Garden-rabbits!

..also need care!
Before today's dress rehearsal for Mahler 2nd with Zubin Mehta (!) I brushed the rabbits. They were not so interested in getting rid of superfluous hair, but very interested in each other. (They are mother and son, but also parents to several healthy little ones so there you go.)
Banki helped too. He was a little disappointed over the fact that I didn't let him come with me to reheasal to see our world-famous conductor. I think he got some comfort from little My...



Banki also had some fun listening to the other house-monkey here, and he got so inspired by the jungle guy that he began to ask for bananas. (Videos will come soon!)

Location: Dads livingroom
Mood: Tired, excited about tomorrow!
Listening to: Alexia in the bathroom

Amazed!

In the bus on my way to work the other day, I saw yet again this curious phenomenon:
Young girls in the very hot new fashion: Sweater (preferably a little shabby) and tights. Only tights. To me it looks like they just forgot to put on a skirt or something.

Anyone - please explain me this! ..or am I just getting OLD??

Location: Paulines kitchen
Mood: Amazed, pre-performance
Eating: Rice and springrolls

Sunday!

This sunday was a little different from other ones. I became "gressenke" (grass-widow. I'll bow to whoever who gets the origin of that Norwegian saying!) - seeing my Robi off to Stavanger again. Quite melancholic!
The house was still full of people though, because Eivind was home for the weekend after a schooltrip to Paris. And then, of course, we ended up going for a walk. We decided to walk around Semsvannet.



It turned out to be very exiting, just look at these ones:
(the first one is mainly for Robi, but also for Helene in case she gets too homesick)

New favorite bakery! ...and seeing friends from Stavanger

I've found my favorite bakery in Oslo! (I think)
United Bakeries, located at Karl Johan. I just love their bread, and the muffins are yummi :)



The same day we met up with a very tired couple from Stavanger. (Well, they are not exactly from Stavanger, more American I'd say, but for me, I connect them with SSO!) They had taken the night train, but since they tried the chairs instead of getting a bed, they were exhausted from the journey. We met them at Aker Brygge (Audun was very immobile, and it was short way to their ferry) for a nice cup of tea. I recognised that I miss them a lot!


Naho and James, fresh from the train... Vivian and Audun

Curious incidents at work...

Lately I feel very privileged to be a part of the first opera production in the new opera house in Oslo. It's Verdi's "Don Carlo" and we have a great Italian conductor. The singers are fabulous, costumes incredible and the stage breathtaking. But - (there's always a but, especially in a new, hightech house...) things happens all the time.
First of all, it's very hard to get around in the house without feeling you get lost. I have a great idea for them: why not just give out a map together with the substitute-access card?
We have been waiting for the technique to be ready for the rehearsals and run-throughs a lot. I have no idea for how long we've been waiting. The scenes change have been problematic, they don't have enough surcuits for the lights, the whole setup for the performance dissappeared the other day and half of the pit lost their lights on the music stands. Poor technichians! I feel so sorry for them - they're struggling with the technich who seems to be sabotaging everything they do, and then all the artists are complaining too.
From big trouble like this, we (in the cellosection at least) have the minor problems with our music. Mum and I (we actually share desk!) have music which has been written in way too much - not only with ordinary pencil, but with both blue and red as well. It's not funny! Lots of crossed-out parts (which we do play) and it's hard to see what we've written among all the other "kråketær" (scribblings). A plus is that they smell kind of nice. Gunpowder!
-Oooh, almost forgot that we were missing the conductor too... (for a while) I was wondering if he had been lost in the building somewhere.

Totto with a very describing t-shirt! (Vi beklager teknisk feil, meaning "we're sorry. Technical problem)


Lene: Thank you for such a great time with you - even it was short! Pictures will come soon!



Helene: HAPPY 18!!! Love you lots and lots! Banki is sending you all his love (but I guess you already know that he is all yours...)

Migrene

http://www.migraine.org.uk/content.aspx?cid=1

I found some really good information about migraine, for those of us who has them...

The wonders of nature!

When you have a mum with a huge garden, then the autumn is like a playground. Or a paradise for seeing new wonders. Like this little siamese twin-plums:



I think they look a little suspect though...
Or female examples of a much-hated species like this:



(I deported it from the outside wall. Didn't get myself to kill it, so now it has a new home somewhere else. No-one knows where. Mwooahaha)

And well, then you have all the work which has to be done: relieve the trees from the huge amount of apples, plums and pears. Remove all the fallen fruits from the grass, which also has to be cut (but because of all the rain it has been impossible to do that yet). We try to send a lot of apples to a juice factory, and also make jam out of most of the other things we don't manage to eat raw or put in a cake..
And then there is also Grandma. We try to entertain her sometimes so she doesn't get bored or feel too lonely now without her husband but a strange vision. (One eye with 60% vision but weird colours, and one blurry eye.) Banki practice cello in case she wants to hear some live music. It is too big for him, so he can only do pizzicato in 4th position... I think he is cute!


The eager cellist!


Isn't she just adorable?

Autumn...

Came home from a rehearsal and found Robi, under a cover in the sofa feeling quite shaky. He's probably getting ill. I'm not surprised - the weather has changed a lot recently and I too felt I was on the verge of caching a cold. Guess we're not the only ones.
It just made me long for the summer - and this summer we spent a lot of time in Slovakia. In the video here you see some of it, accompanied by the now deceased Hollywood actor (whose voice I think everyone who has ever seen a movie, will recognize..). After spending warm days by the foot of the High Tatras, you get spoiled by the view. And the heat.
Fairyland
Now I have to (and actually also look forward to) get used to crispy, fresh air, woolen sweaters, cold feet and hot chocolate in front of a crackling fire.

A completely ordinary saturday

...in Norway means that you go for a walk. Preferably a long walk. We had a shorter one because mum had to go to work around 17, and also visited Grandpa at the hospital (he's just living there for the moment while we're waiting for my Grandma to get her eye operations done) first.
I managed to get Rob with us, even though he didn't actually want to go out. The weather was not really good (it was cloudy with some showers now and then) so I don't blame him. I think he was happy afterwords when he saw that we were going to walk on asphalt (not very Norwegian, but..) and that we intended to go to a place with incredibly nice cakes! Gupu. They're known for having a delicious chocolate cake - and it is very yummi! Still, I prefer the carrot cake, I think.
On our way back down to the car, we found lots, and lots of mushrooms. We didn't have any basket to put them in, so mum's hood had to do. And look at all we found!


Two very happy mushroom-lovers!

Rob made us a fantastic dinner of beef with mushroom sauce and baked potatoes. We had picked up Alexia just after mum left for work, so she had a plate too. ("I'm not especially hungry" she said, but ate a huge portion nevertheless.)
And since we had the house to our selves, we got a film (bought a film for 45,- instead of renting it for 55,- Good deal, don't you think?) and snack, put some wood in the oven and made the living room really cozy. Even Banki joined us! He misses Helene so much that we thought Sweeney Todd would be a good choice. Two of her favorite actors, and Tim Burton - it had to be a success. And it was! Just see how happy he was to get chocolate bananas and see a Helene-movie:



...but I think it'll take a while before I eat meat pies again.

Location: The Kitchen
Drinking: Jasmine Tea
Listening to: Robs computer who tells him "no, I won't do that"
Mood: content, glad I'm indoors! (The weather is very autumny)

Banki's new hobby

Yesterday I introduced Banki to Rob, and they really hit it off! It was so nice to see them together, like two old friends meeting each other again after a long time of separation.
Banki thought it was so nice to meet Rob that he has spent some time reading the English-Slovak dicitonary :)


Best of friends!


Banki with the dictionary


Here he's looking for a familiar word. Can you guess what?

The little house in the forest

Mum was going to have string quartet rehearsal. This meant the house would be occupied, and since Rob and I didn't have any program for the weekend Mum came with the brilliant idea: Why not take the car to the cabin?
(Robs car didn't leak any oil, by the way. We had an adventurous trip around Bærum to find a garage that could look at it. After a looooong time they told us they had a big problem with the car; they couldn't find any leakage anywhere. Hooray!)



We ran through the grocery store to buy some food, ran home to pack some clothes and then headed off for the cabin. We got directions from Mum and key from Grandma, so it couldn't go wrong.
I have not been at the cabin since I was maybe 15, and I know my aunt have made some changes - i.e made a road all the way up to the cabin. We found the new road (this is, mind you, in the middle of the forest, far away from anywhere...) and took all our stuff out of the car and walked up towards the cabin. The road was pretty wide, flat and free from grass. I was quite disappointed, because I remember the path as a narrow, little path full of ants. I was even more surprised when we found a barrack next to the road too, and then Rob saw the cabin. Or more precisely, he saw the three houses there. We had taken the wrong road!
We turned back to the car, drove some 50 meters back and found another road. I was so relieved when I saw the "road" (it was more or less a path which you can drive on), found the cabin and unlocked the door. (Didn't have any problems with it, even though Grandma told me it was ok to bang it a bit..) It was still the cabin I remembered! They'll expand the cabin with one more room, but that's on the back so I'm ok with it.
Anyway, we put our stuff in the cabin, got the fireplace started and then headed off to get some water. There is a well between the main road and the cabin, but in the darkness it was a little problematic to see the little track. To make a long story short - we had a great adventure! And we found lots and lots of mushrooms :)
Back home, with several litres of water, we thought a slice of bread would be nice. Well, we had both kaviar and liverpate in tubes, but no bread. We had forgot bread!! I found some flour, salt, sugar, cumin and baking soda (no yeast) in the cupboard so we made some bread for breakfast. A little hard, but still tasty.
In the morning (after making bread) we got out to pick up mushrooms. We found a lot of them, mostly too old and moshy ones, but also a lot of good ones. We also found tyttebær! (lingonberries, if you think in Swenglish) After that, a gourmet dinner of duck (made completely without any oil or butter, we'd forgot that too) with potatoes and fresh tyttebær-jam, outdoor, tasted incredibly yummie!



Our two days at the cabin were so refreshing! We had great walks in the forest, I practised and we had more than enough food (we even brought back the ingredients for tomatoe sauce. We thought of having it to the pasta that we forgot to buy...). I can recommend bacon and potatoes in the fire! (Put the potatoes, with skin, in the glowing coals and leave them there until they're done.)


Rob's making bread


A random Tonje-peeking-into-the-cabin-picture


The well, or "olle" as Mum say.


The view from the toilet!


My practice-room


Our drying-mushroom-carpet!