Following James Bond

Yesterday we followed in James Bond's wheeltracks down to the coast, through small towns and past old monasteries and high up in the mountains on a winding road overlooking the Adriatic ocean. I'm very impressed with Kristin who was driving!

Montenegro is just as beautiful as I thought, even more. A good thing we got the opportunity to get out of Podgorica to see this!

Podgorica - Balkans Fagernes

Now I am in Podgorica, capital of Montenegro, which since summer 06 has been an independent country. Before that, Montenegro was a part of Serbia. This is a tiny country with both mountains and coast. However, I don't think the capital is the gem of this country. Podgorica reminds me of Fagernes, a small town in Norway. There are a lot of those horrific shopping-and-living buildings that looks like they are made of plastic, have shopping malls on the ground floor and apartments ("condos") above with balconies. Like Fagernes, this is mixed with traditional architecture (see the church in the parking lot above), and surrounded by old, charming farm houses. Around the city are round shaped, snowcapped mountains.

In the restaurant, food is listed in kilos and grams. You don't order a dish with ham or sossage, you order a dish of 250 grams of ham or sossage. Yesterday we ended up having deep fried pancake with ham and lots and lots of melted cheese inside, topped with a heap of greated cheese and a deciliter of sour cream. On the side we had a mountain of sliced pickled cucumbers. Food for people who work in the fields, not for fieldworkers like we are, who sit still and listen to interviews all day...

Tomorrow we have the day off, and we will rent a car and go to look for the beautiful Montenegro.

Beograd

Until yesterday I was in Beograd/Belgrade (capital of Serbia). Belgrade has a variety of building styles, some old building (don't ask me which style, but "European looking") and some newer ones ("socialist looking"). And there is a beautiful, well kept fortress that I plan to post some photos of when i go back next week...

Something else I plan to photograph is some of the bombed out streets. The buildings are still standing there with big holes or walls missing. In one of the office buildings I saw, half of the space was in use while the other half was torn to pieces. It is a depressing sight.

In Belgrade the recent war is present not only physically in the damaged city space, but also in the way people talk. A seemingly neutral question about whether Podgorica has ever been bombed, caused uneasy glances. Likewise, the issue of Montenegro's independence or the reconstruction (or construction?) of the Montenegric church is laden with so many feelings and seems to be put into words only after analysis of the people present and with many precautions.

I got it!

To my great surprise and much greater joy, I got the flat! It was quite nervewrecking in the end, when I understood that I had a chance to get it. I waited four hours for one of the OBOS-members to figure whether he would snap it right in front of me or not, with a membership he got in February. I was away with work at at a conference center outside Oslo, and I was in a ski track in the forest when the broker told me it was mine, and, to quote Mishu: "my mind suddenly became colourful like a Hindi film"!

Bidding for a flat

Today I have bidded (bad, bud??) for a flat for the first time. It's a beautiful flat prized reasonably low, but it is owned by the socialdecmocratic cooperation OBOS, which means that the members (and I am not one of them) will wait around till it is over and then use their right to buy at the price that has been settled on. But of course not if they can't afford it or don't want it enough to spend the money. So there is still a chance...

Check it out:
http://www.finn.no/finn/realestate/object?finnkode=9495228

And wish me good luck. It is all over by midnight Tuesday.

Take the night back!

As a reaction to the recent wave of rapes in Oslo, there will be a rally tonight starting from Olaf Ryes plass 10.30 pm. We will not accept that women's freedom of movement is violated. We don't want our society to develop into a society where instigation of fear is used to control women.

Those who are in Oslo, join us! Those who are not, support us by sparing a moment to think about what fear does to female mobility in the country where you live.

Ski - Nordmarka

Next time I'll try to hold my mobile the right way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HYHmXR1Dos