Bergen Dog Walks - Kings Lake

It is now only three weeks until J and I pack all our things and head for Tromsø, so I thought it would be nice to blog my regular dog walks from home in Bergen. These are the walks, in various directions around our neighbourhood, that all take about 45mins. They are therefore the walk routes that the dogs get regularly. They can be walked in various parts and combinations depending on short cuts and roads taken, but I will try and present them in their original forms.
The first is what J and I call 'Around King's Lake'.
It starts of course at the top of our driveway, and today was a beautiful, warm, clear, late spring day.
On the way down to the lake we pass the local rubbish collection point, boring but useful :)
Then we pass a motorcycle store that keeps J tortured with the fact that he is, for the first time in god knows how long, living without the joy of a motorbike.
We then pass by the kindergarten that you assemble when you need one in a real hurry to meet campaign promises. It was put up in a couple of weeks and was functional within a month. No dogs allowed in that playground though.
Opposite the kindergarten is a newly built soccer ground, also for the kiddies.
Then Hoorah! We have made it to the lake! King's lake it not that popular a walk with most of the locals, so very often when we go there I can let the dogs free range, and they absolutely love it!
Lovely little ducks live on this lake and they are particularly popular with families with kids that come and feed them (with the dogs often being lucky enough to also find the odd bit of bread). There are 2 mother ducks there this year, one with seven babies and one with four. I hoped to get a snap of them today but they were out cruising the reeds on the far side, so I just got one of the dads.
After we've strolled down one side of the lake we walk up into a little stretch of forest on the south side. Here you can also go left up through the local church and home, or as we did today, turn right and complete a full loop around the lake. The dogs were very helpful in deciding which way to go.
At the end of the forest edge you are presented with another choice of walking routes.
If you turn left, you can take a stroll down to the King's weekender castle and through its gardens (which is why we call it king's lake walk). That is about an hour and a half round trip though, more if you want to amble and enjoy the views of the fjord, so it not one of the walks I do regularly before going to work. If you go over the bridge, you can stroll through the forests at the base of the mountain Lovstakken, very beautiful but also a longer round trip. So, today I went right and down the other side of lake.
Bergen has wonderful displays of rhododendrons (spelling?) in the spring, and although they are no longer in their prime, they still look absolutely beautiful.
Looking back over the lake from this side, you see some crazy glass business buildings and our house tucked away up the back, although it is only really visible in the winter when the trees lose their leaves...
From the lake we turn at the NRK building (Norwegian ABC) and head for home. Here we see the mountain Ulriken in the background and today a very lucky paraglider.
Up the hill past the sign telling you it's 10 points for each kiddy...
Up our odd little street...
And then there we are, home again home again jiggity jog. xxx

Travelling Kit

Just a note to show off some pretty pics of my current travelling kit. Well, the one I use for short business style city trips that is...and somehow it seems like I have been doing a fair bit of that lately. Thank you Norwegian Research Council :)

This is the brown bag that I bought from the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. I had been searching for ages for something in this style. I saw a girl on a plane once with a really old school brown leather bag from, like the 70s I guess. I fell in love with it and eyeballed it the whole flight. Of course I have been completely unable to find an original old school one, but when J and I spotted this one in the Bazaar, I knew I had found the bag I was looking for. We haggled of course, but basically I was prepared to pay a decent price to own this baby.

The laptop-carrying type bag that accompanys it is usually this one, J and I found it in a super cool second hand store in Amsterdam.
It is a Harris Tweed jacket turned into a bag, with elbowpad leather corner covers and front pocket. Cute. Couldn't resist. In a strange way, it rather comforts me in meetings with academic silverbacks to have a Harris Tweed hand bag :)

The next layer in the kit is a gorgeous little green number J convinced me to buy in Venice. I have NEVER regreted it. It folds done flat and I often stash it in the main bag. I can then drag it out for nights out or days tourist walking the streets. In that tiny green baby, I can put my camera, wallet, phone, cigarette pouch, lipgloss, map and wrap/fan. Perfect. The little grey one in the photo is my old cigarette pouch made by J's mum. Even though I generally only smoke tobacco once a day - when I get home from work, when travelling and hanging in cafes etc, I generally enjoy a smoke more often.
The final layer inside this travelling bag extravaganza is my two bathroom bags. The brown one at the back was a gift from my Dad back when I was a teenager. He had been in the US and this was a deer skin bag with native patterning. It must be one of the best gifts I ever got from my travelling Dad as a kid, I still use it daily and love it dearly. It is my general makeup holding bag, and when travelling, I store a bunch of earrings in the pocket on the side and put all my liquids, in their under 100ml containers, in the new bag in the front. It came from a funky, and slightly odd, place on Bergen habour that sells modern kitsch.
So, what do you think? Far too extensive and completely over indulgent of course, but don't you think it is pretty? xxx

Amsterdam Tattoo Session

J and I recently had another weekend in Amsterdam, to have the third session of his half-sleeve tattoo done.
We always go to Rosanna at Dermadonna custom tattoos. This time, J had a session on both Saturday and Sunday - poor guy! It was a total of about 12 hours of needle grinding pain.
It was all more than worth it though because the tattoo is looking fantastic! There is about one more session to go, to put all the detail in the sky and finish highlighting the inside arm, but the rest is basically done. It is full of fabulous fairytale-like fantasy characters and creatures.

A new little one emerges at each turn...

Although I only have a photo of this guy before some of the other detail was filled in.
It is so cool! I just love looking at it, which is lucky, since I will be looking at it for quite some time I imagine :)

The best thing about Amsterdam this visit though, was the festival that was in town. I asked what we were celebrating, but all I got as an answer was 'April'. I guess it was something about feeling good and celebrating the arrival of Spring. On the first night, J and I went to the small square just down from the tattooist. They had live music, outdoor bars and a few old school looking festival rides. The best one was a tiny toy-looking ferris wheel. When you bought your ticket you could order a drink and two people could sqeeze into the little open cabins and take a slow small round while they chatted with each other. It was just lovely. I did not get a good photo, but here is what I managed...
J is not good with rides or heights so he refused to go on this one with me :( So we cacked ourselves watching this one go round and round.
It was a kind of double swing where people could face each other or go back to back in a little wooden caged seat. They spun around and around and if they are not making their own journey adventurous enough, the ride master would toss them about to upset any established patterns. It was total madness! People were crashing into each other all over the place and at the end, the engine actually blew up and spewed masses of smoke. It was very dramatic!

After that night, when J refused to go on either of these awesome rides with me, I decided that I had to go on one on my own. I selected one in the main square the next morning. 60m in the air, with a fantastic view over the city, but spinning a little too fast for you to take it all in completely. It was dizzying in a lovely light hearted kind of way. I was smiling from ear to ear when I hit the ground. This whole visit felt like a whirlwind in a lot of ways, but we both had another a great time and it seems as though Amsterdam is fast becoming one of our favourites for a weekend city break. xxx

Birmingham in Spring

A week or so ago I had to go to Birmingham for work...

It was for a seminar on 'Critical Studies of Public Engagement in Science and the Environment'. I know it probably sounds boring as hell but actually it was rather interesting (I know I am a nerd!). It was well attended by bigwigs in the field and when they put us in small discussion groups in the afternoon, I was lucky enough to be in a group with one of my PhD examiners as the facilitator. Unfortunately, I still have such a huge level of respect and admiration for the guy that I become kind of unable to articulate myself properly in his presence, but he was super friendly and supportive, which was nice.

It was another fly in fly out kind of a visit, where I really only got to see the suburbs that lay between the walk from my bed and breakfast to the University (which turned out to be rather long as I got a little lost for a while). I did, however, also take a train into the city one afternoon to stroll around for a while but I quickly got bored by the endless blocks of standard shops and malls - after i had bought a few cheap DVDs from HMV that is! Including 'The Neverending Story', which I can't wait to watch again! While I am not sure I would say I know anything about Birmingham as a city after this visit, it was lovely to get a real sense of spring.

This photo is from my walk through the suburbs into the uni...gorgeous blossoms and tulips and bulbs everywhere!
The homes in that area were ENORMOUS! Really old school rich british style constructions...
Just as you start thinking this all looks very nice and maybe you could actually contemplate living in England, you see something that reminds you of why living amongst the poms may not be so desirable after all...
It was, however, rather relaxing to visit an english speaking city for a change, even though this did mean that I could actually understand all these signs inhibiting my sense of fun and freedom! After a couple of days in Birmingham I flew off to Amsterdam to meet J for the weekend - a city where english is very widely spoken and signs inhibiting your sense of fun and freedom and very much reduced :) Perhaps I can post some pics from that visit next time... xxx