Boldly going...

Hey everyone. I'm at work with Simon attempting to do the 'moral support' thing as we count down to the Thesis Submission. There's only 25 hours to go, 25 hours of blood, sweat, and tears. Well, sweat anyway. It is summer after all...

Anywho, back to Spain and Girona. The next morning we planned to head in to Girona by bus and catch the train to Barcelona. Unfortunately Simon managed to disappear for most of the morning. He had been trying to send an email to the University asking (begging!) to be allowed to continue his PhD. However, the hotel that we were staying in wasn't exactly the most high tech of places and the computer kept losing the internet connection and crashing. Meanwhile, I had stayed behind in our room to relax (read: pack) and was getting a little bit frustrated at the continued absence of my loved one. When he finally managed to return we had plenty of time to race downstairs, check out, race out to the bus stop, and miss the bus. ETA for the next bus? 1 hour. General grumpiness all round. This was when we learned our next lesson: if you sit at a bus stop for long enough, you will eventually find a bus going your way. 30 minutes into our wait, a friendly bus driver pulled over and picked us up. Lovely.

The train ride to Barcelona was fairly standard. We managed to negotiate the Barcelona Metro, found our hotel, and took a wander down La Ramblas. It's very touristy, but lots of fun with a heap of stuff to look at. We found the Mediterranean for Simon to look at (his first time), then tried to avoid all of the drunk Englishmen reeling down the roads. Some sort of football match had been played, England had won, the English were now happy, drunk, and happily (and drunkenly) singing about it. They even managed to outnumber all of the tourist pulling suitcases, which on La Ramblas is a pretty neat feat!

In true Spanish style, we met Simon's friends at 9pm and headed out for dinner. Dani and Cecilia took us to a food market by day/restaurant by night, and there we had our first taste of tapas. It was absolutely brilliant, the wine was great, and the company was pretty damn good too.

Dani met us the next day to take us sight-seeing. First up, the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's massive half-built cathedral that appears to have been modeled on a drippy sandcastle. There were tour buses and tourists everywhere, so I'm glad we weren't there in the middle of summer. The souvenir shop was packed (I ended up buying nicer postcards from across the road for half the price and NONE of the stress!) and we had to queue for half an hour to go in the lift up the spires (elevator up, stairs down - it's the only way they'll let you go and you have to pay 2 euro each for the pleasure!). Dani served as our tour guide, and as he'd done some sort of computer work on the cathedral he knew a heap of stuff that we wouldn't have got from the official guides. From there we headed to the Parc Güell, another of Gaudi's building projects. This one wasn't finished either, and although I have to admit that some of his stuff is very cool, most of his work suggests that he was a bit of a nutcase. Other highlights of the day included visiting Dani and Cecelia's very Barcelona apartment (tiny and EXPENSIVE!), escalators on the street, looking for drug dealers in the park (they're apparently very easy to spot), Native American street performers (odd, but true), and the fantastic Catalan restaurant that Dani took us to for lunch. Very posh, but oh so Catalan...

As Dani and Cecelia were going to Hong Kong the next day, they kindly let us stay in their apartment while they were gone. I think Dani was a little bit nervous as he gave us two contact numbers, showed us the gas at least 3 times, pointed out the nearest metro station a couple of times, and ran us through the entire procedure for getting in to the apartment. Two doors, two keys, one lift that broke down on a regular basis. He even took us down to the street and supervised the unlocking of the doors just to make sure that we were up to the task! We were therefore in absolutely no danger of getting lost as we rolled up with all our stuff after they'd left the next morning.

That day consisted of more Gaudi, with a visit to La Pedrera. That's the place with the rolling roof top that you tend to see on lots of travel programmes about Barcelona. We then decided to go to La Cortes Ingles, a department store with 10 floors of shopping!

Ah... La Cortes Ingles. Open 7 days, 'til 10pm every night. A supermarket with cheap wine and condensed milk in squeezy bottles in the basement, a restaurant/cafe on the top floor, and everything else you could want in between... sigh...

Simon was his brilliant self, the ideal shopping partner - he astounded all of the sales assistants by picking clothes and keeping me well supplied in the changing rooms. As usual, this made him a great favourite with the laaay-dies who spent the rest of the day either giggling at him or making eyes at him. Unfortunately, when it was his turn to try on clothes we found that we were on the floor that only catered to men a good deal thinner than Simon. Now, as most of you will know, Simon may be a bit cuddlier than he was when he was 20, but he is certainly not fat. It was at this point that we decided to console ourselves by buying some cheap wine to drink back at the apartment.

Well, Simon has decided that it's time to pack up and go now, so I'll leave my story there. Until next time...

It's so HOT! To those of you who were worried that Norway might be a bit cold for us I can reassure you that that is certainly not the case... In our last house in Dunedin we had a thermometer set up in our lounge that gave us both the inside and outside temperatures. Simon, being the sucker for anything remotely geeky and cheap, thought this was pretty cool and, as I'm the sort of person who hates to be cold, I did agree with him that this was indeed pretty cool. Somehow it managed to be smuggled in to our bags, so now it has been installed on the other side of the world providing us with all of the indoor/outdoor temperatures we could ever want. At the moment it's trying to tell me that it's 30.1 degrees. Inside. Out in the sun it thinks it's 37.5... So no, Norway is not cold, not cold at all! Even my feet are warm...

So far summer has been reasonably kind to us. I know that we're only 6 days in, but it's been nice to be able to sit outside in a t-shirt. I have to confess that I do miss my jacket as it's the only thing that has decent pockets, but other than that it's been nice to leave it at home. I'm not quite at the point where I'm willing to go out in shorts yet, but if the weather gets any better (or worse if you don't like the heat!) then it will be more of a survival step than anything else!

I mentioned in my last post that Simon and I had been to Spain, so I guess I should write a bit more about that as some of you may be interested in our travels. We'd decided to fly RyanAir which meant that our choice of destination was somewhat limited. As Barcelona was one of the places that we were wanting to go to, we decided to hit the nearest airport RyanAir flew to, over an hour away in the town of Girona. Our flight was going to arrive late so we thought it might be best to stay in Girona for a couple of nights before moving on rather than risk the chance that trains and buses to Barcelona wouldn't be running at midnight.

Flying RyanAir for the first time was an experience. There aren't any assigned seats so there's a bit of a scrum to get on the plane – first in, best seats etc. Simon and I were lucky enough to get seats together, they ran through the safety checks, and then we were off. Our pilot just happened to be a Kiwi (they're everywhere, we can't get away from them!), and we arrived 25 minutes early (I think that's a RyanAir thing, not a Kiwi thing). My fear that we wouldn't be able to get a bus to Barcelona proved to be completely unfounded as the rest of the people on our flight boarded buses and took off into the darkness. We were left at the bus stop with the flight crew that had travelled with us and a few stragglers, all waiting for the 12:30am bus that would take us to Girona.

We learned lots that night. Lesson One was that we were now in the land of milk and honey, or in this case, beer and wine. Simon was able to buy a MASSIVE plastic cup of beer from the cafe at the airport. At midnight. For very cheap! And it wasn't even the largest size he could have bought! Turns out that this is fairly standard in Spain. Lesson Two was that most people at information desks are fantastic. We decided to ask the woman at the bus ticket counter how to get to our hotel. She took our bus tickets, gave us back our money, and told us to buy our tickets on the bus as the bus to Girona would be passing our hotel and that it would drop us off on the way. It was going to be much cheaper too. Brilliant stuff. Lesson Three was finding out that bus drivers in Spain will either a) assume that you know where you're going, or b) forget about you. We sat patiently on the bus all the way to Girona, then watched with a rising sense of unease as the bus driver stopped at the bus depot and signalled that we were at the end of the line. Hmmm...

Asking the driver if he knew how we were to get to our hotel from the bus depot was another new experience. He went all Spanish on us.

Norwegians are quite conservative. I've seen their national costume, and there isn't much in the way of flesh being flashed or anything else that would suggest anything other than the fact that they're just nice, conservative, laid-back people. New Zealanders are also very laid-back. We're comfortable with being a friendly, relaxed nation. Spaniards though, can be a bit different.

There was a lot of hand waving. And a lot of apologising. It went well with the hand waving. I'm just glad that as a conservative New Zealander (and I am one of those people who likes to have a large amount of personal space around me!) I wasn't standing too close. Otherwise the hand waving could have been downright dangerous! After waving and apologising for a bit, our driver decided that he would take us back to our hotel in his bus.

One of the other delightful things about the Spanish is that they like to drive quite fast, even if the vehicle they're driving happens to be a very large passenger bus. Note - going round roundabouts at high speed in a bus is very frightening. Arriving at our hotel was a bit of a relief.

Our plan to stay in Girona for two nights turned out to be a good one. We didn't have to get up early the next morning, and so were able to relax and recover from the night before. As it rained for most of the morning, and we weren't planning to rush, we didn't head away from the hotel until about lunchtime. From our trip the night before (or early that morning, if you really want to be picky!) we knew that it took about 10 minutes on a fast bus to get into town. We decided that it would be nice to walk. This was how we learned our Next Lesson.

Walking doesn't appear to be encouraged. Walking in town is fine, but walking to town is not. There were few footpaths, and when there was a footpath it didn't last for long. We were also in what appeared to be the industrial part of town, with rubbishy empty sections and the occasional workshop or wholesaler. At one point we ended up in a ditch going round one of the roundabouts, and when we came to its big brother we finally gave up and went to the nearest shop to ask for directions. The shop was a large electronics retailer, a bit like Noel Leeming but without all the silly household stuff like vacuum cleaners and clothes dryers. After having a bit of a look around we managed to find someone who spoke English. The conversation went something like this...

'Hello. How do you get to town?'
'To town? You go out of the carpark and then you drive down round the roundabout...'

Ah.

'Sorry, but we don't have a car. How do you get there if you're walking?'
'Walking!?'

Turns out you still have to go out of the carpark and then go round the roundabout. Joy. So for a few terrifying minutes, Simon and I sidled along the edge of a gigantic roundabout, dodging cars on on-ramps and off-ramps and hoping like hell that the Spanish had really good brakes to go along with their really good accelerators. The rest of the walk seemed quite easy after that...

By the time we made it into town we were both quite hungry. Nothing looked particularly welcoming or friendly so we ended up at the department store hoping to find a cafe. We were in luck. Not only was the restaurant open, it looked clean and it wasn't full. In fact, I think there was one other couple there. It wasn't until later in our trip that we realised that this was because at 1pm Spaniards haven't even THOUGHT about lunch... Food was ordered, delivered, and eaten in the usual manner. Then we decided to order coffee instead of having dessert. Well, Simon had coffee. I had what must be one of the Best Drinks Ever – Spanish hot chocolate, or xocolata. As you can see in the photo, it is THICK, almost like drinking melted chocolate but so much better. Although you can get xocolata a la taza all over Spain, the best ones I had were on that first day in Girona. Absolutely fabulous!



From there we were on a mission to find the old city. It had been mentioned in our Lonely Planet guide, and was one of the things that we'd stayed in Girona to see. Our mission turned out to be harder than we thought. It included: upsetting an old bartender because we didn't speak Spanish, getting lost in the 'burbs, and upsetting soldiers from the Ministry for Defense. After a harrowing couple of hours both Simon and I were getting a bit stroppy (me more than him. I've had more practice), and I just wanted to find my way back to somewhere I recognised so that we wouldn't lose the hotel as well. Our decision to take a street that would lead us in the general direction we wanted to go proved to be a lucky one – a couple of hundred metres and we came to a large stone wall. We'd found the old city at last!

The old city in Girona was very nice and I felt sorry for the people who had raced away the night before because it 'wasn't Barcelona'. The streets are all tiny and cobbled, and we visited the fantastic cathedral which was very impressive. We tried some sangria, and had a very nice evening roaming around looking at the various sights.





Due to our long, and at times dangerous, trip walking into town, we'd decided to take a taxi back to our hotel. Yay for public transport in Spain. I could see the speedo so I know we hit 100k/h at one point, and I'm fairly sure we were in a 50k/h zone at the time. Our taxi driver also enjoyed cutting people off and I'm surprised we didn't take at least one boot or bonnet off as we zipped in and out amongst the traffic. He must have been related to the bus driver.

So ended our first full day in Spain. Unfortunately I'm going to have to stop there as Simon needs the computer again – he's still working on the PhD so his claim to the computer is much stronger than mine! So, until next time dear readers!

Brian Tamaki is apparently a 'holy ghost fighter'. His words, not mine. And the 'warrior gene' has been given to us by God...

Ummm...

In my random surfing of the net I have ended up listening to one of the Destiny Church sermons. BT is a bit wound up at the moment, and sounds like a race commentator on speed. Anyway, I shall now switch him off (which involves closing down the tab because once you start the sermon you can't stop it any other way!!), and devote myself to Updating My Blog. After all, there's a whole heap that's happened over the past three months and you're certainly due for an update!

For those of you who might be a bit concerned, No, I am not currently suffering from Religion. It just seemed like a mildly amusing way to pass the time. However, I'm well over that now – I've had enough Destiny to last me a good long while...

So, back to the updating of the blog. During the past few months Simon and I went to Spain (which was fun), my grandmother died (which was not), I went back to NZ for the funeral (which was nice), and Simon has been working on the PhD pretty much non-stop. Oh, and we finally finished watching all of Angel which has left a gap in our days that I'm having to fill with trash TV. Sigh...

As most of you will know, my nana had been unwell for a very long time. She was suffering from dementia, she fell often, and she'd had several knocks to the head and TIAs over the past couple of years. Each time she fell she'd get a little bit worse, and she and I spent more and more time travelling to doctors appointments and hospital clinics. The trips to A&E weren't much fun either. Walking wasn't easy and I'll never forget the relief on her face when I turned up with a wheelchair to get her out to the car and off to the doctors. So when I got a call on my cell phone one morning from the other side of the world, I knew even before I answered it that Nana had died.

My ex-flatmate Debs had just arrived to visit for a few days, and she and Simon were fantastic. Simon assured me that if I wanted to go home, then that's what I should do, and Debs was quite happy for me to abandon her saying that I'd regret it if I didn't go and that if it was her grandmother then she'd be there in a flash. So I went. Simon entertained Debs for the rest of her visit (apparently the aquarium here is tiny!), and I spent about 50 hours in cars, on planes, and hanging around airports. And that was just one way! Annette and Graeme were brilliant, picking me up from Christchurch Airport and bringing me back to Dunedin, which was certainly better than catching the night bus, and I was able to shower away the travel dirt and have a full nights sleep before facing the funeral the next day.

Mum, Leanne, and I went to see Nana at the funeral home early the next morning. I'm guessing that the funeral home did a good job with the embalming – I hadn't seen Nana since January so it was a bit of a shock to see how much weight she'd lost. She looked and felt like wax and, although I knew she would be, it was strange to feel just how cold she was. It was nice to have some time to say goodbye though – I think I would have doubted that she was really dead if I'd only been able to see the coffin. Dad and Leanne did a great job of handling all the details. The funeral was lovely, with lots of people we hadn't expected to see (but I guess that's always the way with funerals), and the three womenfolk of the family interred her ashes in the cemetery with Grandad three days later. Mum commented on the shininess of the spade (I'd say it gets polished by the funeral director after each planting!), and Leanne and I put Nana to bed for the last time. All in all, it was very nice, and I think Nana would have been happy with it.

Going home is always nice, but going home for a funeral and leaving your partner on the other side of the world is a different matter entirely! Not only did I miss him like crazy, but I was also packed off with the 'to-do' list full of things that had to be sorted in my flying visit. Seeing everyone was fantastic, but by the end of the week I was happy to head back to Norway (with lots of Marmite!) for a bit of a lie-down and a bit more of the quiet life! Next time we'll make sure that there's more time so that things aren't quite so hectic...

Simon has just handed me a chapter to read over from his thesis. It's a real page turner (or would be if I could understand it!). In fact, it feels a little bit like this ... We haven't been doing much lately as the PhD has become priority number one and I think we're both looking forward to June 30, which is the last day for hand-in. I have the feeling that bottles of wine will need to be drunk, and that we'll have to spend some time Outside in order to celebrate his new-found freedom. We may even be able to pick up our travelling plans again!

Right, the time has come dear readers, for me to crowbar Simon out of his work chair so that he can go home and ensconce himself in the PhD chair. He only seems to notice the time when he gets hungry, so some nights can get very late if he's had a decent lunch. And I'll read Chapter 5. Oh, how exciting...

Natalie asked me what I was missing the other day – I think I'm going to have to add decent beer to the list! Pilsners and lagers, pilsners and lagers. It's a nightmare. Sigh... They do have Guinness at the Petershead but you have to brave the chatty old men who go there AND be willing to pay the ridiculous prices. Chatty old men are strange enough at home, but when they feel the need to share their pet projects to you in drunken English it can get a little surreal. I also get hassled for my fine choice in beverages.

But back to Oslo where we have successfully parked. Being the relaxed Southern people that we are, we hadn't booked a place to stay. And apparently, if you arrive after 6pm you're considered to be booking in 'late'. The time at this point was around 8:30pm.

'Hi, we're looking for a room. Yes, just a double. What? You only have two single rooms? Thanks, we'll keep looking.'

'Hi, we're looking for a double room. Hey, why are you laughing?'

Repeat second conversation again at a different place.

The fourth hotel had one double room left. We took it pretty damn quick, then dragged our one overnight backpack up the stairs as the lift looked... interesting. The room itself was a standard double room, the sort you'd find anywhere in the world, with a few Norwegian touches. No carpet, underfloor heating in the bathroom (which I love!), and Odd Norwegian Thing #476 – a double bed with single bedding.

Making the bed in our first house in Risør had been a bit of a mission when we'd first arrived. There were no double sheets, all of the duvets were large singles, and all of the single sheets were random sizes, no two alike and none that looked as if they could comfortably cover a single bed. It wasn't until we arrived at the hotel in Oslo that we realised that we just didn't know how to make a bed the Norwegian way...



The duvets act more like cocoons. I found it to be quite comfortable, and it's great to know that the only person you have to blame for losing the bedcovers is yourself, but I think I still prefer the old traditional way.

The next morning we wandered around Oslo. Not much happens in Oslo on a Sunday morning, especially when it's cold and snowy, so we found ourselves in the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, wandering through the doors at 10 on the dot in an effort to stave off the effects of freezing to death outside. They were showing the works of Eero Saarinen who was 'shaping the future' way back in the olden days last century. Some of his designs were very cool but I just don't understand architecture and its language – I used to go out with an architecture student and they all seem to go all funny when they start talking about 'space' and light. I'm sure it's very meaningful but I'm still the sort of person who's more concerned with where the bathroom is going to be rather than the 'flow' through 'meeting areas'.

Which reminds me, does anyone know anyone else who names paint colours for a living? I'd like to meet one of those people one day. The paint on the living room wall at my parents' house is called 'Eskimo Kiss'. It's pale pink. I'd like to know what they were taking when they dreamed that one up!

Back to Oslo though. After a very pleasant hour defrosting, we decided it was time to make our way to the airport. The people at the museum gave us fantastic directions, and the mostly empty roads meant that we arrived at Gardemoen with plenty of time and fairly low stress levels. Margaret was successfully retrieved and we piled back in to the car for the drive home.

Margaret is very much like Simon in many different ways. I swear, if she was the commander on a mission to another planet and they found life on that planet, her first words would be 'Take us to your chocolate!'. I think her mission is a) to save everyone from all the chocolate by sacrificing herself and eating it first, or b) just to eat as much chocolate as possible. I'd like to think it was a), but I have a sneaking suspicion it's just plain old b). We spent many happy times cruising the confectionery shelves in all of Risør's supermarkets before finally sending her on her way to the rest of the chocolates of Europe (Smash is good! Nacho corn chips covered with chocolate. Mmmmmmmmmmm...).

Talking of chocolates, I'm getting hungry so it's time to pack this up, go home, find food. We're watching Angel at the moment and Andrew is very kindly providing us with Season 3 tonight, so it will be pizza and video as I don't want to spend too long cooking – nothing shall needlessly cut into my Angel watching time!

I love my new house. I love my new house lots and lots. I love the cosy living spaces, I love the bedroom I can stand up straight in, I love the view to the cemetery. I love the rubbish bins just outside the front door. I love the fact that it has a dining space! I love the shower (now that the leak has been fixed). I love our crazy washing machine with the separate centrifugal spinner thingy and it's broken catch (sometimes you can watch the spinning. So dangerous, so cool...). I love the fact that I can't hear the neighbours through the walls! I love the door to the non-existent deck (no stairs, 1.5 metre drop).

I love it so much that I don't even mind that we're also across the road from the taxi stand and the bus station, that we're on the main road in to town, and that we have no dishwasher or microwave. The view isn't the stunning 'down the harbour' panorama of our old house but for some strange reason I just don't care. Being close to town and the supermarket is fantastic, I don't feel as if I'm miles away from everywhere and everyone. The stupid thing is that we were only a 10 minute walk away from the centre of town at our old place but it seemed much further.

Everything is within walking distance here which is a brilliant as we won't be buying a car any time soon. In spite of all of our planning ('We'll go to Germany, see what they have, drive it home!'), we've decided against getting a four-wheeled friend. One of the major reasons for this decision was our first proper visit to Oslo. One of Simon's former co-workers, Jennie, was flying out to Glasgow on the Saturday. Simon's sister, Margaret, was arriving in Oslo on the Sunday. Jayson was due to arrive in Oslo on the Tuesday. And last but not least, Jayson's cats were due to arrive in Oslo on the Friday. As many of these comings and goings were work-related the business kindly rented a car for the week so that we could pick people up and drop them off without being at the mercy of the bus timetable (the bane of small towns everywhere!), and the exorbitant travel costs associated with the public transport system. We'd only been in Norway for a fortnight. And we were given the car.

The first few weeks in Norway for me weren't exactly the brightest. Motivation was at an all time low, and Simon was busy dealing with all of the highs and lows associated with starting a new job. I'm not exactly Miss Bright and Cheerful at the best of times and I've been known to get a little stressed about travelling before, so as you can imagine, a trip to the big city in the middle of winter in Norway in a strange car driven by SIMON on the wrong side of the road didn't make me feel any happier. Don't get me wrong, Simon drives very well. He's extremely careful. The women in my family aren't quite as 'careful' behind the wheel. My car had dents. And my sister called Simon 'Nana-pants' when he hassled us about speeding tickets. You get the idea...

We eventually made it to the airport at Torp and dropped Jennie off for her flight to Glasgow. I'd been a little bit grumpy (critical, unhelpful, etc.) but the presence of Jennie in the back seat had enabled me to temper most of my grumpiness. I was annoyed by the roads, the weather, and the speed limits. Most of the limits between here and Oslo are between 60 and 80 kph with the occasional 90 or 100 on the better roads. Towns are usually 30. (Norway has a very high road toll. I think it's because so many motorists die of BOREDOM!!!!!!!). So our 290 kilometre trip took us almost 4 hours before we finally made it to Oslo. By this time it was getting fairly dark.

We didn't really have a plan for the evening – the plan had just been 'Get Jennie to the airport on time on Saturday, pick Margaret up on time from the other airport on Sunday'. Simple. Relaxing. Easy. How wrong we were.

I don't travel very well which is why I usually drive. I get car-sick if I read so I'm fairly useless as a navigator if it involves using a map. And navigating becomes twice as frustrating when the map isn't quite correct, all of the streets are narrow and either icy, snowy, or damp, and some of the one way streets appear to have changed direction since the map was printed. All of these factors combined quickly turn any situation into a minor disaster.

'Where are we?'
'How should I know!'
'Well, you're the one with the map...'
'But I can't read it while we're driving and it's dark and they have the STUPIDEST little street signs way high up on buildings and the map only shows the central streets of Oslo and I don't even think we're ON the map any more and ARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!'

The moment of meltdown? Not quite yet...

Simon pulled over and leaped out to find a street sign so that we could figure out where the hell we were. We'd been lost several times by this point, and neither of us knew the finer points of the Norwegian road rules. I was in the middle of one of my better wobbly making moods which is why I wasn't too impressed with Simon's choice of park – a large mound of snow on the side of the road. Simon had been gone about 10 seconds when the owner of the right-of-way we were parked over (hidden by snow of course!) came home. Lots of honking from him, lots of yelling for Simon from me. Simon raced back, jumped in to the car, threw it in gear, and tried to drive away. Note, I use the word 'tried'. The car stayed put. Simon put it in reverse. Same result. Still more honking from now irate Norwegian, and more yelling from me about cars being parked on snow banks. I offer to get out and push, Simon points out that out of the two of us he's probably the better choice for any large vehicle pushing. And so, in mid-panic, I get my first chance to drive in Europe.

My first problem was that habit kept getting in the way. I managed to bruise my hand on the door when I threw it out to put the car in first. My second problem was the obvious lack of a hand brake and the insistent little light on the dash which kept telling me to take the hand brake off. My third problem was Simon who was gallantly pushing at the back of the station wagon (still with the hand brake on) and who couldn't hear my cries for some sort of explanation as to where some of the most BASIC features of the car had gone. Meanwhile, the irate Norwegian had decided that we were obviously idiots and had driven off down the road (not that I'd noticed at this point. It's amazing how panic can somehow glaze over some of the finer details...). Simon eventually opened the passenger door to find out what was going on, told me where the hand brake was (a button hidden on the dashboard for crying out loud!), and the car was soon rolling away. It turns out that if you eased the car away in first as Simon had previously been doing, the hand brake disengaged on its own. If you tried to speed off in a great panic because of irate Norwegians it kept you firmly in place until you either pushed the button or you calmed down. I could learn to hate a car like that...

Learning to drive in a strange city when you're already stressed, in an unfamiliar car in the dark isn't something I would ever advise doing. From watching the traffic earlier in the evening from the safety of the footpath, we'd decided that in some cases the only road rule was 'give way to the biggest/boldest'. We'd also discovered that taxi drivers are incredibly unforgiving and that town is full of them on a Saturday night. The only thing staving off the meltdown moment was the realisation that we were almost certainly going to die in an 18 taxi pile-up if we weren't very, very careful. Finding a park in an area of town we recognised on the map, and parking successfully without dying (or denting) saw us both heaving great sighs of relief, me for having negotiated the hell-traffic, and Simon for having survived the ordeal of dealing with me in major panic-mode.

So we didn't manage to die that night in Oslo (obviously), and there is more to the story but I'm late to get to the pub and I am THIRSTY! So I promise to finish the story when I'm next online. Promise...

I like cemeteries. Cemeteries have an air of dignity to them, and the older they are, the more dignified they seem. And they're often quiet places which is something I really like. In the middle of a town or city the roads and the cars seem further away, and country cemeteries are fantastic (unless it's raining. I'm not a fan of rain). Even when the headstones are crumbling onto the graves they still retain their magic. It's hard to believe that real people, people who were once ALIVE, are now crumbling like their gravestones below us. And this liking of cemeteries has turned out to be a good thing as we're currently living across the road from one.

The cemetery across the road is brilliant. It looks old, but really it's not. Since we moved in twelve days ago there have been three funerals. All of them started the same way with the bell tolling. The first time I heard it I thought it was something electronic in distress, but a quick search of the house proved me wrong. Out of the window I saw a long column of people walking slowly past the church and through the snow lanes. We've had lots of snow here, more than I've ever seen in my life, but I'll talk about that later. They had prepared the lanes so that one would lead to the gravesite and it was fascinating to watch them snaking through the cemetery. The lanes guided them round and they all finally stopped almost behind the church itself. A short while later they came back, wandering off down the road with the snow continuing to fall around them.

I'm always amazed at the number of old people there are here. What amazes me even more is that nothing seems to stop them from going out! Mounds of snow could be piled high all over the town yet they're still out, doing their shopping, chatting with their friends. I'm not sure if this has something to do with the high number of funerals across the road or not, but it is always inspiring to see yet another old lady, with boots, gloves, hat, and scarf wandering past to the supermarket while I'm sitting inside trying to work up the courage to go out. Mind you, this could be because of Odd Norwegian Thing #385. Outside babies.

Apparently this is a delicate subject with most of the mothers around here. Often when you wander around the town you'll see prams parked up outside shops. Not so unusual considering the size of some of the shops. But in many cases the mothers leave the babies outside with the prams! Even on sub-zero days! Here's a photo of a group left outside one of the cafes.



All of the prams are positioned so the mothers, who are all sitting together at one of the window tables inside in the warm, can keep an eye on their darlings. Strangely enough, none of the babies seem to mind. I've seen only one crying since I arrived here, and that one was inside the supermarket being carried around by it's dad! One of the theories thrown around by us soft Kiwis was that they were just too cold to cry, but the other day as I was slip sliding my way in to town through the drifting snow, one of the babies tried to sit up in it's pram to watch me slide by (I swear it was fascinated by my incredible lack of grace and the general windmilling of my arms that was the only thing keeping me upright!). So I can only conclude that Norwegians are just incredibly hardy right from birth, all the way through until the bells start tolling for them...

The weather has been brilliant. We finally got the Norway we'd been promised when the skies darkened last week and it snowed. Now, if you were talking to someone in Dunedin and said “Yeah, it was pretty cold. Snowed last week”, you'd mean that one day last week it snowed, everyone probably had a snow day and didn't go to school/work, and then it all turned yucky and melted. Here one day, gone two days later. In Risor, it snowed last week. All week. So much so, that some of our friends were unable to get out of their houses without help (stupid doors opening out!). Simon's job each day was to dig out a path from our door to the street whenever he left or came home. Unfortunately we now live on the main road and main roads are cleared quite often. If we were lucky they would cut a path for us through the snow they'd now pushed to the sides, but even so, there is still a small mountain we now have to climb in order to get out to the street! In spite of all the snow, it still hasn't felt terribly cold. Either we're just acclimatising (which is possible) or the cold here just isn't as bone chilling as the stuff you get back home. Sub-zero here just means that you might need to take your hat, and I've noticed that the Norwegians don't seem to increase or decrease the number of layers they wear be it -4 or +10 degrees outside.

Hmmm... and Amusing Thing #46. Adults in matching full-on, one-piece snowsuits pushing trolleys at the shops. Just brilliant.

The snow has been causing a few issues though. The first few days were very, very cold and the snow was light and fluffy, wonderful to shovel because it was just so incredibly light. Unfortunately it's also incredibly unforgiving. An 18 year old girl in Arendal died when she out playing in the snow with her brother – she fell into a drift and couldn't get out and suffocated when it all closed in on her. Not nice. People were also trapped in their cars for several hours between Arendal and Kristiansand. And in Kristiansand there are concerns about the snow falling of roofs and injuring people. So although it all looks very picturesque and postcard like, it's not all snow fights and snow men! (And yes, at one point I did try to make a snowman but the snow was just too light and fluffy to work with. By the time the temperature rose to the point where the snow was heavy and wet enough I was at the point where I was OVER snow thank you very much...)

Anywho, more later...

Well, we've managed just over a week in Norway and it's been a bit of a roller-coaster so far. Travelling for 50+ hours straight is no longer recommended - just ask my ankles, or as I like to call them, the 2 day balloons. I was beginning to think that all airports looked the same, but then a magical thing happened - after snoozing all the way from Frankfurt to Oslo (we weren't even woken up for landing! The SAS don't care about the upright backs and away tray tables!) we arrived at Oslo airport.

'Hmmm...' I thought. 'Something is different here...'

And it was! Norwegians don't like carpet! We had a chat to our neighbours yesterday and they think that carpet is a terribly 70s and 80s thing to do (they're horrified by the English who have carpet everywhere, even in their BATHROOMS! Shudder...). Wood, lino, concrete, and tiles are the floor coverings of choice and in some ways it really does make sense. Who needs snow and frost all over their good shag pile? What need of carpet when you have huge amounts of insulation just sitting under your floorboards keeping you toasty?

Strangely enough, the same seems to apply to curtains. Don't get me wrong, Norwegians do have curtains, but they're more for decoration than any real attempt to keep heat in and the world out. Simon and I are in a very nice little house with huge windows and fantastic views. At night, when we turn the lights on, we have the opportunity to entertain our neighbours if we so choose. We do have blinds that we can pull on a couple of the windows, but the huge gaps between each of the lowered blinds suggest that they were installed by someone who had heard about them but weren't 100% sure why you'd ever need them.

And the madness doesn't stop there! Bacon in a tube anyone? Tubes are a popular way of packaging almost anything, from the usual mayonnaise, to the slightly stranger pepperoni. Yum, yum! We're also lucky - most foods here have pictures showing you what is contained in the packets/tubes. This was fine until we found a can of pate with a smiling child on it. Hmmm... Meat is also a bit strange. According to one of our sources, mince is just that - mince. Sometimes they will state that the mince contains 97% beef, but often it's just the leftover everything thrown through the mincer and packaged for you to take home. Mr Pig, meet Mr Lamb and Mr Cow... In spite of this, we have been eating the mince. It's a little more recognisable than most of the other meats!

So far the weather has been pretty good. We spent most of last week sweating it out in the sunshine while I complained about the lack of snow. The frosts started to kick in last Thursday, and to our delight we found that our street seems to attract the permafrost. Lots of fun when you're wandering home in the dark! My wish was finally granted Sunday morning and we woke to a light layer of snow covering the town. Magic! Hopefully we'll get some more, but as there isn't a cloud in the sky at the moment I'm not going to hold my breath that it will happen soon.

I'm also a little bit confused about Norwegian front doors. They open out, and in Risor you're not allowed to have a door which swings in (think Queenstown council and you'll understand the council here!). Doors which swing out are traditional, but I would have thought that with a snow drift at your door it would be easier to dig your way out than to push a solid piece of wood through it. But then again, I'm just a silly New Zealander, so what would I know!

Most of the Norwegians that we've talked to have been very nice. With the new additions to the EU Norway has had an influx of immigrants, some of whom have been more welcome than others. I'm not quite sure how they feel about this latest NZ wave but everyone has been a little standoffish until they've gotten to know us. From everything I've read, this may just be the Norwegian way, but it is a little bit off-putting in such a small town. I hope to start learning Norwegian soon, so hopefully knowing the language will help - at least I'll know when others are talking about me!

Right, that's about my lot for the day. Apologies for being very slack at keeping in touch - the lack of sunlight had managed to suck most of my motivation, and an unhealthy addiction to FreeCell almost finished me. But I'm proud to say that I've been FreeCell free for almost a week now and a relapse is looking highly unlikely. That and the sun is rising earlier and setting later (or perhaps I'm just sleeping in more and spending my evenings watching the ever entertaining Firefly!).

Laters everyone...

No chain, no need to kick me into life...

No news is good news, and as I haven't heard much from home I'm going to assume that everything is ok-ish (well, as ok-ish as we can expect under the circumstances!). Many thanks for those who sent messages or texts, was much appreciated.

Update on me - still in Hawera. It rained today. We went to the movies (Hawera Cinema 2. Very, very pleasant and only $7 each. I love small towns!), saw Casino Royale (Bond, but not as we know him! I loved it, the Bond movie purists may be a bit put out by the whole thing), came home. I'm now reading the last book in Sara Douglass' Troy Game (she's SO mean to her characters! Lots of spluttering which has amused Nat no end!) and I'm determined to finish it before we leave so I can leave it here. It's hard to believe that we'll be in a different country in less than a fortnight....

Anywho, there's a wild debate broken out here, so I might sign off and find a quieter place to sit before the arm-waving gets out of hand (Simon is trying to prove that he exists. It may be a long night...)

Everyone has gone out on their own private missions today, so I thought I'd write a little more while they're away. Simon and his dad are away getting building materials for the room they're trying to finish - it was supposed to be completed in a couple of days, but as is always the way with DIY jobs you have to triple the time you think it will take and then add another week. Nat and Pete have taken the baby to New Plymouth which should be exciting. I went up there to do the rest of the Christmas shopping on Saturday (with cell phone in hand the entire time just in case a dash to Wellington and the next flight home was needed!) and it wasn't all that inspiring. Did the mall at least five times and wandered up and down the main street several times. The main street was the nicest part of New Plymouth - too many retailers are moving out to the malls in order to cash in on the convenient parking (which is often a nightmare!), and one-stop shopping (no wonder we're getting less exercise!). Attach a supermarket and you never have to go outdoors to shop again! Ruth wasn't very well - any food containing dairy products were doing very nasty things to her, and the boguns were only mildly entertaining (doing laps before lunch on a Saturday! Odd...). I must say though, that everyone I spoke to was incredibly helpful, and they were all very nice. The Sounds music shop in the Centre City mall is the only one that will give you exchange cards on their DVDs and CDs (sheer brilliance!), and the woman at the Muffin Break continued to chat even after she'd given me my hot chocolate!

I've just realised that I forgot to add the photos of the place we stayed in in Napier. So here they are...





There's a couple of other photos I should add too. Found in a shop in Coromandel...



I'd never seen one before, and it just seemed incredibly quirky.

And for those who may have wondered in one of my earlier posts, this is Mao, Mao the People's Cow. Surprisingly, he smells like vanilla (now what are the chances of that!).



We also found the Destiny Church in Rotorua. I was quite taken by the fact that it was only two doors down from Mo's Gaming Lounge...



And people in Rotorua obviously have issues with the Road Code, these are posted everywhere!