Header picture: patterns in lake at Ivesdal
Waiting at the airport -
Tracy has been away at a conference in Oslo and returned on this evening's flight to Stavanger.
I drove to the airport to collect her.
Waiting at Sola airport is never a great problem — there's a beach at the end of the runway (click photo, left, for pictures)
The football match -
The NRK news always contains lots of reports on football. This morning is no exception — but the goal they are showing is unusual.
Click photo, right, to watch a video clip (you'll need to click on the picture in the link to watch).
7 April - a long day, a sad event -
We often have long and complicated days here: here's an account of one such.
Midnight: Friday just beginning. I was just finishing changing the wheels on Tracy's mini (summer tyres at last!) Thursday evening had been the first opportunity to do this during an exceptionally complicated and hectic week, and even then we couldn't leave Sandnes until Katie had finished a driving course at 7, after which we had to deliver a mop to Thomas on the way home (don't ask).
5am:
After a short sleep, up for a bleary-eyed drive back to Sandnes to get Katie on the train to school and to get the car back to Tracy in time for her to get to an 8am out-of-town meeting.
9am:
Tracy back in church, ready for the morning's parents-and-toddlers event, followed by preparations for Friday evening. Tim was at his church, with three funerals and a number of other things.
6pm:
Friday evening consisted of this year's Passover meal at Norkirken (all food and liturgy prepared by Tracy) — click photo, left, for pictures — which was very successful.
10pm:
While Tracy cleared up afterwards together with parishioners, Katie and Tim drove back to Ørsdalen again, arriving around 10, and started digging a hole in the garden. This was because of the day's traumatic event. Back on 26 January 2011 we reported a new arrival in the household — Katie's guinea pig, Champion, who has shared all her adventures since (including trips to Germany — remember last year's passport application?) Over 6 years later, the now-elderly Champion died during the day and was now being brought home for burial.
Midnight:
So by midnight at the end of Friday Katie and I had just concluded a funeral and were able to head to bed — briefly.
3am Saturday: Drive to Vikeså to meet Tracy, who was driving to Kristiansand in time for the 8am boat to Denmark, in order to drive onwards to Germany, with Katie. A maxi journey for the mini. Tim has services in Sandnes on Sunday as well as during Easter week, but will manage to fly down to Germany to join them for a couple of days.
9 April - Tracy, Katie and the mini now resting in warm sunshine at the flat in Germany after their 1000km drive.
10 April - Tim, too. Katie took the train to the nearest big town (Neubrandenburg) today, while T & T enjoyed a quiet lakeside afternoon just down the road in Wesenberg (click photo, right, for pictures).
Meanwhile, down at the farm ... the latest report after lambing is that Thomas Andrew now has more than 120 sheep and lambs; enough to keep him and Duracell well occupied.
Comments
|
"Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. The Hingefreel people of Arkintoofle Minor did try to build spaceships that were powered by bad news but they were so extremely unwelcome whenever they arrived anywhere that there wasn't really any point in being there. ("Douglas Adams, "Mostly Harmless")
Thomas Andrew described recently the day, a few weeks ago, when he had the initial private meeting with the owners of his new farm and came to an agreement about the essentials of the lease/purchase agreement. He then made the 20-minute drive back to Vikeså, where he went into the shop. There, he was greeted with: "there's a rumour going around that you're taking over the farm at Lauperak ..." Which just shows that good news also travels faster than anything, at least in Bjerkreim.
We'll post some pictures of the flat in Germany at some point — in the meantime, here at least is what it looks like from the outside.
16 April -
This morning, Tracy, Katie and mini are on the road in Denmark, heading home in time for the Norkirken service tomorrow, while Tim is in Sandnes for the Easter-morning service there.
Inevitably, having changed over to summer tyres last weekend, here are pictures of the road from Ørsdalen to Sandnes this morning.
Two main ferry companies operate between Norway and Denmark: Color Line and Fjord Line.
The Fjord Line route has a faster boat and more convenient times, but the Color Line one is reliable and runs on time.
We first used Fjord Line on a family trip to Denmark back in 2010
On that occasion the boat arrived 3 hours late.
We've used it three times since — and on each occasion it has been delayed between 5 and 15 hours, due to bad weather, engine failure or the driver getting lost.
Nevertheless, Tracy decided to risk it for this trip.
After all, you can't be unlucky every time. Can you?
On her way, the boat left on time but one of the two engines broke down on the way.
As Katie pointed out, "one engine seems to be going, but the other is just gushing black smoke and nothing else".
It arrived into Hirtshals a modest couple of hours late, though disembarking took a long time because they'd stashed Tracy's mini in a cupboard from where it took a while to extract it.
We've been keeping an anxious eye on the Fjord Line website for the past few days, but they've issued reassuring messages that the boat is now repaired and back in business.
Tracy arrived at Hirtshals this afternoon to get on the boat — to be told that it has broken down again and has been cancelled.
Fjord Line have re-booked her onto an overnight ferry, which (engines permitting) should get her into Stavanger tomorrow morning.
The only problem is, that the ferry was full, so no cabins were available.
So where do you sleep?
Luckily, Katie is intending to go to a camp during the summer, so they had a small tent with them in the car.
Tracy has put up this tent in the boat's Conference Centre (which has been opened to the public due to the suddenly overcrowded boat)
and equipped it with inflatable mattress and the works. (Click photo, left, for enlargement). I think she left the camping stove and portable sink in the car, though I'm not sure.
They're now established in their little corner of the conference centre, surrounded by people who are wishing they'd thought of bringing a tent,
and hoping that no officious ferry manager comes to evict them.
Color Line next time, I think.
17 April - Matt was also travelling home - in his case, from an Easter youth camp that he had been running.
He reports that there was very heavy traffic as people were heading back towards the town after their Easter skiing trips in the mountains.
He was driving an underpowered van pulling a very heavy trailer full of equipment, which meant that he was driving disconcertingly slowly (especially up hills)
along roads where it was impossible for people to overtake. He was just feeling guilty about this when the traffic news came on the radio.
"There have been queues and delays on the way into Sandnes, but fortunately the traffic flow is being evened out by a slow-moving van and trailer which is easing pressure on the bottlenecks".
So we all met up in Sandnes and had an early celebration of Matthew's forthcoming birthday (click photo, right, for pictures). Thanks to Pat and Bob for the VW T-shirt - but also (again) for an earlier gift of colourful socks for Tim. The latter were much admired over Easter, where an old lady who was helping out in the services attended the pre-service meetings in the vestry on each of the days. On Sunday she came across and said (with awed admiration) "purple spots on Good Friday and green spots on Easter Day: so wonderful to have an organist with such liturgically-aware socks". They might have been pink for all I knew (I tend to pull them out of the drawer before my eyes are properly open), but I naturally accepted the compliment and am now passing it on.
Then in the evening, it was Tracy's Easter service at Norkirken (2 pictures here).
20 April - Happy birthday, Matt!
Comments
|
21 April - history repeating itself. We've reported similar stories at least a couple of times before, but the very fact that it keeps happening suggests something distinctive about Norway. Today's news reports that an elderly man was tidying his house and (like you do) came across an unexploded grenade that he happened to have lying on a shelf. So (like you do) he popped into the police station with it and dropped it merrily onto the counter. The policeman promptly closed the police station (while he went home to change his trousers) and called in the army, who cleared the area. The bomb-disposal leader suggests (a little wearily, perhaps, since he keeps saying it) that when you find those forgotten-about unexploded grenades lying around in your cupboards it's probably not the best idea to jump on the bus and take them into the town ("with thoughts", as he says, "of what consequences it might lead to if they explode").
Naturally, the press can't report on someone doing something unwise in Norway without ensuring that the Swedes look even dafter. So there's also a report of a Swedish shipyard re-spraying a ferry bright yellow. They injudiciously did this on a windy day, as a result of which they're now struggling to remove copious yellow spots from two blocks of houses and getting on for fifty nearby cars.
Here in Ørsdalen we're not out spray-painting ferries, clearing the garage of unexploded ordinances or anything else;
gale-force winds are whipping a very heavy snowfall up the valley, causing Christmassy drifting up the windows.
Monday is technically the last day for changing to summer tyres, but people are being advised that they should not on any account do so.
22 April - The storm has blown over (sunny photo from the house this morning) and the forecast is a little better for the next week, so Thomas Andrew has put some of his sheep (of which there are now 160-odd altogether) outside in the field for the first time. They were very pleased — and so was he. Click photo, left, for pictures.
26 April - The children's choirs have just finished for the summer break. Summer break? With snow still on the ground? There's something about spring in Norway that makes everyone very happy. We go around sniffing the air and saying "I can smell the spring", we admire the colourful spring bulbs which are just out (this is the reason we don't celebrate St David's Day here: the daffodils arrive about two months too late) and enjoy the blue skies, green grass, lambs in the road and other signs of spring (Ørsdalen today). So who wants to be having choir practices, or anything else indoors for that matter? That's why "everything" finishes for the summer at the end of April — and May contains half the year's bank holidays. Nice time of year.
27 April - the Hansens go out for dinner -
After 30 years in Norway, we've got most things taped. But one thing we can't do much about, is the response we get when we give our name over the phone. Or even if we're standing there, if it comes to that. You wouldn't believe what a name like Rishton can look like when it's been written down in Norwegian. So on the phone we usually give our name as Hansen. Or something else equally innocuous. Which causes trouble once in a while, like when Tracy and I were waiting for the pizza place to finish making that pizza we'd ordered. It was taking a long time. Tracy mentioned to me that they'd finished a pizza for someone called Olsen ages ago (while I’d been getting something from the car), but Olsen hadn't been in to collect it. They had called across to Tracy to ask whether she was Olsen, but naturally she denied it. We had to go to the counter and say that we'd just remembered that we were Olsen after all. But this evening we were Hansen, and had a wonderful dinner at a stylish manor-house hotel near Sandnes. Celebrating another spring together.
(Photo, right © Tracy).
29 April -
Thomas Andrew points out a local news headline that he regards as unusual: "Doctors in masks trigger armed police action".
Seems like the wrong end of April, but this really is a story from today's paper.