Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

A Travel can be divided into three

A travel is at least three things:

- the anticipation of planning

- the excitement of going, being away, exploring new places

- the joy of remembering and sharing

During Sunday breakfast we started to talk about trips not yet taken. Easter in Italy, autumn in India, summer in......

Oh yes, summer in Norway. The land where summer lasts as long as the daylight is up, which is for several months. Norway, the land where the green is the greenest, the blue is the bluest......where mountain meets fjords and where oldfashioned is still modern.....

While making another pot of coffee we found ourselves looking through a book about old Norwegian wooden hotels. You find them like beads on a string down along the western coast of Norway. We visit at least one every summer on our driving south to my husband's birthplace.

Nothing has to be set in months yet. Alot of planning and dreaming ahead.....

***********************************************************************

Photos: my chest of creativity, an old family chest, where I display travel memories. Beach stones from Italy, shells and corals from Eritrea/Eastern Africa.

When I collected shells at a beach near Massawa their "tenants" were still inside. I was not brave enough to take them out but I wanted the shells so much. Creative resolution - I filled my big soapbox with shells and "tenants", secured the box with a rubber band and hid it in my suitcase. Coming home to Norway a few days later the small escargots were still alive so my husband had to boil the shells for me.....urgh! I was probably not allowed to do what I did, so please don't tell...........

Where love resides..........

.....being a Sunday morning bird....... brewing a mug of coffee, starting a dough for Sunday breakfast pastries, visiting favorite blogs, smelling the moose steak which has slept in the oven over night, looking at the pile of books waiting to be read,.....

.......knowing that the day is wrapped up in family love.

Photos: from my home this morning, while darkness still covers everything outside.

************************************************************

  ________________ Books _______________

I'm working on something. Come back later.......

Update...........

On my way to a birthday. Books'll have to wait. Meanwhile you can take a look over in my son's bookblog. I know no one reading as much as he does.......

At this season

January is the longest month. Christmas is gone, light has not yet come back.

It is dark when I leave for work in the mornings, dark when I come home in the afternoons.

Slowly, slowly something is changing. At first you don't believe your eyes.

Then one day you know it is real. Light is coming back.

God was generous yesterday. When I came home from work he had not yet switched of the light. I ran in to get my camera. I wanted to save Gods generosity.

A winter afternoon in the woods must be one of the wonders of mother earth.

************************************************************************

Blog of the week: With so much light on its way I always get an urge to create. While I write this post it is still dark, dark morning and the rest of the family asleep. I have started a pastry dough to surprise them for breakfast, and am now sitting here enjoying one of my all time favorite "art and crative - blog"; ULLABENULLA.

************************************************************************

I'm taking a break from my Venezia posting. If you still need a photo from the fairytale city today, take a look here.

Venezia. Music for my heart. Part IV

I was up before six, ate a light breakfast and went out to meet the day. It was misty, and sunrise was on the other side of the city, neverthelesss it felt exciting to follow the creator's brushes painting the growing light. I sat down trying to draw a canal, but had to realise that my skills are more in words.

Sitting down at one of the many cafés on the main road between the railways station and St.Mark's Square I watch life. Later in the day this street will be cramped with tourists. Alot of people now also, but the tourists are still deep asleep in their hotel beds. Children on their way to school, students, grown ups hurrying to work, a few already working delivering food and all kinds of stuff using their wooden wheel carts. A young man is delivering a big paper bag with fresh pastries to the café, another man has made a ring out of a newspaper, placed the ring on top of his head and carries a pile of boxes. A woman is coming up from the vaporetta (water bus), using her index finger as a bookmark in the book she is reading, a small girl with an enormous backpack stops at the pastryshop across the street to buy her school lunch. Alot of people stop at the cafés for coffee, gulping down the strong drops while standing. I am the only one drinking caffee latte, at this time of the day the coffee shall be strong enough to chase away sleep.

A small boy still has some homework to do before school. Together with his father he sits down at the table near me, whistling. The father orders coffee while the boy finds his book and pencil. With the help of his fingers the math is done, still whistling. The joy of work, which is found through song and music is apparently something Venezian men carry with them from birth. I am fascinated by the accompanying work with singing an aria or whistling something from an opera. May be this whistling young boy will be one of those whom in 15-20 years will wake me up every Venezian morning with the music flowing out from the glass factory accross the canal of Nati House.

***********************************************************************

In my article I write about Vivaldi and Verdi, La Fenice and La Pietá, concerts every night, opera........with you I wanted to share a couple of pages from my travel diary one morning while I was waiting for my Australian friend to come down for a visit.

Photos: from a church in Padova. Nati House link will take you to the small flat where I usually stay while in Venice.

***********************************************************************

Qualcosa di bello - here is my heart story from Venezia :-)

Venezia for artists. Part III

Venice has been painted and described many thousand of times, and of all the citis of the world it is the easiest to visit without going there. (Henry James)

"All" writers with some self respect seem to spend a period of time in Venezia. Yes, I even spent time there myself when I wrote my book about Lent ;-)

I have collected books from and about Venezia for many years, even before I started to frequent the city, and have a growing collection. A few of the books are always with me when I visit the city, among them is Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers. Miss Garnet is an old spinster, and when her friend through most of her adult life dies, she travels to Venezia to give herself some solace. She rents a small flat near the church Angelo Rafaele, the church where you find a series of old panel paintings telling the story of Toby and the archangel Raphael. Through the book the two stories, Miss Garnet's and Toby's, are woven togehter, and just like the shifting sea-light of Venezia, nothing is what it seems to be.

On Campo Angelo Rafaele you find the restaurant PANE VINO e San Daniele, with its speciality coniglio con cardi selvatici. Sitting at one of the table outdoors, enjoying a glass of white wine I can see Miss Julia Garnet airing her bedclothes from one of the green shuttered windows, and passing by Toby, his dog and the archangel I stop to listen to one of their stories.

****************************************************

I have several deadlines coming up these days, and spend alot of my time up in my studio. Stacks of books are filling every free space around me. Yes, I could easily live the life of a wordsmith :-) Though after a full day's work I find myself in the kitchen, baking bread, creating a new recipe for fish soup, doing dishes.

Tomorrow's Venezia post will be about music.

Venezia - with an open mind. Part II

In the end, while I still walked around trying to take inn at least small portions of the Venecian beauty, Mom and Dad found an open Travel Acency which agreed to change one of their cheques into lire. Thousands, yes, millions of lire. We kids felt like playing Monopoly with all this money between our fingers.

Our path took us right back to St.Marco where we had seen a posh restaurant. Sitting down at one of the outdoor tables there, right in the middle of everything, my Dad could sense that this was an expensive place, so he only ordered drinks; two coffee for the adults, four small cokes for us kids.

How were we to know that coffee for an Italian means a miniature eggcup filled with three drops of gunpowder, the coke bottles were the smallest we had ever seen, the bill was higher then the Campanile............. This was after all Caffee Florian!

My parents are wise people. We had our drinks, we were still a happy family in the middle of a fairy tale, dad payed the bill and we went on to feed the pigeons before taking a gondola ride.

I am writing an article about Venezia for the moment, and article which I hope can be a background paper for taking tourists to Venezia, visiting hidden and unknown places in between the more famous ones. My first idea was to focus on travels in the footsteps of famous writers. Before my last trip to Venezia a few months ago I got a better idea; why not travel accompanied by all the Muses, not only litterature. So during my Venezian week in October when I travelled all by myself, I was not alone at all, I travelled with a sisterhood of spirits showing me a Venezia of litterature, music, art, food, colours, water, people.....an unconventional gathering of muses, I know, but they were there all together with me.

****************************************************

The Venezia tale will continue tomorrow.

This blog already has quite alot of stories from Venezia. Here is the Florian story told in other words, with photos from my birthday last year, here is a cute tale of pigeon feeding on St.Marco.

The Blue Bookshelf is focusing on books from and about Venezia these days. From there is is easy to find the books and order them yourself.

A Week in Venezia. Let's get started. Part I

I was 14 and went on vacation south to Italy for four weeks with my parents and three younger brothers. With a Volvo Amazon and a caravan we were on the roads for four weeks.

For almost two weeks we swam in the sea outside Venezia, near the beaches of Lido di Jesolo, and one day my parents decided it was time for all of us to visit the fairy tale city.

In suffocating midsummer heat we went in to La Serenissima, the city which was predicted to disappear in sea like Atlantis. One of my brothers had frequented the travel agencies in Trondheim for months in search of pamflets for our travel, so we were filled up with images. But nothing can prepare you for what meets you the first time you enter the city of Venezia. I was hooked from the first glimpses, walking around all day with my senses open, drinking impressions like a dry sponge.

This was back in 1972, long before the easy way of travelling with credit cards, and my parents soon realized that our day of visiting Venezia was one of the many saint's days when banks are closed. Dad's wallet was filled with travel checks, but without a bank they were worth nothing more than the paper they were written on. The heat was heavy, we were all thirsty and tired, my parents tried every door which could possible be some kind of a bank......closed! All I can remember from this seeking though is the impressions of a city far, far from anything I could have made up in my wildest dreams.

I got a new knowledge of colours that day:

If we were asked what is the leading colour at Venice we should say pink, and yet, after all, we cannot remember that this elegant tint occurs very often. It is a faint, shimmering, airy, watery pink; the bright sea-light seems to flush with it, and the pale witish-green of lagoon and canal drink it in. (Henry James)

***********************************************************************

I am writing an article about Venezia which might be the start of travels, travels, travels........ The article is in Norwegian, but I am translating bits and pieces here for you. Come along with me for a week in Venezia, the travel continues tomorrow.

***********************************************************************

Quite another topic: Do you know that there is a beautiful, blue flower out there called Britt-Arnhild? Come, take a look!

The Year of an Opera Listener - Amahl - and some bragging....

It is several months since I wrote my last "the year of an opera listener". I still prefere opera to any other music. If you ask my family they will say I listen too much, if you ask me I will say that there is never enough of the time and peace needed :-). So life is quite normal I guess.

Tonight has been a wonderful opera night though; Amahl and the Night Visitors by Gian Carlo Menotti was performed in Our Lady's Church here in Trondheim, with the charming, great, very talented young conductor Torodd Wigum <drum roll> Yes, it is my little brother Torodd, born when I was 12, the one who should have been a girl (in my dreams), but as soon as a boy was born I loved him with all my heart.......and I still do.

I am so proud of you Torodd.

.......and this is not enough.......One of the child actors in the opera was my niece Mathilde.

Mathilde, you did a great job!

Amahl and the Night Visitors is a beautiful story about the young crippled boy Amahl and his poor mother. One night the three kings (the Magi) comes to visit. When Amahl hears about the little child they are searching, he wants to give the child a gift. All he has is his crutch, and when he gives it away, he is healed and can walk again.

It is not easy in a dark, huge church to take photos trying not to use a flash. I really did my best though..... (to give Mathilde and her proud aunt a good memory)

I haven't bought any opera cd this month yet. Now I am on my way to amazon to buy this one.

*************************************************************************

Starting tomorrow I plan to take you on a week's visit to Venice. Have your suitcase and your travel diary ready.

I am writing an article about Venice (in Norwegian), and will share some of it with you......if you want to come along.

The love of food and the time it takes to prepare it.

In the Bible the importance of meals often shines through. Food is the key to a healthy life, and it is important what we eat and how we eat. Either we eat alone or many together, it feels good to sit down around a table, with food prepared with love, with a lit candle and some flowers.

We eat simple food in the Blue Café, but simple is not the same as plain. More important than a wide variety of extravagansa is the love we put into what we make. The time we give the preparations.

The grocery stores have a wide variety of fast food in their selections. Food which are easy to warm up but which we don't have a relation to. We never got soil under our nails when we sowed the tomato seeds, blood on our fingers when we cutted the meat, we have not cleaned our hands from small mother of pearl shells after cleaning the fish, yes, in our busy everyday life we have almost forgotten what it is like to roll out raisinfilled buns, putting some extra raisins in our mouth when no one watched.........

Photos: from yesterday's breakfast

Words: my attempt to translate some sentences from my book, inspired by a discussion on Armchairtravelling recently

***************************************************

It is time for a new blog of the week. I am absolutely sure that you will love Carolyn's colourful photos and even more colourful writing. Carolyn is a remarkable woman, I am proud to call her my friend.

Home again

I've been away for two days. Travels and meetings from early morning till bedtime. Is there anything better than coming home to everything I love, sinking deep down in the sofa with a cup of tea, some biscuits, cheese and honey, chatting with Terje, silence with Terje, reading a book...........I am planning a quiet week-end.