eating out

A night out in Bucharest

Since we´re on a holiday in Bucharest for some days now, we decided to invite my family out for a better meal. Choosing a restaurant would normally sound like a nice and simple task, but proved to be a mine field this time. Not this one, not that other one, not in the city centre, ´cause the buildings are crumbling down, not traditional food, ´cause it´s not properly cooked, but not Italian, either, ´cause you don´t go to town to eat spaghetti, you get the point… The whole thing turned into a quarrel and I and my father no longer speak for the moment. Democracy was never the strong point in our family.

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A night out at Tøyen Bodega

Yesterday we were supposed to entertain some friends, but I got called away for work and then, as a last minute thing, they cancelled. I didn´t feel like cooking anymore, especially since I´d caught a cold in the meantime, so I suggested we try our local tapas place instead. 😉

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Last days

During the last days I´ve been thinking elections, revolution, patriotism and how my life would have been if Romania was a country one could go back to. As in living there. Not that I necessarily would do that, but I wish it were a viable option. I was barely able to sleep and I felt light and full of color. I felt a sense of belonging in all this story, a feeling I often miss both as a foreigner here and in my line of work. You see we, interpreters, are neutral, we don´t belong in any camps.

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Saturday

This week has gone fast and yet not fast enough. I´ve started working  9-4 with a few exceptions and it´s good to be able to come home and walk Sammy and make some food without constantly being in a rush. I managed to go to the gym once and I hope I can attend yoga tomorrow. It feels good to find some time for yourself. I spend enormous amounts of time on Netflix, but that´s because I´m too tired to do anything else. I´m bad with manicure, but I love it when I have one, so I realized I had to prioritize a bit. Breakfast or manicure? The latter!;-)

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Santorini

I couldn´t wait to share my travel adventures with you! I would have already done it from Santorini (although it might have come across as a bit pathetic!), but the internet connection was rather slow. 😉 First and foremost: Santorini is every bit as wonderful as the travel guides will have you believe! Its picture-perfect appearance greeted me every morning and I really couldn´t believe my luck of waking up to such a sight!

Our first day was very stressful since Vinsanto Villas, where we´d paid for our stay in advance, had double-booked and tried to pass a shitty hotel in the middle of nowhere as an upgrade. That made me so furious I was literally ready to jump on the guy´s face when he calmly told us there´d been a mix-up and besides the hotel was renovated, just not our room! haha! How funny is that?! In the end they moved us to Nomikos Villas in Firostefani (we were supposed to stay in Imerovigli) and covered the difference. The villas themselves had nothing wow over them, but our room was spacious and clean, we had a pool, a bar and air condition. And, best of all, we had our own private balcony with stunning views of the caldera!

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Trondheim

Once in a while I get to travel in my work and this time the trip went to Trondheim. Although I´d been here before, last time was a brief weekend visit two years ago and before that I was a student mainly concerned with shopping and partying, so I can´t say I´d seen the city properly before. This time Vuong came along to keep me company and check out shops to place his products in, so I was in luck! Otherwise I would have most probably eaten i my hotel room and spent most of my afternoon napping. 😉 Remember I´m a napper?

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I´m back!

In case you´ve missed me, I´ve been down with a terrible cold with fever and sneezing and the whole shabam. And since I had some work to do instead of  nurturing my cold it took me ages to recover. Now I´m back on track and ready to roll!;-)

Anyway. Let me tell you about the week that passed. It kind of started on Wednesday, before that I was too sick and too tired to care about anything else than work and sleep. To sum it up, it was all about eating and socializing, as I was lucky not to have too much work on my agenda.

Wednesday- lunch with my lovely friend Elif at The Nighthawk Diner, burgers and fries. Chit chatting and chilling, the perks of being a freelancer finally pay off.

Thursday- out with my friend Kristin, dinner and margaritas at Taco Republica. It´s a fairly new and trendy eatery in Oslo, where they only serve organic food in a cosmopolitan environment.

Friday I had lots of time for my beauty sleep, but also for a walk with Sammie, his girlfriend and a couple of friends. In the evening we attended a fare-well party for a Danish friend who´s both moving back to Copenhagen and getting married. Now that´s what I call a wonderful excuse for social get-together and some bubbles!

Saturday greeted us with sunshine, Vuong took Sammy to the woods while I saw The Forsyte Saga. We then met some friends for coffee, had Chinese dim-sum  at Taste of China and made some pizza for a couple of friends in the evening.

Today was for a good day for soup and reading The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak. It´s a compelling book, but not really my type of writing, so I can’t wait to start a new one.

Here are some pictures.  Hope you had a good week!

xx, Alina

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