Show me the love!

Christmas.

The deeper meaning escapes me. For the faithful or the dedicated consumer, maybe there's a point. All I can see is work, bother, money flowing away on strange pointless things that for 364 days are useless. Stress. Distress. Sticky tape curling back on itself, far too much silly food and drink, and a series of uncomfortable social happenings which would be much more fun if spread over the rest of the year.

Sigh.

Yeah, I hate christmas. In recent years I've joked that as long as *I* get presents the rest doesn't matter, but this year I just don't care. I'm too tired, too sore, too underwhelmed. I DO care for my dear ones, very much. I just don't like the expectations of the purrfect gift, the purrfect funny card, the beeyootiful overload of food and booze... On a day which is often too hot for masses of food, too busy to be enjoyable, and too full of memories of past pains and joys to be easily manageable, forget it. I'll be in the hammock, half a cup of cold coffee by my sleeping side, with a book fallen on my legs.

Sorry. I still love you all. I'm going away until next year to find some inner peace, think about some things, and try to renew my smile button.

Be safe, be alert for the festive crap-o-meter overload, and enjoy the champagne bubbles while they last.

This season brought to you by Dior 'Addict', which gets an honourable mention because it's the only purrfume I can smell atm. And because I LOVE the purrple bottle!

Speechlessness antidotes..

Three cupcakes, two good wimmin and a sunny afternoon.

Maccy purring all over my lap.

Rain!

Finding the right pair of shoes for the right person today (no, not me!).

Spending time with me ma.

Lying back on the heat pad, feet up, talking to my darling dorter while my darling husband gets fish'n'chips for dinner.

Having my feet massaged while I lay cuddled under a doona and was allowed to cry for a bit.

Laughing at the 5-minute chocolate cake photo in The Canberra Cook's blog.

Purrfume. Always. Even tho Shirley is boasting about new Jo Malone Amber and Fabuloso cologne, I am content with my Gucci, my Chanel No. 5 Elixir (not Huille, sorry) Sensual, and my bevy of bottles. Little pink pills, well-timed, are pretty good too.

What to say when I am speechless?

Why do mornings ALWAYS suck?

How come I'm a mum but I can't fix everything, not even with a purple Mickey Mouse bandaid?

Which purrfume can do the most magic? Try all of them, just in case, or asphyxiate in the attempt?

When will the shit turn to rainbows?

Where will the rainbows be and can I have a ticket?

What does all this mean? - nah, scrap that, just have a coffee.

Today brought to you by a bloody big fat headache, a wonderful afternoon with my best friend, and a short but soothing chat to a darling dorter. Oh, and a very norty interlude at Addicted to Fabric, which cost more than I can afford. Well, YOU try walking past the words 'SILK ON SALE' and maintaining a normal heartbeat... I might, now I've had a whinge, try Chanel No. 5 Huile Sensual, because it's never failed me before.

Tallinn; Thursday August 28th

Erg. We wake after about 6 hours sleep, both with head aching, bleary baggy eyes, and a firm desire to get back to sleep asap. We’re going to totter off to brekkie, have an actual meal, and then resume slumbers.

In a tiny, tiny concession towards the possibility of maybe an inkle of a zephyr of birthday-ish nuance, I am wearing my red cat socks today. Thanks sis! They’ll get a serial outing - a starring role at breakfast, then a stagger up to the Old City later on when we attempt consciousness again.

Today not really brought to you at all, yet. But M has just returned from a wee forage amongst the natives, and given me a cable to connect to the free interwebs in our room. I’m not putting an exclamation mark in, I don’t have the energy for raised eyebrow/pleased smile/cor lummy yet...

~~~~~~~

Breakfast - back to the land of the buffet breakfast - muesli, fruit, juice... toast! Fibre!!! BACON!!!

M is eating very cautiously, having been told to eat a light, low-fat and low-salt diet for the time being. This is our normal food approach, but when travelling can be very difficult to manage - especially low-salt. We’ll see. He’s been surviving on porridge, soup, black tea water, and the odd bit of white bread, so for him to see such exotica as scrambled egg, tomato, apple juice makes it an exciting brekkie for him, too.

I can’t connect my laptop to the web in the room, cos you need a USB port to plug into this lil Airbook (for the cable), and I posted it back to Australia several countries ago (Bergen I think). M saw someone webbing in the foyer, so maybe there’s WiFi here, or at least a terminal down there we can use. One way or another (someone wrote a song about that in the 80s, I think it was Debbie Harry, the rest of the line is “I’m gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha” and indeed I will, but not the way she meant!)... aha! I’m up to exclamation marks. Better get me some more pillow time before I get carried away and actually wake up...

~~~~~~~~

Aahhhh... sleep. Good stuff. Right up there with coffee, cats, and purrfume... I feel so much better I decide I should stay in bed and finish my book - and put the heatpad on so I can cook my stiff, sore back. Isn’t it a coincidence that today it’s sore? Surely nothing to do with the change of routine from lots of walking, to sitting in a bus thumping along a Russian road for several hours, not enough knee or shoulder room, and a certain amount of unavoidable suitcase-lifting? Nooooooo....

I’ve got Tom Waites on again, I’ve nicked M’s pillows, and my book is having a happy but plausible ending. Purrfume, a decent dinner and !!!! an opera tomorrow night, are in my near future. Yes, birthday celebration part 1 is under construction - M found info about an opera called ?, written by an Estonian composer who used to be a rock star. How can I possibly resist? [Seeing as Arvo let me down, I’m just doing the next best thing.. and we have Arvo on the dear little iPod, so I’ve had some ‘Fratres’ to wake me up earlier.] I had a bit of trouble getting brekkie, cos the buffet was in a darkish corner of the breakfast room, and I was NOT taking off my sunnies for anyone. A shaft of sunlight on the luggage room under my eyes might have frightened the natives. It’s a mercy thing..

Problem solved (thank goddess)

Phil the travel agent of miracles, has found us flights from here to Warsaw, then W to Krakow, taking only 2.5 hours of flight time. And the cost is only a little less than one extra night of hotel (ie on top of our pre-paid bookings, which would mean that a night in Warsaw would be an extra cost on top of the booked night in Riga, which we can't get out of paying for now; too close to arrival time..) plus bus and/or train tickets.. so we're gonna fly. Departing at 6.25 am, ouch. Oh well. It solves too many problems for such an early morning to be An Issue!

And now I must flee cos the puter is running out of battery.

Today brought to you by proper muesli and (inadvertently) creeeeaaammm in my coffeee, nommm.

Where was I???

.. in Tallinn??? Well, now we've had a brilliant, wonderful, magical and very very interesting time in Riga, you all HAVE to go. It's beautiful and lively and the streets are full of music - I've never been anywhere where there were so many people busking and dancing in the streets. Bach duets and saxophone jazz and the lady in the square who dances to folk music and the two young gels who played their violins with great seriousness and ethereal beauty... we went to two premiere performances in two ancient churches, of choir with organ/choir with organ and saxophone octet. Super fabbo.

I realise you are all wondering why I haven't put up my usual eleventy pages of descriptions. The usual reason - no WiFi access. And because our time in Tallinn and Riga was attenuated after M's illness, we wanted to make the most of our time, especially in Riga when M had recovered enough to have some energy.

Now we are in Vilnius; arrived at 5pm today. And no too sure when we are leaving, because we weren't able to book train tickets before we left, and now we find that it will take at least 15 train hours to get from here, via Warsaw, to Krakow. We didn't know it would be such a circuitous journey, so there isn't enough time unless we do a day of travel like this:

- 9am - 12pm; Vilnius to ? (we didnt' catch the name of the town)
- 5 to 10pm; ? to Warsaw
- 11pm to 5am!!!; Warsaw to Krakow.

Hmmm.... if we have to take these trains, if there are no alternatives such as bus then train, or flying.. then we'll probably stop overnight in Warsaw. And I can't believe that that late train is the ONLY train to Krakow. I hope I'm right!!!

We had some Lithuanian Chinese tucker for dinner.. very toned-down Szechuan food. More like chicken with fried rice of no particular distinction. But it was purrfectly good to eat, just not real.

Today brought to you by a very wonderful cup of coffee made for me in a 5 minute stop - on the bus from Riga to here - in the kiosk, a woman put a briki of powdered coffee (NOT instant) into a briki, added water, and set into what looked like a tray of hot grey sand. It boiled up very quickly; she added milk, and there was my coffee. It was good, and very strongggg. Today was going to be brought to you by the ever-popular Chanel No. 5, but I packed it too cleverly. I've got some on now but I can't smell it cos of a lungful of cigarette smoke courtesy of a passing pedestrian, when we were walking home from dinner. So I'm koff-koffing and can't smell a thing.

Nevsky Prospekt, 20th August

All we did today was walk along Nevsky Prospekt... doing battle with the huge crowds, trying to avoid smokers, beggars, spruikers and the handbag arm-gangs! [The standard position for a beggar is sitting down in the gutter (not the road gutter, the water-draining gutter right next to the building walls); with a scrap of cloth laid out for coins; crying. Awful.

We’re looking for a few specific things, and prospecting (sorry) for lunch. First we pass the cd shop, the Stroganoff Monument (still not looking very tasty, although the kissing couples on the grass are rather sweet) and the Stockman shopping centre. Home of L’Occitane to the House of Moi, remember? We go in to use the Bankomat, M’s theory being that it’s safer to go inside somewhere with a) a guard on the door, and b) a relatively private, non-street location. Fine with me. I manage to resist the L’Occitane by virtue of thinking how much longer my money has to last (and how many countries I will have travelled through by then, let’s see ... five, and I’ll be on my way to the sixth and seventh!).

M is looking for a newsagent that may have English (British or American) newspapers. We trawl the shops leading to the Metro, nyet; various large bookshops on the street, nyet nyet nyet. Then we come to the side-street where M has noted there is a supermarket. We’re dying for lack of fresh fruit (we tried to buy some of the bananas in a bowl on the counter at KaveHaus yesterday; no luck, the woman in charge said firmly “DISPLAY ONLY”. Oh.). We walk around the block, looking for the address which matches the map marker. Nyup. However I note the Segafredo sign on a cafe, aha! - Italian coffee, a brand I know. So that’s lunch taken care of (at 3pm - why does everything take so LONG???)

With M’s help, and the little bit of English the proprietor has, I manage to buy some ground Segafredo to bring back to the hotel. The Helsinki supermarket coffee isn’t a patch on the Illy I bought in Bergen, so supplies of something nicer is good to find. The cafe people (at least three of them) invite me to take a seat while they measure out the beans, grind them up, measure them again, and put them in a little container. It costs me about $A12 for 200g, not cheap, but oh how lovely it will be tomorrow morning (or even in a minute, ie 9pm) when I make my first pot. Mr Proprietor was trying to ask me how I was going to use the coffee: I engaged brain and said “We have a press” (miming pushing down the plunger on a coffee pot) and he recognised ‘press’ (ie French Press, that’s what plungers are called in Scandinavia I noted)). So that’s alright, he’s ground the coffee to the right grundity.

There’s no sign of a supermarket, or anyone carrying groceries in bags, so we go further down Nevsky, getting into seriously expensive Western hotel territory (the Radisson, the Grand Palace), looking for Cafe Max, a big cafe and internet site. And there it is! I posted a short blog entry from here, a bit tiredly I think. It’s the essence-de-communist-state which is getting me down. I don’t know how long it was before Budapest, for example, threw off the grim face of the hard years and became a more optimistic, open city; but St Petersburg hasn’t made it yet. The amount of restoration, renovation, updating, servicing is impressive - there are dug-up roads, canals, and pathways everywhere; it seems every building has some stage of shade cloth or scaffolding attached to some part of it; along our street there are men rebuilding window frames and scraping paint off the old ones; glaziers are doing huge business; and there are cranes making the baroque rooftops look very out of date.

I spent a happy hour at the interwebs... catching up on some email, a quick blog entry, and an even quicker last 15 seconds look at my bank book. Hey mum, isn’t that cheque in the mail yet??? I didn’t have time to answer every email, sorry especially to my darling dorter, but we WILL catch up soon. [Can you put things like this in your blog ... ?]

M’s gone off to find another newsagent where he’s more hopeful of finding a newspaper. He’s had a quick look at crikey.com, chuckling his way through a few entries; flicked onto the Sydney Morning Herald home page, and checked his email. [We both find it amusing that his university’s site, when accessed from anywhere but home, always generates a warning box saying ‘THIS SITE IS UNKNOWN TERRITORY POSSIBLY CONTAINING NASTYPUTEREATINGVIRALSPAMGOOBIES”... hasn’t his illustrious institution registered itself as kosher yet? The interwebs spy devices certainly don’t like it. He has to choose the box marked “GO AHEAD AND CONNECT AGAINST OUR EARNESTLY GOOD ADVICE”. Heh. I think after all that he didn’t find anything particularly interesting waiting, what a pity. One could possibly hope for something really suss, or really silly .. anyway, just as I finish my webbing, he’s back with the paper.] Next stop, supermarket possible location number two. A bit of back-tracking along one of the canals, and hurray there it is! Full of actual supermarket things, like soap, and many aisles of grog, and FRUIT, and nuts and crackers and cheese and fresh milk which isn’t off and a zillion types of preserved meats. Huzzah.

We re-stock our vitamins-via-dried fruit supply, add milk and cheese, and top it off with wine, tins of gin and tonic, and two large bottles of Evian water. Buying sparkling water, 375ml at a time, to clean our teeth is getting annoying. It’s quite an experience, I know one usually foams at the mouth a bit when tooth-cleaning, but try fizzy water for a really special, up the back of the nose effect. Or perhaps, don’t...

Then all we have to do is lug our purrchases back to the hotel, about a mile away. M wants to take a taxi, but we can’t see any passing. Then a woman, possibly homeless and quite probably drunk or not well, starts shouting and pushing at someone near where we’re standing. We put one hand each through the supermarket bag and start walking. By the time we get back to Nevsky I reckon it’s not worth getting a taxi - will it have a meter? Probably not. How on earth do we work out what a decent price is to haggle with the driver? I can’t be stuffed. We puddle along, taking it in turns to carry the bag or sharing it between two lengthening arms. We can do it. I silently thumb my nose at the curdled milk lady as we pass by..

Since we staggered back to the room, apart from eating up lots of our lovely new food, I’ve been watching the Olympics. I’ve seen a bit of high jump, volleyball, diving (yes! some diving), some interviews with medal winners (it seems we’ll be going to Estonia just in time for them to celebrate their first ever Gold Medal - in shot put), and now some replays of medal-winning races.

I reckon the bit of today which isn’t already on the blog is brought to you exclusively by gin and tonic, with a slight hint of cheese and cracker; to be followed shortly by Tired Foot and Leg Cream dessert!

~~~~~~~

Hey we’ve cracked the code of the classical music cafe - it’s not the cafe which plays the bassoon quartets, it’s the cd shop upstairs with its speakers sitting over the cafe’s outside tables! So we forgive them for the MTV, after all.

And a little NB for my model-making dear ones: I saw three person-sized costumes today:
- a very poor brown bear, his face was all wrong, even the eyes weren’t level. He was handing out flyers for a cafe I think, purrhaps a regional Russian cuisine serving wild forest animal dishes!;
- a grubby, cheap and battered polar bear, also handing out flyers of some sort (ppl handing out flyers are 10 a rouble along the main road, the majority of them are for restaurants or strip-clubs. If either brown or polar bear had anything to do with a strip-club then the connection escapes me. The photo signs for the strip clubs exclusively feature Spamela Pamderson, btw!);
- a man in an extremely fierce-looking samurai costume, right down to the tasselled cap and black-banded mouth’n’nose cloth, who was, yes, handing out flyers for the nearby Japanese restaurant. His trouble was that he looked so scary I don’t know if anyone was grabbing the flyers!

.... the flyer-hander-outerers also seem to act informally as information guides; I saw quite a few people asking questions - mostly ‘where is KFC?’ and ‘how much further to Target?’ sort of questions. All in Russian, so purrhaps they are a little part of the implicit ‘how to get things done in St Petersburg’ system - you know, the implicit local knowledge stuff that none of us ever see written down; we just know how it’s done. The implicit local stuff (says she, warming to her subject) which is EXACTLY why it takes four hours to buy a bucket, or go to the bank, or find a grog shop (a la Bergen), etc etc. Too basic for the tourist brochures; too informal for the council signs; and too internalised for the locals to think of sign-posting it. Dammit!

Tallinn, god sei dank..

WE GOT OUT OF RUSSIA YESTERDAY.

This is FAR more important than any mere detail about it being my umptieth with a nought on the end birthday. I got two presents - M was discharged from the klinik, and we got stamped out of Russia and into Estonia. Pheeeewwwww...

I have tons of stuff I wrote about our time in St Petersburg when we were only tourists, and some stuff about the time M was in hospital, so I'm going to post it on top of this. I can't be bothered going through it all after posting and altering the dates so it goes in the blog in strick date order. Yes, yes, I KNOW I'm a Virgo, but I also know when I'm beat. And today, I'm free!

I've been doing this: sleep, up for brekkie - where we had real food; muesli, fruit, proper cuppa teas; scrambled eggs, wow - back to sleep, and then some very elegant lolling around in the hotel room. Silk nightie, red toenails, iPod favourites and a bucket of purrfume. Now I am in the hotel foyer making good use of the free WiFi while M is snoozin;. He's ok btw, very tired from the journey (you'll see why), but getting back his appetite and relaxing.

Today brought to you by relief, safe drinking water in the taps, and latte heaven.

Mammon, move over!

Yep, move over, I've been shopping.. window shopping.. does this mean I've bought a lifetime supply of windows? Nope. It means I've given myself delusions of grandeur about what I might just have to get up to tomorrow...

The Scandinavian influence in home furnishing design is so strong, and so familiar. All that Arabia-ware and Ittalla especially resonates with me, from items (mostly crockery and vases) I know well from childhood households (in Australia, I mean). The updated styles are still very school-of, too.

We spent today like this: M took 8 kg of stuff to be posted home (ahem, that was the Sami museum, a collection of papers, and quite a lot of our cold weather gear). I lay on my heatpad to try to quell spasms in my back... I lay there, channelling Ella (hi babe!) (my physio), and did some icky sinus wash stuff as well. Then it was all bombs away to be ready to meet Tuomo by 12 o'clock. He came in to the hotel beaming, because his second grandson was born this morning. We spent four hours with him; walking, driving, having grilled salmon and dill potatoes at the Harbour Market (and me being driven mad by stall after stall selling raspberries, cloudberries and the most highly scented strawberries I've ever had me nose near..), seeing cathedrals Finnish and Russian, various civic centre piles like the President's Palace, the Town Hall and National Theatre, the Opera House (which looks like an old post office, very dreary), and then a marvellous half hour in the Rock Church. This church was built in the 70's, by excavating a huge rock not far from the city centre, and re-using the granite rubble and walls to build a very space-ship like structure. The ceiling is a huge dome, with a copper circle floating above a strip of glass which draws your eye up, up to the rock wall inside and out. The chapel is quite starkly modern, cement floor and lower walls, grey metal seats with cerise fabric covers, and a long slice of copper panelling running horizontally around the top of the 'ground floor' walls. The colour clash of the copper and the cerise, reflected by and in the copper in the afternoon sun, had me reaching for the camera to try to record the colours.

Tuomo dropped off two fairly replete tourists at about 4.30. Our last stop with him was at the Sibelius memorial sculpture and wind-pipe sculpture - this is made from many steel pipes, all different diameters, and clearly resembling organ pipes. You can stand underneath and put your head up the pipes, and hear them 'singing'. Mostly fairly deep tones, and kind of breathy, like whale music. Wonderful!

M needed a break from facts, figures, wonders and wife. So I charged off to do a few chores and then reward myself with a visit to the Stockman department store, which I am assured is THE place to go to buy everything in central Helsinki.

Well, I tried. I cruised the ground floor, standard highly tempting shiny things for women department - purrfume, makeup, accessories (Prada sunnies, darling), belts and bangles and baubles and silly socks and sexy stockings and all that. I succumbed, but only to the socks. Two pairs of purple knee-high socks, to go with the fabbo purple suede boots I bought yesterday.

I cruised up several floors of the store, mooching and being amused by what was familiar and what wasn't, and the behaviour of the people, until my feet started yelling at me. A shop assistant pointed me to the cafe (just round from the skinny-girl's knickers, if you need to know). I fell into a blueberry strudel and a coffee. I pulled out the English newspaper I had with me and tackled world news, smarmy superior English columnist writings about the Olympic fervour and how it would never be done HEAH, my DEAH. Gee, I dislike snotty writing like this...I don't mind opinions, but why so rude?

I tackled the crossword and was just about to take my revived self off to the home furnishings and textiles, when a familiar face appeared at my table - Terttu! And her partner, who is a Viking. Another coincidence in a day of them (next blog entry will detail this bit). Lovely to see her again and assure her that I am feeling better and ta-da! up to touristing again, etc etc.

Now I must leap off the puter and go to eat dinner before M dies of diet. Friday night in Helsinki, the beeyootiful people are out, the Helsinki Festival starts tomorrow with a city marathon, and anything, just ANYTHING, could happen with my Visa. Yippee!

Helsinik, Wednesday August 13th

Blah.

You get highlights, magic, cor and wow and gobstoppers. You get true people and exciting adventures and purrfume on sale and wonderful shopping and galleries and holding hands in exotic places and it's marvellous. And the weather shines and everything is sparkly and your feet don't hurt (or your nose).

And...

... you get days like these, where will all the best intentions, and surrounded by all the above, it's just shit.

I don't know why.

We slept in again, and had lovely fresh coffee again, and puddled around getting ready to go out for lunch while checking the webs ... but somewhere between waking refreshed, and leaving, we both went flat. We both ignored this fact, and went around the corner (literally about 2 buildings away) to the Helsinki Museum of Modern Art. We spent about 2 hours there, having lunch first and then looking quite closely through 4 floors of exhibitions. Some very bleak visions, especially the urban shots of emerging Soviet states. M quoted the national suicide statistics for Finland at me; not exactly the cheeriest nation in the world.

As we move through the galleries, I am intrigued by the art (and many video/photo/graphic mixed installations) - and kind of horrified by a video of a German 'Baby Box' - a place outside hospitals where a baby who can't be cared for, can be left safely if the mother must. There is a joint video screen - film of the mother walking to the hospital and then away, and film of the inside of the hospital room where the alarm sounds and the medical team come to take care of the baby. Quite, quite confronting.

I feel a little retail therapy is in order after this, but walking our legs off uphill to the Kamppi mall, finding various things we need, and getting back to the hotel is not possible without a blow-up. It's all HIS fault, of course. I'M not tired, bleary, sore, sinus-y and depressed. Not at all. I love seeing abandoned babies, rainy days, teenagers smoking their heads off everywhere, dirty bus stations and a sad 'Aussie' pub with fluoro-cheery signs outside.

While M made a crucial grog-shop stop, I pissed off into the 'Sorco' department store, which kind of leeches onto the side of our Sorco Hotel. There's a huge parfumerie on the ground floor, and there's a sale. Hurray. I know I don't need to do this, but I cruise the shelves, nothing much here I haven't seen.. some interesting things... hmm, that's a good price for that, I only have a sample bottle at home... oh well, hell, here's the Euros and away we go. I could say the devil made me do it, but I knew it was me really. I get all homesick when I see Lancome 'Miracle' on the shelf, reminds me of my sis, who likes to wear it. And hi sis! - I had a BLT the other night and it wasn't a patch on our Psycho lunches. Not even having it with a Bailey's coffee helped. Goes to show that Canberra has gourmet food to equal or better international city standards, eh?

I'm gonna stay here and dial-up a movie, while M goes out to a church concert. We need some time apart. I need to have a gin or two, do some knitting, and get a grrrip.

Today brought to you by mall eau de bus exhaust mixed with cinnamon bun; several rather nasty test shots of purrfumes (DON'T buy 'Flower Bomb', or 'Hypnose', ick too fruity and sweet); a new bottle of Prada 'Iris'; and any minute now, a beaut cup of plunger coffee made with a Swedish plunger, Norwegian coffee, and Finnish milk and water. And, quite possibly, a bit of Aussie sweetener, if I can find it. Else gin will have to do!

Hmf. I'll write about yesterday another day.

Helsinki, proper stay this time.

From a Helsinki bed...

Oh HOW we slept last night, solid and silent and long.. all we managed after arriving in our room was to admire the features (standard modern hotel room, but the bed is in one piece, there is a big shelf in the bathroom, and I have the window side), unpack completely (and gee, what piles of stuff come out of those little hard-working suitcases), stagger out to eat, stagger back, and fall over.

M woke me just now with real coffee, yes we have a kettle, it’s amazing what a difference it makes to food if you have even the tiniest fridge, and a kettle.. and I am lying on the bed, looking (from the 7th floor) over the Helsinki Town Square rooftops, towards the cathedral. On a building nearby is the time and temperature, a breezy 19 degrees today. I see the locals are wearing jeans and long-sleeved jackets, so it can’t be so warm yet.

I woke dreaming of my brother, and a Chinese princess, and strangeness and distance and the madness of elite protocols in dynasties... what? Like, the princess needed a nom-de-plume, so all over the kingdom a list was made of all existing names, so she could be given a unique one.. I seem to have the Chinese on my mind. Which reminds me, I missed the diving in the Olympics again. I miss it every time. Dang. I like watching diving.

Anyway, we are slowly pulling ourselves together (with the help of the coffee and Rachmaninov’s 3rd piano concerto on the iPod) in time to meet M’s Finnish linguistic professor for lunch. I don’t much feel like going out, but I think we are free afterwards for more collapsing as needed.

Haven’t cracked the hotel’s “free” interwebs yet. I tried last night, by pressing buttons on the remote to make clever things happen on the tv, but I couldn’t then get the little laptop to run off the connection I think we’ve paid for.. oh well. Research later today should clear that up. The set-up in the room is that you tell the telly that you want interwebs, then use the keyboard on the desk with the telly as the screen. INteresting.

Seeya later..

I wish I could stay in bed....

Friday, Kirkenes, Olympic-madness-starts day...

Final day of shipping, a nice thing to be back on land.. nothing moving around wherever you look.

We’re staying at the Rica Hotel, Kirkenes, very nice. DAMN expensive, $A80 per head for a buffet dinner - a very NICE buffet dinner, but sheesh! We have a big room, and a big bathroom. The usual book-in time, we were told, is 3pm. Given that we arrived at 10am, the day was looking a bit stressful - Kirkenes isn’t a throbbing heart of any kind. But M, ever resourceful, took to the young reception person and said “Oh but is there any chance of booking in a bit earlier, my wife isn’t feeling very well”. Heh. This must be the ONLY upside of my nose being my nose. So after waiting a discreet few minutes for other ship-departing comrades to clear the room, we quietly came up in the lift to our room. Wonders. A proper bed. A bathroom big enough for a bath! And walking room. The boutique nature of the ship’s cabin was fun, but we did find it tricky to do things like get dressed, without giving each other a black eye with an inadvertent elbow or somesuch. Here we’ve spread out as much as we dare, not fully unpacking for only a night, but being able to stash things without having to be neat and tidy. Enough with Virgotude!

We spent some time writing notes and letters, then went out to find the post office and try to get rid of some loot. Success again - all posting done, 8 parcels winging their way to Australia, arriving in about 7 days according to the very efficient Norsk post office person .. we had a great time packing post office bags, finding post codes and thinking of all the ppl we were sending to.. a nice feeling.

After the post office fix, we had lunch at a Bakeri and Konditori - ham and cheese sammos and coffee. The service was very interesting - lots of extremely blonde, ice-eyed waitresses (and customers - a boy about 8 years old with white hair - not an albino, because he had darker eyebrows and eyelashes), but the coffee took until we’d eaten to be served. And our lattes were extremely hot. I carried mine over to the counter to add some cold milk, and managed to tip the whole beautiful thing over. Yeah, me a bit tired. What with the late night, early morning, unnatural activity before normal corpse-reviving time, and the excitement of being on land again, I was clearly not myself. The coffee (a whole tall glass of it) went EVERYWHERE - all down the counter, across the floor, across my clean, brand new daks, ditto shoes and socks. Bugger.

But this is a testament to Australian wool, because I was able to wipe down my daks, shoes, socks and not a mark left on them (thanks also to my darling dorter for the many layers of water/soil proofing on my shoes, it worked!). The staff were very kind, not only mopping up the mess but making me a free new coffee. After this the only possible thing to do was to have a sleep.

I resumed the day at about 5.30... only to read, have dinner, and find some pretty amazing things on tv - like, oh I’d forgotten totally (no newspapers remember?) that today the Olympics begin. We watched the opening ceremony for about 3 minutes, only enough to see the official opening words. Then M insisted we move channels, too much Party propaganda for him. I channel-surfed and found, ye gods! an Ozzie drama, Colin Friels et al in a cop thriller. So while I’ve been engaging in other soothing personal activities (cutting my fringe, drinking cold gin, repacking my cases to fit more in - not actually impossible, so ner to all you cynics out there) I’ve been able to enjoy some Aussie logic, accent, bullshit, cynicism and humour. Wonderful! Now M has shut himself into the bathroom to read because he can’t cope with the tv sound. I’d better give it up.

Tomorrow we turn south, crossing into Finland and heading, via a scenic tour, to Inari, where we will stay the night. I think it’s another Rica group hotel, although I do hope it’s cheaper than this one - as you know I have no problem with luxury, but if I’d known the buffet was so expensive I’d probably have bought bananas, bread and cheese at the ICA (IGA in Norsk, stands for Independent Coop Association I think)... or at least tried to eat my head off. We had that amazingly huge and wonderful seafood feast on the ship last night, so I just couldn’t fang this one. Best item? - there were two: sun-dried tomatoes; and a sort of fish cake, more like a fish ball a la Vietnamese soup, but as wide in diameter as a slice of orange, served with brown gravy. Very tasty. As was the very large chicken drum and breast - a Viking-sized chicken, but moist and tender. So perhaps I have just described why this buffet cost as much as it did. The array of fresh salad served with it was good too. I didn’t dare look at the desserts, temptation is too hard.

Tomorrow, ze bus. Today brought to you by what I believe was a lot of nice Gucci (I have no sense of smell atm), latte floor-wash in the Konditori, and a fresh Norsk cinnamon/sugar bun. Nom.

~~~~~~~~~~
I was reading ze brochure about Kirkenes and this remote area of the world. This area was formerly known as ‘Lappland’, now known as the homeland of the Sami people, who speak a dialect of Norwegian which has more in common with Finnish than any other language. M described as a language/dialect which started out the same 2,000 years ago but took a turn sideways. I can imagine that! And, we are further east than Cairo. Even thinking about the curvature of the earth leaning up to the North Pole, it’s a long way further east than I would have guessed. We are really travelling! Yesterday we passed a whole lot of ‘north’ markers - the largest northern town, the most northern island of Norway, etc etc. Even the northern-most port, although I am confused about that, because I know ships can get to Greenland, and Iceland, places like that, which I am guessing cover more northern territory. Perhaps it’s all related to this warm Gulf Stream, and the ports are described as such because boats can get into them all through the year, not just for a few days in mid-’summer’. [Speaking of which, a balmy summer’s day in Kirkenes on 8th August is 8 degrees with a brisk cool wind. Mum this is where you should move to when the summer gets too much at home.]

Last night on M/S Polarlys, sailing to Kirkenes

We’ve had a pretty good last day - quite a few highlights in one day, altho I didn’t think it would work out that way - I didn’t sleep well, and after getting up for breakfast (firmly taken behind dark glasses) I went back to sleep until lunch time. M was meantime sailing happily into Honnigsvard, where he went exploring for the usual - post office, newspapers, etc. We lunched on board and then set out together, first to the post office, to send 4kg of stuff home - another accumulation of newspaper cuttings, brochures, acquired goodies, unneeded clothes and sundry bits and pieces which, three weeks into this trip, I know now for sure I won’t need.

Our next stop was at the local gift and wool/fabric emporium! The women there (we forgot to ask her name, I’m sorry, she was so helpful and friendly) performed a vital task and finished the translation of my little Norwegian knitting project. It was something to see - she and M bent over the bench while I went fossicking for more products! He took excellent notes, and with my knowledge of knitting terminology in English (‘knit one; purl two’), her ability to turn Norsk into Southsk, and M’s quick research-writer note-taking, we soon had the task done.

I found many wonderful things in this shop - gifts, knitting wools, glass beads, bobbles, fabric, etc etc. I bought quite a bit of stuff, and we realised as we carried the bag back to the boat that I had pretty much replaced the entire 4 kg of stuff we’d posted home. Oh well .. tomorrow in Kirkenes there will be another entirely efficient Norsk post office and I can spend as many hours as I like (and as it will take) sending lots of little parcels to my dear ones. [Tomorrow goes like this: we have already taken our 4 main cases to the drop-off place on the ship, from whence they will be de-boated onto the bus into town. We will then dump them (and as much hand luggage as we can) at the hotel, and take off to the post office. The remainder of the day as it comes. Then on Saturday morning, late-ish, we get on a bus to Inari, and repeat but without the boat. And, perhaps, without 4 more kg of stuff. But no promises!]

We sailed from Honnigsvard at about 4pm - we both immediately had a good Net fix, altho I ran out of time for poor old T and S because of needing to send purrsonal emails. That done (eeeeeek my family are emailing me about Christmas! I am in DENIAL about that) M returned panting from an info session about leaving the boat, to tell me we had two deadlines to meet if we wanted maximum help with suitcases. At this point we were sailing through open sea on a windy afternoon, so we spent quite a funny couple of hours falling over while we tried to encourage our possessions to telescope back into our bags. Not helped by me doing another presto vwala with the outgoing vs incoming - I went up to the gift shop to get stamps and post a last lot of cards (for franking on board) and while I was there I ahem oops seemed to leave with a number of things in pockets equalling or possibly overtaking the weight and dimensions of what I’d posted. Sighh .. I am a consumer, not always happily, but if I explain that one of these things was a cat, would you furgive me???? I hope so. She is a very nice little green glass cat with rather wonderful reflective green glass triangular eyes. You DO see how I couldn’t resist?

And, once again, the time slipped away with no mark, because there is no night as such this far north in the summer (the barely 9 degrees with a howling wind off the sea summer!). M had to drag me away from finishing our laundry, so we could go to dinner. It was a seafood feast, to mark the end of the voyage north for all the passengers; to farewell those sturdy souls taking to the land; and (I presume) to stun the return passengers into a calorific daze so they don’t feel like the trip home is the same again backwards. Even the captain made an appearance, so we were informed. But I am very peeved to report that he didn’t come to OUR table to say hello. Maybe we weren’t consuming enough Aquavit for only another umpty kroners per teaspoon ... the seafood feast was just that, a huge buffet of wonderfully fresh designer goodies - salmon done three different ways, crab, prawns, lobster, filled crab shells, ‘Light’ fish (which Steve warned us is always described as ‘an acquired taste’, which to all of us translates as ‘don’t feed to a dead dog’).. as well as reindeer stew (tasted like beef strog to me), umpteen veggies with cream, and the usual array of rich sauces and salad creams. As the boat was still in open sea, the sight of dozens of passengers simultaneously trying to cram their plates and stay standing was most amusing. I ended up with three bits of damage - a little American lady attacked my wrist with the lettuce servers, I fell off my left foot and nearly dropped my plate, and a hefty Norsk elbow rearranged my right boob for me, en passant. I thought it had been quite well-behaved lately, so I guess it’s a good thing it was taken care of...

Everyone at our table ate very well, everyone also had a big bowl of dessert, well for heaven’s sake there was creme caramel again, as well as chocolate mousse, fresh icecream, apple cake, redcurrant and blueberry compote and other bad, bad things. Served with 3-pint jugs of fruit jus, pouring cream and maple srrp. I had a bit of nearly everything, with a bit of nearly everything on top. It was fabulous. And yes I did also have blackcurrant jelly with cream at lunchtime, so ner. Be jealous!

At about 11pm the M/S ? passed us on the return voyage. There was much hooting and camera flashes and flapping of banners over the side of the other boat. I don’t know how many on this boat went out to wave back. It was a fine sight to see ourselves sailing away in the other direction - the M/S ? is exactly the same shape etc as this ship. We could see them for some time in the fading grey rainy light, a liner in full flight does kind of stick out on a grey sea and sky background. I thought it was magnificent. Very quick though... I tried to take some photos but I think they’ll be poor quality because of me being on the inside of a double-glazed window. But anyway, THAT’S what WE look like!

Now it is 11.30pm, purrfectly light outside (the type of grey light you get on a fairly rainy day, which it is - I can’t speculate on the amount of sunshine you might see because it’s been grey and squally since Tuesday afternoon); M has taken our cases away, and our cabin looks anonymous again without all our interesting stuff everywhere. I will have to leave behind the beautiful red roses, even I can’t think of a way to manage them as hand luggage for three days. We’ve had a most fascinating time doing this cruise, learned a lot of things, and seen some sights I could never have dreamed of. Successful all round, and most instructive as to what we might change if we did something like it again.

What would I do differently? Mostly I’d go somewhere warm, so I could spend a lot more time outside on the boat. It’s been far too cold to do more than nip out, try to suck in a breath of cold air untainted by cigarette smoke, and nip back inside again. The vacuum-sealed nature of the common areas has bothered me; I have literally popped my ears a couple of times when the pressure has felt odd. So, yes, I think I can’t claim to have fulfilled a long-held fantasy of lying around on a deck chair while a nice purser with tanned legs brings me a margarita on the half-hou, until I roll off... I’d perhaps try to find a cruise where water wasn’t treated as such a luxury item. Even for water-wise Aussies, having to pay for ordinary drinking water when you are surrounded by bloody vats of the stuff just lying around waiting to be filtered, is a bit of an insult. And the price-hiking of booze annoys me a bit... it costs several crucial limbs to pay for the cruise anyway!

The coffee-deal would have impressed me if the standard of coffee had been better. The coffee WAS filter coffee, always pretty fresh, but why why WHY was fresh milk only available at breakfast for the cereal? The ship certainly took on and off many tonnes of goods at every port, including French people, so why don’t they supply fresh milk? They can’t claim to be too far from civilisation when they can produce fresh tropical fruit every day. Tsk tsk Hurtigruten. I tried the non coffee-deal coffee twice - I saw ppl drinking espresso so I thought I’d cough up for a latte. But that came out of an instant latte machine - once again, fresh coffee, but with an auto-milk-frother, so you got the latte made as a milk-coffee mix. NOT the same. Fresh milk I think, but auto-frothed. This all affects the flavour, which is what I’m really going on about.

The final minor key for me was the row of silent, unmoving grey nomads in the Observation Lounge - all the way up at the top and front of the ship, their chairs set in a row as close to the windows as they could get. And so they sat, hour after hour, day after day, watching water moving towards them. A lot of the time they were asleep. This afternoon when I went up there briefly to knit, I swear about 10 ppl in a row were a neat line of motionless, sleeping heads. Missing it all... people didn’t seem to be very keen on interaction; unless they were sticking to fellow countrymen. I vote the Norwegians as the happiest travellers, even the somewhat irritating fellow up there this arvo, who kept whistling the same bit of Don Giovanni thru his teeth while I was trying to count my rows. The Germans seemed to be having the least fun; looking dour and never cracking a smile. The Americans, in my extremely jaundiced view, were feeling ripped off because it wasn’t exclusive enough. The other poxy passengers weren’t dressing for dinner, or being suitable impressed by being in their august company, and as for the food! No poptarts! No plain green salad! And ‘soss’ on everything. Not good enough. The British? I put them in two groups - the ppl we got to know at our fixed seating lunch and dinner table - we made a hearty group and much jollity was experienced. Other (generally more elderly) English people seemed to be a bit lost - they were wearing their special ‘touring trousers’, ‘holiday boots’, and matching marital backpacks, but they didn’t seem to quite know what to do and where to go. As for the French, they were harmless enough .... Madame la maman could have washed her hair last week, and Papa le comic didn’t share the child-minding enough for my liberal views, but the little boy was charmant.

Enough. T and S was always intended as an opinion-venting outlet, but enough! I must sleep so I can get up too early for my liking and hump bloody plastic bags full of STUFF around at unnatural hours of the day. And possibly suffer for a while before I can get a cup of coffee the way I really like it. But that won’t kill me. Meantime, today brought to you by eau de very fresh sea wind, that wet-fresh smell of just-washed cotton clothes, and a blast of Gucci across the prawns. And I must quote Nigel, who described Troll Fiord as ‘a wet cul-de-sac at midnight’. That’s how to kill poetry!

Getting to Bergen, a second view..

The end of the trip was peaceful enough. We got a taxi easily, got to the hotel, discovered we were at the wrong hotel, but the right one was just across the road. M went over to register, leaving me sitting on cases. A good move, because the hotel is in two parts, and the part our room is in is right next door to the wrong hotel. Got that?

A strapping young Viking called 'Peer' came along to help with the bags. He amused me by running up the three high flights of stairs with all our bags. I stomped up, feeling somewhat odd, developing an ache in my chest. At the top I dropped my backpack, thinking it must be muscle spasm.

Our room is hot, small, and is really a loft, with one window in a sloping wall, so M's side of the bed is a bit dangerous. I hate it. But it's now 1am and too late to start fussing. I try to hold it in, but M says rather bitterly 'this is the cheapo hotel I booked instead of the much more expensive one our travel agent found', so I say 'well if we need to move [for which read: if *I* can't stand it] I'll pay the difference for a posher hotel'. Hmf says M.

I have a shower, unpack the minimum and fall onto the bed. But I can't get to sleep, because no matter how many puffs of Ventolin I have, I can't seem to catch my breathe. Suddenly I erupt into a major, violent attack. M sits helplessly holding my hand while I fight for breath between coughing and trying to hold the puffs of Ventolin in my lungs long enough to do some good. M has dug out his spacer, so at least I can use the 'rebreathing' technique, which is a life-saver. We look at each other, both thinking 'how the fuck are we going to find an ambulance and/or a hospital this time of night in a completely unknown city???'. Not a happy situation.

The attack settles in about half an hour, a very long half an hour, especially for M, who has to watch me go through it. I have always thought that one of the worst things about asthma is how awful it must be for people to have to witness it, people who care about you and want to make it better, NOW.

When things are calmer, and I can get a peak flow reading which isn't in the danger zone, we discuss our next move. It's a toss-up between finding a hospital, and taking a big dose of oral steroid. The tablets, at nearly 2am, win. I chuck them down the hatch, crying a bit, have another shower to wash off the sweat from the attack, and fall somewhat hysterically into bed.
~~~~~~~~

NEXT DAY
I wake feeling pretty frail, but not wheezing. I take the next dose of tablets, fill up on my puffers, and lie around thinking FUK IT'S HOT IN THIS HORRIBLE ROOM until M wakes. He, the saint, goes out for coffee, because I really don't feel well enough to move.

After the coffee [and the muffins and doughnuts he thoughtfully adds to his shopping], I try another shower. Then we totter over to the other bit of hotel to the reception. I tell them quietly that I have very bad asthma and is there any chance of a room lower down? Three flights of stairs being a major challenge right now. And, hurray, there is. With very little fuss we stuff our bags with the few things we'd managed to unpack, and M lugs it all down two flights. This room is MUCH nicer, has three huge windows and less sun (because the window upstairs was sloping up the roof, and therefore is exposed to more of the sun). It also has a kettle, so I have unpacked the plunger I bought in Stockholm (for rather too much, my maths was wrong, dammit), and the ground coffee I bought in Bangkok. Tomorrow morning, multicultural coffee!

We've been out for an excellent fish dinner, to a restaurant attached to a major pub complex. The restaurant is named 'Wesser Steigl' and claims to be the most famous restaurant in Bergen. It was certainly a lot cheaper than other restaurants nearby. Our meal is slightly spoiled by an American woman sitting at the next table, who whinges about the heat 'My, it was hot in the States, and now it's hot here' (DER!!! It's norther summer in both places!!!!), the slow service (it wasn't), 'do they call this CHICKEN??' she said, etc etc. I was glad when they left, and I hope they heard my remarks about 'lard-asses' and UNDERSTOOD THEM.

We walked slowly through the main 'square' - part closed-in street, part grass and sculpture area - down to the fish market at the harbour. The fisherman are hard at it selling their catch. At 8pm! The Bergers (Bergenese? Bergen-meisters?) are out in force, walking the children, showing off their purrfect '16-years old and lookin' good in shorts' tanned legs, taking the air with a few fags to improve the texture. The setting of this city is nothing less than spectacular - a shining harbour, beautiful Scandinavian architecture - all of the old buildings kept in excellent condition - and very close by, a mountain range rising a lot further than Mount Ainslie! We can see a funicular rail running up to a castle or perhaps resort of some kind. We'll investigate tomorrow when we go to the Information Centre.

The city is incredibly clean (see below for why!) and orderly. I love this orderliness, it means that a bit of logic applied to our general Australian/Western understanding of what you find where in a city, will have quick results. M always needs a newsagent, I always want lots of cafes and the odd 'shopping oppurrtunity'. Although I am trying to contain myself to small examples of local textiles or crafts, or little prints of typical artwork. Ahem. Failed that challenge in Stockholm and Bangkok ... Bangkok, says she defensively, WAS a planned spend-up at the tailor, but. As for Stockholm, I am delighted with my Viking t-shirt, which has gone straight into service as an extra pyjama top for M; my Svensk national colours of bright blue and yellow boxer shorts which are very airy (ahem, sorry dad, TMI); our new teddy bear to be Sophie's friend, and the doo-dads which I am posting home tomorrow, some for us, most for friends. So there.

~~~~~~~
I am happily settled back in the room now, grateful for the extra comfort, the lack of wheezing, and the very good news that the daily temperatures will go down by 10 degrees in the next few days. The forecast is that by Saturday, when we sail off to the fiords, it is expected to be 18 degrees and raining. Yeah! M told me earlier today that Bergen is famous for, among other things, the highest rainfall per annum in these parts. I looked askance at the hot blue skies above us and thought a few evil thoughts about bloody amusing Viking gods toying with my equilibrium.

And so to a good book (a psychological thriller), some vanilla yoghurt, a few more drugs, and the happy end to a rather anxious day. M has tootled off, re-energised by dinner and two huge tins of Aass beer (heh), to a department store called 'Galleriet' which is only a block away. To buy a fan. I will lug it, uncomplaining, however unwieldy, however heavy, around the rest of the world if necessary. Smiling as I shove it into my bags, gleaming with pleasure as I tote it on my back and pay extra double excess baggage for it on every bus, train, camel, Vespa, whatever. I will even offload purrfume to make room for it.

He is my HERO. He returns with a fan. LUVLUVLUV!

PS: I bought a German patchwork magazine because M said he could 'easily' translate it for me. We'll see!

A letter from Stockholm

We had only three full days here. The first we spent in a heap, recovering from the long journey from Bangkok. We did manage to get up (on Friday morning) and have breakfast - I ate in silence, wearing my sunglasses, only just keeping my face out of the bowl.. we went straight back to bed afterwards. M was up again at about 2pm, but I slept on.. I think we went for a walk around the local streets, before finding somewhere to have dinner. I can't remember, two days later, where or what it was. That's exhaustion for you!

It seems Stockholm is having a bit of a heat wave - that'd be right! I am doomed to bring heat waves with me wherever I go. It's because I get too hot very easily, and obviously the gods are funny bastards and enjoy watching me melt. And get sore bits on my face from wiping gallons of sweat off with tissues. And wearing through several changes of clothes each day so I am also doomed to lashings of hand-washing. And having horribly hot, tender feet. For heaven's sake you lot up there, hot and tender are words usually found in recipes!!!

Ahem.

On Saturday, we should have been feeling much refreshed, but we both had a bit of traveller's tum. I flaked out after breakfast, actually falling asleep in the big chair in our room while the maid cleaned the room. She woke me gently to say "you can go to bed now" and patted me kindly. We were due to go at 1.30 to meet a dear friend of M's, one of his early Chinese professors at the ANU. [When we were here two years ago, Goran spent parts of several days with us, showing us around the best of the 84 museums in this city. I recall spending quite a bit of time falling back from Goran and M walking together, so I could let my jaw drop in private. Damask silk panelling on the palace walls! Hand-painted "wallpaper"! Gilt on the legs of the furniture used for arranging flowers and serving food. Amazing.] I didn't think I'd make it through the afternoon, but you just can't let ppl down .. can you. I spoke severely to myself and dragged my ass into some kind of vertical arrangement, and off we went.

Goran has since re-married, and he had arranged for us to meet him and his wife at the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities. Unfortunately the museum's administrators have removed the guts of the collection, leaving only a few rooms of rather ordinary items, but have spent a lot of money building a very fake Chinese garden. We had to leave after only a short visit, because Goran was getting visibly upset.

We repaired to the nearby Museum of Modern Art - I'm always keen on Modern Art exhibitions. On entry, Goran led us all firmly to the cafe, stating most determinedly that 'this is the best coffee in Stockholm, it's famous'. Rightio! The chairs were very strange, low and small of seat, almost children's chairs. But the coffee was indeed very very good. I was very self-controlled and only had one.

The exhibition was full of fairly brutal modern canvasses by an American painter, who echoed Dali in some of her attitudes to flesh - faces pierced and pulled by hooks, blood-stained cloths covering bits of bodies, that sort of thing. And a very strange and repellent animation involving two naked people, who give birth to a hippo and a whale. Odd.

We were happy after this to retreat to mere consumerism (having farewelled our friends), visiting the H and M store to try to find the bookshop/cafe we recalled from last time. We didn't find it (wrong shop, it turns out) but we fell into the H n M cafe anyway. M was looking very keen on his wine by then - we'd been speaking about 3.5* languages all afternoon and even for M it was getting a bit wearing.

Today we decided to head for the water. First stopping to buy an iPod recharger, because we left ours at home. We ended up stamping around through four different shopping malls before finding a place that hadn't sold out. After that we were free to go down to the quay - M suggested we take the boat to the castle and have a look around there. But by the time we got on the boat it was after 2pm, and the trip one way is an hour. The castle closes at 4... we decided to spend only half an hour looking through the grounds, and then enjoy the water views and cool(ish) breeze on the return trip. There were a lot of ppl on every possible bit of 'beach' sunbathing like mad. Apparently it's still very much the rage here. I find it almost shocking to see people with dark tans, or obvious sunburn. Tut tut!

M decided his feeties were falling off so he took the train back to the hotel. I opted to walk, feeling guilty about lollies I ate last night and an icecream that fell into my gob at the quay. By the time I'd investigated a few shoppies and sprayed my arms with six different new purrfumes, MY feeties were falling off, and I still had the uphill bit of Drottinggattan to go, to get back to the hotel. So I am lying on the bed, with the fan playing on my throbbing tooties, while I write this up ready to post when I next have Net access. Tomorrow we leave here at 7,30am to catch the train to Bergen, via Oslo. I'm looking forward to a day of no walking, of watching beautiful Swedish (and I daresay Norwegian) countryside passing by, and perhaps starting my first sewing project.

And no, I didn't buy any purrfume. But only just!

*English, Swedish, Mandarin (because Goran's wife is Taiwanese) and a bit of German and French to fill in a few linguistic gaps. I don't have any Swedish except "Tack" which is 'thank you". My Mandarin is pretty non-existent, although I can still understand a great deal more than I speak. I have the remnants of schoolgirl French, and M, clever clogs, speaks German like a native. So we had a very multi-cultural conversation!