gem, at least in this summer weather we’ve been having! “One should think Italy moved to Sweden”, I told a bartender excitedly, while waiting for him to pour our rosé. “I know, it’s unbelievable, it’s even hotter than the Mediterranean these days!”

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Garden Life

I haven’t blogged in a long time and I realized I’ve kind of missed it! The thing is I’m trying to write “real stuff”- short stories or even a novel and the process is exhausting, I’m telling you! Besides, it leaves me with a feeling that blogging is just amateur writing that no one reads anyways. But then a couple of friends told me they were looking forward to my new entries and so I decided to let you know how things are on this side of the world. 😉

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A Weekend in the Mountains ‘

In Norway, having a cabin is like having a grandma in the countryside in Romania. Everybody has it, except for us, the newcomers. And since I have a dog and no kids, I seldom get invited anywhere- at this cabin we can’t have dogs, at the other we’re going with the kids (no thanks!) and so on. Oh, and I forgot to mention that I don’t ski, I have a tendency to complain at times and I can be quite a pain in the ass if not in the mood for company. Beat that!

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Writing

At night, words are bubbling up from the depths of my conscience and they won’t let me sleep. I could write a whole novel in one breath, yet I feel paralyzed by the fear that I’ll lose “a good night’s sleep” and ruin my next day, so I keep struggling, one foot out of the duvet at a time, stretching my muscles, I’m so tense one would think I was carrying rocks on my back all day long, not interpreting.

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Bucharest part II

I was a bit disappointed to hear that F was teased at work since he’d caught a cold and stayed home for a couple of days right after our trip: “Did you get food poisoning in Bucharest?” a French buddy said. “I hear you were in Bucharest”, a Czech colleague added, “it must have been wild!” And I know it was all a joke to them, but I have to admit it hurt. Here we are in 2018, traveling like never before and still harboring the same stereotype views of the world. Book a trip, I blurted out! We decided to invite them and serve them Romanian wine the same quality and price range as the French ones, hiding the label to see their reaction. ‘Cause it’s easy to classify persons as “ignorants”, but the thing is many decent people probably feel the same way, but don’t say it out loud and so nobody ever corrects them. Anyways, rant of the day.

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