BIG MAMA TIME!

It's half-term school holiday and we're staying in Oslo. Half-term winter holidays usually imply going skiing in the mountains, but I had no such wish this year - not for myself at least, and I wouldn't sacrifice my own wishes to please other family members (which I've done often enough in the past and probably will do again. The plight of Big Mamas. Sigh).

Farmhand Jelena

Farmhand Mira

So instead Technical Big Mama took the little girls along to The Museum of Science and Technology, which is FUN! I enjoy it too! While the girls were eager to go to the science room, where they could test out various games and experiments, THIS is what I enjoyed looking at:

Some of this stuff is still in my possession - I was particularly attached to my yellow Walkman! And I've always wanted a Jukebox!! I refuse to leave this earth without having owned one! Imagine feeding all my singles into it and then choosing and selecting.... Oh - dream on, Big Mama..... Where would I place it in my new flat? On the terrace?

Big Mama flying - YEESS!

Watching how your own pulse squirts "blood" out of the heart

Cars are fun too! Always! Oh, how nostalgic I get about cars! My mother drove a mint green Ford Cortina in Tanzania, and there was a Cortina at the museum. An old Mercedes reminded me of our old red one!

And some cars are even older:

When I took the girls upstairs to the permanent telecommunications exhibition - which by the way my sister was employed in setting up initially thirty years ago - I was reminded of the time I took my youngest daughter Sophie (born 1991) and some of her friends to the Museum when they were kids. When they saw the old dial phones they had no idea how to use them! That's when I realised they were born into another age - the age of the keyboard! My granddaughters reacted the same way of course - when I told them these used to be our telephones AND that we waited one and a half years for a subscription, they just stared at me with wide eyes. 

My oldest daughter Johanne (born 1983) remembers the phones, Commodore computers, the first Nintendo, the phone booths and having only three TV-channels. She claims to have been born in a different era! I think she's right.

OUR HOUSE

Autumn view from my window

Winter view from my window

Spring view - my birthday party in May 

I have lived in my house in Oslo for exactly twenty-nine years and six months. We bought this house just before we got married, moved in just after we got married, I gave birth to my first-born just a few months later (yes, I was a pregnant bride). 1983 was a stressful but eventful and happy year for sure.

Our house has views on a small stream called Mærradalsbekken. I call it Amazon River in summer, because the undergrowth and the trees that line it resemble a tropical rain forest rather than a small urban oasis. In the course of the years that we've lived here we have lost at least three hours of evening sunlight due to enormous trees. But the local municipality are very unwilling to cut down trees.

There were many times during our daughters' childhood that we made attempts to look for a larger house, but we never really found anything better. The closeness to everything in our area is fantastic - a seven-minute drive into the city centre, proximity to the sea, to shopping centers, public transport - everything. Urban but idyllic. Central but quiet. (Sounds like I've already made a sales prospect).

Five years ago we renovated the upstairs bathroom and the kitchen - finally - and these rooms became EXACTLY what I wanted. My bathroom is a small spa, with a deep Philippe Starck bathtub, scented candles and dimmed lights. My kitchen is superbly functional for all my cooking - I do my kitchen dance between the cupboards and the different appliances, everything in its place, everything simplified. And soon I'm going to leave it all.

And my basement room! A bit 80-ish, but still our party den, the children's and ours. This is where we sent the kids to watch TV, to play Playstation, where we threw their birthday parties, where they listened to music (LOUD), where I listen to music (LOUD). And where we've just celebrated our second last Christmas.

Christmas at the bar

Pictures of my guys on top of the bar

I have a record player!

But the time has come for us to move on. Our children don't live here any more. What did I just say? They don't live here any more? Correction: They don't live here all the time. All of a sudden they happen to be between rental flats and travels and boyfriends - you name it - and they come moving back in again. So their former three bedrooms are always ready with made-up beds. 

This is where we'll be moving. They have only just begun clearing the building site:

Our flat will be in the building on the right. Moving in late 2014. I'm so glad I have a long time to prepare the move. Both physically and emotionally.

BARCODE

At the hairdresser's today, nine weeks since last time! I usually go every six weeks, but now that I'm growing my hair, my lovely Swedish hairdresser (a girl!) said I could wait seven weeks until next time. 

Today was sunny, and I'm going to post a couple of more NICE photos from Oslo. (Still struggling with guilt over that slush picture yesterday, I think).

A glimpse of the Opera house

A glimpse of the Oslo Fjord, the harbour and the islands

A glimpse of the hills around Oslo (and the Central Station)

Back in the Stone Age I used to work as a foreign exchange/client consultant in one of Norway's largest banks. They have recently moved into a new location, in one of the buildings that's part of Oslo's new "barcode" skyline in Bjørvika. A whole new district is being erected here, and while it'll be a construction site for years still, it already looks promising and innovative.

http://www.archdaily.com/304829/oslo-a-haven-for-adventurous-design/

Two of my former colleagues - who've remained two of my best friends - invited me for lunch on the 16th and top floor of the bank building (yeah, yeah, this is not going to be the Manhattan skyline). The views were magnificent and the building an architectural gem. However my friends - and others I overheard - pointed out that the architects have not necessarily paid attention to user-friendliness - not an uncommon missing link between the creators and the users, I suppose. 

http://www.e-architect.co.uk/norway/dnb_nor_headquarters.htm

Many of the employees - among them one of my friends - have "free seating" at the office - that is, she brings her laptop into work every day and then grabs the first available seat and desk. There are little padded frames on the wall where you can stick your head in if you need quiet and privacy to talk on your phone, but as my friends said - and we're all more or less the same height, approximately 163 cm - the frames have been mounted by a guy at least 190 cm tall! 

These fabulous lights are from a "relax" room, which is very dark - only lit in this way - and suddenly they turn off and you're in complete darkness with a small canal of water lining the walls. So you'd better be steady on your feet (not TOO relaxed in other words), or you're in the canal before you know it!

This is the Markets Department, where all the stock brokers, foreign exchange dealers, client consultants and market makers sit. It's strange and a bit nostalgic to think that I used to be one of them, but like I said, that was back in the Stone Age when all the currency rates were up on a board and hardly anything was computerised. As you can see, some of these employees have six screens each. And while we used to scream out for the rates we needed from the spot dealers, and they would shout them in return, and we would yell back that the deal was done (millions and millions of dollar sums echoing around the room - no wonder there were mistakes made...), this new Dealing Room is oh-so-quiet. Every exchange, every deal done electronically. The foreign exchange employees get older these days. In my day we were exhausted by the age of thirty-five. 

SLUSH

This was Oslo today - rain and sleet on top of snow - everything becomes grey, dirty, dreary slush, mixed with salt! I parked outside the bakery at our local shopping centre to have some lunch and coffee with my daughters and Mira, my youngest granddaughter, and we had to wade our way through the parking lot. I was wearing my brown leather boots from Debenham's in London, and they were absorbing water like a sponge and getting white stripes from the salt, so I went home later and changed to Wellies. The only sensible footwear in this country! 

This afternoon I drove past the woods where Grete and I walked yesterday, on my way to my swimming club, and I took this photograph of the construction work on the new American Embassy:

It's going to be enormous, and it will certainly be an eyesore, planted as it is in the middle of a green area and eventually with high forbidding walls around it. Well - all the neighbours will have to learn to live with that, but the location next to a sports hall.... what on earth went on in the heads of the decision makers?  

On a lighter note - my granddaughter Jelena stayed with me Saturday and Sunday, and today Mira is here for dinner. It's half term school holiday, so we're not stressed about bedtime or homework. It's also very nice to babysit them separately once in a while - both for them and for me. At the weekend Jelena showed me some photographs that her friend had taken - they were so lovely!: 

Grete was inspired to take some photos of her yesterday too, so Jelena's eagerly waiting for the results to be sent to her. Very much the pre-teen now!

Before I went to bed last night I checked my Instagram account, and I noticed that Jelena had commented on a photo that I published there a couple of weeks ago, when I was in France:

She had written "Beautiful grandmother" in perfect English. How's that for a "thank you" after spending the weekend at my house? She certainly knows how to melt Big Mama's heart!

I asked if I could take a picture of Mira this evening, and she said "Oh Mimmi - you're just going to put it in your blog!" Nevertheless, she was a bit jealous of Jelena's photo session with Grete yesterday, and claimed that it was really her turn to be with Grete and me and go to museums and exhibitions with us. Wow! Cultural little girl! Well, we have taken her along before, and she's enjoyed it.

Mira with "Knerten" & "Karoline" last summer

I'm very excited today that I managed to buy two OVERLY expensive "platinum" tickets (whatever they may be) for the Fleetwood Mac Tour, which will be in Oslo in October. Yes!! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GN2kpBoFs4

I'm signing off now with a NICE winter picture from Oslo. Feeling a bit guilty about showing my hometown from its worst side. Winter-Oslo can be beautiful. (But please, dear weather gods, can the snow melt soon? PLEASE!!!!) 

GONE FISHING

A long walk with my friend Grete today, through her childhood woods, which are now being ruined by the building of the American Embassy. It's being raised on a huge corner of this lovely green area (now white), near the road where Grete grew up and right smack next to a sports hall, where hundreds of children do their activities every day. The Americans (with the Norwegian government's blessings of course) are moving the embassy out of the city centre due to terrorist risk, but they find it quite okay to place it next to a hall where children play. Where's the logic here?

Having got this off my chest for the time being, I want to talk about my dinner! Here it is:

Doesn't it look delicious? This is "Rakfisk" - a Norwegian fermented trout! I believe Norwegians are second only to the Japanese in eating raw fish, but we have to eat it processed in some way - preferably old and rotten!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakfisk

This is really a Christmas dish, and we order a bucket of it every year in October from the producer in a valley up country called Valdres, so that we are well prepared in good time for all the upcoming Christmas meals. Especially there's our big traditional friends and family party between Christmas and the New Year, when we serve a buffet (like a smorgasbord) - where "Rakfisk" is the main dish. We had one fish left over and have enjoyed it today!

  

This is what it looks like after I've fished it out of the bucket, before I clean it, remove the bones and cut it up. It's served with a LOT of raw red onion:

And of course accompanied by Aquavit. This is a specially made Aquavit supposed to go really well with the fish. I can assure you it does. My husband got this from a friend who's a "Rakfisk"-enthusiast and who throws an all-male party every December, where he serves five-six different "Rakfisk"-types, including one he's fermented himself. The guys have to do a blind test and vote! Yes, I agree - it's a bit crazy, but not an unusual pre-Christmas phenomenon here in Norway.  

It's served! Joined by sour cream, pickled beetroots, boiled potatoes and "lefse" (thin potato and wheat flour wrap). Okay. We have strange food. 

But then - every country in the world has its own strange food! It makes us bond! Nothing can make a better topic of conversation than food.