London baby

Just back from my London weekend. Really nice, but full of mixed feelings. Great to see Anna again, noticed that she is still the same old, crazy human being from school. She lives in Edgware road, in what could possibly be the most filthy apartment in all London (and I've seen some ugly places, including my own). When I arrived Thursday night, there was no water in the bathroom. In order to flush the toilet, you had to fill it with three big bowls of water. When the water finally came back, I was thrilled over the possiblility to take a shower ( Anna told me they usually visit the swedish church for that). But then of course, the showerhead didn't work. So I had to use the same bowls that I used for filling the toilet, to pour hot water over myself, sitting in the bath tub. Welcome to London...
The weekend was spent clubbing at Hoxton bar & kitchen ( apparently the new "it"-place), visiting National gallery, Notting hill, Spitafield market, the old apartment in Shephards bush and my old job at Montignac. Wich is no longer called Montignac, but The Hungry olive and is taken over by former head chef Ian. Ernest is gone with the wind, but his spirit is still there...

To sum it all up, London is still lovely and I'm so going back, baby.

The rainy day that turned into snow

Ok, was just out for a run and it started of a little chilly, then the rain began dripping, then more rain and just like that, it started snowing. Yeah. Just when you started to get used to the sun; bought cute shorts, sunlotion and shaved your legs it strikes back. Reminds me of this swedish proverb, which I am unable to translate (well I could, but it would sound relly weird): "Nej, sa roligt ska vi inte ha".

Anyways, Rachel turned up today at 10.00 o'clock this morning with dark rings under the eyes, looking like she just spent the weekend in Dublin, celebrating St Patricks. She came home yesterday but literally went straight to the pub ("Dude, I needed a pint of beer"). Apparently she ended up in an IRA bar on the day of celebration. "So I told my friend Bess, we have to leave now, and she's just like: No, don't wanna leave, its nice here and I'm like: Honey, trust me, we have to leave. And i knew I couldn't explain to her why, cause she would just go: Rachel, who's the IRA"?

The task

Best St Patrick's day EVER. Not that I ever celebrated it before, but hell, this was good fun. Don't know if it was the fact that I swept two tequilashots and one glass of champagne within 15 minutes or that everyone else was just as drunk, but it was such a good night out! My task for the night was to steal some guy's hat/+ wig and put it on another guy's head. It's funny cause my only memory from yesterday was stealing the hat and the wig. Talked to Marika today and told her how sorry I was for not completing the whole task. She just looked at me. "But... Haina, you did. Don't you remember stepping up to the other side of the bar and placing it on this unknown guy's head?"

The St Patrick's day

As Steven Fry would have put it, I rose today "about the hour most decent people would have thought about one more shot before bed". Went out, bought a magazine and sat down on my balcony with coffe, omelette and croissant. Oh, what a wonderful world. Reflecting over things a little. It's St Patrick's day today. The only thing I know about it is that you're meant to be drinking. A whole lot. Rachel is in Dublin for the weekend to celebrate with her american friends. She thought about going to Amsterdam first but decided not to to, "since there are twenty americans going who've never smoked pot before and I don't wanna deal with that".
After breakfast, time for some splurging in the city. After meeting up Katrin and Louise for coffe I happened to pass by Morgan de toi. So I bought some. Clothes. To be able to afford them I went straight home afterwards to rent out my flat and my new location is now Dustbin 3, just beside the parking at Rue de Marquisats.

The postman who almost wasn't

Started the day with nice run by the lake. Nelly Furtado in my ears, mountains around me and it's all ridiculously beautiful. The view (which I am unable to show here because of lack of USB cabel. Instead shitty photo from the french tourist office. Enjoy!) will never stop to amaze me. Finished with Swedish breakfast (knackebrod and polarkaka, yummie!) and afterwards I just sat in the balcony while pretending to study. Looked up and suddenly saw the postman standing outside the gates with a big parcel in his hands. Ringing and ringing on the doorbell, but of course no one answered because no one one was me. So I leant over the balcony and shouted: "Bonjour!" French postman looked every where around him, as if expecting the little voices in his head to turn up and take him from behind. Shouted again, this time louder and eventually he looked up with a puzzled expression on his face. Made an attempt to read the strange name on the parcel. "Ber...Ber..."

"Berndtsson!!! My parcel from Sweden arrived!!! Jumped (ok, ran down the stairs) and oh, my darling stuff was here! Loads of books, earphones and my missing black partytop. Sometimes parents are good to have.

'The hippopotamus' by Steven Fry among the books. Fell in love with it after reading the foreword. Why has no one introduced me to this man before? Apparently the book is about Ted Wallace; "an old, sour, womanising, cantankerous, whisky-sodden beast". Sounds and is excactly the type of book I would enjoy. Especially like the way Fry describes his writing process: "If the day has gone well I'll dissapear upstairs for a round of light celebratory masturbation".

Haha! More of that, please.

The very unproductive day

Why? It started off so well. It was a sunny day and I had all the time in the world to really get under the skin of the pronoms personnels and the plus-que-parfait and the other homework. But it is now six o'clock and the only thing I've managed to produce so far is the following sentence:
"En Juillet dans la Suede, il fait chaud mais il pleut beacoup aussi".
Pulitzer prize, here I come...

The birthday

Ok, sorry for being such a lazy blogger this week. Can only blame my expose and crazy search for cheap train tickets to London (+ f-ing Eurostar who refuses to accept my swedish creditcard. Rotten in hell, you evil french traincompany!).

Anyway... Weekend started with Louises birthday party, verri nize. Welcome to the twenties, girl! Dinner at her and Marika's, followed by shots at Finn Kelly's and dancing at Rivers. Highlights from the evening:

- Louise playing nouse- flute for the dinnerguests ( yeah, it is just as weird as it sounds). For those who have never been introduced to a nouse-flute (where have you been living???), it's a yellow thing you put under your nouse while blowing to make it sound (next step, learning to play different tones and finally, a song) Ended up with everyone determined to order one for themselves at www.snor.nu (cause that's what we do in Annecy).

- Creepy Italian guy stepping up to Katrin at Rivers and whispering: "What do you think of my friend"?, then pointing at even creepier Fabio lookalike (long greasy hair and waay to revealing shirt, doing something similar to the chickendance in the other end of the room).

- French guy peeing very close to Manuels bike outside of Rivers when we left. Funny dialogue:

French guy: " Ooh, je suis desole..."

Manuel: " Ah, C'est pas grave"...

Marika:" But is grave! He's peeing on you bike!"

Manuel: "Well, it's a free country..."

Saturday: Lovely sunny day wich started with nice brunch at the lake, then later in the evening: American dinner with hamburgers and fries at Casa De L'Isernon! Marika, Louise, Katrin and moi enjoyed Rachels cooking-skills.

Highlights from this day:

American kid Taylor locked in his own apartment, scared to come out and face crazy japanase girl who followed him from the night before and refused to leave. Called Rachel in panic (always there to offer friendly advice: "Dude, just get up and get going! She can't hold you there! She's fucking 90 pounds! Push her out in the street and run! Or sell her to a barowner!")
Another day in the city of Annecy...

The not so funny presentation/ the funny scottish roomie

Oh, my god, I'm completly terrified. Have to present scary "expose", ca veut dire talk about something, anything in front of the class tomorrow. Minimum 15 minutes. Minimum my death. Of all choosable subjects I've chosen humour. Like, cultural differences and how some humour is really popular in some countries, but not at all in others. If I'm lucky, no one will understand me. I hope so, cause otherwise I'm gonna end up offending the whole groupe (the red line in the presentation is that people in cold countries have much better humour than people in warm countries, cause it's the only way they can survive. And of course, the majority of my group is from a warmer country.) Apparently, humour can be very offending. Something I never thought of before, but when I googled it, the word "offending"came up almost as many times as the word "funny".
Well, the good thing is that by this time tomorrow, it will all be over.
Another good thing is that another new roomie has moved in. She's scottish, and sooo funny. I mean, as i f the accent wasn't amusing enough. Will probably end up speaking a very odd mixture of californian american/scottish english. My posh british accent that I was so proud of, is long gone with the wind. Thanks, Rach...

The cheap date

Friday evening spent in Manuels new, fresh apartment in the old town. Me like very much. Big kitchen/ livingroom where everyone (mostly swedes+ one colombian girl and one german) could hang out and get drunk together. We had traditional knytis (seriously cant't find translation for that word) and everyone brought very good food and wine. Discovered I'm a very cheap date, can zip (or is it sip? whatever) on the same glass of wine an entire eveining and still end up very drunk. The preparty was so nice that we didn't leave until 23.30 for the colomians farewell party for Sabrina.

Arrived there just in time for some serious tequila-shotting (although norwegian guy Bendikt stole most of the lemons), before stepping out for a night on town (aka Rivers).

Fun to see everyone developing their very own drunken pattern; Russian kid Felip always wandering around, picking up random people, Manuel always teaching everyone to salsa, Louise always making ugly camerafaces and imititating a japanese girl, me speaking a weird mixture of stockholmska, french, spanish and english, Patrick making fun of me for that reason.

Was woken up at 10. 15 today , by phonecall from Rach who's spending the weekend in Milan; "My bag with the camera, mobile and everything was stolen yesterday!!!"

The never ending telenovela, soon to be continued...

The french night and The german

Ok, as a tribute to Patricia I'll give the english a try. We'll see how it works.
Monday was a very sad day when Tricia left. The house suddenly became disturbingly quiet. Rachel and I tried to cheer us up by looking at our farewell gifts: two small cookbooks whith loads of recipes for cookies (in french). Then we made an attempt to bake. The attempt failed and we ended up with a big, scary brownie from Monoprix that we somehow had mistaken for a cakemix (no laughing! a mistake anyone could have done).
Yesterday, the new roomate arrived, something that we had been looking forward to with mixed feelings. The only thing we knew about her was her nationality: German. In order to be prepared for the worst, we imagined her as a huge, deeply conservative and religious woman who
A. would eat all our food.
B. would hate tequila. (Big problem)
C. would be, you know... german (don't mention the war!).
Very relieved when she turned up and seemed perfectly normal. Well, she does hate tequila but we can work on that (starting tonight).
Yesterday was also French night at Patrick's and it went well. We brought the scary brownie (ok, what was left of it since yesterday) and Patrick bought another scary cake and in the company of some tea we chatted the evening away, in french. We're gonna make french night into a habit and are currently thinking about a name for this club. Ideas, anyone?