A Roll in the Universe

As you probably already know, I visited Vienna and Budapest last week, both for the first time. I'm used to European cities, having been to a number of them. Crooked streets, often narrow; old buildings, often many large, ornate ones; domed churches and tall cathedrals; long, continuous histories, with much drama and changing of hands and governments; royalty, revolts, rebuilding. So why did I like Vienna and Budapest? Why Budapest is the easiest to answer: The river. The Danube (Duna in Hungarian, Donau in German/Norwegian). A dramatic hilly west bank (Buda) meets the flat Hungarian plains on the east bank (Pest), and the ribbon of water passing under many bridges past large, elaborate buildings (like the Whitehall-inspired parliament) creates a gorgeous and exotic scene: Why I like Vienna is harder to nail down. Perhaps it's the city's combination of being both old, charming and Austrian. Or its more compact city center and narrow streets, some mere passageways, lik

Sorry, dear reader, for not specifying when I would leave on my trip and that there would be no blogging. I don't believe in telling the whole free world stuff like that. I got home a little after 8 pm my time today, after 13 days of bussing and walking and humidity and 35C/95F in the shade, with a record-breaking 40C/104F in Budapest one day. However, we had a comfortable bus, a good driver and an experienced guide. The youngest in our group of about 30 was 19 (travelling with his brother of 25) and the eldest was 87 (travelling with his wife of 75). We were a good bunch, with folks from many parts of southern Norway, making conversation sometimes difficult due to dialects, but we eventually got used to each other. And I definitely enjoyed both Vienna and Budapest! I want to go back. I took about 900 pictures (my new camera is great!) so it'll take me a bit to go through everything. I'll be making some photo albums and a permanent page of the trip. I'll let you kno

I'm out of practice when it comes to travelling. Part of it is that it's been a while since I travelled, really, without easy access to shopping in case I need anything and I'm older and have other needs. So I'm trying to organize and plan and get everything together, and I usually am good about these things, but this time I truly annoyed myself. Still, I managed to finish packing. All nice and neat and even left plenty of room for souveniers. And after this trip, I'll know better.

Paula made me do it. And I'm trying to cool down after a lovely walk in the sun after having been to the post office and then deciding to walk around the pond on my way home, stopping to look at black coots feeding their young, a magpie taking a bath, and crows looking at me quite leerily, and then stopping off at the store for almonds (good if you get gas) and Nestea Peach - the sugar content be damned, it's nice and cold and tasty! Uh, right, so here I sit. May as well meme. (Then I have to go finish packing.) GRUB-OLOGY What is your salad dressing of choice? Olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Or blue cheese. What is your favorite fast food restaurant? McDonald's. It's the only one where I live. What is your favorite sit down restaurant? Any of the Chinese ones. On average, what size tip do you leave at a restaurant? Norway doesn't do tipping, but if I'm extra pleased, I'll leave up to 10%. What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get s

I haven't blogged much lately. I've been doing laundry, trying on (old) clothes (and donating unwanteds to the Salvation Army), buying some new ones, sorting into "take/do not take", all in order to find what I want to put in this for a two-week trip involving humid Budapest and possibly rainy Vienna: More later, like after I've actually put something in my suitcase.

We don't get the midnight sun where I live, but we do get a perpetual sunset-segwaying-into-sunrise, moving from the northwest to north to the northeast. The rosy glow above was captured after 11 pm last night. In the southwest was an odd but beautiful performance by other clouds. PS: The title of this post is from Joni Mitchell's song "Both Sides Now" .

Thursday night (July 7), the view out my bedroom window was what you see above. Contrast that with what I saw the next night:

I don't know if this juxtaposition between ad and Speed Bump cartoon was deliberate, but I did notice it.

I lost my existing comments and didn't like that, nor could I find how to restore them/have Haloscan show them, so I put everything back the way I found it. The Haloscan interface isn't much different from Blogger's javascript-driven one, so no loss there. So much for that experiment in the blogging world. :-)

...and maybe I've screwed up my blog. C'mon, Blogger, repost the entire thing! How big is a large blog, anyway? UPDATE: Entire blog is published - and all old comments are gone. :-( Must do some exploring this weekend.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog. UPDATE: ...And removed.

I rotate folders I keep for conversations with an e-mail group of friends. As I get to the new month, I clear out the previous year's messages and start storing the new ones. So I was clearing out July's and there were my messages about Grandma's death. I was wondering how July of this year would be. I have missed her for a year, and with her passing, I also began to grieve again for Grandpa. I find myself still angry, not angry at anyone or anything specifically, just angry. My prime emotion when something happens that I don't like is anger. So I feel that and then I feel the abandonment, of being left alone. It's been up and down this past year. Moments of complete peace and even forgetting, and then moments of intense, aching longing for them. If I go to their grave, I am consumed by loss, anger and a feeling of injustice, as well as enjoying talking to them, seeing them before me, hearing them answer me, as if they are still here and we are still all togethe