The fledgling Progressive community of Oslo invited me to visit them and run a shabbaton this weekend. I decided I'd do it, but use the excuse to have a little weekend break in a new exotic (to me) city. And cartesiandaemon was brave enough to agree to join me.

( Oslo adventures )

I really enjoyed working with this community. I got the impression that they really need me, not just someone, but me specifically. I'm not saying no-one else can contribute anything to them, obviously, but they like the fact that I'm young and clearly a lay person, yet coming from a position of knowledge, and they really seemed to respond strongly to my approach to Judaism. They also asked me how I felt about being "the token heterosexual", so of course I answered that I'm not all that het (um, yay bi visility?), and asked cartesiandaemon how he felt about being the rabbi's wife! Actually this is the first time I've dragged the Beau to a service; I was so committed to community stuff this weekend that we'd have had no time together if he skipped the boring religious bits as he usually does. He was very noble about it, anyway.

On the negative side, cartesiandaemon has given me his cold, but at least I had fun catching it, unlike my usual habit of picking up lurgies from all my colleagues who are parents of small children. I have to go to a conference tomorrow, and I'm speaking first thing on Friday morning, so I'd better get well by then. Not to mention I need to write my talk!

Florence just about lived up to my expectations, and they were high. I think we picked the best possible weekend to go; the weather was sunny but not hot (it sometimes got a little chilly in the evenings, when the wind got up, but still pleasant), it was still tourist season with stuff going on and attractions open, but not insanely crowded or expensive. And best of all, it was some European culture weekend which meant that all the museums were free!

( most amazing holiday )

I am so very blessed.

I'm just sorting through the very small number of photos I actually got round to taking when we were exploring the far north of Sweden. They are mostly not very good, which is partly because I haven't quite picked up the knack of photographing endless landscapes, and partly because Kiruna itself honestly isn't that photogenic. Anyway, here's a small selection of snaps of Kiruna (the last few are of the cultural museums at Jukkasjärvi).

I did manage to get one good shot of a reindeer (in a fairly small enclosure in the Sami cultural museum), though:

I had the most absolutely lovely summer vacation, so very lovely that I didn't even feel inclined to run to the internet whenever I had a spare moment. I can hardly think of a time when I've intentionally cut myself off from the internet for such a long period, certainly not since the end of the 90s. Of course, that means that I never got round to writing up what I was doing (and I have such a backlog of book reviews). So I'm going to write at least some notes to remind myself for the future; unfortunately they are only verbal snapshots, as the other thing I completely failed to do was take photos.

( bijoux )

I went on the international researchers group summer trip again this weekend. We went to a tourist spot called Mariefred, which contains a pretty old Swedish town and a castle with the delightful name of Griffon Island Castle.

( tourism )

I have basically given up on taking decent photos with my camera, and I'm using it as a point and shoot until I can replace it with something that suits me better. This is partly a bad workman blaming her tools, but that camera really doesn't match what I want as a photographer. It is possible, but way more fiddly than I can usually be bothered with, to switch off the autofocus and auto light balance. Anyway, here's a selection of the least awful of the snaps I took during the trip.

I can't believe it's been a year since rav_hadassah left Stockholm! Anyway, I really wanted to see her again before she disappears to California to train as a rabbi, so I organized a long weekend in Holland. And it made lots of sense for cartesiandaemon to join us; since we have geography anyway, we might as well travel to interesting exotic places to see eachother. The combination of romantic weekend, with exploring a really lovely place, with getting to see rav_hadassah, made for a lot of wonderfulness combined together, and even so, the weekend surpassed my expectations.

( yay! )

Yay lovely and cultured city! Yay seeing two of my favourite people and introducing them to eachother! Yay wheat beer! Yay snuggles uninterrupted by geography or company! I love it when my plans work to defeat geography. Oh, and cartesiandaemon's account is much more witty than mine.

Returning to the by now rather delayed account of What I Did on My Holidays: I was really taken with Amsterdam. I think it helped that I had a bit longer there than in some places I visited, and it helped a lot that I was with friends rather than on my own. lethargic_man is the most excellent of travel companions! But it's also a great city and very much tourist friendly.

( continued trip report )

Conclusion: even though I only had time for the really obvious tourist clichés, I'm definitely a fan of Amsterdam. Yet another place I want to find time to go back to some time. At least it's reasonably easy to get to from both here and England.

I have barely had time for LJ at all in the last couple of weeks, but part of the reason it's taken me a while to get round to this post is that I'm finding it fairly difficult to write. Particularly if I don't want to offend people. The thing is, visiting Germany freaked me out a lot more than I expected. Or to be more precise, Berlin did my head in. Let me try to write down a factual account of what I got up to, and try to include as much of my response as I can put into words.

( four days in Germany )

I want to go back to Germany for a more extended visit, preferably when I'm in a better headspace.

I travelled from Stockholm to Rostock in north-east Germany by a ridiculous route, via Helsinki and Tallinn. This is not in fact because I am bad at geography (though I am) but because it worked out both cheaper and more interesting than simply taking a train from Stockholm to Berlin.

( travel notes )

I've spent this week learning how to be a better microscopist. ( microphotography )

Not a particularly major event, but something to note: Making Light posted a link to kd lang singing Hallelujah. If you haven't heard this already, you really should; it's the first time I've been motivated to find software for saving YouTube videos (though really I only want the soundtrack, the video is just of a concert at Sidney Opera House). I am a purist about that song; I care too much about Leonard Cohen's original to like most covers. And I don't generally like kd lang all that much. But this performance is seriously awesome. And then there was some discussion about Cohen covers and I found out that the Jennifer Warnes cover album Famous blue raincoat has been rereleased. And it's even on eMusic, so now I have a copy of Warnes' duet with Cohen himself, Joan of Arc, where she sings Joan and he sings the fire. rysmiel played it to me when I was in Montréal in 2005, and it is just about the most emotionally powerful song I have ever heard.

On the planning front, well. I tend to stress about travel more than is really required, and in this case I'm not nearly as pre-organized as I would like to be. However, I have booked all the travel from here to London via Finland, Estonia, Germany, Holland and briefly Belgium, and all the accommmodation I need at the stopover points. That's the important thing. I reckon once I'm in England I can be flexible and if some of my planned meetups don't work out, well, it's a pain that I don't get to see people I'd hoped to see, but at least I won't be stranded. And I haven't planned what I'm going to do in any of the cities on my whistle-stop tour of northern Europe. But if I'm only going to be in each city for between a few hours and a day and half, I think I can get away with just wandering around and soaking up the atmosphere, rather than going to specific Tourist Sites. (I have to do it all on a 64Mb camera memory, which should be an interesting discipline, as apparently they no longer make the cards that fit my camera.)

Not connected to anything else at all, but while I'm posting, have a link to the writer Catherynne M Valente's thoughtful and personal essay on porn.

I've had two fun weekends and not got round to posting them because I got snap-happy and had piles of photos to deal with.

Last weekend was a trip organized by the foreign researchers' group. We went to the old town of Sigtuna, travelling via a castle called Skokloster (the name means "the cloisters on the shoe-shaped peninsula").

( trip report with many pics )

Hm, this is long, I should put the Midsummer stuff in a separate post!

There was an unexpected (to me, not to everyone else!) holiday on Thursday, for Ascension Day. I didn't know about it until late Wednesday, but I suppose it's lucky I knew about it at all, due to my kind colleagues thinking to remind me. In Sweden, if holidays fall on Tuesday or Thursday, the extra day is more or less a holiday as well, which is sensible because frankly, if it weren't officially the case then half the work-force would call in "sick" that intervening day.

The weather has been very mixed, alternating brilliant sunshine with torrential rain with a period of tens of minutes. But I have managed to spend some of the bonus free time outdoors, in spite of this obstacle.

( diary summary )

So I was in Stockholm over the weekend, mainly for a job interview, which I've talked about in friends locked posts. But apart from the interview, I had a bit of time for wandering around on Saturday morning. ( travel diary )

So, my flight map looks impressively arachnid, doesn't it? The thing is that almost all those lines represent trips in the last twelve months, which is a bit scary!

Also, I read and have put up reviews of: Vernor Vinge's A deepness in the sky, and Anne Tyler's A patchwork planet. Annoyingly I managed to run out of book before I got home, so the journey back was even more boring than it needed to be. I think it's because A deepness in the sky looks like a big thick doorstep that I expected to keep me going for ages, and in fact it's such a quick read that I finished it much sooner than I expected.

Cliche though it is, I am decidely having a lovely time here.

hatam_soferet had the day off Monday, so she was able to join me for touristy stuff. Sadly, pretty much everything is closed on Mondays, but hey. The American Indian museum helpfully wasn't, and seemed interesting anyway. Gorgeous building, (the former customs house), but the exhibits weren't so great; the museum has decided that actually telling visitors anything about Native American culture is politically incorrect. Then some wandering around the area just exploring the city.

Yesterday I went to the Yeshiva University museum exhibition about the history of publishing the Talmud. Specialist, but fun. Took the ferry to Staten Island, which apparently is the tourist thing to do. I hadn't planned well enough to get much out of the trip. In the evening hatam_soferet and her friend MJNH were doing a singthrough of Carmina Burana and the Chichester Psalms, so I hid in the corner and listened to people making lovely sounds. Also getting to hang out with MJNH was cool.

Other cultural stuff: the in-flight movies were IQ (just about the stupidest film I've ever seen) and In good company, which was frothy but well done, I may talk about it if I get round to it. And I should write reviews of Kate Atkinson: Emotionally weird and Rosemary Sutcliff: The witch's brat. Right now I'm going to tear myself away from air conditioning and internet and venture out into the city to do more touristy stuff though.

When I got back from Dundee my aunt R and cousin S were at home. They decided more or less on a whim to come and visit from Australia. They're both fun people and I haven't seen them in years (due to an excess of geography) so it's good to catch up.

At the weekend, we made a trip to Brighton to see my brothers. ( adventures )

Oh, and gradually catching up with book reviews:
- Poul Anderson: The broken sword
- Iris Murdoch: The sandcastle
- Mary Doria Russell: The sparrow

Yay! I actually took a break from my thesis, and spoke to some Real People, and left not only flat but Dundee itself. I'm still scared by how much I need to get done in a very short time, but I have to say I feel a lot better for it.

( in which livredor actually has a social life )

It was tiring in the way that staying up too late catching up with a friend and then doing a lot of walking through city streets at slow tourist pace interspersed with museuming are tiring. And tiring the way that relaxing after being really really wound up is tiring. But that's ok, it's a good sort of tired. And I love pseudomonas very much.

Sociable shabbat, part b

Shabbat morning, I went with J to a rather interesting synagogue, Darchei Noam. ( change? Impossible! )

In the afternoon, darcydodo joined us from Long Island for a rather exciting picnic, followed by a very pleasant afternoon enjoying the sunshine by the waterfront. It was fortunate that my cousin B had pointed out to me the previous evening that New York has a waterfront; in my ignorance of geography, this had come as a surprise to me! It was lovely to sit and gossip and just be quietly together for the first time in ages; pseudomonas was very much missed.

As soon as shabbat went out we had to rush around manically getting everything ready for the wedding; J went to a mikveh (ritual bath) while darcydodo and I did things like ironing and checking with the groom that all the last minute stuff was sorted out.

I've just had a very pleasant weekend in London seeing several friends and taking something resembling a break, which I rather needed.

( Lovely people )

Sociable shabbat, part a

Friday evening, I was invited to dinner with a cousin. ( relatives )

Yay for excellent cousins!

I've just spent a few days travelling round the Scottish Highlands with M. The most brilliant fun.

( the full story )

Then we came back and got thoroughly soaked wandering around Edinburgh. It wouldn't have felt like a proper Scottish holiday if we hadn't been rained on at least once though!

Actually, coming home after three days of gorgeous scenery, I think there's nothing that went to my heart quite so much as the view over the Tay approaching Dundee (I can't find any kind of decent picture of what I mean; I will keep looking and add one if I do find it). I know, I sound like Dorothy now, but even so.