Well. I’m in Edinburgh now.

Seeing new things and taking a crazy amount of photos makes me exhaused, in a very different way than studying does. Therefore, I am going to sleep now.

Tomorrow, we’re going to the Orkney Islands.

There is a moth larva that is eating up all the flowers and the leaves of the bird-cherry trees in Stockholm. They cover the trunks in a greyish all-covering net that spreads out on the ground.

They are everywhere, the larva, crawling on the ground, sending a shiver down my spine even though usually, I’m not at all sensitive to insects and other things that crawl.

It’s like in a Tim Burton movie. Only, it’s not as enjoyable when it’s in your own back yard.

On my way to my last tutoring session before summer, I happened to see something surprising in the back yard of a neighbor to the family I tutor for. The neighbors did not only have the obligatory trampoline and other toys spread around the garden, they also had a bunch of hens. Seriously, egg laying hens! Oh, as if planting blueberries and reading The Horse Whisperer wasn’t enough. Now I’m missing the hens and roosters and chicks at Whiskey Creek Farm too.

But it’s a great thing, really. If I had a back yard, I would definitely have hens there too.

I also found this cute little screen print on an electricity box thingy:And just the other day, while buying a bottle of wine for Kirke, I happened to see this at the liquor store:

That’s the beer we drank in Dolores Park in San Francisco! Seriously, I’ve had some good times.

 

It’s become a tradition of mine, writing things on this blog way after the fact. My intention, however, is that I’ll from now on will be up to date. On Friday, I leave for Edinburgh together with dad. I have bought a small laptop, beautifully blue-green. I will be dad’s assistant, he’s going to write a piece about the new wave energy ventures off the coast of the Orkney Islands in northern Scotland. From there, I’ll then hop on the train and go across Europe, meeting up with old friends and making new ones on the way. And that’s just the way it is, I write the most and best when I’m traveling. But now, unlike during all my other trips these last few years, I’ll have a lot of spare time to do something with. I see myself sitting on trains, writing and going through my harvest of new photographs from the last city. In that way, I’ll have plenty of time to compose long travel inspired posts for the blog. Things rarely turn out the way I’ve planned, though, so we’ll see. Maybe I’ll be sitting here in September, writing about Scotland, way way behind. I’ll be pretty busy this summer.

But, yeah. So. On Friday more than a week ago, at about two in the morning, I turned in my degree project. Tomorrow I’m going to present it. Back in high school, my Swedish teacher was of the more austere kind and often slightly skeptical to the way I wrote, but he said I was a natural at oral presentations. Maybe that’s a gift I’ve lost, or then he was just odd – but I feel like all presentations I’ve held during the last years have been embarrassing and I’ve always started stuttering. I’m not looking forward to tomorrow.

But during these twelve days that have passed since I turned in my paper, this odd bubble of being in between, I’ve had some really nice experiences. Except for finishing up my posts about Liberia and Brussels, I had an Almost Graduation Party together with Lina. Unfortunately, there was some technical issues with the subway and half of our guest couldn’t get out to the suburbs. But I made the most of it anyway, lost big at boule, two of the guests managed to lock themselves into the bathroom and I ended up having to simply disassemble the lock on the bathroom door. I am also pretty sure I managed to drink an entire bottle of champagne all by myself. I’ve never done that before. I never realized how bubbly that amount of champagne can make you feel. I must say the feeling quite agreed with me. The last guests left at three thirty in the morning. The sun was already on its way up.

The next day I spent with a headache and an uncharacteristic viscosity to my mental capacities. My stepmom picked me up and we went out to the summer cottage to prepare for her 50th birthday party. I drove dad to the market-garden and then helped him and stepmom to plant the blueberry and raspberry bushes and the apple tree (a Katja! the best kind!) that we had bought for her. The blueberries made me think of the Duckworths and when I wasn’t helping with the party preparations, I was lying in the grass reading The Horse Whisperer, an old and very shabby paperback copy that I’m pretty sure I picked up from a book exchange shelf in Cusco four years ago. And that made me miss Jay and the horses and it made me sad, that I can’t go back to Fort Langley or Sebastopol anytime soon – but also kind of amazed about the strong feelings of longing that these memories induced in me. It must mean that my North America trip was something special. But also that right now, I’m also in a good place – otherwise I wouldn’t feel that I can’t go back on the spot. In the end, isn’t that what life is all about, the creation of  memories that make you feel strongly, ache and tingle and smile and grow.

The blueberry bushes I planted.Brother and dad in hammock.

I went swimming in the lake with dad and my baby brother. The 50th birthday party was a success, the sun was shining and it was a perfect summer’s day. Both of my cousins on dad’s side were there with their babies, these lovely little bundles of delight and wonder.

And it hit me. Last time there was a party like this at the summer cottage was when dad turned 50 six years ago. I had just graduated from high school and had no idea what to do about my life. I had no faith in the future either, what with climate change and the state of the global environment and economy and everything. I was not happy, and I remember going to hide in the guest house, where I usually reside when I’m at the cottage, watching Gilmore Girls while the party was going on outside.

Life is pretty similar now. I’ve (almost) graduated from the next level of my education, and don’t really know what’s going to happen in the future – not even in the fall. The global economy has taken a turn to the worse, and the reports about the environment aren’t getting any better either. But life is also so very different. That despair, I don’t carry around on it anymore. I’ve learned stuff, both at university and from people I’ve met, from my travels, from myself. It’s not as if things are any better in an objective sense. It just feels – I don’t know. Like life. Is worth it. Anyway.

I guess the biggest change during the last six years is that I’ve become so very corny. But I don’t mind. Tomorrow I present my bachelor’s thesis. Then, I’m off on the next adventure.

As an easy day trip from Brussels lies Bruges, the old medieval trade town sometimes called the Venice of northern Europe. And I understand why, with all the canals. And hordes of tourists, EVERYWHERE!The draught horses have found a new calling in Bruges: to carry the tourists around town.  The central square was occupied with some kind of traveling carnival. Seriously, very odd, this place with the old, mostly beautiful houses, and then all the people throwing balls into loops to win toys, the blinking lights and a space ship simulator. Not what I’d call idyllic.  It is a nice place, cute and small. But it has also been kind of ill used by all the tourists. It doesn’t really feel like a real, livable town anymore. And I guess that’s OK for a day’s visit. But that’s enough. I will not want to go there again, not for myself anyway.

If you’ve read this blog before, you will probably have noticed that I have a soft spot for street art. And, to my big surprise, there was no small amount of street art in Brussels. This city of bureaucrats, also seems to have a strong and very lively underground culture, young people who paint on walls and rebel against the strict rules of the establishment. I found it refreshing, and could of course not get enough with my camera.Little lovely rhino.

Mr. P with the disappointingly small peeing boy statue, Manneken Pis.

On my way home from Liberia, in the middle of April, I stopped by Brussels to visit my friend Marita, who was interning at the EU this spring. It made for a nice weekend in this capital of the European Union – in a sense the first of spring, with tiny pink flowers in the trees.Marita’s street in Ixelles. The EU quarters, rain. Marita and I met a group of German interns at the Thursday after work at Place Luxemourg, and after a couple of beers we tagged along with them to the ‘best fries in Brussels’. I had no idea before this, but apparently, fries is the shit in Belgium. You can buy them everywhere, in a cone, with mayo on top. But hey, I’m not complaining. I’m all for the fatty and salty. Grand Place and the tourists.  The touristy street in Brussels, just off Grand Place. Outside this impressive cathedral, we asked a Russian guy to take a photo of us. He, in turn, asked if he could use his fish-eye lens. Well, he didn’t seem to know how to get the focus right, but the result was pretty cool anyway. Me, eating the traditional Belgian waffle. Good, really good, but it does not beat our Swedish ones. In my humble opinion.  The Royal Palace. Brussels (kind of) from above. To the left, you have the Royal Library. Not that impressive, in my opinion. Straight in front, the cathedral. Slightly to the right, behind the houses, lies Grand Place. Behind, you have the Royal Art Museum. So, yeah, this is pretty much in the middle of everything. Funny-looking house front, right? Gives a completely new meaning to green architecture. The view from the main entrance to the Swedish representation to the EU. Apparently, this park isn’t all that safe, at least at night. And I think I witnessed some dealing there, while sitting on a bench waiting for Marita. Odd. Still, it was a nice little park when the sun was shining.Me, eating something else traditionally Belgian: moule frites – that is, mussels with fries. Delicious – but then again, I love most things that are soaked in garlic.

Finally, I’ve managed to write kind of what I wanted from the Liberia trip I went on with Hanna in the beginning of April. Now it’s already well into June and I’m preparing for my next trip.

But, just as a conclusion to this, I want to write that Liberia really captured me. That there was something about the rainforest landscape and all the children. It is really beautiful. A diamond in the rough.

(But then, again, I fall in love with most places I visit. During the last four years I’ve wanted to move to La Paz, Oxford, the Namib Desert, Vancouver, Vancouver Island, Seattle, San Francisco and now Liberia. My heart is in no way true.)

The first morning in Monrovia, on mom’s balcony. Breakfast of papaya, pineapple, scrambled eggs and some humus – to the sound of the Atlantic crashing against the beach right on the other side of the wall. Pretty big change from the snow and ice we left behind in Stockholm.

Hanna in Harper, trying out the way everyone carries around stuff in Liberia. It’s tricky, and god, how Morris and a couple of girls across the street were laughing while looking at Hanna’s efforts.

One afternoon in Harper, Hanna, Morris and I were looking at a monument of President Tubman’s mother, when we heard music coming from a newly built church nearby. It was choir practice and and I got the others to come in with me to listen.

The church was empty except for the choir standing in the front with the choir leader and a small electrical keyboard and a couple of chairs here and there in the big hall. But I think it was the emptiness that made the voices carry so well underneath the tin roof of the church. It was a simple hymn made up of chords for the different voices in the choir, with one voice changing note while the others stayed the same and then vice versa in a constant wave of changing harmonies. It wasn’t complicated, and in English too, so after hearing them singing it one time, I could easily follow them, singing under my breath. It was beautiful, though, in all its simplicity. So very different from the both traditional European and contemporary American hymns that I’ve been singing in the different church choirs that I’ve sung in over the years.

The singers in the choir were young, teenagers mainly, and they had no sheet music, only the choir leader giving the rhythm and their memories. It made me miss singing. Like so many things, singing is one that I’ve felt I had to give up for the time being due to lack of time.

But maybe it wasn’t the actual melody, in the end, that felt exotic to me. I think it was the way they sang. A straight forward timbre, the strength of the voice derived from the stomach rather than “coming out of your eyes”, as the vocal coach my old choir used to say. It gave a less clear and disciplined feel, but instead felt so much more sincere. And the rhythm, not the same as but kind of related to the Swedish folk songs that are to be sung with emphasis on the second and the fourth stroke.

I could have stayed there, listening to them for hours, while the lizards ran across the walls. But choir practice ended and we were due to eat dinner with mom and the deputy minister.

  Hanna, making a new friend at the new county administrative building being built in Harper, with funding from the UNDP.Hanna, terrified while crossing the Hoffman river in a canoe. 

The last night in Harper, we were offered to stay with the senator in his nearly finished house. Both mom, Hanna and the deputy minister had become sick from the mold at the guesthouse where we were staying, so we were more than happy to pack up our things and leave.

Later, way after sundown, the minister finally arrived, also to stay at the senator’s. We were already sitting in the big, empty entrance hall, and once the minister had settled in, the senator took out his bottles of palm wine. Finest quality. Because, in Liberia, as in most other countries in the world, traditional hospitality includes alcohol.

But Hanna was too tired and mom doesn’t really drink, so I ended up having to defend both Swedish and Finnish pride as nations of drunks with these Liberian high shots. And I didn’t disappoint. Palm wine is a very strong, very easy thing to drink.

So there was I, the former teetotaler, drinking shot after shot with a Liberian minister, senator and deputy minister, way after midnight, to the sound of the crickets and the generator, the night air barely even cool. Odd thing, indeed.

Night-time visitor at the senator’s.