Cars of Moscow

the rich and famous and the rich and infamous drive with style in Moscow!

Visit to Moscow.

We were in total 4 girls who were lucky to go to Moscow. This city is something else from St. Petersburg and it was a great break from all the studying. Here we are in front of the very beautiful Church of Christ the Savior. They call it Putin's church since he opened it only 10 years ago. It was rebuilt after the Soviets had torn it down to build the worlds largest Lenin statue. They realized only too late that the location was too near the river, and instead decided to build a huge pool in the hole they had dug... Russians!!

For the first time I've posed for a classic picture: me and Tolstoy

Kreml
Kreml and a farmer girl and a crazy girl
somewhat calm streets of Moscow

Days of signs

I dont know why I am suddenly writing in blue with this horrible blue underlining....anyway, here follows a few pictures from the past few days. Weddings here are extremely popular, and they make a big fuss out of them... The signs speak for themselves especially if you read russian...
This one is about korruption!
This was one / oh now the blue dissapeared! well this one was posted at the entrance to the Peter & Paul fortress, we were not allowed to ski, make fires, jump of the buildings, get drunk and so on.

This was also taken at the Peter & Paul fortress by the entrance to the toilet. It makes me rather curious about what normally goes on in a russian toilet ?

In the meantime

On our way to a restaurant in downtown St. Petersburg.
Just to prove that I'm actually studying here. We are often at school from 9.30 to 6 in the evening!!! No time to converse with Russians...

Breakfeast at the Dacha

I am staying at the dacha with my mother and this mornings breakfeast was all in blue. Big juicy blueberries, sweet cherries and soft plums. All bought at the lokal market in Pushkin, the nearest town in which the Ekatarina castles lies. Even now she only speaks one word russian she also managed to buy 1 kilo of big meaty kantarells and 2 huge slabs of beef for steaks. I finished school for today and will meet up with her later to visit a memorial grave for the almost 500.000 people that died in St. Petersburg during WW2.

My mother came to visit me in Petersburg. She is staying in a dacha, that belongs to a russian servas host. The dacha is situated some kilometers outside the city in an area full of dachas. A russian dacha is a kind of weekend house. Most of the houses look rather homemade giving them lots of character. Its easy to understand why people here have dachas, the air and noise in the city quickly becomes unbearable.

Saint Petersburg

I've arrived to Saint Petersburg to study russian. All of us students here study together in Tromsoe on a bachelor degree named Russia-studies. The universities in Norway have in coorporation with a university here in Petersburg a centre, where we are taught russian. The name of the course is practical russian. But they also allow us time for being tourists and on Sunday a trip to a nearby castle was arranged. The summer residence of Catherine the Great- or Ekatarina as her name is in Russian. To protect the floor they had us all wear these blue papershoes.
During the 2nd world war this residence was used heavily by the intruding Germans (nemetskij in Russian which means something like those who don't know, i.e. how to speak) Later the sovjet government had difficulties deciding wether to restore the residence or use the money to feed their people. The first alternative was chosen, which we can now benefit from ( if at least for 30 minutes or so)

Puck and Frost

The 2 alaskian huskies. Puck is the black and white (above). Great dogs!

Visiting Vevring

Vevring is a little community by a fjord on the westcoast of Norway, where Anders has his father-roots.

Snow and blubber season

Anders & Co. got lucky this weekend with the seal hunting. So most of Sunday was spent removing blubber from the 7 seals they shot. Anders got 4 himself and was kind to give me one of them, which made me really happy. I even got to remove the blubber myself- which is called "spekking" here in Norway. So now I can't wait to get it back from tanning, so I can sew something. Unfortunately it apparently takes up to a year :-( The picture show the pile of blubber from the 7 seals. Anders is taking it up to a friend in Alta, who will feed it to his dogs (huskies) and Stein Harald is making sealoil from some of it.


Here Anders and Stein Even are removing the blubber. Afterwards we washed the fur in dish washing detergent to get out the oil in the fur. Lastly we put all the furs into a big casket with salt brine.


Last week we got at least 1 meter of snow onto of all the old snow. It had been snowstorm for 4 days, when the sun finally broke through again.


Our frequently visited birdhouse with a snow hat!


Our bicycle/toilet house and the slim walkway over there-you need to keep you tongue straight in your mouth when you walk over there, otherwise you easily end up in the deep snow.

Summer at Dagtun+Swedish Goodies

Hello Folkens- so I might have found a bit of time in my tight tight scedule to uploads some more photos. As I write the snow is falling down outside, but I'm so behind with this blogging, so this post calls for last summer. The summer of 2008. And this time you will se my house! and a hippieswede who lived there this summer- all very exciting. This first little yellow house is our "Naust", where our old wooden boat lives along with our fishing gear. On the first floor, there's a room for guests and friends of guests and so on. It's best to visit in summer- no heating down there.
This is Swedish Elin, it was really nice to have her in the house. Dancing around the house, spreading joy and always ready for an interesting chat about selfhealing and prostitution :-) We are sitting outside what is actually our toilet, but the sun is warm there, so who cares if it smells a bit of ....

I must also mention the other beatifull Swedish wizard who was staying that summer- Magda
I long for summer when I see this, allthough pictures cheat a bit, summer isn't really summer up here, but still summer though...hmmm..!!?
This is the main house: Dagtun is her name. Sanja and I live on the first floor and right now Maret is living on the main floor, where the kitchen also is. Aahhh isn't it lovely!! Just above the main door there's a small place for other guests as well, like old friends and ex- lovers, there it's ok to visit all year round!
This is the view from our kitchen, where everything happens! We prefer not to have guests sleeping in the kitchen, except on the occasional overdose of whisky, chilivodka, cognac or deerdinner on top of yestersday half a bottle of akevit! (akvavit, aquavit or just snaps).

Frost in the morning, winter is already here (this is from the 10th of November 2008)

Collage

more pictures!! now a collage from 2008- juhuu!

Jannaski

skiing with Janna last spring (2008)

A few pictures from 2007

This was the view from my studenthouse in Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen.










And here's one from inside. These where some of my good mates on Svalbard. I think this was one of our last dinners together.



Then I returned to DK, back to a wild christmas party with biology students from Copenhagen- it's me in the back dancing...

Hi again

After various unsuccessful attempts with other traveling blogs, I'm gonna go for the mainstream kind. My wish is simply to encourage myself to take more pictures and keep friends and family easier updated on my life. So- let's see what happens!