A place in the world to be called home

Breena Ronan from Who doesn't love roses asked how the location is for my new job and let me just say it's special and give you all a few hints.

It's somewhere on this map

It is a small town in a cold place, but it's a nice and friendly community in spectacular nature in the middle of my new field area. It's a small university with a good reputation (let's see about that once I arrive, hope I don't ruin it) and it's a really good environment for what I do. It's not so much for heels (gonna miss those) or business suits, but it does have some nice places for going out and it is possible to buy a decent cup of coffee and a good meal. I guess we will do more outdoors activities than we do now, but there are local cultural events as well. It will be difficult not to out my location once I'm there, but so far my lips will be tight. If you can guess where it is, please don't mention the place directly in the comments.

The roots and all that

I am back from the trip to the home country. Even though I haven't moved very far away I am sometimes homesick bordering on the pathetic. Back home the weather is much nicer, the nature is gentler, the cities larger, the food better, the jokes funnier, the people more diverse, the cultural life more sophisticated and everything better known - to me. A few years ago I would have ridiculed anyone saying the above. Anyone who would be opposed to emigrating or at the very least working abroad for several years would have been a looser in my opinion, especially if the abroad in question was a mere 24 hours road trip away.

The thing about Europe, aside from giving people from other continents the chance to visit several new countries in a matter of days, is that it's actually quite diverse. Even within regions that might seem superficially similar to the visitor. Although a neighboring country might not be far away in distance or language group it is still a new country complete with its own official rules and regulations, traditions, food, news, literature, music, TV-shows, ways of doing things, perceptions of good and bad, wrong and right and not least cultural heritage. Sometimes it is just a matter of getting that special kind of bread, listening to that song from the 80's on the radio or knowing who the heck they are talking about when referring to that comedian who used to be so funny. One of the things I love about going home (besides the yummy food and the hip and happening cities) is to get all these cultural references, to know what things used to be like and to have shared memories with someone else.

I am not more nostalgic than I remember some things that were less than ideal (say ridiculous real estate prices anywhere near hip and happening cities or complete lack of jobs in either of our fields). For the same and other reasons I also don't think we will be living there anytime soon. Instead I think I am on the verge of becoming obsessed-with-home-country-emigrant type who will go out of her way to get recognizable home country products, only cares about home country news and gets crazily happy about any chance to elaborate on home country ways of life. We already subscribe to the emigrant newspaper and have the kitchen cupboards stocked with Weird National Specialty, and I know more about what happened at home the last six months than what happened here yesterday, so I'm well on my way to achieving this. Watch my steps, I'm not sure I like this about myself.

Endings and new beginnings

I haven't posted anything in days. I have been busy and caught up in life. I have given the final exam for my students, been through the evaluations, packed my belongings, cleaned the apartment for the next tenant and shipped around 160 kg's of books, notes, clothes and field equipment home to my permanent adress. My adventures in the Arctic is over for this time.

It has been an amazing term and I am grateful I have been given this opportunity. I have learned a lot about teaching, and my field and about the institution from a faculty perspective. I have gotten some nice feedback from the students and faculty and feel convinced that I have left a positive impression. I also got some surprising, but actually useful, comments on the student evaluations, but I will talk about those in a separate post later. I will continue to work with some of the students as they will be doing their Master's theses with me and I have plans to go back for field work and will collaborate with the new hire who is filling my position. I know I will come back and I think I will have some kind of role at this institution in the future.

The first time I visited this institution I also stayed for one term and I was heartbroken when I had to leave. I did not know how and when or if I would manage to come back for any significant period of time. I was following the last glimpses of light from the town during take off thinking about the once in a lifetime experience I had just had, and when we landed I was surprised to see the trees and the daylight and the civilisation in general. This time was different. On the way across the ocean we had the most spectacular northern lights surrounding the plane with a thin streak of daylight looming on the horizon. It was such a beautiful way to say goodbye for this time, but it didn't make me sad. I will see the northern lights again and the darkness and the snow and the arctic summer when that time comes. I will miss it, especially with all the rain we have here where I am now, but I have never felt so relaxed about leaving.

I am looking forward to not living in boxes and bags anymore, to not be traveling back and forth every few weeks and to have one adress, one phone number and one affiliation. I am looking forward to have a life in one place and be able to participate in activities running over several weeks. I am also looking forward to be back in my own department where I cannot distance myself from things I don't care about and where people will expect things from me - also in the long run. And afterall I DO like trees and daylight and sunshine and city life, and it does make me kind of happy to think about going back to work in my old* job tomorrow. I think that this time it was not so much about leaving, but about coming home.

*This is not completely true since I am now supposed to be the assistant head of department, which I have never been before and don't really know how to be either. Good thing I will only have one working day this month before I leave for holidays.

Home sweet home

I am home! For 36 hours. Not in my temporary home in the arctic, not in Germany, not in a hotel room, not visiting anybody, but home where I live according to the social security system and where I keep most of my stuff. I realize most people wouldn't find this extraordinary, but I am so fed up with this nomadic life style right now and waking up in my own bed for the first time in months was heavenly to say the least. I can't wait to get back in two weeks. To top it off Fiancé moved in today. He was here for even less time than I, since he is driving the rented moving van back to the continent and finish off a few things at work before he moves in to stay. But we have unpacked some of the boxes and placed most of the furniture, so it feels like a home for both of us now. It looks so much better now than it did before and I never had enough furniture to fill the house anyway.

In an ideal world my entire focus today should obviously have been on Fiance and his moving in, but I just didn't have enough time for that. I came here last night after another long conference day and a super exhausting flight thanks to airport security and end of week travelling, and just wanted to sleep, read Cosmopolitan, eat chocolate and sleep some more. (One might wonder why he is willing to move in with this hibernating person in the first place since all I want when I am not at work is SLEEP). Alas, I couldn't hibernate all day as I am leaving for another meeting in Russia at 5 AM tomorrow morning and had a lot of things I needed to finish before leaving.

My students are waiting for the evaluations of their research projects (I promised they would have these a week ago), the study administration is waiting for the official version of the finals exam (I wrote the questions yesterday during an extraordinarily boring presentation at yesterday's conference) and I must prepare the presentation for the next meeting (to be given on Monday). It is 9 PM now and I haven't finished any of these tasks yet. So far I have done laundry, carried boxes, rearranged furniture, put up chistmas decorations (very pretty), booked a hotel room for a stop-over on the return trip, booked a ticket for visiting my parents for christmas, eaten take-away chop suey and watched a lot of TV.

I don't want to do things sloppily or at the last minute and I feel kind of guilty for not really working effectively today. But I have practically no time for breaks right now. All my free time is spent in airports or on planes or in random hotel rooms and I just can't relax when it goes on and on like that. I wish I was going to stay here and could allow myself to chill out just for tonight. Instead I am maximising my chill-out at home time by watching a very girly TV program where couples talk about love and what they value in their relationships (practically Cosmo on screen) while I write evaluations of research projects for the students and eat mint chocolates.

Next stop Norway

I got up at 3 AM this morning to catch the bus from German sea-side city to the regional airport in order to catch an early morning flight to Oslo, Norway. I am here for two days before leaving again for the next leg of this odyssey-like journey.

I was hoping I could sleep on the bus, but no such luck, as the driver thought that German folk/pop music was just what we all needed between 4.00 and 5.30 AM. A brief 30 minutes nap on the plane was all I managed before I arrived here and had to be serious and take care of stuff, talk to people, go to meetings and generally be awake. The day in itself was not too bad. It was fantastic to be in the city (compared to where I live now Oslo is a true metropolis..... though, it's really not), fantastic to walk around in the sun and i met with a colleague I didn't know very well, and he turned out to be fun and easy to talk to.

I spent three hours in the morning sorting out visa trouble at the Russian embassy, and managed (after a lot of anxiety, nailbiting, phonecalls to Russia and four incomplete faxes) to get the visa placed nicely in my passport five minutes before closing time. This afternoon I (and abovementioned colleague) had a meeting with the jounalism department at the local professional college, about a collaborative research - public outreach project we are starting up. The meeting left me with a feeling that we did not understand each other, and it gave me a lot to think about. Like how far we are from succeeding in creating a good connection between scientists and journalists. I am going to compose a separate post on this topic, but I am not sure I will get around to that today.

Because I am extremely tired now and the only thing I want to do is sleep. I also wanted to take a shower and use deliciously smelling new cocnut hair conditioner and curl up in white and crisp hotel bed linen with the laptop, but I have already done that for a couple of hours. I have not had any dinner, so I should probably go to sleep before I get too hungry. I couldn't muster up the energy to get dressed and go downstairs and buy some proper food, so I have been eating chocolate and peanuts out of the hotel minibar (something that will cost me at least the same as a decent meal in the hotel cafe due to the exorbitant minibar prices). Right now I am about to get up and get another soda in the fridge after eating a bag of very salty peanuts. Why on earth does a hotel of this standard not have room service. Very strange.

Good bye to a part of my life

I was supposed to work at home today from Fiances place, but I have done nothing but going to the dentist and walk around in our soon-to-be former city to enjoy the sunshine, the familar streets and houses, the water and our neighborhood. I am excited about our future and our new life, but I am very happy that I got a chance to be here for a few days before we are leaving.

Yesterday we drove to our favorite beach and went for a walk. It is winter here but not too cold yet, and there were still people gathering in cafes and in front of food stalls. We walked along the water, watching the sunset, the sea gulls, sail boats, passenger ferries and large cargo vessels heading out from our port city through canals and straits to the open ocean. For years this has been our favorite getaway from the city when we needed an afternoon away. We used to go to a small tapas restaurant at the sea front in winter, or to the saltwater indoor swimmingpool with huge panoramic windows to the beach. Last time we were there was in the summer when we came for an after work picnic in the sand. This time we were walking into the small seaside touristy village, talking about how we might want to return to this area some time in the future.




In the evening we went out to dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant. We dressed up nicely, had fantastic food, talked about our life, our future and the time we have been apart, drank red wine and Italian grappa and I felt so happy and thankful for everything we have achieved and for being in such an amazing relationship.

Time to move on

I am going to visit Fiancé for a few days, leaving today. This will be the last weekend in our German home and the end of not-living-together. At the end of the week he will move to our first shared home. I am really looking forward to that, but somehow it is also a little sad to leave the old place and the city. I finished my dissertation in that apartment and I lived in the city for months at a time during the last three years of my PhD. Last year around this time I was moving out of my apartment in grad school city after a succesful defense, leaving all my friends and twelve years of my life behind. But for the past year I always had Fiancés place as sort of a link to our old life. Now we are really supposed to settle down for a while in new town. Although I have been there for a year now and have a good social network of people from work I still don't know anybody I would describe as real friends and I still don't feel a connection to the town. Fiancé is really excited about new town and I think it is about time I give it a real try too.