friendship

Christmas as 4

This year we’re celebrating Christmas the 4 of us: me and F, Madde and Sam. ❤ I’m trying to find the Christmas tree foot stored somewhere in the attic, ’cause, guess what: We’re getting a tree! I’m so excited I could jump for joy, had I not been so sleep deprived that.. But that’s another story.

Since we moved into a new apartment in February, we’ve been negotiating a new style together- I have things to fill a whole house, but it’s stuff I bought on my own or in “my previous life”, so we’re trying to find something that both can live with. 😉 Which is why we’re not gifting each other anything this Christmas, instead we’re getting this lovely lamp from &tradition. It’s called Copenhagen, one of my favorite cities. We wanted to make sure it would come on time for the holidays and because I dared to ask, we were able to buy the one on exhibited in the store with a big discount. Yay!

My George Nelson bubble lamp is not double insulated and so we have to find another pendant for our living room table. And who would have thought it would be such a hard task? I’d been looking at Louis Poulsens PH lamp, but it has the same shortcoming, so we’ll have to search some more. Do you have any advice?

I had to get a new Mac since my old one ended on the floor with a cup of coffee aboard and I need to buy an Apple Card for my memory card, or else I can’t seem to transfer pictures from my camera. And you know me, these things take a lifetime to get sorted, which is why I only have pictures from my mobile. But I’ll leave you a cute picture of my two babies who seem to make friends with each day that passes.

I hope you have a lovely holiday and drop me a line if you feel like it.

xxx, Alina

London 2019

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As I was telling you about, I have a school project on documentary photography and that brought me “all the way” to London. Did I mention I have two close friends living here and that it was my birthday on Friday? No? ‘Cause these two facts might have played a minor role in my choosing one of them as the person to follow over the course of three whole days . 😉

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Friendship

The smell of fresh coffee, the neighbor’s drill, the morning fog and Sam curled up like a fox on his door mat on the balcony. Mornings like this make me feel so much alive! It’s Monday again and somehow it only makes it better, because everyone else is working. I have tons of things to do myself, but no pressure when it comes to any particular order. Even Sam doesn’t seem to mind having to wait a bit for his walk. He came in, gave me a peck on the cheek, or rather let me ruffle him a bit, then we had a go at playing ball, meaning I threw it and he fetched it and went outside with it. Game over.

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Lunch at Energiea

Most times I come to Bucharest, I make sure I fit a lunch or coffee with Irina, a high school friend, in my “busy” schedule. 😉 It’s so refreshing to meet with someone so different and easy going in the “run, run, run” mentality of Romania, I can’t even begin to tell you. Things seem to be changing a bit though and the younger generation appear more hedonistic than my friends, more set on leisure time and freelancing, just like me.

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So we met at Origo, my favourite place, both for the coffee, the people and the shade, where I’d just managed to empty half a cortado in my lap, on the same silk dress a pigeon had “blessed” a day before. Haha! I wasn’t even furious, I felt like a kid with an ice-cream, unable to eat it without smudging all over herself.

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I’d asked the guy next to me on the bench if he liked Bucharest, since he spoke English and carried a huge camera, just like me. And he told me yes, it was his second time and he came all the way from Texas. When I told Irina she was like “I can get somebody straying once, but coming back to Bucharest?” Haha! I told her I totally got it, especially if you’re not into sights (like I’m not), and more into people and taking a city’s pulse with a camera on your neck.

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We had a lovely elderflower lemonade to go with our pasta and salad lunch and raised the bar with a Prosecco by the end, since it was Friday and we only see each other once a year. 😉

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Irina has a 3 year-old boy and we chatted about sleeping and reading routines, I mentioned my Diana one too many times and I might have slipped in Sam, too, even though he’s “just a dog”, since he’s my only kid. 😉

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We spoke of other colleagues from high school, how some of them never seem to have time to meet, how others have secluded themselves and others again have just disappeared from the map.

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I’m going to visit her at home today, so stay tuned for pictures of what I hear is a lovely garden and “maybe”, if I’m allowed, of a toddler. 😉

xxx, Alina

My Party

I’m going to Bergen for four days and I can’t wait. Actually I wish I could stay home in my pjs and make the same amount of money, but since that doesn’t happen to us, mortals, I can’t wait. 😉

On Saturday I hosted a lovely party and I had such a good time I will now be able to work without recess until Easter. 😉 haha! I did wear a cute dress and high heels, but somehow I completely forgot to take pictures and the ones we took in the beginning made me look like a witch, so no go. 😉_MG_0017(older picture) Continue reading →

Stavanger in Winter Clothes

The second half of this year I’ve spend working my ass off, billing and paying debts and I’m still miles away. 😦 Luckily I’ve had a couple days out of town here and there, so I used each opportunity to have a short city break. And Stavanger was no exception. I was there in court with a good friend of mine for two days and we had a blast. Heroines by day, superwomen by night. Haha! I’m exaggerating, of course, all we did was have a late dinner on the first evening and an early one the second one. But it felt so good catching up, no kids to tend to, no dog to walk, lots of time to buy the last Xmas gifts (for her) and to get a Xmas haircut (for me)._mg_0053 Continue reading →

Sunday in the Woods

Today I took my Sammy to the woods by Nøklevann. First we had our morning coffee at Gordanas’s, where Sam chased a toy mouse and a tennis ball when he was not tickling the girls and stealing kisses from them.

“Did you bring woodsy clothes today?” (the girls)

“This.”

“Will you be warm?”

“I think so.”

“Where’s your wind jacket?”

“I don’t own one.”

“Alina!”

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Stavanger

A couple of weeks ago I received a mail about interpreting during a two-days case in Stavanger and although I answered within an hour, they´d already found someone else. I have to admit I was a bit beat up about it, not that much for the money itself, but for the opportunity to travel. Besides, what made me really upset was that the trial is in November, but an interpreter is not seen as worth more than a couple of minutes’ waiting, if you’re not available, someone else will be. So when I got a call on Friday afternoon about traveling there yesterday for work, I immediately said yes, although it took a couple of arrangements to make it. _MG_9366.jpg Continue reading →

Best friends

We were loud. Boy, were we loud! Back in high school, loud was all we knew. Crying for attention, begging to be seen. We felt we could have it all (at least I did) and yet we belonged to the sacrificial generation that had no illusions of a better future. Only dreams. But God did we dream! Our dreams were as wide as corn fields, as tall as skyscrapers! We would make it, and make it big!

Many years later, it´s still the two of us. People come and go, friendships last for a while and so do relationships, even we found ourselves estranged from each other on more occasions than one, but we hold on to each other until we patch things up and move forward. I´m not good at calling, neither is she, she doesn’t even have a fb account any more and so months go by without us sharing a word, but when we do meet it´s like in high school all over again. We laugh until we cry, while sharing a bottle of Prosecco and telling each other all sorts of funny stories from our lives and line of work, me with my criminals and she with her pupils, I tell ya, it´s one hell of a life we´re leading!

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