I have been busy today. Did some quick housework and had a house inspection. Met the new real estate agent and she couldn’t find my unit. *chortle* We have discussed the issues I have about doors warping, leaky ceilings etc. Should be interesting to see what comes out of that, but the owner likes me. *big deal.. I pay my rent on time*

I have never dealt with my finances before, as an adult. X always did them, and before that, I lived at home and my taxes were done by the family accountant. So now, it is time for lori to grow up a bit, and get her financial life sorted out. I finally began paying attention to thinks like, credit card interest rates, superannuation messages from my current fund, and took the bull by the horns. I have taken action and now hopefully, I am going to have a little more organisation in my life.
I have yet another family dinner to attend tonight, dad is back from Port Hedland, and my gifts that I  sent home for my family arrived. One casualty, one blue goblet - however the other one survived, as did the glass cat. phew! I purchased 4 pairs of shoes.. I should take pictures since I know Steph will want to see them Cookbook for mum, Viking recipes, and a book about hamlet, dad gets a chelsea football shirt and hat pins, my sister gets munch stuff from Norway and a swedish lion keyring.

I have my job interview at work tomorrow for the team leader job. It’s a hefty paycut, one I am not used to, so will have to see if I can get some kind of extra  out of it. I am going for the job for experience, and because I like working where I do.

Almost done with my travel pics.

some moments I just want to record..

The man in short shorts, standing in front of the shop window, and my friend singing to me as we sailed past on the bikes “who likes short shorts?? He likes short shorts”

The drunk social swede that decided to talk to us when we were in Råå on my last full day in Sweden, and kept asking me if I was *sure* that I spoke english.

Buying some postcards, and asking the lady in english, “how much are these?” and she replied to me in swedish, and I said to her, “I can’t speak swedish, how much are these?” and looking around for my friend as she continued to talk at me in swedish before saying to me in perfect english.. “buy one more and I can sell them to you for 39kr” (about $6AUD)

Coming across the phrase, “having a Corby done” or “doing a Corby”, in reference to Schapelle’s luggage story in Bali.

On a more serious note.. Most of the Australians I travelled with on the way home, do not believe that the Federal Govt would lift a finger to help them if they get in trouble overseas. Every Australian I met was paranoid about their luggage, with locks and shrink wrapping everwhere. They referred to David Hicks and Corby as examples of aussies hung out to dry to appease overseas interests.

Less serious note: Catching fire when I was selecting a desert from a table covered with Tealights, and being tired, and awake for nearly 36 hours, I looked down, put the food back on the table, turned to the girl next to me and said “oh look I am on fire” and putting my shirt out, and picking up my desert again.

After landing in a farmer’s field at the completion of a balloon ride, and then the Balloon leader asking the farmer’s wife who had come out to find out what was going on.. “do you mind if we land here?”

Exchanging money and Roskilde tickets, very early on a Sunday morning, two nervous looking couples, like we were doing a drug deal.

In my first week, I went with my friend into Copenhagen. Pretty impressive and not so clean, masses of people around everywhere. We decided to walk up the main shopping street - and we needed to cross a large square, which was full of tourists, and for some reason I did not want to even look like a tourist, so I kept my camera in my pocket. At the head of this square, and no I don’t know what it is right now, I will fill in the details later when I get home and check on the map, there was a huge building, with spires decorated with gold paint. Looked very impressive.

We took a few pictures, avoiding the skaters who were whizzing in between Danes and tourists, and then walked towards the main shopping drag. There was a line of old men sitting on some park benches, with their old bikes, and cans of beer scattered around the place. They were swapping stories, sleeping or just staring into space. I noticed this a fair bit whilst I have been over here. I guess we have similar sights in Perth, but normally not so out in the open.

There are a lot of leather and fur shops in Scandinavia. Lots of sales too, not that I could afford to pay $400 for a leather coat, but it was tempting. Great styles. What wasn’t so great were the tourist shops. I, of course, had to go in them. I was looking for souvenirs, mainly a hat pin for dad, he collects them. I have collected hat pins for each of the European countries I have visited. I found a hat pin, which cost about $10AUD. Bit of a rip off, but was a nice Danish flag.

I didn’t go see the big palace in Copenhagen, or the little mermaid. A nice Danish lady whom I was sitting next to on the flight from London to DK, told me that lots of Australians go there and I would probably enjoy it. Maybe, but I am not one for following sheep, so I stuck to window shopping and buying some stuff for my sister in the Royal Danish shop. Their seconds for china and glass were expensive, but their best goods, you need a mortgage for. On the otherhand, wow. Totally awesome and I think I would like to have a Royal Danish dinner set one day.

When we were out on the street walking around, you generally don’t think that you are breathing in someone else’s body gases. A good reminder however, was the man walking in front of my friend and I. As we were all part of a human river on this road, this guy.. let out a series of farts timed with each step, each fart getting longer and longer. I looked at my friend who had this determined look on their face, and we maneuvered our way from behind fartman. He ended his fart symphony with something that sounded like it was emitted from a whoopee cushion and by then we were off and running ahead so fast, I was running out of breath; from holding it, running and simultaneously laughing.

Then we made our way to Tivoli. They have a theme park there, restaurants and concert halls. We walked around, went to the beer cave and had a pint of Carlsberg, and watched the crowds. We were going to have dinner at the Viking Restaurant. Granted, there weren’t buxom wenches serving, or viking men stomping around in their fur boots chewing meat off the bone and throwing leftovers to the dogs.. What they did have, was great food. Raindeer, ox, boar.. on a spit. Mmmm. Very nice. The drink I had was a mix of beer and mead. Very tasty.

I have some excellent photo’s of this particular visit to Denmark, and I have been across a couple of other times over the last few weeks to check out other things, which will come up in later posts.

So.. memory of this visit.. Tivoli and FartMan

posted by lori at 8:14 PM
1 Comments:

Hammy said…

Den lille haufru. Amalienborg and Marmokirken. The little mermaid was a bit disappointing - it is little, as the name suggests.

Some of the castles are nice to visit - Rosenborg. Maybe you could visit the Tuborg or Carlsberg breweries.

Don’t forget to post some pics!!

Not all of this is going to be in chronological order, so I will start with some of the other stuff.

I caught a chest cold and ended up with hearing problems again! So, since I couldn’t hear and was coughing up half a lung, I sold my Roskilde Tickets to some norwegian couple who had lost theirs on the way through to roskilde, and went to see Norway instead.

Dwelling on Roskilde, am I disappointed? yes. However, that won’t stop me from trying and doing the same thing next year. Hopefully I won’t get sick. I got the cold because I wandered around the streets when it was raining (wasn’t real rain) but I got wet and didn’t dry off in time.

So lets look at Norway. LOTS of blonde people. The further north we went, the blonder people got. I have seen so much greenery, and rolling hills, lots of trees, I even saw Elk (moose for americans). Awesome bridges, and real tunnels, not like the northbridge tunnel, but tunnels through hills, the longest one being 4.8km long.

I saw The Kon Tiki exhibition, with The original balsa-wood raft, I saw the Viking Museum with real longboats, dug out of burial mounds at the turn of the 20th century. Extremely well preserved. Photo’s shortly.

I saw their maritime museum which shows the type of boats being designed, built and used. Some techniques today are the same as they were a thousand years ago. Found out that Herring, which is these days is a delicacy, was nearly fished out nearly a century ago, so now they have all these rules and quota.

No I didn’t try any Whale Steak, not that I looked for any, the price of everything in norway is immense. I paid close to $5 for a small 600ml bottle of ice tea. The cheapest food was of course maccas, so I had some.

The only way to look at everything in Oslo is to buy their Oslo card, which gives free parking and use of their buses and trains and ferries. Also gives you free entry to their museums and art galleries. Definitely worth it. A bit of an open secret, I saw a few americans paying for tickets individually rather than flashing their “oslo” passes like me.

I went to a natural history museum and saw real dinosaurs and stuff. Tyranusaurus Rex. Awesome. Lots of cool rocks and stuff, like why Scandanavia is so diverse. (for a nerd like me that is interesting) Saw their gem display, awesome stuff. And finally but not least, I went to the Munch Museum. I stood in front of some of his pieces, looking at the frantic brush strokes. He did very typical portraits of his parents and sister, and later on, a classic Munch impression of his sister. He did many versions of the same artwork, including “the scream”. The original is still in the gallery, but the one with vivid colours, that was the one that was stolen.

The security was intense, a guard in every room, and your stuff was xrayed, and you had to go through a beep machine aswell. They take their stuff seriously these days. Once more the prices for souvenirs was exhorbitant, however.. I knew this was where my hip pocket was going to be hit, and I accepted those charges gladly.

I think overall, Norway was an excellent choice to visit. I should go again, I want to see the Leprosy museum in Bergen :>

posted by lori at 3:05 AM
2 Comments:

Hammy said…

Sad to hear about Roskilde. One of those things on your lifes list of things to do that hasn’t been crossed out yet.

Bergen is very picturesque. Make sure that you take the train out to Flam and take the valley train down to the fjord - unmissable.
8:28 AM
lori said…

It is on my list of things to do Hammy
7:47 PM

June 13 - 18

It was with great excitement that I got out and on the plane to Denmark. It was a relief to be out of MrG’s apartment. I was sat next to a nice Danish lady who gave me lots of advice about flying (She was a nurse). She had relatives in Perth, so we talked about that, and how she has lots of frequent flyer points to fly business class when going to different continent. *sigh*

I met my friend (that I am staying with) at the airport in Copenhagen, and we talked all the way back to their place. Very green, and very sunny. An interesting observation, on certain days you can see lots of vapour trails. I saw hundreds in the sky over london, not so many in Sweden and Denmark but you see a few.

We had lunch on the ferry travelling between Sweden and Denmark, great lamb steaks, great coffee, more Carlsberg beer. Then we purchased some beer on the way back to my friend’s house. On the Danish side of the strait, since it’s cheaper. Apparently alot of swedes do this. After a few days, it’s not uncommon to start noticing swedes walking out of the Ferry Terminal with a few cartons of beer on small luggage trolleys, all for “personal use”

Swedes and Danes are much friendlier than the Brits, however, will choose not to speak english if they can get away with it. Since my friend was around, they would direct all their questions to him, rather than me. Fair enough.

Shopping time$

I have purchased a nice pair of sneakers, I am size 40eu. A leather backpack and matching purse. Then comes the travelling to the glass factories of sweden. Orreforrs, Kosta, plus some other smaller places. Wow. Their warehouses were pretty large, and surprisingly, not so many tourists there as alot of Swedes doing their shopping. Seems like all the good stuff gets sold overseas, as swedes like their bargains with the seconds. Seconds could be.. a blue dot in the wrong place, or a paint stroke not long enough.

So I got a couple of blue goblets, a small glass cat (i think) I got a wooden carved pen.. Had this great afternoon tea, lunch and evening meal with a family friend of my mate. He lives in that area, so he showed us around all the factories.

The mossies are huge!

More later

posted by lori at 11:37 PM
2 Comments:

Hammy said…

Great to hear what is happening. I’ve been waiting to hear on Lori’s Cubes, but, nothing. David posted a link and I’ve been able to catch up with what I’ve been missing. Jealous Lori, jealous.
4:09 PM
lori said…

I am unable to log in properly to my blog. Guess the security is too good or the logging in system is too crap
7:51 PM

12 June 2006

I was picked up eventually by a friend of the family, MrG. Mum had described him as rather conservative, very right wing. A little bit of an overstatement. He was more like an english version of Pauline Hanson. You know.. England for the English, fix problems at home first, then let immigrants in, test all immigrants for diseases, make them learn english, make them get jobs, but ensure everyone has an equal chance, best man for the job, not cheapest man for the job etc.

Funny thing is, alot of english people I met when walking around in London on my first full day there were like that. Alot of them rolled their eyes at “foreigners” who didn’t know how to do things like.. Queue.. or stand to the right on the escalator so that the people rushing could get through. Apparently standing in line for more than 3 minutes was waiting too long. Obviously, I have alot of patience, I didn’t care if I was in line for 3 minutes, I wait up to 10 to get my coffee at work.

It was a hot day, 32C. Well I loved it, and hooned around the tube, and when the tube wasn’t working, on the buses. I got to sit on modernised doubledecker buses. No airconditioning at all on these things, or on the Tube, reminded me of the old perth buses and trains before it became electrified.

MrG did a great job in showing me alot of things, I went to see where my dad was born, and took some pictures of the front door with me in front of it, and then the man who was living there opened the door and we had a chat for a few moments. He had moved into the house after my grandmother had died. How cool. He let us in, and I walked through the house, on the same floor as my dad did when he was a kid, into the same backyard where he played in. Mind you, it wasn’t nice anymore. The garden had died, the ground was cracked and dry due to no rain. However I was finally there.

Then we took the tube into central london and the man sitting opposite me was sweating so much, that water was dripping off his face on to the floor, and there was a huge puddle. I have never seen so many people sweat like that except at the gym after a heavy workout. I made sure that MrG had plenty to drink as we wandered through the city. The biggest irritation was not getting a COLD drink. They were lukewarm. The coldest drink I had was the Carlsberg beer at a pub. Great drop that.

Now for the awesome bit. Getting off the tube at Westminster, coming up the stairs and around the corner and seeing Parliament house, Big Ben and after being totally gobsmacked and looking like a bloody tourist with my camera.. I then noticed the big burly policemen carrying around sub machine guns, the helicopters flying around the central city, and MrG moaning about terrorism, Tony Blair and how evil he was, and how hot he was, and lets go to the London Eye.

Still, one thing I need to say, most people in london don’t smile. They snarl, or avoid looking at you and look away if you try and catch their eye and smile. I started keeping count. Indian women do not talk to white people. I smiled at many and none of them smiled or acknowledged me. That was a bit confronting.

We made it to City Hall, supposedly the house of Dick Whittington. I still have a hard time believing he was real. By this time it was around 3,00pm and I was getting irritated with MrG. All day he had moaned about everything, the tube, the buses, the lack of government control, the anarchy of the system. I saw a Salvadore Dali and Pablo Picasso exhibition, permanently on display and wanted to go in, and he turned around and said to me.. “oh do you have to, why do you want to see that type of thing?”

I got really annoyed. I didn’t want to rush around all morning like he had made me do, just so we could see dad’s old place. He just wanted to get there and then he had said, the rest was up to me. This was something I needed to see. When you live in a small city like perth. Thousand’s of kms from major events, when there is an opportunity to see what is my favourite artist (Dali) why wasn’t I going to use that moment in time, grab it, and say, this is my moment. I could regret it. I turned around to him and said, “There is no guarantee that I could see this again if I come back, it is here right now, you said I could look at what I wanted, and this is something I want to do, right now”. He backed off and told me he’d wait in the cafe. Off he went, and off I went, to have my first almost religious experience with Dali.

After Dali, it was the Eye. Pretty cool, wrapped up in a plastic bubble with MrG looking not very happy, but he hadn’t been on the eye before so it was something new. I got him a hatpin to celebrate. We purchased dinner in Leceister Square. It cost me 75AUD for a hamburger, chips, Fish and chips, 2 cokes and 2 iced coffees *choke*

I can’t describe how it felt to be in London, seeing it with new eyes. Seeing this historical city. Walking through streets I have read about in plays, heard in songs, watched on movies and on the news. Seeing something older than I had not been exposed to. Someone should invent a word to describe it. I am definitely coming back next year.

posted by lori at 10:52 PM
2 Comments:

Hammy said…

It nevers ceases to amaze me how trusting and interesting the English are. In which other country could you travel to from halfway around the world, land on their doorstep, and be invited in for a grand tour of the household? He obviously bought the story that it was where your father grew up but most normal people would turn you away, don’t you think? It must have been a fabulous experience though and I’m betting that you’re glad the old man entertained you with the tour and hospitality.
6:32 AM
lori said…

I guess he bought it because we knew so much about the house, the door knocker that my grandfather put up, he knew a little of my grandmother due to the neighbours around at the time, however they have all passed away. He said something lovely. He said that the house was lucky. That made me smile.

June 10/11 2006

Mum and my sister were crying when I walked into customs to board my plane. I was stressing alot. By the time we landed a 3rd time in 25 hours, I felt like a long distance veteran.

Brunei airport was boring. I have a 4 hour stopover and some Brunei money, I am going to be buying some gold on the way home, and spending time in their “net cafe”. I might also get some lunch, they had this awesome chicken sandwich with creamcheese and aniseed.

I needed to get off and away from the drunk englishman sitting next to me, who from Brunei to london drank brandy from his coke bottle and popped sleeping pills. He did a great impression of a starfish when he was sleeping. I did not have alot of room.

Dubai was painful. Someone lost a tyre on the runway and we spent an hour circling the airport at night whilst they tried to start the machine that cleans the runway, and then clean the runway. When we landed, we skidded and none of us were allowed off the bloody plane. My nasal passages, were aching. Who knew that you can get some kind of sinusitus when stuck in a plane for nearly 10 hours flying. I was so thirsty, I wanted to drink water until there was no room left in my stomach for anything else.

I wanted to be poetic when I saw London as we were landing but there were other things more pressing on my mind.

My hair felt greasy, and sticky, and really dry. I felt so horrible, so when I woke up after my first 3 hours of solid sleep in nearly 36 hours of being awake, flying, stuck in international terminals - I found that brushing my teeth, and cleaning my face and putting moisturiser and some makeup on made me feel human.

The staff at Heathrow were unfriendly. I asked 2 simple questions.. “how do I get out of here and find where to be picked up”, and “where are the luggage storage facilities so that I can store it on my layover”. The man pointed right and said exit that way, and then pointed left and said luggage that way. When I asked for detail he said again: “exit that way” “luggage that way”. I was pointed in the wrong direction for the exit.

Leaving someone behind that you meet, and get on with, and finally understand how things are supposed to be - That is the hardest thing about being home. I have been home a week now, my mind is still overseas in countries where I got to see and do things I have only really read about. I spent time with a good friend, and left reluctantly.
I have some posts which I am going to put up on the blog now, I had issues trying to log into wordpress, so started a blogger record. However, I really was very busy, so I didn’t log on to internet alot, I felt it was unsociable when I was staying with someone, and really, you don’t want to spend all your time on the internet when there is company.

When I didn’t go anywhere at night, we ate at home, watched a DVD and drank danish beer or Campari. Campari is very tasty. The sun set late, the sky never turned black, instead it stayed indigo. Whenever Sweden won a worldcup match, the entire area erupted with swedes screaming, then after games, they would get out in their cars and drive around beeping or walking around drunk.

I have lost weight, needed to purchase new clothes for work. Starting riding when I was overseas and continue now at home. Things are looking good, other things have left a gap in my life, however, overall.. I am getting what I want.