Happy New Year from Sicily

Phase 2 of my Christmas holidays: I leave for Italy, exactly speaking for Sicily.

The day after Christmas, as foreseen, I went for some shoe shopping. I needed new black boots as my current ones are somehow out at the moment. This way I could give my grandmother (who is too old for walking around looking for presents) also the feeling of not only giving money, but that it's actually used for something. If another pair of shoes are something necessary is actually something men and women could discuss about now for ages.

Anyway, these new boots had to fit now also in my suitcase because I wouldn't come back home before travelling back to Oslo in the beginning of the new year. However, I successfully managed to fit everything in.

So the next morning, on Tuesday 28th of December, my mother and her husband drove me to the airport. And there I was again: at Cologna-Bonn airport where I just had arrived few days ago.

Now I was on my way down to Sicily.

Actually, Marco and I planned to spend New Year at some other place, somewhere in a big city maybe. But it was difficult to find a place that was accessible and connected with flights from Catania or Palermo and to Bologna (for Marco) and from Cologne-Bonn or Dusseldorf and to Oslo. London turned out to meet these prerequisites, but a trip to the British capital would have turned out to be far too expensive at that time.

So in the end it became Sicily.

I had my (direct) flight to Catania. I even arrived together WITH my luggage :-) Upon arrival I took the shuttle bus which brought me in 2,5 hours southwards to the coast town of Agrigento, home town of Marco.

I was so happy to see him again when he picked me up at the bus terminal there. We hadn't seen each other since mid October when I was in Bologna.

We spent the next days visiting some friends and just hanging and joking around, getting filled by his mum cooking or with great pizza out in some restaurant with friends. 

The last day of the year was dedicated to the preparations of the dinner which was held at Marco's parent's place. In the evening his relatives came over and the whole evening was characterised by a looooooot of good food and a lot of card cames - quite a traditional thing to do with the whole bunch of family and friends during the festive days.

At midnight the new year is (mostly) traditionally celebrated still with the family. Only after clinking glasses and exchanging best new year wishes the younger generations buzz off, meeting up with friends either for playing or to some discotheque or something else.

Marco and I wanted to go to some concert hold in town, but until we made our way out of his house it was already so late that the concert was already over. We joined some friends in the city centre for a while. By about 3 a.m. however, we decided to go back home. Tomorrow we will be flying back north to Bologna.

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of you!

Merry Christmas

It's Christmas time!

I wish you all a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!

December 24:

It's December 24th, 17:30 in the afternoon, half an hour before we are going to start our Christmas celebrations and finally my luggage arrives! This feels like Santa Claus ringing on your door delivering you your Christmas present :-) Well, it was actually a delivery of a present, but not of my present, but of the presents for the others that were in that suitcase.

Unfortunately at this point of time of the evening those presents didn't get anymore the chance of getting wrapped. It was simply too late for that and the people would have to be content with the plastic bags around them.

Also the Christmas cards I had planned to write during the day will remain blank for next year.

I just had exactly a couple of minutes to take my Christmas clothes out of my suitcase and iron them.

This year Christmas was celebrated in a different way then usual. Normally we celebrate Christmas Eve at home at my mum's place, having most ofen fondue, sing Christmas carols and go to the midnight sevice at Church. The last couple of years we had always invited good friends of the family over for dinner as they are alone having their kids living far away in Australia.

This year, though, it was them inviting us over to celebrate Christmas Eve at their place... in the Bavarian way, because they are originally from Bavaria. The Bavaria way meant: huuuuuge veal Snitzel accompanied with Bavarian potato salad (without mayonnaise) and coleslaw.

After all this fillling food it took us a while until we could handle the dessert: chocolate mousse, whipped cream and berries... and not to forget Christmas cookies :-)

We, that is the the couple of friends, my brother, my mum and her husband and I, were still sitting together for quite a while and somewhat around midnight we went back home.

Though different from all the other years, I had a good Christmas Eve. It's simply nice to spend time with the family and friends.

December 25:

For some years now we no longer celebrate this Christmas day in my mum's family. This is basically since my grandmother's death in 2003. It had always been her birthday and the whole big family came together (all 16 cousins and the aunts and uncles). So this year this day was quite a quite day. My brother spent it in the family of his girlfriend. Later in the afternoon we would have some friends of my mum and Engelbert coming over. However, before we wanted to use the time for a walk outside in the snow.

There wasn't nice sun, but simply the blanket of snow. And right next to our row of houses, the forest starts. Perfect for a winter walk!

This walk felt soooo good! Conclusion: I do love (also, but not only) winter! An hour and a half walk like this makes me feel great!

December 26:

Already at noon Engelbert's daughters, my stepsisters, came over with their boyfriend. I don't see them that often recently and I think it was a pleasure to see them again. We had some healthy chicken soup and in the afternoon some fantastic home made ice cream based on ginger bread (Lebkucheneis). My mum got the receipe some years ago from a friend and it's sooooooo delicious! I could have eaten the whole box of it, but there was still some Christmas dinner on the programme of the day.

December 26 has actually always been the day of celebration with the family of my father's side. We usually were at my grandmother's place, but she's not getting younger. Since already last year's celebrations - in 2009 I wasn't in Germany over Christmas - were relocated to a restaurant and everyone liked it, this was repeated also in 2010. My father had organised a restaurant for this evening where we had a table for all of us. Since my parent's with their "new" partners still get along quite well, a day like this can be celebrated in peace all together. So today it was not only my father with his wife and my family of that side, but also my mum and Engelbert with my stepsisters and their boyfriend. In total we were nearly 20 people having a good evening with good food and pleasant conversations.

It was good to see this part of the family again. When you do not live at home anymore and not even close to home,  it becomes difficult and seldom that you get to see everyone of your family regulary.

For the opening of the presents we spontaneously decided to do that at Andrea's place. It's certainly not a big apartment, but we all squeezed us on the sofa and the few chairs and managed in somehow to fit all in.

Sitting so close together gave it a totally different atmosphere. A cosy one!

Everyone was unwrapping presents and I could say that the fresh salmon brought along from Norway went down well.

My grandmother's Christmas money would be translated into a pair of new black boots and shoes the next day :-)

Somewhat at around midnight I left together with my mum and Engelbert as last ones. All others had gone already about an hour before.

Christmas is over now and I liked the days spent together with the family.

Christmas holidays 2010

Finally, Christmas holidays! I was one of the last ones in the office leaving on holidays. But since my direct colleagues Franck and Stéphanie were already gone, someone had to be in the office until it closed until after New Year.

The last days before the holidays passed so quickly, mainly because there was always something going on or to do. The Nobel Peace Prize Concert, something-red shopping for the Christmas party and the party itself in the office, the Christmas concert, Drøbak, then the goodbye dinner with Moritz and also the last two evenings before leaving I rushed around town to find at least some Christmas presents. I did have some ideas, but I hadn't bought anything yet and there were others I hadn't even made up my mind for regarding gifts.

Last but not least on Wednesday evening December 22 I packed and went to bed early. The next day I had my flight super early in the morning.

I was curious about how I would go with my flights, because it's right now a period of total winter-conditioned chaos on streets, airports and train stations. Whole Europe is totally blocked and - except for the Scandinavian countries and warmer South Mediterranean areas - unable to get any kind of traffic run properly.

I had a flight booked with AirBerlin from Oslo via Berlin-Tegel to Cologne-Bonn. For some reason (which was not weather related) my plane left late in Oslo that morning. Consequently I arrived also with delay in Berlin-Tegel where my scheduled transit time of 45 minutes was suddenly reduced to nearly zero. The moment I arrived, I had not even 15 minutes until my connecting flight was supposed to leave... and I still needed the aiport bus taking me from my just landed plane to the terminal C from where I had to run like hell to make it to terminal A. And even when arriving totally out of breath at terminal A I still had to pass again the security controls. Since they were already waiting for me at the gate, I could pass the controls without queueing.

Finally, I was sitting in the plane to Cologne-Bonn. I just made it... but did my luggage make it as well on board this plane?

The answer when arriving at my home airport was NO! I arrived, but not my luggage. That was the same for all of us 5 passengers coming from Oslo that had the same connection via Berlin-Tegel.

So before meeting my father outside who picked me up, I filled out a lot of paper work at the lost and found counter.

Let's see when I'll receive my luggage. There is still one more day to go to Christmas.

My father didn't bring me home straight away. He actually brought me to his wife's company's garage where he had parked my car. When leaving Germany last time in November I had left my car there, because my father was taking care of taking it to the safety standards authority/technical control board = MOT(?) (in German = TÜV) and also to put my winter tires on. So I picked up my car there, said good bye to my dad and drove home.

My mum had already warned me: the conditions on the streets were extremely severe. Though the highway was kind of ok, I drove carefully, because the temperatures were just around -2°C/-1°C and the precipitation could freeze at any time at any place.

However, the worst I had when arriving home, when turning onto the streets of our residential area. I cannot remember having had such slippery streets there - at least for sure not during the last 10 years of having my driver's licence. My car just slided along the street in the tracks formed in the snow by previous cars and hold by the amound of snow bordering the 20 cm wide tracks. When stepping out of my car it was slippery like glass. Rain that just came down froze immediately --> black ice! It took me over 5 minutes to overcome the 20 meters between my car parking and our entrance door. The ice was uneven and thus not easy to walk on. Luckily I didn't have my heavy suitcase with me.

But I eventually made it home, safely! I was happy being home again!

Later in the evening it snowed again and I took some pictures during the evening and the next morning.

At the entrance, in the front of the house:

 And in the garden:

 

And I assure you: it's a long time ago that I had seen that much snow at our place at home.

But I like it! Snow creates a magical, fairytale atmosphere and it really gives me the feeling of winter... unlike the rain, mud and grubby weather we often have in winter times.

Snow is winter! And I love it!

Goodbye dinner Moritz

This is it: Moritz' last day. He just came back from his North Cape tour and we all had decided to meet for dinner before he leaves. Kind of good bye dinner.

So on Monday December 20, we went to that Italian pizzeria "Villa Paradiso" in Grünerløkka which Moritz had never been to before. But it's a place to know, because they really do have fantastic pizza, I think. Even Italians say it's good pizza :-)

However, the day actually started with work and a Christmas lunch at the nearby Thon Hotel Opera. Not many colleagues were left in the office; most of them had already left on Christmas holidays. Maria, from Scandinavian Image, subscribed those of us holding out until the last working day, to a lunch buffet at the hotel. We simply closed down the office for a couple of hours; it's definitely not the most busiest time of the year.

So we had the pleasure of free drinks and a lot of good food at one of the hotels we all use a lot for our clients and in the meantime could have some nice chats with our colleagues before heading back to the office.

Coming to the evening now...
Moritz, Jana and I already met up at 19:30. Just having called Audrey we figured out she wouldn't be able to make it before 20:30. So we three already sat down in the basement part of restaurant and ordered some wine/beer.

As I had mentioned in my previous post [see here], Jana and I had some difficulties with finding a farewell present for Moritz. When we had the idea of getting him a trapper hat - which he totally fell in love with during the RIB-boat tour to Oscarsbord nearly 2 weeks ago - we had the problem of not finding them anywhere in town. At least no nice and "original" ones. Either the colours were not adequate, or the texture was awful or they were all over with fur or whatever.

Finally it was Jana who for some reason had to drive out of town to the Sandvika Storsenter (shopping mall) and who happened to find one of those trapper hats that might be of Moritz' taste. It wasn't a black one as we initially tried to get it, but we anyways had the possibility to change it in case he wouldn't like it.

By the way, right on my way to the restaurant, after all the searching around in town, I passed a shop (which was already closed) that sells exactly the hats we were looking for.

However, now we had a hopefully nice one. Jana had wrapped it and we handed it over to Moritz together with a card while we were sitting in the restaurant.

Moritz couldn't believe his eyes, when he unwrapped the present. You should have seen his face, because this was absolutely unexpected. Anyways, I think he was also fine with the colour brown.

Later, that is about nearly 2 hours! later - also Audrey finally came. We moved over to a bigger table and finally ordered our pizzas. By the time waiting we became all quite hungry.

As expected, the pizzas were great. I was too full though to have a dessert like the others.

Altough it was Monday, we stayed quite long in the pizzeria. Moritz had been talking a lot about his experiences in the North the last weekend and Audrey told us about her trip to France. Time passed again so quickly while we were having good conversations and a lot of fun.

At one point, though, we had to leave. We had to go back to work the next day.

We said good bye to each other and to Moritz. We wish him good luck for the future!
And who knows, maybe he comes back to Oslo one day, either because he cannnot resist Trude's ongoing offer to work for Authentic Scandinavia when he's finished with his studies, or because he figures out that Germany is too warm for wearing his new hat or simply because to visit some friends ?!

Jana's birthday excursion for coffee in Drøbak

Drøbak, such a small little village... and I'm about to go there now for a third time! The reason is simple, but the story behind a bit longer.

On Tuesday, Moritz will leave Norway and fly back to Germany. His internship is over now. Right now he's travelling to the North Cape, but we will meet him on Monday evening to say good bye.

In any case, we need a farewell present for him. It wasn't actually that easy, because we needed something that would still fit in his limited and already over-weight luggage. And we needed it by Monday evening. Hmmm...

Then I had an idea: when we were on that RIB-boat tour to Oscarsborg 10 days ago [see blog post here] Moritz totally fell in love with those trapper hats. They are totally in at the moment. There are so many people in town running around with them and Moritz kept on mentioning how cool he thought they were.

Jana liked the idea as well and so we had started our search for these hats. This was easier said than done. I called that guy from the RIB-boat company, Roy, told him about desperately looking for those hats for Moritz and asked him where he got those hats from. He said he ordered them from a wholesaler in Bergen. Since ordering something on the internet wouldn't fit into our time schedule, Roy offered to have a look into his boat tour equipment. In case he still had a new, unused hat (he had recently bought new ones) he would sell it to us. He even offered to send it to us via regular mail, because he wouldn't make it from Drøbak to Oslo before Monday.

Instead, Jana and I thought the other way round: that going to Drøbak would actually be a nice sunday excursion for us. Jana had never been there before so we offered Roy to actually come over and pick the hat up.

However, Roy didn't have any unused hats left, but Jana and I decided to go anyways. Just for keeping up our tradition of doing something (preferrably outside) on a sunday. And additionally: it was Jana's birthday!

We started with a visit of the Julehus Drøbak is famous for. It has all sorts of Christmas stuff and also a Father Christmas post box for kids.

Later we walked over to a small café called "Hos Hanna" to have some tea and hot chocolate as well as a piece of traditional Norwegian gulrotkake (carrot cake).

A little present for Jana.

Self-made hot chocolate: you dip a stick with chocolate of your choice in warm frothy milk! Very funny and cool to see the chocolate slowly melting in the hot milk.

After our sweets stop at the café we walked a little around the village. It was already dark though and also quite cold. So we decided to take the next bus back home to Oslo.

I hope Jana had a nice birthday, though it was just a little excursion.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Jana!