Germany

So, I'm in Germany. I've been staying with my friends Lone and Jana this first night, but today I'm moving on to my aunt and uncle's place in Untersteinach. A very nice little village outside Kulmbach, but unfortunately, with no internet (at least there wasn't the last time I was there two years ago). This means that for the next 8 - 9 days I'll be off the radar, and will have to manage without internet and email. It will be hard, I know, but if this is the hardest I'll be forced to endure in this life, I guess I should count myself lucky.
And it should give me time to focus on finishing that 7th novel in my Viking series.

Packing again...

I've been in England, in Worthing, for almost a week and it's time to pack up those 30 kilos again to move on. Tomorrow I'll travel to Stansted airport where I'll stay till Monday, when I'll be on a morning flight to Nürnberg in Germany.

It's been great being back in England again. It truly has reminded me about all the things I love about this country, and how much I miss it. I've gone for several walks on the beach, I've attended my first ever aqua aerobics class (it was fun – can't believe it was 45 minutes!), last night we went to a wedding party on a river boat on the Thames in London, and today I've been to Chichester and met up with a couple of my friends from uni. All in all an excellent week in England.

But, as I haven't been to Untersteinach and Kulmback for 2 years now, I also miss that place – so I'm quite sure that it'll be great to go there – and there is of course also the bier fest!

England and Germany

I’m off to England today, and next Monday I’m continuing to Germany where I’ll be staying for another 10 days. It will partly be a vacation, and partly a work-holiday as I will also have to keep writing on book number 7 for the deadline on August the 4th. 

I’ll see if I’m able to take some photos and post here for you, but for now I’m leaving you with some photos that I’ve taken previous years, in England and Germany. 

Road trip

Can you spot the hotel on top of the waterfall Vøringsfossen?

Dawn and I went on a little three day mini tour of Norway from Monday to Wednesday this week. We went by car, and drove through Fagernes, Flåm, Voss, Eidfjord and Hardangervidda to Oslo. On the way we saw some amazing views of magnificent mountains and beautiful fjords, and we drove through the world’s longest road tunnel, The Lærdal Tunnel, almost 25 km long. And we saw quite a few stave churches.  

And on Monday I’m off on another trip: I’ll be spending a week in England and then flying on to Germany where I’ll spend another 10 days. See you all back in Norway by almost mid August I guess. 

Dawn is coming to Norway

I’m so happy today because one of my best friends, Dawn, is coming over from England. This is her first time in Norway, and I can’t wait for her to see where I live and meet up with most of my Norwegian friends. And then next week, we’re going to be tourists and explore parts of Norway together, because I’ve never really been a tourist in Norway, so that should be a lot of fun. 

And if you wonder who Dawn is, she’s the singer with the guitar in this YouTube video. 

And then there were none

At some point our family owned 6 lovely Holy Birman cats, but over the years, they’ve become older and some have become ill and eventually they’ve had to be allowed to leave this life. We had one left, Minas Tirith’s Darwin, he was such a warm, caring, cuddly cat, 13 years old – and today we had to put him down as well.

He got his first tumour last year, but has lived quite well with it since then, but now they had spread so much that there was nothing else to do, but what was right for the cat. It is a very sad day. 

Baksjøen

I went for a walk today, after having sent book number 6 to the publisher. There's a lake about 10 minutes walk from my home called Baksjøen. I took some pictures.

Book number 6

It is done. The story of book 6 is ready and written down. There might still be some adjustments to do, there always are, but I trust that this is very close to what it will end up to be in the final version. I have struggled a bit with this one, it’s been hard to find the right words – but I also think this means that my language is a bit better than it usually is in early versions. So hopefully this means that I won’t have as much work to do when redrafting as I sometimes have had with other stories. 

Right now I’m just happy, as I always am when another story is down on paper. It’ll be good to send it to the publisher tomorrow, so that my editor too gets to see what the new story is like.

And now I think I’d better try to get some sleep, and hope that the mosquitoes have left the flat – there were, for some reason, plenty of them in here last night, I don’t know why. But tonight I go to bed armed with bug spray, so let’s hope that’ll keep them away.