Junk food and aged wine

The last couple of weeks we have been on vacation. A few days in Venice, then cruising around in the Adriatic Sea, visiting many interesting places, and eating lots of good food (and drinks? No, very little, I don't drink alcohol when I'm with the kids).

As usual, the Germans were walking around the pool with big beer-bellies and small Speedo pants; very ugly. As usual, the Italian girls had tiny bikinis; very nice! (where the Hell is the moral here?) And whenever I tried to take a picture of the kids or a nice scenery, some unknown jerk bustled in front of my camera in the moment I was pushing the button.

The best about vacation is having plenty of time to relax in the sun and read books. I started with some brain-junk-food; "The Darkest Room", a crime novel by Johan Theorin. It's one of these books that makes me shout: "What the Hell, I could have written better than this shit myself".

Then came the aged wine (when it comes to drinks I actually prefer beer, but never mind); The Gambler by Dostoyevsky, this fabulous little book that I read on the beach every summer. I looked around, feeling pity for all the people sitting there with their junk-literature; Robert Ludlum, Stephen King, Tom Clancy, Barbara Cartland, Stephenie Meyer ... and so on. Burgers and fries are OK now and then, but not every day.

And then, I discovered this little pearl of a book (actually I found it in my wife's suitcase): "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" by Muriel Barbery. It's an intelligent and funny book about a concierge who loves the works of Tolstoy, and a super-smart 12-year-old girl who has decided to commit suicide on her 13th birthday ... well, I won't say more. Just read it!

The 3rd worst invention of all time: Pizza with pineapple

Recently, I was going through my blog archive, to delete some old posts that were really bad and not worth keeping. Also, I found that I had forgotten to complete my little trilogy on the "worst inventions of all time".

I had written about the first two
1. Religion,
2. Handguns,
but not the 3rd and last one. So here it is:

The 3rd worst invention of all time: Pizza with pineapple.

I like pizza and I like pineapple, but not at the same time. One of my favorites is pizza with pepperoni, and I really hate it when I get pineapple on top of it, or even worse, when the pineapple is mixed in with the melted cheese.

It's not a big problem, you may say, and I agree. I can order my pepperoni pizza without pineapple, or simply peel them off. Sometimes it's good to have a problem that I can do something about.

I can’t stop all the religious extremism going on, and I can't get rid of all the handguns in the world. But I can at least get the pineapple off my pizza.

Tomorrow the vacation starts; two weeks away from the computer, and with lots of Italian food. Have a nice summer >:)

Hometown tourists

Today was another nice and warm summer day. Little boy and I decided to be tourists in our hometown. We biked down to the quay, and took the public boat out to the little island in the middle of the fjord.

The island is full of interesting history, from versatile use throughout the centuries. Before year 1000, the vikings used it as an executions site. The cut-off heads of the executed were put on high poles, to be visible to visitors coming in the fjord, just as a gentle reminder.

In the 12th century, Benedictine monks built a monastery on the island. They were famous for the beer they brewed and notorious for their wild and noisy parties. The bishop complained that the monks were selling too little and drinking too much of the beer themselves. In the 1530’s, the monastery was shot to bits and pieces by war ships, when the catholics had to escape the reformation.

From 1650 to 1900, there was a fortress and state prison on the island. Among the prisoners were several noble men. The most enduring was on the island for 55 years, on a sentence for “unsatisfactory behaviour”, when he complained about his rich and powerful mother-in-law being mean.

During the 2nd world war, the Germans built an anti-aircraft cannon battery on the island, to defend the big submarine bunker on the harbor.

Today the island is a public recreation area, with a museum and a nice little beach. Little boy and I visited both the museum and the beach. We did of course agree that swimming was required to get ice cream.

And now we're gonna watch the World Cup final >:)

When the poor save the rich

A year ago, when the financial system was close to breakdown, governments all over the world, using tax-payer’s money, saved the banks and the stock traders. Last winter, the same happened again when the Greek economy was in deep crisis.

When the rich and wealthy are in deep shit, they call for poor and ordinary people to save their asses.

This reminds me of an incident I observed a couple of years ago, during our summer vacation. It happened in the town where Napoleon Bonaparte was born.

A huge yacht in the guest harbor was attempting to lift anchor. They steamed forward and backward and sideways, with rear propellers and bow thrusters. The men prayed and swore and yelled at each other, and the pinup girls on the sundeck escaped to the cabins, in their Chanel bikinis and Prada sunglasses.

The crew was obviously better at serving champagne than at handling anchors. Whatever they did; the damn anchor was stuck on the sea bed.

A big crowd on the quay was watching the scene, giggling and laughing and shaking their heads.

Suddenly, three local kids appeared, in a small 12-feet dinghy. Two boys put on their diving masks and jumped in the water. When they returned to the surface a few seconds later, the anchor was free.

The yacht lifted anchor and set off to sea. But before they left, they threw a parcel wrapped in gold paper to the kids. The crowd on the quay applauded, and waited in excitement for the kids to open the parcel.

The kids just waved to the crowd and disappeared >:)))

On the beach

Today was a nice and warm summer day, almost 25 degrees (75 Fahrenheit). We don't get too many days like this in our town. So I left work early, and then little boy and I went to the beach.

There are many small beaches along the fjord, close to town center. Little boy picked a beach that has an ice-cream shop. We agreed that swimming was required to get ice cream.

The water in the fjord was refreshing ... some would say cold. But the kids of Winterland don't care, they swim anyway. You just can't stay in the water for very long.

We both got ice cream, before we went home >:)

The evil dentist

At the place where I grew up, there was a mean and evil dentist. His office was in the school building, right by the football field (football=soccer). When the ball hit his window, he got furious. He ran out and grabbed the poor boy that kicked the ball by the ear, and pulled him into the dentist’s chair. He picked the nicest and whitest tooth in the boy’s mouth. With an evil grin on his face, he drilled out a wide and deep cavity, while the boy cried and screamed in pain. Finally he filled the cavity with dark and ugly amalgam.

Don’t you believe it?

I used to tell this story to my little boys. They believed it, and even counted on my teeth the number of times I had kicked the ball at the dentist’s window >:)))

Perfect summer day for skiing

Today we had a perfect day at the glacier.

Last night temperatures fell below the freezing point in the mountains. So today the surface of the glacier was hard ans solid. Around noon the uppermost surface had softened a little bit, to make perfect skiing conditions.

Weather was nice, and no wind.

In the picture you can see the kids playground with the big jumps in the foreground and snowy mountains and other glaciers in the background. In fact, the landscape is entirely shaped by glacier through thousands and millions of years.

Most glaciers are not suited for skiing, due to dangerous crevasses. The glacier we're skiing on is special in that sense; it has almost no crevasses, just a few small ones in the upper part. The crevasses are less than a feet wide and only 10 feet deep, so they are no risk for the skiing.

Now we're back on the camping down in the valley. We have two cabins, with a total of eight beds. Little boy and I, and another ski-dad stay in one cabin. Six teenage boys sleeps in the other, in the most incredible mess. There are piles of cloths, helmets, back-protection plates, goggles and ski boots. In a mysterious way they are able to dig up the right stuff every morning before we drive up to the glacier.

We make the cooking very simple; there are two items on the dinner menu. If weather is bad, we eat pizza. If weather is good, we BBQ outside the cabin. Today, like yesterday, we BBQ'ed >:)

Summer at the glacier

Yesterday was our first day on the glacier. From the camping down in the valley up to the glacier is a 40 minutes drive, with 1500m, almost a mile, of vertical ascent.

Weather was mostly cloudy. On the way up to the glacier, we passed through the lower clouds, almost like an air plane climbing after take off. Throughout the day we had both warming glimpses of sun and cold gusts of snowfall. The skiing was like summer skiing often is, on the soft and slushy glacier surface.

It’s interesting to study the glacier front. The characteristic layering that you can see in the picture is due to many years of alternating snowfall in winter and surface melting in summer. The bluish core of the glacier can be hundreds or thousands of years old.

The science of glaciers is called glaciology, and is a Hell of a fun and cool subject (literally spoken hehe). There are two main types of glaciers; polar glaciers and temperate glaciers.

Polar glaciers are found only in arctic areas, like the ice caps on Greenland and in Antarctica. The polar glaciers are frozen to the ground, which makes them do fantastic things like surge.

Temperate glaciers are “warm”, in the sense that the base is always at the melting point, and water is flowing underneath. The glaciers in the Alps, on Iceland, and in Winterland are temperate glaciers, including the one we are skiing on these days.

The weather forecast for tomorrow is superb, and I will try to take a nice picture to show you >:)