Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Coincidence or??????

I have written before about having  pen pals from all over the world and what joy and blessings this give me. A couple of months ago I got a letter from Sally in South Dakota, a penpal of mine for about 11 years. She told me that she was coming to Norway with her sister and that they would be spending a day here in Trondheim. She hoped that they would be able to meet me and my family during the day. I wrote her back and gave her my cell phone number, and then last week I got a new letter from Sally. She wrote that she and her sister would be seeing the Nidaros Cathedral in the morning on the 22nd of July,and afterwards they were free to meet us.

My father in law came here last night to spend a week with us and we wanted to take him down town this morning to see the new exhibition in the Archbishop's Palace with the Norwegian crown regalias which opened a months ago. After breakfast I still hadn't heard from Sally, but we decided to go downtown, I always take my cell phone with me so she would be able to reach me anyway. And the Archbishops Palace is close to the cathedral, so I wouldn't be far away when or if Sally called.

Well, time passed and I heard nothing from Sally. We finished the exhibition and went to another museum in the same area, I with my phone in my hand waiting to hear from Sally any minute, wondering why she didn't call. And I looked around at the crowd of tourists wondering if Sally and her sister were somewhere. We finished the next museum, and on my way out I say the man selling tickets were talking with two ladies, and flipping through an old phone book of Trondheim. Well, I said to myself and prayed a short prayer; miracles do happen, what if these two ladies are "my ladies". There was a rack with postcards close to where they were, and I walked over pretending to look at the postcards, trying to see what the man was writing. On the yellow notepad my name was written, together with my very old phone number which have been out of work for years, and yes, the two ladies were Sally and her sister :-) Sally had lost my letter with my phone number and she had tried "everywhere" to get help to find me, and the only phone number this helpful man was able to give her didn't work!Yes, as I said, miraclas do happen, and one happened today to Sally and me.

My two ladies just left. We saw more of the town together, we had coffee outside the cahedral and we all went home here to the garden, my parents came over and we had a barbecue and coffee and ice cream for us all. And as a present Sally gave me the most wonderful summer quilt.

Long and lazy summer days.

Long and lazy summer days are here and we more or less live out in the garden. Tomatoes and strawberries are ripening, the ruccola salad is almost growing too fast and yesterday I had to prune the herbs in my herbgarden to give light and air to the smallest plants.

I make salads for almost every meal, and enjoy Carel Kapek's book about his travel in Norway in 1938 while eating. And all the time I enjoy flowers, birds, bees and squirrels.

Strawberry season

Here in Trøndelag we are in the middle of the strawberry season. The market downtown is brimming with fresh berries. I bought the 12 kilos I use to buy for canning/freezing last week, now I buy a few basket whenever I pass the market to bring home for enjoying with cream or ice cream.

Cantina Campo dei Fiori

My daughter will soon be going to Italy and Terracine for 16 days. This will be her third visit to Terracina, but the first one "on her own". I looked through some of my Terracina photos the other day, and long to go back myself. And one day I will.....

I celebrated my birthday in Terracina this year, and for my birthday dinner I invited a few friends to Cantina Campo dei Fiori. A small, but thoroughly charming restaurant in Centro Storico, and thoroughly charming Italians working there. I know that Ingrid will go there to eat during her stay and she will greet Davide and the others from me.

Longing

I am always longing, for something and somewhere. Longing to fly high and free, longing to do, to go, to see, to live.

“The art of living is to be content with what you have” some people say. “The art of living is longing” I say. Longing is no contrast to be content. Longing is the inner force and strenght that take you to new places. New places inside yourself, new places around the world.

Longing is the wish to live the life God meant you to live. Longing is to live full and free.

The photo was taken in Norma in Sounthern Italy in April, spending an afternoon with friends, watching hanggliders.

More food and friendship.

I have written about friendship and food several times. Just as important as eating together is preparing the food together, and Saturday night, before we went out midnight fishing, we were invited to our friends at their cabin to make bacalao together. Bacalao is a fish casserole based on dried Norwegian codfish, potatos, onion, tomatoes and olive oil. It is said that the Portugeeses developed the recipe, but it is also an old traditional dish in the coastal town Kristiansund.

Friends, food, flowers, not too many moskitos, view, serenity, talk and laughter.....that's my paradise.

Midnight fishing.

Norwegian summer nights are too light for sleeping, and late Saturday night we went out fishing with cabin friends in their boat.

I got the biggest cod fish, and needed help from Terje to get it into the boat. Marta and our friend measure it.

Beautiful sunset around 11pm, seen from the boat.

 

Just one more Prague post.

Our days in Prague was so filled with experiences and good moments, I can keep on blogging about it for weeks. But I have other themes for blogging as well, so I will give you just one more Prague blog, at least for now, this time from Prague's castle and cathedral area, Prazsky Hrad a Hradcany.

When you visit a city for the first time and only have three days you have to chose what you want to see and to do. Just walking around, breathing the atmosphere is always on top of our list, Terje wanted to see historical places like Vaclav Square, and I had opera or classic music as a main goal, and we both wanted a tour on the river. We had a wonderful two hour lunch on the river one day, we went to the National Marionette Theatre for Mozart's Don Giovanni and loved every single minute of it, we had coffe and a long walk on Vaclav Square, and we walked, walked, walked around. And everywhere we walked we could see the hill with the castle and the cathedral. At first we didn't have any spesific interests in going there ; "why shall we do like all other tourists?". But the last day we decided to do it anyway. And gosh, we are so happy we did!

The day was HOT, but neither of us mind sweating as long as we have our water bottles, so we climed the steep hill up to the castle and bought  "see it all" tickets. The area consists of the castle, three churches and an abbey, and also a small area with several very small houses, The Golden Lane, where the legends tell about  he people who used to live there; The Small People. And there were also a National Gallery of Portraits. (Ha, as I write this now I know that I just have to write you more blogs about this later.......there were so many wonderful things to see, so many perfect impressions., so many new artists to me.)

We climed almost 300 stairs to get to the top of the cathedral tower and a perfect house roofs view of Prague, oh, yes, it was terrible hot in the heath, but well worth it, but what took my breath away was the many stained glass windows in the cathedral. Having lived with the stained glass rose window and all the stained glasses telling stories from the Bible in the Nidaros Cathedral here in Trondheim all my life, I am a true lover of this spesific art. And coming into the St.Vitus Cathedral was like goming into a new and yet unknown room in heaven! (I am so thankful that Jesus has promised us a heaved with many rooms, and so thankful whenever I am taken to one of them). I have no words to describe what I saw, and it was not easy to get good photos, but I have the windows kept in my heart to enjoy for a long time.

But we could not stay inside the cathedral for ever. There was so much more to see, and open minded, open eyed and together we took it all in.

And to top it all I found a localy made nativity scene in one of the artshops in The Golden Lane. With all the travelling I have been able to do this year my collection of nativity scenes is growing fast. (But that's a story to be for my Advent Basket writing in December).

Prague Botanic Garden

Sunday we spent a couple of hours in the botanical garden in Nové Mesto (The New Town)in Prague. The garden's main attraction is a water lily, Victoria Cruziana, which is strong enough to carry a small child when it's blooming. During summer the lily gets dozens of flowers, though each one survive only one day. We were not lucky enough to see any flowers, but the leaves were also worth a visit.

King Karl IV (Charles VI) founded the first botanic garden in Prague in the 14th century, though there is nothing left of it now as far as I know. The University garden which we visited were founded in 1775 elsewere in the city, but was moved to Nové Mesto in 1897.

When we visited the garden there was a special Art and Charity mosaic project going on. I bought an art card, and was then allowed to make my own mosaic which will be part of a huge mosaic decoration which will tour gardens all over Europe. You can find more information about it here: http://www.femancipation.com/main.php The card I bought has a special number, and my piece of mosaic got the same number, si I will be able to track it on it's touring.

Prague, a City of Fellow Readers.

I love cities where I find fellow readers. As I did in Prague. There were bookstores, book pubs, book cafés and “Antikvariats” around every corner, and you didn’t have to look long to find people reading in public – on the tram, in parks or just standing on the pavement deep in a book.

When I pack for a trip my books are always the most important to me, which means that my suitcase is always heavy. But I can rather do without clean clothes than without books. I pack notebooks, travel books, traveller’s tales, usually several travel diaries, guidebooks, maps, novels to read…….you name it. And the first thing I do unpacking in a new room is to stack my books, on the desk and on the night table.

Prague has always been a city of and for authors, poets and readers. It is the city of Franz Kafka, Milan Kundera, Rainer Maria Rilke, Karel Capek and several others. A couple of weeks ago I found a wonderful treasure at a junk sale here in Trondheim, Cesky Roman/A Czech Novel by Olga Capek. It is a huge book, hardbound from 1951, giving a lot of information about the city and the country, but most of all about Olga’s life with Karel. I did a search on amazon today to see if I could find more books by Olga, she must have written a lot, in between being a famous actor, but I did not have any luck. I found many by her husband though, and ordered a few, among them a travel book from his travel to Norway (I know I have read it before and used to have it in my shelves, but no it is nowhere to be found) and a book where he writes about his life as a gardener.

There were so many things we wanted to do during our three days in Prague, so there was not much time for browsing book stores. But the last night I had forgotten my three days tram ticket in the hotel room (NOT on purpose), so while Terje went back to find the ticket I had 15 minutes in the big book store near the tram station J Most of the books were in the local language, but I also found a good section with English books. And among them a lot of translated Czech literature. I bought “Prague in Black and Gold, the History of a Cit” by Peter Demetz, and “Prague Tales from the Little Quarter” by Jan Neruda.

I did not know very much about Czech literature before starting planning this summer, but give me a month or two and I will be a master J