Feeling Fragile For Farewells and Further Faffing-about..

Wednesday, 24th September.

Our last full day in Freiburg. We had a good party last night, much jollity and good food and I didn’t get too tired.. after sleeping half the day it’s not surprising! My family gave me some fabbo goodies - chocolate made in the very village where my sis-in-law grew up; a Winnie the Poo pencil (for reasons I don’t fully understand, they associate WTP very strongly with me.. I may have sent one of the girls a “Pooh” present when she was a baby???), and a good shower back-washing/scratching thingie.

Today we really spent most of our time getting ready to leave (ie leave Freiburg/Germany) - a long period this morning sorting through possessions getting ready for another uber-post (15kg this time! - M is sending home the most books of any parcel this far); to do this effectively we ended up half-packing and making sure that we found and segregated items to be returned to the family.

We lugged the postables into town, and the post office experience wasn’t too bad - we know how to make up the flat-pack boxes now, and with M’s good German nothing much goes wrong. But we are always tense cos there’s an implicit system about how you do it - do you buy boxes first and then pack?; or do you head for the counter first so they can sell you the right sized boxes? or a similar thing but where they tell you a different way to do it so it’s cheaper overall??? I dunno. There was no shouting, it didn’t cost any more bombs than usual, and we left feeling virtuously empty-handed. A small celebration at an Italian cafe ensued.

Then time to get to grrrrips with The List. I still have gifts to purchase for my girls, M needs a Net fix, and I want to go to the fabric and wool shops I found on Monday. M talks to me in circles about the timing and how long to take and when to be back etc etc and I get cross. Why ask what I think if he’s already made up his mind??? ARggggg..

Ahem.

This out of the way, we dealt with a minor crisis when we got to the square and it was the wrong church. What??? But we worked it out quickly and forged ahead to the other square and then I knew the way. As we went along we dropped into various shops to get lil things for my younger niece for her birdy. We had a most satisfactory pile of girlie-bits and pongs when we’d finished (and she loved them, was having fun trying it all on and smelling the purrfume and so on when we left tonight...). I got samples for me too! Excellent.

The fabric shop was very, very good. Also very, very slow. And there were two women who seemed to me to be arguing over who was first, slowing things up even more. M sat patiently on the husband chair, then impatiently, then coldly, then shiveringly, before finally coming inside (his chair was in the arcade) and trying to ask politely how many more hours I’d be. I was kind of wondering that too... I shopped quickly for the fabrics, and once the duelling dragons had paid and left I had Herr ShopKeeper’s full attention. And his English is quite good, which meant I asked more questions, so... a fairly big chunk of ze inheritance is gone again kids, sorry! I gots wools and silks and felts and wunderbar things and superior quality remnants and such goodies!!! M said rather sourly that it looked like I’d replaced the entire postage weight. And???? I’ve done it before, says she defensively. Oh well. I have to brag that one piece is a bit of honest-to-gawd Missoni fabric, from the Italian fashion house. Ner. It’s a sort of folk print of braids and simple hand stitches and such, useful to me because little bits of it will be purrfect in a quilt, and a big bit of it will make a very unusual and bright skirt or cape for moi. It could be the only international designer brand item I ever wear! And, therefore (come on keep up!!!!) entirely necessary. And I’ve packed it all away purrfectly easily in my suitcases and then it will go in ze post in Helsinki (Friday) and no-one need worry at all.

I’m sad there was no time left to go to the wool shop, but even I could see that I would end up with just too much bulk. And the excitement of schlepping hundreds of bags has totally worn off, if indeed there ever was any to start with. We’re down to our ‘low’ version of numbers of cases atm, and I hope we now stay there until we get to ‘bought it Duty Free when jet-lagged, exhausted and incompetent’ things in Seoul and Hong Kong airports. Oh, not that I’m PLANNING anything....

Our last family meal was delightful, the girls singing and everyone telling jokes. And FOUR purrfumes competing for best around the table, cos I gots everyone some. Well, except for M, but he doesn’t mind. Sometimes he has a bit of mine; sometimes he uses the geranium oil which is so calming. We are clean enough that we don’t need it as camouflage!

I am now looking at an extremely tidy motel room, a line of bulging suitcases and packs sitting where a colourful tumble of clothes, gifts, purrfumes, books, scarves and bits of food used to be. This is a very good motel - it gets the most ticks on M’s comparative list, especially in the ‘room on each side and at the end of the bed’ list item. It fails only in two areas - no kettle/bar fridge, and no hair dryer in every bathroom. I asked and was able to borrow a very good dryer though, so this is only a comment on the lack of it as a standard item.

Tomorrow we leave at about 9.30 to go to the station for a 2-3 hour train trip to Frankfurt. We arrive there about 2pm, then I must post that fabric (and a tin of coffee and five packets of chocolate - the Lindt flavours available in Europe are much more varied, and I deeply regret not buying the one in the Baltic states which is 70% dark chocolate flavoured with a pinch of salt!). I am firmly in GOING HOME mode. There may not be much more text written in museum/sites/sights mode. Somehow this last few weeks has been a haul and a trek, and the time with my family here has made me see how much I just want to go back to my normal domestic environment and return to taking pleasure in the little things. Enough with the kulcha! Begone, fine dining. Face me not oh splendid vista. Give me a cat, a cuppa tea and me back yard, maybe some washing flapping around, and that’ll DO.

M feels similarly, but still has energy for kulcha. He enjoyed his time in Heidelberg, finding various nostalgic sites (his music teacher’s house; a particular pub; that sort of thing!) and having a break from the intensity of avec moi.

Maybe in Seoul I’ll be intrigued enough to go outside and see what makes Koreans different from other Asian cultures I’ve experienced. But don’t be surprised if all you get is photos of the different colours of taxis, like I took in Bangkok!

Today brought to you by a whole list of things: Essence de Hubby; ‘Magnifique’ in large doses; Calvin Klein’s ‘Euphoria’ for my sissy; ‘Kate Moss’ by Kate Moss; and Laura Giagnotti’s ??? (sorry, the docket is buried too deeply for now, I promise I’ll look it up asap) for my younger niece. M had some Magnifique on him cos he hugged me when my wrists were still wet. And the shop assistants in the ‘Müller’ department store gave me about 11 samples of some Estee Lauder Anti-Wrinkle Didja Know Yer Getting Crumbly Cream.. that smells quite nice too. I don’t expect it to have any effect beyond competent moisturising.. g’night.

E-purr-phany...

The last two days have been a physical marvel - a palpable lifting of the weight from my shoulders and spirit.

I think, since we crossed the border into Russia, I've been under a dark cloud. The reckoning for this I shall examine more closely when I have more time (having spent 2 hours sorting things to post this afternoon, and 2 more hours re-packing this evening, I'm not inclined to natter just now). But the feeling is strong and quite clear to me. The last five weeks at least have been a big struggle.

For now, we are quite delighted to have taken umpteen more kilos of stuff to the extremely excellent and efficient and orderly and friendly Saturday Helsinki post office. All kinds of amazing things can be found - packing boxes which don't require a degree in spatial-development-architectural-witticism to assemble; staff who point out cheaper options!!!!; tables for packing which are equipped with scissors, that wide strong sticky tape, string (yes dad, we finally found some!); labels, instructions and plenty of ROOM!!!. We happily filled two boxes with papers, souvenirs, unguents, a few spare clothes (I still don't really need my fiord-wear heavy-duty wool jumper) and suchlike.. the only thing I didn't find room for was a 1 kg tin of excellent Freiburg 'BIO BIO' coffee. Natch. It's in with me smalls now; I can go anywhere at this point and as long as my luggage goes with me I'll be orright for clean undies and nice coffee..

We repaired to the nice cafe of our Helsinki previous visit - Leonardo's. We ate the whole cafe. I had a small meltdown during the meal (tears are not far from the surface, the last few days) but pink fizz and grilled ching and some cheesecake to share fixed me well enough. Since then, as I said, I've been packingsortingfiddling with all me stuff and thinking exclusively of HOME. As of tomorrow evening, it is a mere week until we feel Australian soil (tarmac) under our footsore tootsies. I may not kiss it but I'll be bloody glad to consider a little tap of the toes, or maybe dripping a tear or two onto it. If I drink enough on the last leg, I might even vaporise Sydney airport, which would be a very community-minded action!

Our flight to Seoul leaves at about 5pm tomorrow; we'll be off to the airport about 2pm to ensure I have time to claim my tax duty back (from previous Helsinki purrchases) (but not all of them; I mistakenly sent the paperwork home to Oz a while back. Bugger.). We need time to get some wons, too. That's Korean currency, and it runs at something like 96.4 won to one Ozzie dollar. My maths won't be up to it I assure you!

As for recent Visa action, the nice lady at the Sokos shopping centre, where I went today to purchase the amazing luxury of a whole box of Kleenex tissues - not the endless little packets, which drive me nuts - FORCED me, I tell you, to try several new purrfumes.

You know purrfectly well what happened next. Mmmm.... Escada, Dior, Gaultier... how to choose??? I found a way, of course I did!

I gots to go now and order my bedtime hot chocolate from the bar before it closes - Satdy night in Helsinki and come 9.30pm it's doornail dead. Don't ask me why. As long as noone keeps ME awake I don't care.

And, btw, there should be time tomorrow morning before we nick off, for me to do some uploading and thought-and-snorting. I feel bad I've been neglecting ze blog, but just wait patiently and you'll read allaboudit. Guten nacht and sleepen tacht, for now!

Today brought to you by layers of 'Magnifique'; Gaultier 'Classique'; Chanel No. 5's 'Huile Sensual', and a spot of some new Escada called something like 'MY PURRFECT PONGO'.'

Snort.

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.

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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 day of July..

FIRST: I've been fiddling with dates and times, to try to get the posts back in order. So you might find peerless prose below you haven't seen, underneath p/p you HAVE. Happy untangling!

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Last day of July, and we are having a major excavation of all our belongings, aiming to post a big heavy bundle home, the first boxed set of accumulations since we departed our home shores..

I am somewhat better today, although once again it is a late start. But we've achieved a lot without leaving the room - eaten, coffee-ed, pilled, washed, laundered, folded, fossicked, sorted, packed and re-packed. Determined that THREE purrfumes can go home. I would almost sob, except it's not really going to take me very long to acquire more, is it. No, not even a question.

There is a good feeling, to see the huge piles of meds slowly reducing as we guzzle them down every day. And I like knowing that we can ditch all the cold weather stuff at Helsinki, that should leave LOTS more room for spontaneous souvenir sampling.

I do hope I can find a wi-fi Net cafe soon, so I can get these various bits onto the blog. I'll get all out of kilter and you won'ts know where I is at!

Today brought to you by Lotte Lenya singing Kurt Weill on the darling iPod, the previously unidentified purrfume (Gucci, by Gucci!), and a rising sense of excitement about the boat trip. Yippee! T and S goes coastal!

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Those dang Viking gods have been at again. We achieved great things and very sore feet today - major post office operations (look out for small parcels and postcards, my dear ones), money exchanging (and we found a place that doesn't charge a fee! - I now have a zillion Norwegian kroner but I don't really know what they're worth, M keeps changing his mind about the maths and I haven't bothered to check have I..), found a laundry, found (after a PROLONGED STOMP AROUND A LOTTA COBBLESTONES) one of the two liquor stores here, only to discover it had closed 10 mins earlier buggerbuggerbugger ... went past the wool shop for some knitting needles and wool but it had closed- this northern summer midnight sun fools us easily into thinking it's been 4pm for half the day, only to find the good Burghers of Bergen have the gall to close up shop at 7pm!. How slack is that... where was I??...

Oh yes, M was fading fast so he came back to the room for a bit of non-B time. I stopped at the 'Bazaar' dress shop [where I was investigating cruise-ship formal wear the other day] and managed to bend my Visa card most successfully. I am now kitted up for anything short of a royal visitation, in which case I shall retreat to my room and knit.

Returning to our room, thinking happily of Netting and having some coffee, I find M looking hot and cross.. he needs some time out and is planning a Net fix over the road, via the pub. But oh bloodybotheringshit he suddenly grabs his jaw, and out comes a crown from a back tooth. Baaaaaaad news. We take deep breaths (the better to swear, my dear); then I stomp up to reception while he has his nervous breakdown in private. Jarle, the very helpful young man at the desk, searches for a dentist which is still open. No luck, and no luck finding an after-hours clinic either. Eventually we agree that we'll front up at 8am tomorrow, when someone can ring around and make an appointment for us. I hope we can get in somewhere quickly, it will be very VERY anxious-making for M to go on a boat trip for 6 days with a busted tooth. And who wouldn't be? The chance of it suddenly getting very painful is a nasty risk.

HOWEVER one good thing that comes from this is that Jarle confirms that this hotel does have wireless internet, so when I've typed this last bit I can load up several days worth of peerless prose, and gets myself back into date order.

Today brought to you by ow-de-cobblethrobbers, coffee, and a strong longing for chocolate.