Winterurlaub

My ski boots. Must be more than ten years old, but I hang on to them as they are the kind that adjust to your feet after a while, so they are kinda comfortable. To the extent that ski boots could ever be comfortable, that is. I just bought a new pair of skis, and there are matching boots available for those. So I am afraid these old faithfuls will not see the end of this skiing season.

Time to brush the dust off my German language skills again. Among the many stupid mistakes I have made in my life, studying German throughout business school must have been among the biggest ones. I truly suck at it. So, my dear husband, who also made the same stupid mistake back in business school, never misses a chance to make fun of my less than laudable oral German grade. Getting a grade 3 on a scale that goes all the way up to NINE is not my proudest achievement, no. Funny though, that I am the one speaking German to the locals here, while Mr. Incredible (who got a five) sticks to English. Could be the glühwein giving me the courage, I don't know.

I once heard that "you take your wife to St. Anton, and your mistress to St. Christoph". Yesterday Mr. Incredible took me to St. Christoph for lunch, so that must mean that I fall into both categories. I do believe this must surely be a good thing, right?

Austria is perhaps not known as the gourmet country of Europe (Mozartkugeln, anyone?), but it works for me. And there is nothing like getting some "knödel" every now and then. They also make amazing "schnitzel", not to be confused with this terrible frozen version served anywhere else in the world. Apparently the tuna season is on in the alps at the moment, as tuna seem to be included in any meal. And lobster. Apart from tasting delicious, as lobster always does, I have FINALLY found a word in German that is a "keeper". No more boring "lobster tail" here, from now on and in there will be "hummerscwhanz" all the way. Bitte sehr.

Location:Arlbergstraße,Sankt Anton am Arlberg,Austria

An anatomy lesson

Flew down to Zürich on Wednesday evening for our annual skiing trip to the alps. Although the flight from Oslo is just over two hours, it was a living nightmare. It all started during boarding. When I suddenly realized that we were in fact boarding the ego-flight to Switzerland, more specifically the first leg of a trip to Zermatt (oh-so-posh). It was just packed with finance people greeting each other in this obnoxious nasal manner that seem to follow getting a job in their line of business. A simple "hi" or a brief little "hello" does not do it for these guys. Ohno. It is all :"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahloooooooooooooooooooooooo" and
"eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeihsaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaann" for two hours straight. LOUDLY. Followed by gin and tonics, enjoyed STANDING in the aisle of the plane.

Some of them where traveling in the company of their luuuuvly wives. Mostly blonde women wearing a lot of expensive jewelry. One of them had three - 3 - of the lovely Cartier bracelet that I have my eyes on. So, we are talking SERIOUS high maintenance here. For some reason these women just smile, they barely speak.

Just for the record. I am completely aware of the fact that being a blonde (although artificially, which may be even worse), and married to one of the guys in this business, I am sort of throwing diamonds in a glass house here. But we do not tend to be part of that "thing". So husband nodded back to the ones he knew, and introduced me to the guys that came over to talk. Funnily enough, the other wives were not introduced. Hm. Perhaps it was not the wife after all.

Anyway, enough about the ***holes. Let us get to another body part. If you have read about my previous mid-air ordeals, you know that I do have a strong opinion AGAINST people getting "too comfortable" on planes. Guess what, on this flight I hit the jackpot! Sitting in the first emergency row, I had the pleasure of having the only guy on the plane that would not need skis on his arrival sitting in the row behind me, with his feet in the open space to the left of me. He kept kicking into my extra serving table holding my extra mini-bottle of champagne. Jerk. Then, on the other side of the aisle, I got a guy with a serious thing for his feet. He took off his shoes to reveal his stinky socks as soon as we reached cruising altitude. Yuk. If that was not enough, he kept stroking and caressing his feet all the time. I suspect a serious case of fungus. Double-yuk.

I have never been more happy to feel the landing wheels touch ground.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Arlbergstraße,Sankt Anton am Arlberg,Austria

Barking up the right tree

Good news! Spring is in the air. And we are starting to see some ice-free sidewalks, at least in the city centre. I am still in boots, as our house is on the top of a small hill, perhaps the most ICY hill in all of Oslo, so I still need to wear SAFE shoes. Boring - yes, but now I have a glimpse of hope. Soon I will be able to dig into my shoe-wardrobe and wear PROPER shoes again. And, in time, maybe even SANDALS. At least after Easter?

There is nothing better than walking home in the sun after a fun day at work and then opening the mailbox downstairs to experience the most surreal of all. The receipt of A REAL POSTCARD. For YOU.

The mail we get mostly includes:

• Bills (almost too obvious)
• The monthly magazine from the Book Club(s), telling you which totally uninteresting book you should be careful and cancel within a far gone deadline.
• The book(s) you forgot to cancel from the Book Club(s) last month.

Receiving a postcard is a very welcome change from the above. Sometimes the postcards are from friends or family telling us about how awesome their previous trip to "xxxxxx" was. (Please feel free to fill in some "übercool" destination of your own choice). Most often, however, it is a very nice postcard from my mother (Dad of course says "Hi!" as well). This time she found the greatest card, just look!

This could have been our wedding photo, looks just like me and my "luuuvly" husband! People that know me well, are quite aware of the fact that I have always had this thing for cows. Cows just seem so kind and innocent. There are no mean cows. I do have a strong preference towards the black and white spotted ones, though. So, needless to say, this card really made my day. It is now waiting on the kitchen counter for Mr. Incredible to come home from work.

Inspired by this card I finally got the courage to sit down and write a card myself. Our upstairs neighbors have recently bought a dog. A dog that does not appreciate being left alone in their bedroom for hours. Something it expresses by barking. Continuously. Being not only a cattle person, but very much a dog person as well, this breaks my heart when I hear it. So I got this card for them (the creative one-dimensional sound effects have been added by yours truly). Sound wise, it does not bother me that the dog barks, I just turn on our tumble-dryer to drown out the noise. But the dog sounds pretty bothered.

I hope they leave the poor thing at home with the radio on or something from now on. Or - if necessary - with a dog-grade valium or three.

Monsieur Perignon strikes again

Ooops. Found these at the back of the closet this morning. My burgundy boots, from Marina Rinaldi. This color is now getting back in fashion. And as the boots also happen to be more than five years old, I guess they are on the verge of being VINTAGE. Which I guess is waaaay cool.

Got back from France again yesterday. We left Oslo and the whole "World Championshit" hysteria behind late Thursday night. Time for the official signing of the purchase contract for the house, or the "Compromis de Vente". French people do not play around with contracts. Ohno. So half of Friday was spent at a notary's office in a small village by the sea, being read the first version of the contract. In French. Including all the detailed clauses related to sewer, termites, lead and asbestos. I guess what we ourselves are more worried about, is the fact that our pool looks like shit on Google Earth. Anyway. To my big surprise, I actually understood quite a bit of what was read to me. Even though my French is level with that of a local two-year-old. Hm. Hopefully the kid would not be quite as eloquent in the field of "boissons alcoolisée" as yours truly.

This is what it looks like when the snow stays where it is supposed to be. 

Up in the mountains. A truly fantastic sight.

We got to visit the house again after the contract was signed, and we were happy to see that it exceeded our memories from the first visit. It is always very strange going back to see a place again a second time. Most often everything looks smaller, but this was not the case. And the bathrooms looked better than we remembered. "Monsieur Incroyable" even got to try out the facilities, so to say. A bit short-sighted when you are visiting a house that has not been lived in for eight months. So, now he knows how to turn the water supply back on.

Another fabulous dinner at our regular in Cannes, Astoux. Giant "crevettes" and the best sole you can think of. Paired with a nice Mersault. After which our old friend Monsieur Perignon decided to pay a surprise visit to join in the celebration of the big property transaction. Must have been fun.

Some mornings you simply do the world a favor by wearing sunglasses. On such days it is a good idea to leave your rental car safely parked, and instead take the opportunity to explore the local public transportation. Like, for instance, the train from Cannes to Nice. Very convenient. And when you bring a bottle of diet coke and get to hold the hand of the one you love, it is almost bearable. I even picked up another important French phrase. When it says on the train ticket that you should "composter" your ticket "avant" something, it does not mean that the French are so extremely eco-friendly they kindly ask you to COMPOST your ticket AFTER it has been used. Nope. Now you are warned.

 

These next few weeks, waiting for the house to finally be ours, are going to be VERY long. The contrast between heaven (left) and hell (right) is just too obvious these days.

Probably the worst games ever

Norwegians are weird. For instance, we love standing out in the woods for hours in the freezing cold, just to watch our athletes rush past us within the blink of an eye. These Lacrosse boots are part of my "waiting-for-hours-in-the-woods" attire. Purchased for the World Rally Championship in Norway a couple of years ago, I think. Paired with layers and layers of wool and fleece, topped with ski pants and a down jacket, I am prepared for anything in these. Except, maybe, actually MOVING AROUND. Posing as the Michelin Woman is somewhat overrated.

Getting up at eight in the morning on a Saturday to catch the subway into the woods is not what I normally do. Saturday was a very rare exception. My home town is currently trying to host the World Championship in (Nordic) Skiing. We are OF COURSE winning lots of medals, which is cool, but really no big surprise. Norwegians are BORN with skis on. And, of course, we let only our very best skiers participate. But, why then, is it, that we let some of the most useless people around host the event on our behalf? These are the people that:

• Are unaware of the fact that Saturdays tend to fall on weekends
• Do not know how many people to expect. A hint: How many tickets did you sell? Duh!
• Do not expect people to show up so EARLY. If people had arrived LATER, they would surely have made it to the skiing arena on time, yeah? Double-duh.

The consequence of the above "minor hick-up" was that thousands of spectators with 100 USD tickets to this Saturday's skiing events were stuck waiting for the subway. OR - like us - were tricked into taking a bus that dropped us off in the middle of the woods with little or no information about how to get to the skiing arena. If you were lucky enough to meet one of the so-called "hosts" of the event (who were quite far and between) you very soon regretted asking for directions. Then you had the pleasure of being shouted at, spoken down to, or - at its best - simply ignored. I know that it is not easy getting people to volunteer working at sports events like these. So, of course, you might not get hold of the most qualified people. But most people do at least have the ability to SMILE, don´t they?

This sign MIGHT indicate that this is a bus stop. 

It may also just be a nice picture of a bus. 

Who knows?

I am not sure if this was to make up for the grumpiness of the "hosts", but as part of the so-called "culture program" presented along "The Path of Winter joy" we were entertained (?) by around fifty overly annoying people singing and laughing and throwing snow at each other. They were - of course - dressed as TROLLS. How original. How very Norwegian. 

Did the stupid trolls manage to put us in a better mood? Definitely not. For that we have Jägermeister. An important ingredient in any successful outdoor sports event. Along with the mandatory hot dogs in a thermo flask.

To me personally this chaos was not really such a big deal. Ok, I wasted a Saturday wading around for hours in uncomfortable shoes/far too much clothing and I missed the victory of our skiing queen. Which I would most probably not have been able to see anyway because of the thick fog. But the lines were also full of people that had travelled from far away to be here for this event. And they missed it due to some useless nitwits that have landed jobs way above their capacity. Totally embarrassing.

Sad to say, very often NO management is better than BAD management. I cried with laughter when the head of our local transportation company, "Ruter", was interviewed on the news today, working as a guard at our local subway station. Showing that he is indeed "a man of action" and as a result he is able to "pull up his sleeves" and contribute when needed. Sorry. It is a bit late for that now. Let´s just hope we get though the next weeks without any further embarrassments. Then he can get a permanent position as a subway guard. That might just be the perfect job for him. More within his reach, so to say.

The mother of all shopping lists

Buying the house yesterday was a pretty big shopping decision. After we got back to the hotel after our excursion to Nice last night, we sat down by the hotel bar and had a few glasses of champagne to celebrate. Since I had been driving, we had not had the chance to do that earlier. We then located the house on Google Earth. Just to make sure that it really existed. It was quite easy to spot, though, as the previous owner has already moved out, so we have the only empty swimming pool in our neighborhood. Well, "empty" apart from leaves, algae and rain water, that is.

In total - Saturday was quite exhausting, and I think we fell asleep as our heads hit the pillows. And when you sleep heavily, you tend to dream....... 

Waking up on Sunday morning, we instantly exchanged previous night's dreams. No surprise, we had both been dreaming about the newly acquired house. The outlines of our dreams were, however, quite different:

My version:

The whole dream evolved around decorating the house and shopping for furniture with my aunt (who is an interior designer). A lot of focus on the fabulous Louis Ghost chair from Kartell.

Husband's version:

The dream started with the house becoming terribly expensive. Mister Incredible was - in fact - R-U-I-N-E-D. In the end he had to rob a bank (!) to pay for everything. What a nightmare!

You could say that our dreams provide a quite good picture of our personalities. I am always very optimistic about everything. This might sometimes be verging on unrealistic, but it also means that I am generally quite happy. My husband - on the other hand - is "The King of Pessimism". "Murphy's law" is his mantra. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. I guess the two of us being together is a perfect example of "yin/yang". Two complementary universal forces we are. Indeed.

I picked up a stack of interior magazines from the airport in Nice on my way home. Filling an empty house in time for our summer vacation is quite a challenge, even for a black belt shopper like me. I have already started researching garden furniture, which is at the top of my list - together with beds. That is really all I think we need to start with. My shopping-averse husband really wants a TV (including a Norwegian satellite dish) and a sofa, too. The cutlery we will have to get back to. Not having any would be the perfect excuse for eating out all the time, wouldn't it?

Blending in with the locals

What a day! After browsing another four properties this morning, and then going back to see the construction site again, this time around in sunny weather, we had no more doubts. We had found our house. Scarily enough, there was another family looking at the house when we were there, so we had to act quickly. Over a delicious lunch in Mougins, our real estate agent called the owner to make him our first bid. Hopefully - a bid he could not refuse. Haha.

We finished lunch.

Then we waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

To kill some time, we drove up to Nice to watch the yearly carnival. Cool to hang out with Brigitte Bardot, Charles de Gaulle -  and a bunch of pretend transvestites - on a Saturday night. You surely do not get that back in Oslo.

Sitting down at a cafe close to the local MR, we got the phone call we were waiting for. The owner refused our initial offer. But he made a counter-offer. Which we happily accepted. Wheeew. We got the house! At least we hope so. I do not really believe it until I see the signed papers. For the time being we are in the hands of the vast French bureaucracy - for a total of up to twelve weeks. I can not wait for it to be June!

Then we might be the proud owners of:

• Two olive trees
• An apricot tree
• A figue tree
• A pink house with two balconies
• A swimming pool

Having a house with a garden is pretty grown-up, don't you think? Hm. I hope this does not mean I have to start acting my age, as that would be sad.