Eurovision

Yes, it is that time of the year again! Last night was the first semifinal of the Eurovision song contest (a blog post in the New York Times about the phenomenon can be found here - especially entertaining is the discussion), and I spent it with my Icelandic friend Reynir, who also happens to be one of the 'reviewers' of the Eurovision contestants on the show 'Alla leið' on Icelandic TV (check him out here, and click on one of the links to the right if you are curious). It is brilliant to watch the show with someone who is so in to it! We watched, screamed, sang along, drank beer, were horrified, laughed, got goosebumps, the lot! The presenters were awful, but other than that it was a great show.

So, what do I think this year? Well, for the first time ever (!) I actually called in and voted. Obviously I voted for Sweden (one must have some national pride!). The artist - Malena Ernman - is super talented. The song, well, you either love it or hate it. I'm the first category, but don't think it will win. Doesn't matter. She's doing a good job.



The best performance was, however, Iceland (and I'm not just saying that because Reynir is twice my size). The girl who sang it was really good, and the song very pretty. Probably the best ballad this year, and will definitely be among the top songs in the final.



Other than that, my favourite song in this seminfinal was Portugal. I discovered Portugal as a Eurovision nation last year, but they have a pretty poor history in the contest (no wins). This song was both happy and sweet, and I liked the fact that the girl was so moved after her performance.



Among the other semifinalists to make it there were no great surprises. Turkey will end up high (with the obligatory 12 points from Germany - now, that is immigration politics!) but don't deserve it this year. They've performed better earlier years. Israel must have been the jury's vote - that was just too much politics and too little music.

Tomorrow is the second semifinal, but there is no doubt that Norway will make it through to the final. It would not surprise me at all if good old Norway were to win it all (and very well deserved).



I love it!!!

Odd things in Norway that I do not miss, part 2

One of the things I definitely do not miss from living in Norway is the ladies’ toilets on the top floor of my office building on campus. The windows allowed the light to beam in all day, at the same time as the lights in the ceiling were particularly unforgiving. Looking in the mirrors was always bad. If you didn’t wear makeup you looked like a ghost on a good day. Wearing makeup you looked like a hooker (no matter how much or how little you wore). Nothing could ruin a good day like the mirrors on the 6th floor!

Odd things in Norway that I do not miss, part 1

One of the things I really missed in Norway was good grocery stores. I heard rumours that there were some - but as with everything else in Norway, it was out in absolute nowhere. No car meant no shopping. (And if you would actually find one, there was no way you could afford anything anyway.) When visiting Tim in Cambridge/Ely/Catford going to Sainsbury's or Tesco was one of the highlights!

I am still just as excited going to the grocery store as I was back then. I just love the selection of food; all the exotic products, the weird local dishes, the scary looking pre-fab stuff. And the fact that you can buy alcohol in a normal store thrills the Lutheran Swede in me.

Sweet things, part one

So, right now I am hopefully in Tel Aviv, enjoying the sun and the pool. (And if you've heard anything about hijacked planes or so, well, then you shouldn't be on this blog anyway but rather check out CNN or the BBC.) So, a few posts I had saved up...

In Oslo, I would occasionally force Tim to go out with the garbage (which was in the back yard of our housing complex, visible from our kitchen). One snowy day, when I forced him out, he did this for me, beneath our window:

It made me feel terribly guilty, but also very loved!

Celebrating Norway

Yesterday's 17th of May made me recall one of the times Tim and I 'celebrated' it in Oslo. (Possibly the same year as I took the picture below. It's from 'our street' in Oslo, where almost everyone flagged from their balconies. It was really pretty, and every year they got lots of attention for it.)

Tim and I had walked down to the Palace (a five min. walk from where we lived), to look at the parade. When the parade was over, we walked up and waved to the royal family, as the good fake-Norwegians we were. And the amazingly poor pictures we took was a great addition to our collection of 'bad pictures of European royal families', which we had started the year before with a really bad photo of the Swedish king (well, at least we got his hand).

After having had the obligatory hot dog in potato bread (!), we got in contact with some of Tim's old friends. They invited us over to a flat in central town, where one of them was serving cocktails. Wohoo! we thought. That sounded absolutely great! We were a little surprised, because 1) few Norwegians will serve you any other alcohol than beer because it is so expensive, and 2) the girl who we were going to had about a year earlier converted to Buddhism, and did not drink (but then, even sweeter of her to make it nice and festive for the rest of us). Well, we should have known. It was all a misunderstanding/ mis-translation. It was not cocktails (surprise, surprise) but fruit cocktail - diced fruit in syrup! Which was nice enough, but not what we had in mind... And when the others a bit later went out for dinner, we had to go home, since we were rather poor at the time. But happy birthday, Norway!

For all the Norwegians:

Happy 17th of May!!! Jeg savner Oslo og President Harbitz gate og jer alle.

Wave to the king from me, and make sure to eat loads of pølse i lompe. I will do my best and celebrate with the only Norwegian food I have in the house: Stabbur-Makrell (courtesy of Minna).

Gratulerer med dagen!