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A very expensive coffee

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My coffee in Mo i Rana costed me 250 euro. What?! 250! Why?! Well, I canceled last minute my reservation for a wild wild north airbnb. So, I hardly got money back. I drove about 3,5 hours from Bodø to Mo i Rana. After talking to my brother and his girlfriend for a while, after finishing my coffee, during my girl was behind the computer, I decided as last check to take his girlfriends advice and flip a coin. To feel what felt best. I choose the other side… I chose to drive back to the guy I had stayed with in Bodø. For the first time I felt this could maybe become more. I, and felt ‘we’, needed more days together to feel how we are and could be together. Now back in the Netherlands, after a lot of driving, I feel lost. This is not home. But since I feel I need my girl to finish school here, it’s her last primary year, and I have some financial support here, I came back. Now that the distance bothers him, and he is kind of confused, which I understand, I also feel I still haven’t met the...
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The castle that wasn't

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They both looked at me in the big full of disco lights bar. I didn’t get a: you look good, but that dress is nice and sexy. Which made me feel cheap and no owner should ever say that to someone working for him. Though I knew his character, once his new girlfriend was gone his atmosphere changed. He was like this. It was just all too bad. I didn't expected this was the castle I would be treated as a princess (and if so, I wouldn't ever act like one, still: . . .) Especially when you feel more like a friend or one of the boys when it comes to connection, talking and humor, it is just too bad. So, I stayed true to myself. To this around two meter castle owner, with his longer grey hair often which seemed uncombed or unwashed. I gave him my truth. Which actually made our conversation finally better and more interesting. George Carlins: “Women are crazy, men are stupid. The reason women are crazy is because men are stupid”, made him not only laugh but also agree. He said that he tol...
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The night we slept in a gamme . . .

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Gamme, I learned from the owner of the Airbnb a day after we stayed at the little house, is a Sami house, where they stay near their reindeers. Or as one can find online: ‘ A gamme is a semi-permanent residence. They were built by Sami people of every lifestyle. Coastal Sami lived in the gamme year-round until moving into Scandinavian-style housing. Mountain Sami kept two huts at their winter and summer settlements. They moved between the two throughout the year, staying in their lavvu while in the field. Gamme are supported by curved wooden poles forming a dome. The dome is then covered in sod and allowed to grow over until it blends into the countryside .’ On the photo you see her helping a bit. The owner said what you could do to help. We corrected and added some stones at the sides of the chimney. I left some candles, a pen, some paper and two bags for tea. I didn't have more to add.  Couchsurfing, for those who don't know this, is a website which is for meeting (travel) pe...
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Haunting weather and the art of stubbornness

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Overseeing my shortcomings have led me to see I should not slow down or race the day. It hasn’t got to do with either of those things. It has to do with what I truly want, also when it comes to the interaction with my daughter. Not what nearby strangers seem to say with their eyes or their mouths. I have to say sometimes talking to friends and relatives helps me to connect the dots that my brain nowadays like to create. Hoping that one day I see all the dots connected to a beautiful drawing. This journey is not what it out to have been. A free nomad feeling. A quest for future places and plans. Instead it has made me dreary. I’m not as restless or impatient like I used to. Or is less showing itself. Maybe that is just asleep due being so tired. Or maybe that’s not what is relevant at all at the moment. The weather has haunted me many kilometers from the Netherlands till here. The warmth drains the energy out of my veins. Even now, when sitting with a view of the mountains, in the shado...
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A mind full of fog, hunters, wisps of snow and men running after their ball

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Click on the photos to see it bigger. My mind is foggy, drifting between places, traveling and staying. I feel in contrast with the magnificent views and my feelings. The having of an obligation to love summer has made me stubborn. Has made me tell I hate warm weather and how I miss the snow immensely. Is the truth of me making others questioning their own? Or perhaps used of people crying out that summer, the heat is wonderful... I find it even more a dread.  Though the air is way better, the pollen here explode due to a short summer. Since in wintertime we only get two weeks off it can't bring me to these magical places. Seeing from so close the hunting: the geese still fighting upside down in both hunters hands and to hear and see the shot hit the most innocent target in the world: beings of an animal kind, I found myself in a crying pain. My daughter hasn't cried like this for such a long time. The cruelty of this world . . . to see really innocent boys (for they think it...
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The days of mushrooms, the lake and the hill

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Looking through the window with heavensteardrops I see the lake. Yesterday it would have been too windy to cross with the boat, today too rainy. Which is fine, for we did our exercise for a day or two. Yesterday we, also with our best friend in Norway who is also staying two nights here (some hosts/people are just so heartwarming), we did a route that with it's length of 3.2 kilometers would seem short in the Netherlands. But do know we climbed about 200 meters up, over small rocks and massive ones. My daughter and I find it harder because we're not used to it yet and our breathing is clearly not up to it yet. But we made it! The view was worthy of our effort and we treated ourselves a swim back at the small beach at the lake which was way more crowded this time then it was the first. I've said it before. I'm rather on a stage than in a bikini. I try to not think about it and focus on the freshness of the water and of course my daughter.  She is pure happiness in the wa...
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The 'What could possibly go wrong?' and the lake swimming diaries. (A new summer 2024 travels.)

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My daughter is still asleep. Making coffee. Starting the day.  I am still tired from the traveling. I drove about nine hours the first day and nine hours the next day. Both days were different tough. First day around 27 degrees. In a black car without airco: it's a sauna. I am very bad with temperatures that passes the twenty degrees. The noise of the windows open bothered me less than I thought. Still listening to music isn't what I do then. Anyway not listening much anymore. The first long travel, more than two years ago, we listened almost non-stop to music. Got tired of it I guess. The second day we had a lot of rain accompanying us. Which made driving in a different way difficult and extra exhausting. We would drive about seven hours, but we decided to drive two more, to get a day earlier to our first host in Norway. --- DAY 1 (Wrote the same day in the car, while my daughter was reading along and laughing a lot about it. Sometimes she thinks I'm cool...) ... a big fil...
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