100th post! - Kate Havnevik

The title was meant to be just "kate havnevik" but then I saw it was the 100th.

Kate Havnevik is a norwegian female singer. She had been in a lot of different styles and genres, but up to now I only had the chance to listen to two tracks from her (back then) recent album, "unlike me" and "timeless". I didn't want to talk about the music in itself but about what that music means to me.

I discovered her just for instance during random surfing (despite the shroddy internet connection) when I was in Ulm, and downloaded for free these two songs...

I was astonished how dreamy and enchanted these atmosphere were. Ulm, my first city, the snow, my small room, at the top of a typical german house (i'm not sure about a precise definition for the kind of building in this case), in sight of the münster and a nice view over the inner city roofs, the cold breeze, the nights and the walks along the city, the food, the smells, the small discoveries, the straßenbahn stop in the early morning and the nice tune of my morning alarm, the unknown language which made everything harder but more miserious, and Havnevik with her wonderful music. I felt happy for every step I made in the cold. I felt in a wonderland which in Huggin and Muninn's phantasies is called Norway or Scandinavia, even though I think it's probably nowhere but our spirits.

Everything was perfect and I had a life on my own, deciding for every step, the room was my nest, even tho somebody else could have seen it as a dark lair. Everything was delicate cause it was deeply me. My room and that music, my room and the snow, myself and the streets. I was sorrounded by and of myself. After some time, which was incredibly short - just a month or so, but felt like a life - I started to lack something: a guitar in my hands, a hug every now and then, a person to take care for. Yes, that's loneliness, but a very feeble one. I didn't look for my italian friends for a few weekends just for coincidence, which eventually I did. And then I met her. And everything changed.

The world which was still and silent like in a snow bowl started spinning fast and fast and my frozen heart respawned and the music changed: it was time for chikinki.

But now I'm going too further.

Everything was too short, the time for myself and the time for chikinki. 

Only 5 fucking months. Never doing it again, too short time.

The travels of Munniver

I' sorry for all the (imaginary) readers of this blog, for not having time - or means - to share my extreme experiences in the country that recently won the "most eccentric country" award: Finland.

I've been here for... several weeks, lots of time and yet not enough. My knowledge of finnish advances very slowly, partly for lack of time, but mostly for the characteristic of the language itself. Every time I learn a new word, or grammar feature, I find out later that I was mistaken, or the word is right, but it has 7 other more often used synonyms. Learning a language has seldom been more frustrating.

The other habits still surprise me, or I surprise them; for example, Jaakko was amazed, impressed and disgusted when he saw me putting salt on salad.

Salt and oil, is there anything more basic for a salad?

And there is a lot more. What about, for example, the silence? It seems to be a law in here, that I actually don't dislike - and as every rule is often broken by teenagers. I could spend hours describing the perfectly hygenic lack of hygene; no matter what they do, finns are always healthy - except for lactose allergies.

I should post a few pictures, but, well, they are on the other account now. I suggest to everybody who has a facebook account to check them there.

All the time I've been moving. After Lappeenranta I came back to lahti for one single day to leave again for Helsinki. There, after 2 days I departed for Turku, where the Ferry to Mariehamn, Åland, was. Together with Jaakko we went on a short trip with the motto "Knights & Dragons". Don't ask me why.

After enjoying tax free shopping, wonderful scenery from the sundeck, terrible wind on the sundeck, we reached the glorious capital of... Åland.

The city is tiny but quite pretty, a weird little island, in which finns can fell "half-foreigners".

There's not too much in Åland, but beaches, bird poo, ships and tiny forests should keep you busy for some time.

Then we faced another too early departure, this time towards the capital of... Sweden!

I have to say - finns, forgive me -  I loved Stockholm. There is so much to see and to do; the capital seems massive, its city centre comfortable and huge: looking from the channel, you can see a wide wide city, or so it seems. Don't think of New York, that's way to  big, but in Stockholm, there's free air - except in the small tourist venues of the Old city - everywhere. There is room for people. And toilets are expensive.

There is an entire small island for museums and a park, a Tourist could spend weeks in it. We only had tim to visit the Vasa museum and it was great.

By chance, we had the two sunniest day of the summer... so that the city looked even happier and warmer - Helsinki feels quite the opposite.

So, long story short, I ran out of time. I'll try to write again soon....

BWOOOOOUU - INAPPROPRIATE!!!!

Birmingham by surf

A friend of mine is going to Birmingham in a couple of months. He's going there with an international mobility project within university and a company. Lucky he is!

Not that I'm fond of Britain but must be a great experience. After all is exactly the same experience as I did, just coordinates change: the country, the person, the company.

Another friend of mine just ended up the bachelor degree and I'm doing that in a couple of months too hopefully, so an idea rose to my mind: why don't we all go there?

That's exactly the kind of sudden ideas that fade in a couple of minutes. Anyway I surfed to Birmingham and exactly to the local university site. I roamed an hour maybe on internet to seek infos, images and tastes. 

When I was a bit younger I was used to just take a map and fly to that region with my imagination. I usually chose dolomites or other mountain regions among Italy. Now I look a bit further the italian borders, but I'm still doing the same, and I soak the same juice. I think I like to travel that way as much as I do really travelling and organizing real travels...

For the whole morning I felt in Birmingham, between the thick red bricks of the campus and the typical british spring air. The hot summer was not there anymore for a short time.

Living abroad is a different thing than travelling. I'm still willing to do both.

Die zeit, the time that kills

After this huge expierence (never huge enough, never long enough, never enough), there's a lesson among the others that I had to draw: Time wipes, with every little drop that flows away, places, emotions, moments, feelings, people, loves.
I can be pretty sure I'll never see some special someones, but not necessarily cause of premature death: because mutually banished and ostracized by time.
Leaving home first, and Ulm afterwards, I discovered that there's a horrible truth that I already knew, slightly, but I can feel burdening and omnipresent: time kills, passing by.
When you live the same place for years you run into the illusion that things are changeless and still, because the hills never move, nor they'll do.
But we walk in time, not only on earth, and the hills fade away, people fade away, we fade away. We'll never reach the same place even crossing a square called during the centuries under the same name. As Eraclitus said: "You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you"

World stands there, people don't, expierences don't.

We all have to face that, cause what scares us most of this truth is: death. Death is the natural consequence of all this. And as a natural thing we shouldn't be scared but allow it to be.
If we couldn't die I think we would barely care about things going away forever. Time would be but a two penny coin if we would be timeless. Hopefully we are not.
But we are scared to lose things as the time passes away: it gives us no control on the events, on our lives, nothing to hold on to.

In my taoistic point of view I feel this lesson as the most important one as it is the key to live peacefully whatever happens outside, whatever we have to face.
There's no race, nor no place, that can avoid the rule of time, that's why Huginn is speaking that way: to tell you what he saw so far, wherever he went.
Cheers.

History loves to get stuck in linguistic facts

"Real history loves to get stuck in linguistic facts"

Munin hails you from the far north... "so near to the north pole" as grandma said.

Actually I'm still far far away from the northpole. I can't surprise you with 'Vönderful pictürs vrom Vinlant' because I don't have the cable to download them on this laptop. They'll come soon.

I'm in Lappeenranta - which is NOT in Lapland, and it is NOT snowing - suffering from early awakenings caused by the "midnight sun" which happens to be at 4AM and there's no curtain to stop it. It's true: finnish houses are great to bear the cold dark winter but completely unfit to the summer - which is, as you may not believe, just wonderful.

Finnish summer is not just warmer but the antithesis of the winter. The days are warm (not lately... but in general they are) but not too hot, which allows you to stay in, out, wherever you want. Sometimes in Italy it's so hot that you can't really go out or at least not enjoy it.

If the day is not warm enough for you, you can just stay in sauna, which hot temperatures and incredible moist would please the pickiest tropical reptile.

The sun shines almost all the time, giving you freedom of performing any activity at any time of the day - except sleeping.

Lappeenrant (Willmannstrand) happens to be on the biggest lake of Finland - or so they say - which continues, through an artificial channel, straight to Russia. The border is only at 30 km from here; for this reasons, the city, even though very small, is packed with russians, and pretty much everything is written both in finnish and russian - no swedish. The buildings and the city are small but prettier than most of the finnish cities. It's a nice place.

Lakes are very pretty and always accompanied by tiny foresty islands. The weather is completely crazy, alternating thunderstorms with sunshine, but I heard that it's the same in all europe. And what about the food crisis? It is giving me the creeps, aren't they exaggerating? First it was a bad year for agriculture and now all the prices - even dairy, meat, chocolate, drinks - is overpriced.

Well anyway, I came to think about houses.

What are our houses really for? Are they a place for fitting human beings, feed them and make them sleep in warm beds or something else, a temple to some pagan deity?

I'm thinking of all the rooms locked, left there "for some special event" or "so that I don't have to clean them everyday". Are our houses some temple of self-worship, of esteem-wanking, to show ourselves our little amount of glory and wealth, not to show or to use? Are they some complex political instrument to promote our image? Are they a den of vanity, furniture and appearance, or a safe place for people, steady or traveling, a shelter for friends, to offer them a bed and a warm soup in the time of need?

Take care, Munin.

A day to the seaside

Life is like a trip to the seaside on a sunday...
You wake up in the morning and walk to the seaside, and all you think about is reaching it, cause you think it's the place you want to go at the moment. You have to walk for a hundred yards and you have to stop frequently to let the cars go by and cross the street. Like at school: exams are a sort of barrier to cross to reach the last goal: reaching the sea, ending the education and get to the adult age. You have a bag with you: with a paddle and a bucket to build up your own sand castle, and loads of other toys.
Eventually you get to the sea.
And there you go: it's already 12 and the sun is freakin'burning...
You've never been to the sea before: you wouldn't imagine it to be so huge: everything's blue in front of you. It's nearly scary... And now? What should you do?
It's a bad moment when you reach the adult age, you get your degree and kicked out in the world of work. The sea's so huge. You've always been sorrounded by houses and walls, with small steps to do one after the other, one at time. Now everything's free and there's a lot of space, but your eyes refuse to see: what should I do with all that space?
Some people now are laying down at the sun: they're lucky, they can live their day without doing anything. But you're a honest guy and you're going to call the people that are coming to the shore with a boat. They are fishers and they'll give you some hard work for today and some money too.
They come closer, you hail loud them to get the attention, and after a few words they'll get you: you're on for today.
You throw your bag: the toys, the bucket, the sand castle: there's no time for it anymore. Bye bye toys. You jump on the boat.
From now on you have to face the infinities of the seas. From now on you can decide. You can keep on fishing with these guys or trying to get to a bigger one and sea another sea.
What will happen next?
Probably they'll get you to the shore, you'll be old and your face wrinkled, your hands marked by fatigue and the salt of the sea. They'll get you to the shore and they'll give you a few of the food you fished together with them: will be enough for today, cause the day is nearly gone, sun's setting and you'll have some time to rest on the seaside.
Maybe you'll even find your toys. But you forgot how to build a sand castle.
Sun's down, it's getting cold, too cold.
And that's how your life ended, that's how your day to the seaside went.

Vinlant!

I'm in Finland right now and I've been here for 4 days now. I wish to speak a bit about it, but i'm given no time at the right moment. I'll surprise you with a few pictures though...

Wonderful sunset on lake Näsijärvi. 11PM approx.

Hedgehog (Siili) in Tampere.

Briefly

Have you thought it was the end? That with that last post, "Hugin and Munin" or "Fratelli oltr'Alpe" was archived, finished, just a piece of garbage left in Google's memory? Did you hope for it? It's not!















Eventually, Erasmus is just about getting drunk with foreign people.

Farewell

And thus it happened. Quickly, without time for remorse, the end came.
All my flatmates left very soon. I hated them, but leaving is forgiving. May they have peace.
Luca left quite soon. We gathered there, in the courtyard, after a long terrible night in "the Church". It was a very windy and sunny morning, time for farewell. That was the last time I saw him. We kept tears for ourselves. Remy brought him to the airport on his car. The two flatmates travelled together once more.
Many memories came to my mind, things to remember, thing seen together. All gone.
We had but a last hug to tell each other everything. Goodbye.
Thus he left. The wind brought clouds. We went back home.
Then it was time to say hello to everybody else, the same night.
I spent the day cleaning and trashing everything I couldn't bring with me. One shall not have more than he can carry on his shoulders, if he's willing to have any adventure.
Things own us, they are an anchor that keep us down, at the harbour.
Evening came. We ate our last dinner, full of sorrow, of remorse, and carelessness. Then all the "survivors" met there, at Alice's place (was it?). Me, Henna, Remy, Alice, Arielle, Giorgia, Federica. We spent a wonderful night, talking, throwing a ball, throwing wax on Remy's laptop (ooops), drinking vinegar (yuck!), beer.... One of those usual wonderful Erasmus night. So bad it was the last one. Then me and Henna had to leave, our flight was in the night. We hugged everybody and said bye a thousand times. It was so hard. Then we wanted to say farewell to the Californians, Christian, Federico, Kevin. They were having a party at Trevor's and every single of them was drunk as fuck. They barely notice we where in. We managed to say bye to Federico though. It was better maybe. I felt sick of farewells. We saw them in the best of their lives, laughing and having fun, not minding about the future. The moment itself was reality. Jumping and spanking each other was the thing. I like to imagine that they are partying even now, there in Belgrove; I am too melancholic to party on the edge of the end.
Farewell boys, I will not forget you.

Away we went. They were playing Stairway to Heaven....
Packages done, away we go, to the airport. At the first light of dawn we get to say goodbye, we are able to say "farewell or see you" to all the buildings and fields, dyed by the pink morning light. The early bus catches me and Henna. He drives us north, to the airport. We are given the chance for a last look to the city. Seagulls walk in Grafton Street. The radio is on a Gaelic channel. The speaker says us "Slàn". Here we go, the journey with the bus ends, we are in the airport.
The thousand things I didn't have time to do come to my mind. It's too late to mourn.
Farewell Ireland.
Me and Henna take different planes. For us it is just a "see you soon".
I am tired. I did not sleep all night. But I have some energy left to feel sad other than sleepy.
The airplane accelerates, more and more; the wheels leave the soil, and as they are tear away from the soil, my heart is teared apart. Farewell Ireland. This time is no joke. This time may be forever. Farewell Ireland. Farewell to the green fields and the muddy beaches, to the crows and the people, to the Guinness and Inis Mòr, to the incredible rocks of Giants' Causeway and wonderful lakes of Killarney.
Farewell Kathleen ni Houlihan, my love, Farewell.

O'Donoghues

This world famous pub was worth a good pint before leaving the Island. So we stopped there one afternoon, a not crowded day, to have some black stuff.
The pub is very small, the toilets almost medieval, the walls scratched and covered with hundreds of pictures. Al this, in the rest of the world, means a low-prestige, dirty filthy place. In Ireland it means quality.
High quality is the people, a company of old-middle aged Irish women. Incredibly good was the pint. Nice was the day. A good place, go there when it's not crowded and enjoy. You'll never forget.