Hyttetur

The title is a tribute to the song "Hyttetur" and I think all Norwegians knows how it goes. It wasn't any sister who was sour, but a grandma who was complaining. But that was mostly because her equipment didn't hold together.

My brother is at a folkehøyskole (some kind of school in-between high school and uni. Voluntarily.), called Bjerkely Folkehøyskole, where they focus on photography. And this Saturday they had all the families gathered to see what the young, aspiring artists had done during their excursions abroad. Mum wanted to go there, and dragged both me and Grandma with her. Since the school is much closer to the cabin than home, we slept over there from Friday to Saturday. The only problem was the 1 meter of snow we had to conquer. At least Grandma. It's been over 15 years since last time she used a pair of skis, and the last one to use her shoes was me some 3 years ago.
We didn't really plan anything, just packed some food, clothes for one day, skis and the key. Called aunt Astrid to get the code to a gate-lock, and we all took for granted that everything was ok - only worrying about Grandmas skiing skills.
A mistake.
Her shoes started to fall apart the moment she put them on at home, but we only realized it when we got out of the car 300 m. from the cabin. (That was almost 3 hours drive from home.)
As a result: we spent a few hours to get from the car to the cabin.
We left Grandma's skis in the car, and let her walk instead. Mum left us to find some snowshoes that should be at the cabin (according to Grandma, who hadn't been there for some years), and I stamped my skis into the snow so the old woman would have somewhere to walk without disappearing into the whiteness. It was not really successful. Sometimes I heard "Noooo I don't want to" behind me, turned around only to see her falling SLOWLY into the snow. Tilting, is probably a better word.
Mum didn't find the snowshoes, but Grandpa's old-old skis. They didn't fit, of course, but at least they had a string Grandma could have around her shoes to keep them from falling off.

Finally inside, a cozy fire in the fireplace, soup in our stomachs, tea and burning oil-lamps made the effort worthwhile.

Saturday morning, mum and I woke up with the smell of coffee in our noses. Grandma had gotten up with the sun, heated up the house and came up to the attic with sweet buns and coffee. It was such a nice morning!


Grandma, the early morning bird.


I just woke up - but the coffee was nice and strong :)

After breakfast it was time to pack, wash the dishes and figure out how to get down to the car again. It was still a lot of snow, or more even. After a lot of searching around, we found a second set of keys. They led to a shed mum didn't open yesterday - and what did she find in there? Snowshoes!
I gave Grandma my shoes and skis, and took her old, broken shoes and the snowshoes. Both mum and Grandma fell down a few times (mum due to a heavy backpack, Grandma because of not practised her skiing for a while but blaming the equipment) and we had great laughs at it. I felt like a rescuing party.


Snowshoes!


Grandma on skies, and my footsteps next to her.

To get to Bjerkely, we had to drive through Elverum centrum. It was really crowded everywhere, lots of people - and animals. A market! Every year there is a market there, but we didn't know what date it was (didn't check) so we missed it. Arrgh!
But I'm very happy we didn't miss the show at Eivinds school. It was great! Quite long, but so many fantastic images. How I wished to have enough time and money to go to Cuba, Venezia, Kambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Amsterdam.


This is just some of the rubber Grandma's shoes left behind in the shop...

Location: Mums livingroom
Eating: Dinner, soon
Drinking: -----
Listening to: Grandmas adventures of the day.
Mood: ok

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!