Christmas 2021

Hi you all! Long time, no see. I won’t make any excuses about the time, there’s never enough time, but when there is, I seem to be letting it slip from my hands by doing nothing much. November has been cold and I’ve been sitting by the fire, pretty much like my cats used to do. 🙂 I guess it’s not really a waste of time, as long as it’s a sort of therapy- your body and mind tell you that you need to rest and you’d better listen. Especially since I’m still waking up at 5 am and the days are a mist of a never-ending todo-list. Too bad this inactivity usually spills over into my admin work, so that I’m way behind with my VAT again. But that’s a different story.

How have you been? I miss you commenting my entries, but hey, as long as I’m hardly ever in here anymore, I can’t expect you to be. 😉 We’ve been decorating a little, it looks really Christmassy and cosy here. And Madeleine and I made gingerbread twice, with the kind of dough you buy in the stores, since I can’t seem to find the inspiration for any real baking these days. She really enjoyed it, both eating the dough (and the cakes) and fooling around shaping it. 😉 I won’t even mention the mess…

Work is slow, but I don’t mind it that much, as long as I know I have a couple of cases coming up in January. I’m finding it harder and harder to put up with the way interpreters get treated, but I won’t even go there, I feel like a broken record as it is. I should probably do something entirely different, but until the day I figure out what that might be, I’m taking my Bachelor in interpreting, to be on the safe side. Just handed in my exam, I wrote all kinds of personal bullshit and I’m not expecting to pass, but at least I gave it a go.

Otherwise I’m really close to taking my driving test (and hopefully my driver’s license), I’m already planning to lease a car in February or March. Cross your fingers! I can’t bear another day without a car! I know it’s not politically correct to even think that, but the city is not made for getting around by bus with a toddler in pram and between walking Sam, her getting her nap and the short winter days- it gets dark at 3:30!!- we seldom get to do anything else than buy cocoa at the coffeeshop 5 minutes by bus from our home.

Christmas is around the corner and I’m looking forward to a break from it all. We bought very little presents and just gave each other a vintage lounge chair, the type you sit in by the fireplace. For Madeleine I ordered a toy train set, a book (mostly because I’m bored reading the old ones) and a set of jumper and beanie in a traditional Norwegian knitting model. I used to hate them before, maybe because I also had one when I was little and it itched like hell, but now I find them really cute (and warm). 😉 What are you getting your loved ones for Christmas?

Hope to be back with a recipe soon!

xxx, Alina

Ålesund

Vestlandet (the Western Coast of Norway) has the same appeal for me as a movie star- yeah, it might be pretty, but that’s also all it is to me. Because living in Volda many years ago was so hard- both in regards to the language, to adjusting to a new culture, its rainy weather and its taciturn people, I never feel like going back.

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Bergen

I was in Bergen on a short business trip and I thought I´d write a couple of posts about this town I love so much. An old Hanseatic harbor situated on the West coast of Norway, Bergen has got charm galore. The city center is contained by 7 mountains and preserves a small town atmosphere with wooden houses, narrow streets and lane ways, a meat market and a fish market, coffee shops and stores. It expands before your eyes as houses seem to be clinging to the mountain back. Nature is majestic and so is the architecture. And the people are so much more polite than the average Norwegian, you wouldn´t believe it!

Bergen was my adoptive home under a 3 months´trial in 2012 and I fell in love with it at once. Unfortunately, the weather is pretty bad due to the town´s geographical position- it´s raining cats and dogs and not only once in a while, either. And since I wasn´t in luck yesterday, I had to do my best with my camera and frozen feet and defeated the rain and my need to stay indoors by the fireplace.
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