Snusmumriken

Two weeks ago, I went to Stockholm and uppsala to visit a girl in my class a school. I tried to write a bit about it, but it all turned documentary-y and weird, and I ended up deleting half of it and never finishin the rest. But old or new. It’s still text. Here it is.

Uppsala/stockholm 1. Getting there and getting home.

I’m on the train home from Uppsala, where my friend Maria is an exchange student for a couple of months. One part of me wishes that I had been there too, which I could have if it wasn’t for the fact that I chose to stay in Oslo. Fortunately there is another part of me who is incredibly happy to be where I am, nowhere temporary, but rather good old permanent Oslo.

I brought books over, planning to read my way to Sweden and back. I should have known beforehand that this would fail miserably, but I guess I am the naïve kind who never learns from experiences. Trains have this weird effect on me. I end up zoning out. Even though this was a six hour drive, I spent part of it reading a novel, part of it sleeping and most of it just zoning out and staring out of the window while looking at the landscapes and the houses gliding by.

The wagon I was in was jammed with a group of free masons in their fifties, and they managed to add a whole new set of prejudices to the ones I already had against free masons. There were three young mothers in the wagon, and as none of the children can have been more than a few months of age they needed to sleep. One of the mothers had gotten a seat in the middle of the free masons, and asked one of the frontmost free masons if they could swap seats, but he was completely unwilling, stating that “If we keep swapping seats, chaos will ensue”. After this the free masons downed five bottles of Aquavit, (60%? liquor), got really loud and started smoking in the bathrooms. At the same time, the kids kept on waking up whenever they fell asleep because of the noise, but oddly enough didn’t start screaming. The mothers were starting to get that desperate “oh fuck my day is going to become a nightmare if the kid doesn’t get some sleep soon”-look in their eyes, especially the one who was seated in the middle of the crowd. When a lady who was seated next to me asked the masons to please take it a bit easier, they started yelling that “she had to have some problems that she was taking out on them, and what a bitch she was who wouldn’t let them have any fun”. Arguing with someone who has downed half a bottle of hard liquor isn’t too much fun, and for some reason people in their 50’s and sixties manage to be worse than most in that aspect, possibly because they can say that “hey, I’m older than you, thus I am right”.

Now, on the way home, there aren’t any masons. I won’t be writing about the actual trip until tomorrow, because this is turning into a rather long body of text.

I think the train just hit a moose or something. There was a thump, the train braked really quickly and stood still for quite some time.

Uppsala 2: Actually being there.
(the part I never really got around to write)

Maria lives at a place called Flogsta, where the houses are tall and eastern block-ey, and where the corridors are incredibly long. Where twelve people are sharing one kitchen, and where everyone screams as loudly as they can at ten o’clock every night. Apparantly they have been doing it since the sixties. I can understand how sharing a kitchen with eleven other people creates a need to get rid of some built up aggression. It felt weird. It was a place like I explected student housing to be like, but completely unlike how it was when I lived in a student house myself.

And then I stopped writing. I was sitting on the train in the middle of the night, it was chokingly hot and I couldn’t sleep. Yeah. So the rest of the holiday, even the nice photos that were supposed to make the text less lonely will be my secret. Haha

The first thing we noticed when coming to Istanbul, was the omnipresent Turkish flags and party posters that decorated the streets for the day of the republic. According to a taxi driver, there were even more flags than earlier years because the Turkish army had suffered rather big losses the week before. I understand why a country with angry minorities and which is at war gathers around naitonal symbols, like the flag and the worshipped Mustafa Khemal. But for those of us who have more Kurdish friends and sympathies than Turkish, and who really doesn’t support Turkey’s foreign politics, it felt uncomfortable. A foreign element to us was the strong element of party politics in the celebration. The party posters were everywhere. Look at Erkan Mumcu in a Jesuslike pose. If you vote for the motherland party you’re bound to get a hug.

The city is full of street cats which are surprisingly clean and friendly, and stray dogs which are neutered and vaccinated by the government before they are released into the streets again. According to the hotel manager, most people don’t have pets, but rather take care of the cats and dogs in their neighbourhood. Being myself, I ended up picking up almost every cat i saw. I didn’t catch hepatitis, and I didn’t bring any of them home.

In the neighbourhood, all the streets had their own theme. There was a shoe street, with shoe makers, sole shops, and one shop that only contained loose stilettoe heels. There was an army-themed street and one tailor street. It fitted my idea of a medieval town to perfection. My favourite was the shop that only carried taps. Taps. No other plumbing equipment, just taps. How can one survive, when one only sells taps, or soles, or bootlaces? The whole town would die the moment a “bademiljø” shop settled there.

Perhaps the most interesting night, was the first one spent in Taksim, a rather trendy part of town. As we were a group of thirty people, we split up and ate at several restaurants, and then went out to several different pubs in the same area. The group I was with first ate at a place called “Fermentasion”, and ended up following the waiter at the restaurant to doRock, a metal club in the same area. We watched a Russian metal/industrial band who were touring in Turkey and who were singing “Satan lives” in Norwegian. How surreal is that? They were amazingly fun to watch, with skinny girls in latex banging on big barrels and lots of fire.

The last day was perhaps the most cosy one. We started by taking a guided boat trip up the river. Seeing something from the seaside is always different from seeing it close up. Then we took another boat over to the asian side of town, which was a wholly different experience than the old town and taksim. The asian side felt more modern and alot less touristified. We found a nice restaurant, ate lovely food, and then settled on a cafe, where some man was playing that turkish lute, and some men were dancing while we played backgammon and smoked a shisha.

My predictions were correct. I’m more than averagely in love with istanbul by now, and I really just want to go back as soon as possible. I think this is a town that you have to experience several times before you can get the full experience, and now we are over and done with the virgin-tour. Hagiasophia and the blue mosque and the topkape palace are all seen, and I've been to the grand bazaar and had a turkish bath at a local place where noone spoke english.

For the first time in my life, I have a hotel room of my own. It feels a bit weird to have my own bed, my own towels and my own shower like this. The general rule is that whenever I’ve lived at a hotel, it has been with my mother, but now I’m on my own. It feels weird, but then again, it feels rather nice too. What’s stranger is to live at a hotel in Fredrikstad. I’ve been living here most of my life, but with the exception of a scout trip, I've never paid to stay anywhere in this town. But it’s nice. Of course it’s nice.

I’m at a magazine editing and publishing seminar, and although most of the people here are editors, most of the lectures are relevant for a little committee member like myself. The lectures are nice. The room is all mine. The food is really good. The lunch must be one of the best lunches I've ever eaten. As a bonus, the people are nice and I’m enjoying myself alot.

What’s even better is that I’ve got a camera again. This means that a lot of my coming posts will contain photos. It feels good. I’ve also bought a computer, but it’s still a week away from being delivered. I love having new gadgets, but what I like more, is to have things that actually work. My new camera works like a charm, and I really hope my new computer will too.

Photo nr one is called: “is my mind dirty, or do these mussels look obscene to you?”

The first time i went to the Roskilde festival turned out to be the wettest roskilde ever. When I returned this year, the rain record of 2004 was beaten in one day. One would think that someone were trying to give me a subtle hint that roskilde isn’t my place to be.

Day 1. Saturday 30th june Public transport is mean, and the beginning
Problem of the day: I was going to take the bus along with , and , but although I had called the bus company the day before to make sure that i was guaranteed a seat, no bus showed up at the bus station, although I was there at half past eight. I found a train that was to leave at half past ten, but because NSB has sold twice as many tickets as there were seats on the train, they had to spend an hour reinforcing the train. Since the train was delayed, the corresponding train in gothenburg wasn't waiting. Or that's what we were told. They were waiting, and then drove off as none of the passengers from my train knew that the gothenbug train was waiting for us. I got on a train two hours later. I met up with the others in copenhagen, and went to the queue in front of the entrance to the festival. It was a bit wetter than expected, thus the whole queuing thing ended up being a worse idea than what it had seemed like.

Day 2. Sunday 1th july making the camp
We got into the festival when someone razed the fences around four in the morning, after spending a night sleeping while queuing, and found a good place to create the camp that was supposed to end all camps. I realised that during the night someone had nicked my tent-skeleton-thingie (teltstenger) and i found some others on the ground. They didn't quite fit, but the tent was put up. This is the day where it started to rain. Since had sprung her knee while tripping over a dwarf, she and lived at the caravan camp. That was half an hours walk and then 20 minutes by bus away. I fell asleep at half past six in the evening, and slept until nine the next day. My all time sleep record.

Day 3. Monday 2th july The good, the bad and the sparsely described
This is the day where it continued to rain. The queues to the cashepoints were enormous, so me and went into roskilde centrum. I bought sandals. We visited someone elses camp for hours and I had chocolate stout and honey ale and elderflower beer and coffee stout. Loads of different beers. The party and the people were wonderful. But after that the alcohol wore off and the rain started to pour down and after a really really gloomy interlude it all got a bit better again. This is the day where i got the festival-camp-feeling that i had been looking forward to, and where i discovered that honey beer is my alltime fabourite.

Day 4. Tuesday 3th july Gradually becoming more tired and gloomy
Me and went into roskilde centrum again. We walked around and ended up seeing the fantastic four film at the cinema. It wasn't too good, but it was a nice day. We ended up watching some danish band with an accordion and a man who sang about how his ladys dog didn't like him. All in all it was a really good day. We visited and in their camp, but since we had such an active day we were all a bit tired, and ended up going home after a few hours. The day ended with more than a hint of gloomyness back in the camp, as everyone were getting tired from the rain and the mud, and tired people get short fuse. We decided that we were all tired and needed to recharge some batteries before the actual festical started. Me and decided to go into copenhagen the day after.

It rained and walking became more and more difficult. This video here is actually taken just one street away from our camp, which shows the difficulty of the walking even more clearly.

Day 5. Wednesday 4th july Climax and then improvement
Problem of the day: It rained all night. Our neighbours went mean on us. They started playing loud techno when every other camp was sleeping, starting at five, continuing until we gave up this whole sleeping thing around eight. I got up and found out that someone had nicked my wellingtons, and that I only had sandals left to cross the calf-deep mud. Someone had also placed my trousers and raincoat in the mud in the mean neighbours' camp and jumped a bit on them. I ended up going to take a piss wearing underwear and a teeshirt, and was yelled at for looking like a slut, by the very people who at the time had placed their chairs on top of my wet and muddy clothes. I'd had enough.
In addition: went home. went ill.

We went to copenhagen, which I think is the smartest thing we did during the entire festival. First we went to Glyptoteket and looked at sculptures and things. Then we went to the hotel and slept from 12 to 5. We found a restaurant with food, and saw goya's ghost on the cinema and everything was nice and wonderful and fluffy. Batteries recharged like that, and being happy and fluffy is so much easier when you get enough sleep and when you are on a holiday without all the mud and the feeling of gloom that we had accumulated back in the camp. It didn't even rain that much.

Day 6. Thursday 5th july Festival starting and my mood being really good
Problem of the day: It rained alot. My mobile got wet and turned itself off (i don't know if it's permanently dead yet). The first concert was postponed by an hour because they needed to dig trenches around the tent. was still ill. Poor bastard. He was concious and there for the worst part of the festival, but had to go home when all the goodness occurred.

This is what the mud and rain looked like.

It rained alot, but it didn't matter that much, as we went to Nationalmuseet and looked at old stuff, which was nice. We bought new wellingtons, and I bought myself some new trousers and suddenly I was warm and dry again. Coming into a festival that actually had music and stuff was awsome, and I had a really good time. Discovered the rum and cigar tent, which ended up being my favourite place during the entire festival. And the mohito slush they sold was so incredibly good.

Watched:
+ bassekou kouyate & ngoni ba
+ björk

Day 7. Friday 6th july
Problem of the day: Suddenly my bankcard stopped working. Comepletely. I had loads of money on my account, but the card didn't react no matter how many times i tried. Perhaps it had lost it's magnetic powers or something. Aksel's parents transfered money to his bank, so we thought we should be safe by Saturday morning. and thomas went home, so now me and were the only ones left in the camp.

Teamed up with for maher shalal hash baz which is the weirdest music I've heard in my entire life. Not only were all the songs less than a minute long (they played a total of 120 songs), but they were also trying really hard to achieve the higher goal of making loads of mistakes. And there was a man playing on beer bottles and a clothes-rack. I'm still a bit fascinated. It was a day of goodness, and for once i wasn't the first to want to go to bed. The festival feel had really taken me in.

Here's a video of the hash baz people

watched:
+ musicians of the nile
+ camera obscura
+ in flames
+ maher shalal hash baz

Day 8. Saturday 7th july
Problem of the day: The money hadn't been transferred, and thus we were completely out of money and without any way to get home. We tried to buy train tickets online, but that didn't work either, cause DSB's websites were mean and dysfunctional. Managed to get hold of my little brother and he milked his mastercard for me. At least we were saved.

During the last couple of days, it got windy. Suddenly we had flying dust and mud. Just watch this video, it shows it all really well.

Ended up playing backgammon in the rum and cigar-tent rather than seeing hayseed dixie. I had been looking forward to seeing them, but it was raining so heavily that going out there in the wet wetness sounded awful. Aksel was getting better at the backgammon, and beat me two times.

watched:
+ slaraffenland
+ darko rundek & cargo orkestar
+ the flaming lips
+ red hot chili peppers

Day 9. Sunday 8th july going home
Problem of the day: Were awfully tired. Aksel was really starting to get ill. My train was having major issues. The one hour train ride from oslo to fredrikstad took me four and a half hour, by train, bus, train and lots of waiting. I was also getting self concious because i smelled so horribly. Coming home was awsome.

watched:
+ blood sweat drum'n'bass big band
+ wilco

CONCLUSION
Everything that could go wrong did, but i had a really good time nonetheless. Still: if I go back i want a) A car b) a camp with more people in it. Not more than five, but perhaps more than me and aksel. c) A better tent. had the awsomest tent ever. d) better weather. I wonder what roskilde is like in dry weather.I also got accepted to the masters program. There will be studying. Hurrah.