(title obviously not a reference to a Replacements song, by the way.)
we had breakfast.
it was good.
also the sun was shining and we were listening to spring music (the shins, the beatles, belle and sebastian, nina simone).
we made gorgeous salad for lunch – hooray!
today I’m going to finish up my skirt, so I can show it off.
the air smells like spring.
so the past days (actually, pretty much since roomie came back) I’ve been on a crazy sugar high, meaning I got very little sleep but a lot of sunshine – it’s still cold out, but sunny enough for us to decide to spontaneously make churros and enjoy them for breakfast outside on the grass snow.
churros and coffee!
blankets, a perfectly blue sky above our heads..
frida, revisited
heaven
I got a little chocolate bunny from Ana so that made Easter suck a little less.
(I really wanted to not be stuck at Fantoft, be in Oslo or Stavanger instead… well, I guess you don’t always get what you want.)
Happy Easter!
Sunday, day one:
after almost missing my train (I arrived at the station exactly seven minutes before my train left) and the raised eyebrows of the couple sitting with me in the train after I accidentally dropped the milk container into my cup of coffee, I got to Finse. Getting off the train I felt a little confused, because all there was around was the platform and a hotel. a few little houses scattered here and there but nothing else. I heard two girls speaking english and recognised one of them, carrie, because I’d checked out her website the previous day. Anyway, turns out that both carrie and laura were going to be in the snow sculpture workshop; we were given the key to the steinboliger – our home sweet home for the week – and dropped off our bags into our rooms. I, of course, picked the crazy room with the broken lock, no drawers, but a nice view on the frozen, snowy lake…
I lived at number five :)
we had to wait for everybody to arrive, and it was already 6pm with dinner scheduled at 9, so we bummed around the hotel lobby (where our base/hangout would be for the rest of the week) sort of getting to know each other.
Monday morning started off at 7:30am, with breakfast at 8, a little discussion about our expectations for the workshop after that, and then we got our skis (yes, the only way to move from one place to the other was to ski..) and went for a ‘walk’ around the area.
gorgeous
By tuesday, I’d already decided that I was going to build an igloo!
work in progress
dinosaur-igloo!
the igloo lit from the inside..
pretty dinosaur
dino head. I want to hug him!
candle holders in the snow.
[to be continued..]
this is going to be a long one.
I am currently sitting in the library, it’s quiet and it’s empty and it feels like a stormy day because the world started whispering.. This week started off with another Brandon LaBelle workshop (well, the continuation of the last one) where we have to do a work based on people. I was thinking of basing mine on the guy who works at Apollon, and to develop that further into a work about language/people speaking different languages/having to adapt, etc.. until I passed by Jonsvollsgaten and saw the anarchist flag. It’s a flag that’s sitting on top of the roof of a house that’s among other houses that are so close together, once you are walking around in the block it’s impossible to figure out which roof is which and where the flag is. Earlier last semester, rudi and I tried to find out where the flag was, with no success. So after school on tuesday I went to knock on some neighbour’s house asking about the flag. A girl was really nice and told me to go to number 6, I rang the doorbell and a very nice guy opened the door, S.
Turns out he put the flag on his roof to protest against the Jonsvollskvartalet houses being torn down, he was also squatting there and he told me the history of the Jonsvollskvartalet squat. we sat around drinking coffee among mandolins and he was so helpful, got me a lot of material, magazines, newspaper articles..
We met in town yesterday (he copied me the dvd of the small documentation they did about the squat.. with Erlend playing the guitar randomly at some concert, of course..) and had a lot of fun so this is turning out like it will be a great great project… and obviously now I have a friend for life and a lot of connections into the anarchist Bergen scene, haha.
Parallel to the spatial practice, I’m in a collage course with Dag. it’s now the second week, so I am doing some class-hopping, as well as working on my very secret sculpture… and in two days I am off to Finse, to beautifully freeze my ass off in a beautiful setting in the middle of nowhere… obviously making art. ICE SCULPTURE for realz. Kind of looking forward to it, at the same time this means I will be spending a lot of money that should probably be spent on rent instead.. or on my Oslo train ticket (going there for Easter… AGAIN)
and now I’m off to go see what Ricardo has made for dinner (projects involving MUSIC and FOOD are the best ones.. ever).
I’m curious.
girl blogging directly from the academy library, where I came to do some “research”.. the Space/Sculpture workshop is proving to be very interesting, especially since the guest professor (Brandon LaBelle, will be linking him later) is just very good at holding lectures, very open in his ideas, opinions, etc.. and thorough, straight-forward and elaborate in his speech. I had already noticed that when he was here last semester for the Sound and Silence seminar..
We are on day two of the workshop and have our task for the week, which is to find a location and create a sculpture (in the loose sense) that possibly relates to the environment in some way, using a wood stick, approximately 1.70m long. So exploring, thinking, researching, brainstorming,… obviously what I am doing right now. (slacker, ehrm)
On another note, I am working on a lemon/meringue pie (I love citrus fruits and I am just sick of not finding lemon pie anywhere when I go to restaurants with my parents, so now I’ve got a recipe; it’s my first time making it, let’s hope it won’t be a total disaster!). I’ve got the dough and the lemon cream filling ready, just have to bake the crust today and make the meringue. yummy!
Why do I always decide to bake things that end up making our apartment smell like sugar, cinnamon or chocolate for the following 200 days?
So, Monday: first academy-related day. After my very laid-back weekend (to tell you the truth I don’t really know where it’s gone) getting up after 3 hours of sleep and in complete darkness was H A R D. the first part of the day was dragging itself on, when Mia started speaking my brain switched off, because her norwegian is sooo difficult to understand. The presentations after lunch were more interesting, a finnish artist from Tampere especially, and then another presentation that stretched to infinity, past the unbearable (ok, my limits were set low, I was tired)
had coffee with a new student and showed her the best thing about Bergen: the public library. then grocery shopping, reading, hanging out in my room, Diederik brought me my beloved Vega back (poor baby suffered without me), and then a surprise visit from Abdel, Pierre and Anas. we had tea and I showed them my wonderful blinking christmas lights. After the boys left I started watched Sid&Nancy, but found it too depressing. In the middle of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (not like I haven’t watched it 500 times..), Ana-flatmate showed up – hooray! we exchanged cute presents and christmas tales, went to bug Pierre in his room, and finished the film: pure love and sadness. I love it.
today was insanity at its best: Ana came with me and we somehow went astray (real aim of the expedition to town was getting bank+university stuff done), so we ended up trying out make-up in every store we could and looking for cheap clothes. I was convinced I wanted to find a wild wild dress – something golden-y and glittery. Sadly had no luck – I think I will settle for a black tulle skirt which, if I play around with pins and needles (haha) a little, might turn rawrrr enough for me to want to wear it.
In the evening we took a bus to IKEA, had ice-cream, looked for christmas lights on sale, tried to avoid Haakon who works there,… I now have a billion kgs. of leftover cloth that I got for cheap (or at least as cheap as it gets here) so I am happy. we got back around 11:30pm, had dinner, and BAKED until now. so we have mountains of cookies (obviously zimtsterne that turned into zimtherze) and peach cake. öööüüüüäääääähhh
guess whose stomach will be angry?
The journey from home to home was an adventure, but I am now here with 15 extra kgs of very superfluous stuff, such as traditional italian christmas cake (panettone + pandoro), my favorite type of torrone (Nurzia), some random chocolates, fluffy cloth for my book covers.. green tea – as if it was impossible to find here – but at least I cut down on the books.
Which was a good idea, because the second I got through the door, I found some choice literature waiting for me (first in the form of a note in the elevator from Stefan and Matze, then two notes from them on our Wall of Fame, followed by a note for me byAna, and my Jonathan Safran Foer book, as well as a copy of The Great Gatsby which, I have to admit, I have not yet read… and, surprises of all surprises, a little package – thank you panda – containing Dave Eggers’ How we are Hungry, which I cannot wait to start)
Santa Claus also brought me a purple disco ball that will have to be hung in the kitchen sooner or later.
I was restless when I got home, so I unpacked my 256kgs of useless luggage… and hung two chains of christmas lights in my room and I am very proud to say that it looks gorgeous – pictures will be taken soon.
and to quote MCR.. “So long and goodbye”
first hours in Norway:
these are my first impressions of Beautiful Bergen..
I decided to fly to London, partly because I knew that end of november would bring boredom, partly because I thought I couldn’t make it through my favorite month without seeing my favorite friend.
So. Sunday night is just pure enjoyment, randomness and champagne which we drank on the way to our favorite neighborhood (Brockley). I was introduced to Jonny and his bunny. (I was trying to find a way to formulate this – I just love the rhyme, don’t you?)
Monday was walking around, almost sightseeing, hanging out in a park by myself reading Miss Chopsticks by Xinran, then hiding in a bookstore for more books books books, coffee + boyspotting.
waterloo station!
trees are friends
Monday was also cool because we went to the water rats to see soko, who was wonderful, and then we flew to the barfly just on time to catch verdena before they got on stage. They were amazing, just like the last time I saw them…
Azzls is random
so am I
thank you Helen