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3 Sept - Day of no fire.
Because at the end of August "everything" gets back to normal after the summer, the beginning of September tends to be the time for doing all those things that have to be done once or twice a year.
And so it was that I had not one but two fire practices today.
The first one was in church, where everyone with an official function in all our local churches gets together, lights a candle, consumes cake and coffee, and then carefully blows out the candle afterwards
(photo, right - click for enlargement).
The second one was the village fire practice, which we've described on previous occasions.
Everything went as usual (photo, left - click for enlargement) except that I parked my car on the bridge and took advantage of an otherwise unused hose to give it a very good wash with river water.
On Friday morning, Tim is off for 9 days, to ... Germany to play concerts. Again.
Now driving a surprisingly rattle-free car, he will visit various destinations in Thüringen.
For an advance taste of some of the featured repertoire, you can listen here to works by:
4 Sept - problems for the police (i). On 1 October last year we wrote about a man who had dropped into his local police station with a live grenade, saying "what am I supposed to do with this?". The answer, of course, was "aaaagh!" and the sound of running feet. It must be something to do with the time of year, because today's news reports on a man who was clearing out his house and found (like you do) a large quantity of unstable old dynamite that he'd had hanging around for a long time. So he put it in his car and drove off to the local tip to ask into which recycling container he was supposed to throw it. The staff at the tip apparently squealed something about the police before crawling under an upside-down skip, so the man drove off to the main police station in the town. The town centre has now been evacuated and a large area around the police station has been sealed off. "We don't know how far he's driven with the dynamite, but we think he didn't know quite how dangerous it was", said the policeman, still wiping his brow with a large handkerchief.
7 Sept - problems for the police (ii).
A news story from mid-Norway this morning tells of a moose that ambled into a small housing estate.
This is not unusual in itself, and people usually steer well clear of them and hope they'll go away.
On this occasion, however, they were surprised to see the moose being pursued by a young man with a sword.
"He was not inclined to be aggressive towards people", said the local policeman to the news reporter.
"The moose or the man?"
"The man. Witnesses said that he was offering them moose steak".
The police in Namsos later brought in an intoxicated man for questioning and confiscated a sword.
"We can confirm that no-one was in danger, apart from the moose", say the police.
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8 Sept - back in Germany
I (Tim) drove back to Germany yesterday for the next batch of concerts.
The first one is in Bach territory, almost exactly in the middle of the country (close to several of the earlier ones).
There isn't a direct road there from the north, so I chose (as the least indirect solution) to drive over the Harz mountains -
a road I've often used before, though not recently.
From the hotels website I simply chose the cheapest room that wasn't more than 10 miles out of my way.
So I ended up in the centre of a small town that I've never heard of before, let alone visited - Stolberg.
If it had been anywhere other than mid-Germany this place would be full of tourists;
as it is, it's a sleepy place (nothing much seems to have happened here since Luther preached in the church in 1525),
but the whole town consists only of cobbled streets and half-timbered houses - beautiful! (Click small photo, left, for more pictures).
Hotel was OK, too.
Really fantastic concert in Mühlberg this evening.
Tomorrow I've got a student arriving from Norway for a crash course on German Baroque organs.
But for now I'm back at the familiar hotel where I'm on first-name terms with the owners and they ask after the children: it's a good feeling.
Last time I played in Mühlberg was 16 September 2007, with Andrew page turning (early in his year of home schooling at Haworth).
He remembers it as the village with the sausage museum; I remember particularly the beautiful organ from 1729 (click picture, right, to see photos).
Just like in Gräfenhain last month, they sent me out for a heavy lunch of game goulash and
Thüringer Klöße, together with a large beer -
so maybe the concert wasn't as good as my hazy recollection of it.
Incidentally, I could choose between game goulash or horse goulash, but I reckoned that I would get a
cool reception from Katie on my return if I chose wrong.
These Klöße, rather similar to Norwegian potetball, are so much a part of Thüringen culture that
you can even listen to a song about them here
(with pictures showing the landscape around Mühlberg).
13 September - more fire practices! Arrived in Bamberg this evening in time for tomorrow's concert and have spent a few happy hours practicing in the cathedral together with the local fire brigade (that is to say, I practiced the organ and they practiced rushing around with helmets and flashlights; but they came up to the organ loft and wanted a go as well, so there was a great deal of hilarity). Here are a few pictures of the city centre this evening.
14 September - Good concert today. The cathedral was packed (500-600 people) and the response was very good.
Now heading northwards to meet Bob and Pat (my brother and sister-in-law) in Denmark tomorrow.
Bamberg was one of those World Heritage cities, like Weimar, where it was almost impossible to put the camera down,
so I've ended up with more photos than usual (click photo, right, for pictures).
It's a surprisingly large city,
built on seven hills each with its own church, so the locals apparently refer to Rome as "the Italian Bamberg";
but then, people in Bangor ("the Athens of Wales") used to speak of "The Bangor of Greece", so I suppose anything's possible.
Stayed overnight at a pleasant hotel a little east of Hannover, then on past the Danish border
(compulsary stocking-up on washing powder at the border shopping centre on the German side)
and a lovely few hours with Bob and Pat, at an obscure coastal spot near Vejle (photo, left - click for enlargement).
Ate pizza and chatted before I had to push on to Hirtshals to catch the overnight ferry to Stavanger.
16-17 September. The ferry journey turned out to be not quite as planned. It was due in to Stavanger at 7am, and at 7am we were duly heading in to port - but it was Hirtshals. The ferry had been cruising around the Danish coast all night waiting for a storm to abate, and had then developed engine trouble which meant that we had to return to Hirtshals, disembark, wait around on the quayside and then get on another boat. This one left at 11 in the morning and should have reached Stavanger by 9 in the evening, but due to the same storm (which wasn't making the journey any more comfortable) it didn't arrive until nearly midnight. As we were approaching Stavanger the lady announced over the speakers that we would shortly be docking in Hirtshals, which caused widespread alarm, but thankfully it was just a slip of the tongue.
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Congratulations to Tim's nephew Michael and his wife Anna on the birth of their first child - the first of a new generation in the family.
The Radio 4 Bach programme that we mentioned a few weeks ago is to be broadcast next Tuesday morning. There are several contributors in addition to the narrator, and the programme is only half an hour long, so we imagine that each individual's contribution will have been edited down to just a few words. But it will be fun to hear what they make of the topic!
19 September.
What does a Norwegian bus shelter look like?
Click bus stop, left, to find out.
Here in Ørsdalen we've had a mostly bright and sunny day, but we're seeing the first signs of leaves beginning to turn colour and other autumnal features - including smoke from the chimney (today's pictures here).
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Problems for the police (iii) (see top of page for the previous two).
As we said earlier, it seems to be the season for exploding things.
Yet another large grenade has turned up (where do they all come from?) and the police have apparently decided to blow it up -
at a graveyard.
A no-fly zone has been put in place over the graveyard.
As Tracy pointed out, there may have to be some tidying up of remains afterwards.
PS - Andrew points out that the panic is over - the "grenade" turned out to be a metal container - but that there is now a new news story about exploding cocoa.
(This is a "self-warming" instant cocoa that has now been withdrawn from sale because it apparently has a tendency to get out of hand).
20 September - counting sheep. The hayfield and the field around the fruit trees could do with trimming down before the winter, so last night we put eight sheep into that area, safely enclosed within the electric fence. We woke up this morning and counted them to make sure they were all still there (though of course it's hard enough to wake up that early without having to count sheep as well). ... six, seven, eight ... nine, ten, eleven ... Twenty sheep were quietly nibbling the grass inside the electric fence (photo here). Our eight appear to have rung their friends: "party in Ørsdalen, with lots of weed available". Or something. Our normal problem is one of keeping animals inside the electric fence, not of more sneaking in.
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21 September - after an evening in the forest, the wood cart is beginning to fill up (this is firewood for the second part of 2014 - photo here).
If Joanna is right, we have problems: just at the moment (lunchtime) there are two groups of sheep queuing up to join the party (click photo, above right, for enlargement).
This evening, after the customary pizza and film, Katie (black) thoroughly thrashed Tim (white) at chess (click photo, left, for enlargement).
23 September - They're putting out the snow sticks for winter this morning, along the road in Ørsdalen. I was just grumbling to myself that it doesn't seem long enough since last year's sticks were cleared away to be getting new ones already; and indeed when I think about it, it's only four-and-a-half months ago. That's not much for the "non-winter" part of the year. In any event, we're now prepared for snow. (Click photo, right, to see the hard-working staff putting out the sticks).
There's no sign of the snow yet, though (thankfully) - still autumn sunshine (today's picture from by the lake).
24 September - Red sky in the morning (click photo, left).
Is it joining in with Joanna's sheep warnings?
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As expected, the Radio 4 Bach programme was sufficiently compact and with so many contributors
that Tim's contribution was edited down to a few words and a couple of seconds of the Bjerkreim organ -
but the programme itself was quite fun (even if we don't necessarily agree with some of its conclusions).
You can hear it here:
or download it here
(a large file, so the link takes a while to open).
27 September - Continuing the Bach theme, had a Bach concert in Stavanger Cathedral this evening;
drove home past quiet evening lakes.
You can hear the last movement of a Bach Organ Sonata from the concert here:
28 September - a walk in the woods.
Katie is helping run the sound system at the local Agricultural Fair today (it's that time of year again! - click picture, left, for enlargement, or see last year's pictures),
so after dropping her off I took the opportunity for a quick walk in the woods on the way home,
including half an hour of relaxing in the sunshine on the banks of Ørsdalen Lake (click photo, above right, for 3 pictures).
As everyone knows, the sport in Norway is skiing.
So what do you do during those (few) months of the year with poor skiing conditions?
The answer is roller skis (skis with little roller-scate wheels underneath).
All through the summer you meet skiers hurtling along the lanes with skis and ski-poles.
This is not without its risks; each year there's a number of accidents involving collisions between cars and roller-skiers.
So our local authority has completed a ground-breaking project - a specially-designed tarmac track that winds its way in a huge loop up through the forested hillside above the sports hall in Vikeså.
The track is even floodlit (with large padded bolsters round the lamposts on hilly bends, just in case anyone gets out of control).
The following comment, from a lady with a pram, was overheard at the Agricultural Fair (which is held in and around that same sports hall):
"I don't think much of this new footpath to Vikeså.
It's really steep and you just never seem to get anywhere!"
Shades of the wanderweg here, I think.
28 September - what's the headline?.
You've probably gathered that there was a general election in Norway a couple of weeks ago.
It always takes a while to sort out what the results actually mean after Norwegian elections,
so we still don't know for sure who will be in the government.
Labour is still the biggest single party but it is evident that the government will be a coalition between the Conservatives and the far-right party.
The only question has been whether the centre parties will join in the government or whether they will be in opposition
(and thus be able, together with Labour, to block unwanted legislation).
There have been protracted negotiations, especially with the leader of the Christian Democrats (the man on the left of the picture).
The main story on today's NRK news carries a picture showing the end of one of the many meetings, with the Christian Democrat leader walking away (literally and probably metaphorically).
So what - given that this is the rather stuffy and correct national broadcasting service - was the headline? Click photo, right, for answer.
