Life update
Aug. 13th, 2015 04:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12Wow, it's been a while since I've posted on LJ/Dreamwidth. Lots has been happening, though, so I have plenty of stuff to update you all about.
My mother essentially spent all of July (and the first week of August) in this part of the world. She's been visiting me annually since I moved to the UK. For this particular visit, she spent the first week in Cambridge. Matthias and I were both working, but Mum knows Cambridge quite well by now, and was able to entertain herself during the day, meeting me each evening at work to walk me home. I walk forty-five minutes to, and forty-five minutes from, work every day, and I normally do it alone, so it was nice to have some company. She even discovered a (much nicer) secret short-cut that I hadn't known existed, so now my daily walk takes me past canals, community gardens, and horses.
The week after that the two of us went on holiday to Norway. This is something we'd been talking about doing for years, but it was always complicated by either my PhD or visa situation. This year we were determined to go. We spent four days in Bergen, which was absolutely wonderful - another town that I fell in love with - and about a day-and-a-half in Oslo. It poured with rain in Bergen, which I gather is normal, but that didn't prevent us from spending one day doing an absolutely breathtaking hike from Mount Ulriken to Mount Fløyen. We're pretty tough hikers, but the terrain was a bit of a challenge, in that we had to scramble up and down mountains, dodging bogs and jumping between stepping stones. We met some great people along the hike, including a young Swiss couple who were going on and on about how expensive Norway was (Switzerland is so cheap, they said, which made us raise our eyebrows a bit), a pair of friendly middle-aged Norwegian sisters who walk the track every year, and a Finnish family whose little daughter gave us her last piece of chocolate at the top of a particularly steep hill.
Apart from more hiking, we spent our time in Bergen eating vast quantities of amazing fresh fish. The Fish Market was pretty much heaven to me.
We had been advised to catch the train between Bergen and Oslo, which was a long journey, but well worth it. The route takes you through lots of little mountain villages, and around stunning clear lakes and waterfalls. There was snow on the mountains, even though it was the middle of the northern summer.
Our Oslo time was a bit of a whirlwind tour, taking in the centre of town, a hipstery-student area, the upmarket redeveloped former docks (doesn't every harbour town have an upmarket redeveloped former dock area?), the Viking Ship Museum, and a park in the embassy area of town.
After Oslo, Mum headed back to the UK for a week working from a base in Cambridge (she's a radio journalist and always puts together at least one programme when she visits me, interviewing Cambridge- and London-based academics) and a bit of hiking in Suffolk. I flew into Germany for a weekend visit with Matthias' family and then a holiday with him in Hamburg.
Hamburg reminded me a bit of Oslo (although without the insane Norwegian food prices), in that every neighbourhood within it had a very different feel. (It also had the ubiquitous trendy upmarket redeveloped former dock area, although for some reason the Hamburg version of this was filled with shop after shop selling Persian carpets.) We managed to do a bit of everything in Hamburg, from a harbour tour to a museum exhibition on the curating and sharing of memories from the earliest days of photography until now. My highlight was probably the tour of the spectacularly over the top Rathaus, which was well worth the 4-euro price. Our tour was in German, but they also do tours in English and French, and I would highly recommend it if you're ever in Hamburg.
After Hamburg I joined Mum for a weekend in London, where we walked two stages of the Capital Ring Walk (we did Wimbledon to Richmond and Richmond to Osterley Lock - you can do them as two separate walks, but we combined them as together it was only something like 13 miles). Then it was back to Cambridge, and work. Mum stuck around for another week, and flew back to Australia last Saturday. It's been weird walking to work without her.
In extremely good news, I got my new visa, which I had applied for in March and then spent a stressful four months waiting for. It's for five years, and is a great relief to finally have in my hand, as not having a visa puts you in a kind of weird limbo. The category of visa for which I applied allows you to request your identity documents back (which is how I was able to travel to Norway and Germany), but I was extremely worried that I would have trouble at the UK border when I tried to reenter with only proof of application. In any event, it went fine, and the application was approved and sent some days later, but I'm glad to put this particular application behind me. What with gathering documents for evidence and then waiting, the whole process really took about seven months, which is long enough! When Matthias called me to say the visa had been delivered, I danced around my office!
I've been reading some truly wonderful books, and I really must do a bit of a roundup at some point, but for now, I'll leave it.
My mother essentially spent all of July (and the first week of August) in this part of the world. She's been visiting me annually since I moved to the UK. For this particular visit, she spent the first week in Cambridge. Matthias and I were both working, but Mum knows Cambridge quite well by now, and was able to entertain herself during the day, meeting me each evening at work to walk me home. I walk forty-five minutes to, and forty-five minutes from, work every day, and I normally do it alone, so it was nice to have some company. She even discovered a (much nicer) secret short-cut that I hadn't known existed, so now my daily walk takes me past canals, community gardens, and horses.
The week after that the two of us went on holiday to Norway. This is something we'd been talking about doing for years, but it was always complicated by either my PhD or visa situation. This year we were determined to go. We spent four days in Bergen, which was absolutely wonderful - another town that I fell in love with - and about a day-and-a-half in Oslo. It poured with rain in Bergen, which I gather is normal, but that didn't prevent us from spending one day doing an absolutely breathtaking hike from Mount Ulriken to Mount Fløyen. We're pretty tough hikers, but the terrain was a bit of a challenge, in that we had to scramble up and down mountains, dodging bogs and jumping between stepping stones. We met some great people along the hike, including a young Swiss couple who were going on and on about how expensive Norway was (Switzerland is so cheap, they said, which made us raise our eyebrows a bit), a pair of friendly middle-aged Norwegian sisters who walk the track every year, and a Finnish family whose little daughter gave us her last piece of chocolate at the top of a particularly steep hill.
Apart from more hiking, we spent our time in Bergen eating vast quantities of amazing fresh fish. The Fish Market was pretty much heaven to me.
We had been advised to catch the train between Bergen and Oslo, which was a long journey, but well worth it. The route takes you through lots of little mountain villages, and around stunning clear lakes and waterfalls. There was snow on the mountains, even though it was the middle of the northern summer.
Our Oslo time was a bit of a whirlwind tour, taking in the centre of town, a hipstery-student area, the upmarket redeveloped former docks (doesn't every harbour town have an upmarket redeveloped former dock area?), the Viking Ship Museum, and a park in the embassy area of town.
After Oslo, Mum headed back to the UK for a week working from a base in Cambridge (she's a radio journalist and always puts together at least one programme when she visits me, interviewing Cambridge- and London-based academics) and a bit of hiking in Suffolk. I flew into Germany for a weekend visit with Matthias' family and then a holiday with him in Hamburg.
Hamburg reminded me a bit of Oslo (although without the insane Norwegian food prices), in that every neighbourhood within it had a very different feel. (It also had the ubiquitous trendy upmarket redeveloped former dock area, although for some reason the Hamburg version of this was filled with shop after shop selling Persian carpets.) We managed to do a bit of everything in Hamburg, from a harbour tour to a museum exhibition on the curating and sharing of memories from the earliest days of photography until now. My highlight was probably the tour of the spectacularly over the top Rathaus, which was well worth the 4-euro price. Our tour was in German, but they also do tours in English and French, and I would highly recommend it if you're ever in Hamburg.
After Hamburg I joined Mum for a weekend in London, where we walked two stages of the Capital Ring Walk (we did Wimbledon to Richmond and Richmond to Osterley Lock - you can do them as two separate walks, but we combined them as together it was only something like 13 miles). Then it was back to Cambridge, and work. Mum stuck around for another week, and flew back to Australia last Saturday. It's been weird walking to work without her.
In extremely good news, I got my new visa, which I had applied for in March and then spent a stressful four months waiting for. It's for five years, and is a great relief to finally have in my hand, as not having a visa puts you in a kind of weird limbo. The category of visa for which I applied allows you to request your identity documents back (which is how I was able to travel to Norway and Germany), but I was extremely worried that I would have trouble at the UK border when I tried to reenter with only proof of application. In any event, it went fine, and the application was approved and sent some days later, but I'm glad to put this particular application behind me. What with gathering documents for evidence and then waiting, the whole process really took about seven months, which is long enough! When Matthias called me to say the visa had been delivered, I danced around my office!
I've been reading some truly wonderful books, and I really must do a bit of a roundup at some point, but for now, I'll leave it.
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no subject
Date: 2015-08-13 10:57 pm (UTC)Pics or it didn't happen :P
Yay for the visa!
no subject
Date: 2015-08-21 01:59 pm (UTC)Yay for the visa!
Thank you! (And sorry for taking so long to reply.)
In terms of photos, I don't have a smartphone, so taking photos is always a real hassle for me and involves lots of planning. I will try to remember to do so at some point.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-16 10:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-17 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-17 12:15 pm (UTC)And yay for getting your visa! I'd say dancing is the exact right reaction to that. :D
Looking forward to your book roundup; I feel like I've read enough disappointing books this year that I need something wonderful.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-17 04:30 pm (UTC)It was such a relief to get the visa, as it had been the source of much stress.
I'm not sure when I'll get the chance to write the roundup, but I'll try to do it soonish. Interestingly, I've read some really excellent books this year, and some of my summer reading in particular has been outstanding. Sorry to hear you haven't had such luck.