oslo

Park life

What have you been up to lately? For the last couple of days I haven´t had any assignments and the weather has been great, so we got to be outside most of the time (me and Sam), while V has been working his ass off to prepare for SEEK (Berlin trade show).

As I was agonizing about an invoice that the state hadn´t paid in 6 weeks instead of 3-4 and, feeling I would soon burst into a fit of rage (or worse, into tears!), I took my buddy Sam to the Botanical Garden to meet with a colleague and blow out some steam. And what do you know? The money came eventually and we got ourselves a pretty awesome day as a bonus! Picnic in the park! Another friend came after a while and we chatted, browsed through magazines, threw balls for Sam to fetch and went back and forth to the café for water, coffee and ice-cream. 😉IMG_5088 Continue reading →

Celebrating my husband´s success at Taco Republica

Yesterday my husband made his first satchel and I´m so immensely proud of him! He´s designing and making leather accessories by hand and although very talented, it´s been a tough ride. The Norwegian market is small and uptight and people are so rude, 90% of all mails he writes remain unanswered! This being said, we´re going to Berlin for the SEEK trade show! And we have high hopes! He´s already been contacted by a trade show in New York (they tried to persuade him to attend), an internet shop that wants to promote his products and a couple of private persons for smaller commissions. 😉 Yey!

So today we felt like celebrating his success and what better way to do it than with a beer and some tacos in the sun! In Scandinavia, you learn to make do with the weather you have and a sunny day is a festivity in itself! IMG_5066

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A Barbecue in the Park

Yesterday we had our first barbecue in the park and it made me jump with joy! You see, in my opinion, one of the best things about Norway is being able to make use of the city´s recreational spaces- parks, forrest, waterfront, you name it. You can have a picnic right in front of the Parliament building and work on your sun tan from the Opera house´s marble shores. Not like back home where you can´t even tread on grass or else you´ll get a fine! 😉 haha!

And since the weather was sunny and I didn´t feel inspired enough to cook, I suggested a salad and some baked veggies to go with grilled sausages and flat bread (we got some Lebanese bread, from the corner shop). So I packed a bag, told Sam we were going out, although it meant following me everywhere around the house, and started on the veggies.

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House of my dreams

I´ve always dreamt of the whole shebang- a man and three kids, a cat and a dog and, last but not least, a house with a garden in the middle of the city! For now I can only check husband, cat and dog! And a pretty airy apartment not far from the city centre at all. 😉

However, we´re kind of outgrown the place and besides we crave some private space outside and this cute little beauty would give us just that! Don´t you just love it? I could easily envision myself living there. And it´s two minutes from The Food Court I´ve been talking so much about lately.. 😉

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A Walk alongside the Aker River

The best thing about Sundays is waking up late, drinking coffee in bed and doing something together as a family. We usually pick a route and buy some potato nan from our local Indian place (Punjab) and then walk to a coffee place. We´ve been talking a lot about following the river Aker upstreams, back in the day it used to be quite shabby, but now they´ve cleaned it up really nicely and we didn´t meet any drug addicts or dealers in our way. IMG_4919 Continue reading →

Atelier Asian Tapas

Our friends have visitors from the big abroad, so we thought it´d be nice to go out for a meal and get to know their sister/sister in law. We´re huge fans of Mathallen (The Food Court) and it´s quite central, too, but for some reason we keep forgetting to go there lately. And since we´re trying to show Oslo from its best side, we booked a table at Atelier Asian Tapas, where they serve delicate Asian influenced dishes. With the same owners as Xich-Lo, a fantastic French-Vietnamese fusion restaurant in Oslo, one cannot expect anything less than exquisite taste and relaxed service. Atelier has high aspirations of becoming a regular meeting place and they have weekly events promoting Vietnamese food with a twist. It´s also the place you go to for a yummy lunch and a glass of Prosecco, especially on a Saturday afternoon.

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Today

Heia! How have you been? I´ve been running around these couple of days, between jobs, friends and home and my whole body hurts as though I´d been working with my back! Besides buying groceries and taking Sam out once out of three times, I haven´t done that much, but working as an interpreter sure takes its toll on me. After a 9 hours´ day, I usually fall half-dead on the couch and watch Hbo with V. (we´re on Brotherhood now and we love it!)

Today was not as busy however, so I managed to squeeze in a long awaited coffee with a friend of mine and Sam. We sat outside with our necks stretched towards the sun (while Sam was hiding under the bench) and I almost had a heat stroke, I swear! But it felt amazing, after all these cold days, when winter seemed to be never-ending, you need a bit of sun to feel alive again!

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A Lovely May Day

I love long weekends and May is full of them! This Monday was Pentecost and we had nice weather, so we went on a walk with our dear Sammy. They say this May is the coldest in some years (I forget how many, Norway is all about weather records as it is!), so I put on way too many clothes, just to find out I didn´t actually need a sweater and a wool scarf, a cotton one would have  done just fine. 😉

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Oslo life

This week has been quite uneventful for my part- I started working on Tuesday, did some laundry and some spring cleaning in between, took a couple of longer walks with Sammy, “stole” some lilac branches from the park every other day and went to a dinner party yesterday.

Norway is still giving summer a thought, keeping us “en suspense” for now and I find it hard to dress, always ending up on the wrong side of the scale, either too cold for my outfit, or too hot. Layering is the solution, I just need to learn how to do it properly! 😉

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1st of May

Yesterday we had a day off and had planned in advance to meet with our friends Kristin and Jack and their kids for a stroll in the Ekeberg Sculpture Park. I invited them over to our apartment first and served them freshly baked ham and cheese horns, coffee and juice. After playing with Sam and Beo, the kids were excited to go outside and walk for a bit. The park is just 15 minutes away from our place, but it´s like entering a whole different world nevertheless. An enchanted one. IMG_2884 Continue reading →