In Norway, one of our main Easter traditions is reading and watching crime fiction, which we will often sit down to enjoy after a long nice walk in the snow.
Easter Crime
Deconstructed Red Mars/Green Mars/Blue Mars – Bar
As March is the month of the Roman god Mars, I decided that for this months geeky recipe, a deconstructed mars-bar would do nicely.
And what better geeky Mars-related property to choose, than Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars-trilogy of books; “Red Mars”, “Green Mars” and “Blue Mars”?
I deconstructed the mars-bar by making a red nougat ice cream, green caramel sauce and blue chocolate cookie crumbles.
Look,
I’m not gonna pretend this was an unmitigated success
InterRail 2010 – Part 2: Exploring Berlin
After my unsavory experiences in Hamburg, I was very happy to finally start doing some real touristy stuff in Berlin.
Not a lot interesting happened to me in Berlin. I just had a nice day, walking around, taking pictures. Then I moved on to Amsterdam.
A lot of places in Berlin had this very interesting mix of old majestic architecture and new degradation.
It was also interesting to see regretful war memorials for World War 2. Most war memorials I have seen other places, were put there by the victorious forces.
All in all, I very much enjoyed my day in this lovely city.
In the next part; Köln!
If you want to see more of the pictures I took in Berlin click here 🙂
My Year In The Norwegian Airforce
Between the summer of 2009 and 2010, I served my mandatory military service as a guard in The Royal Norwegian Air Force.
In Norway, when I was 19, all young citizens had to spend one year in the military.
There were easy ways to get out of it. From diseases, to ideologies, to responsibilities, to drug-use. So if you wanted to avoid service, you could.
As of March 2016, Norway currently employs a weaker form of mandatory military service for men and women, as now only those who are motivated are selected.
Probably a better systems, so they can avoid people who would rather not be there.
It started with a two-month boot camp in Stavanger. I was assigned to the airforce, but don’t get me wrong, I’m no top-gun. There are a lot of positions in the airforce that don’t require you to ever get in an airplane, and I served my time there as a guard.
Compared to the rest of the year, this period was more like a border-school/summer-camp than a true military experience. At the time I felt it was hard, but later I realised
this was a really soft entry
InterRail 2010 – Part 1: From Bergen to Berlin
I am continuing my project of curating my own Facebook photos, and this post is the first in a long series about an InterRail-trip I took during October in 2010.
I had just finished a year in the military, stationed quite a ways way outside of a city in the northern parts of Norway. It was cold, boring and mostly lonely.
Being stuck somewhere you don’t want to be, for the better parts of a year, really makes you want to spread your wings and experience the world.
Trading one location for many, if you like.
I started in my hometown of Bergen, Norway.
From there I travelled via Sweden and Denmark, down to Hamburg in Germany, where I stayed for the first night.
I only ever saw Hamburg in the dark, as I arrived quite late and left very early, but
the area around the train-station is one of the seedier places I have seen in my life
‘The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone’ and ‘Pan Twardowski’
I have always been fond of subversions of fairy tales and fantasy, so it came as no surprise that
I ended up loving ‘The Witcher 3’
I Want More Movies Like ‘Black Panther’
I watched the new Marvel-movie, Black Panther, a few days ago, and I must say that I absolutely loved it. Not as much as I loved ‘Thor: Ragnarok’, but that film had space-travel and monsters, so it had quite the advantage on me!
It is the first superhero-movie, to my knowledge, that is set in Africa, and features mostly african characters.
The main location of the movie, the fictional country of Wakanda, is a technological utopia built on the customs of african tribes.
That got me thinking about what superheroes inspired by other indigenous peoples from around the world would be like.
My thoughts immediately went to the indigenous peoples of my own country, the Sami people.
They reside in the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland, and a little into Russia. In a fictional setting, who knows what sort of hidden ice-kingdoms could be hidden up there.
One of the really cool parts of the movie was how traditional african clothes were used as a basis for the “afrofuturistic” designs of the costumes. I would really like to see how the same costume-designers would take on the traditional garb of The Sami.
I’m not sure what the name or powers of a Sami superhero should be, but including their thousand-year old practice of reindeer-herding in some way could lead to some cool stand-out superhero stuff.
I’ll stop now, and let this idea sit where it is.
Making a hero like this should be up to the individuals that are actually from the people in question.
What other cultures could make some new and interesting superheroes?
Oslo In The Snow
I and my girlfriend went to Oslo this last weekend. Going from the second biggest city in Norway to the biggest city may not seem like it would be that different, but in a country as sparsely populated as Norway, this was something of a big-city vacation for us.
We were mostly going to visit a friend of my girlfriend, who had moved to Oslo many years ago.
Her parents still living in Bergen, she had visited us a few times, and this would be the first time we reciprocated.
We met up in the city center, then proceeded to walk around to see the sights for much of the day, stopping in stores along the way.
While Oslo was not much colder than Bergen, it was much more covered in snow. In Bergen you usually get snow, then rain, then ice, then snow, and so on, so it is more slippery than wintry here at this time of year.
Much of the distance we covered was along this river. At the point pictured here, much of a waterfall had been frozen completely over, with the water making a new river in and under this new ice-“landscape”.
It was hard to capture just how cool this looked on camera, but if it does not come across, I am pretty sure that you could safely walk over that ridge. Not a risk I would be willing to take, but still.
At the end of the walk we stopped at a food hall, where I ate a delicious chicken-leg burger, before we later met up with our friend again, at her apartment, where she had cooked some wonderful summer rolls.
I really over-ate that day.
All in all it was a great little mini-vacation, and I really needed that after not traveling anywhere last year.
It made my participation in The Time Travel Blogathon slightly harder, since that took place at the same time, but it all worked out quite well.
Looking forward to our next trip already, wherever it may be!
The Time Travel Blogathon
Here’s a link to the full list of links to the various great blogs in The Time Travel Blogathon that I took part in with my last blog-post Source Code – A Retrospective.
There are a lot of good posts there, so…get clicking! 😉
Source Code – A Retrospective
This is my contribution to the Time Travel Blogathon hosted by Silver Screenings and Wide Screen World. You should check out all the other posts aswell!
The film I am covering is the=&0=&, directed by the great =&1=& (who just released his new film ‘Mute’ on Netflix).
Admittedly, this is kind of cheating.
Source Code is not technically a time travel story, but it does work with =&2=&
Time Travel Stories
I love time travel in fiction.
That is one of the main reasons why I love Doctor Who.
I love how this storytelling device can put ideologies from vastly different cultures, separated by decades or centuries, up against each other. By doing this, we can compare them, and find strengths and weaknesses in both. It can also just lead to funny jokes, or cool imagery, like a medieval knight riding on a velociraptor and wielding a laser sword.
Games as Literature – Alan Wake
I have previously expressed my love for video essays on YouTube, and I now have yet another great example in “Games as Lit. 101”.
Alan Wake is a game about creative creation, specifically writing.
Any writers who are reading this should definitely watch the video above, even if they have never played the game.
I loved the game when it first came out, but I feel like
the subject-matter hits closer to home now that I have started intentionally writing