![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaThis got long, so I will break it into chapters:
Friday morning I took it easy, relaxed, ate yummy food (left over bread cooked into French toast, but with chopped spinach in it), re-packed my bag, and finally left the apartment around noon to catch the bus to the city center. I briefly considered taking the “hop on hop off” bus tour towards the train station, but the loop direction goes the long way from where the city bus dropped me off, and I decided I would rather do the 40 minute walk directly to the station, than take the bus first the wrong way and then loop back. This got me to the station quite early for my train, which gave me a chance to eat some more before Aidan, the local SCA guy I was to travel with, arrived. He and I had a very nice trip out to the event site, with much enjoyable conversation. We were (as planned) the first on site, so we set up the SCA signs on the way in.
Much to his surprise, the site owners weren’t ready for us when we arrived. The main hall is used as a gym most of the time, but when the SCA rents it they move all of the fitness machines to the back of the hall, to give us room for feasting tables. Apparently this is normally done before the first SCA person arrives on site, but this time there were still people working out! They assured us that they would get it clean and ready very quickly, and they did. The next surprise was upstairs, where the hallway was filled with old bunk bed frames in very bad shape waiting to go out, and there was a guy working in the rooms as fast as he could to put together the replacement frames (I am guessing it was one of those “it always takes longer than you think kind of days for the poor guy”. So Aidan and I helped out by carrying out the old frames and then getting started on cleaning the kitchen (along with the others in the autocrat group, who arrived only shortly after us). The kitchen was not left in a very good state by the last folk, but it didn’t take us long to set it to rights, so that they could start cooking the evening meal. Then I put on a costume and went downstairs and helped out with setting up the hall.
The SCA group there has tons of banners, so we covered the room with them. We hung all the long ones from a rope in front of the exercise equipment so that it didn’t show (and I also hung cloths on individual machines, so that they wouldn’t show through gaps between the banners), and the smaller ones along all the walls, covering (or removing) the modern “art” (mostly fitness posters). Then we set up the tables and unpacked and set out all the candle holders etc.
By the time the hall was ready there were already a fair few people there, and I spent the rest of the evening happily talking with people, most of whom I hadn’t met before. A surprising number of them, like me, have moved often and don’t really know what to answer when people ask “where do you come from?”
I went to bed a bit after midnight on Friday (many stayed up later, but I wanted to be awake for the morning’s classes).
Saturday morning breakfast was seriously medieval—all foods (indeed for the whole weekend) from the same Medieval German recipe manuscript, and the beverages included “small beer” and “small cider” (both typical medieval beverages—beer or cider watered down to a light, but still flavourfull (so they tell me, I didn’t taste them) beverage that was normal for breakfast). They did also offer two beverages (tea and coffee) that “comes from some centuries after when I was born, so I don’t know what they are” said the head cook.
I didn’t try all of the breakfast options (being a vegetarian I didn’t eat the meat options, and not eating things containing wine or vinegar I didn’t try the wine porridge), but the egg “sausages” (made by cooking scrambled eggs and then mixing them with raw egg and spinach and flour and then shaping them into sausage shapes and frying them in butter till cooked through) and the pasta (make an egg noodle dough, roll it out with almond flour, then cook it in milk till the milk is absorbed, then fry it in butter) were both really yummy! (Of course, one can’t go wrong with butter, eggs, flour, and spinach if one is feeding me.)
After breakfast the amazing Kaarina did her course in analyzing medieval music styles (to better be able to write songs and music in a specific period style, something she loves to do). Then we paused her course so that the improvisation class could happen on time (breakfast went over the planned time, but since it was a laid-back event, no one cared). I didn’t attend that class, which was held in a different building, but the ones who went said it was much fun. The teacher is one of Ireland’s leading improvisation artists and had never been to an SCA event before. He stayed for the midafternoon meal, and is said to have enjoyed it (I didn’t actually meet the man myself, since I was at a table on the other side of the hall for the meal).
The second half of Kaarina’s class was singing period songs. There were a number of ladies who already have a large number of period songs they know, but a number of the ones Kaarina had chosen for the class were new to them, so we had a great mix of songs we had to work on, and songs we could just sing. Oddly, only people who happen to be female attended that class. We got to one song where it would have been especially nice to have someone sing the bass part, and we asked the men paying a board game nearby, and they all said they don’t sing. Just then the Prince walked into the room, so I asked him if he sings. He does, and he happened to know that song already, so he came over and we were able to just sing the song straight away (having the bass really helped—we had been building up that one, first everyone singing the melody, then breaking off a few on the alto part, then adding a few on the tenor…). Sadly, his Highness had only just gotten over a bad cold, so he felt that one song was his limit for the day, but it was nice of him to join for that much.
That midafternoon meal was one of the event highlights for me—a chance to eat with friends, at a time when I am hungry! Most of the recipes from that part of the feast were meat based, so the kitchen cooked up a special plate of cooked grated carrots, mushrooms, and roasted asparagus and brocclini. Yum! (Well, I didn’t eat the mushrooms myself, but they were easy to pick out.) There was so much on that plate that after I had eaten as much as I wanted I took the plate around to the other tables until all the veg had been taken. That part of the feast didn’t really have any starch based dishes, so after everything had been served I asked the head cook if there was any of the pasta left over from breakfast, admitting that since I hadn’t eaten any of the meat (I think I was the only vegetarian on site) I needed a bit of starch to fill me up. He told me where in the fridge to find the pasta, and suggested that I put it in a bowl with more milk and microwave it. That worked really well, yum!
The Prince and Princess did a court during the midafternoon meal, and all of the awards they presented were very popular. Two of the award scrolls they presented were of extraordinary beauty (and Drachenwald scrolls are always really lovely), and after presenting them, they announced that they were also awarding the scribe admittance into a Principality Arts Order (the name of which I have already forgotten). Apparently the woman who made them has moved to Vancouver BC, where she is working as a special effects artist, making many different sorts of things, including calligraphed and illuminated manuscripts as needed. As a result she is busy enough that she isn’t really doing SCA with An Tir, nor is she making scrolls as gifts for anyone other than close friends (both recipients are such good friends that every image in the manuscripts had meaning for them), since she is enjoying being paid for such work.
I really enjoyed all of the music, good company, and progress on the embroidery and nålbinding projects I had brought with me. However, by 21:00 I was starting to feel like I had had enough of social time and I retreated to my room and checked messages and did my duolingo Swedish practice for the day. I had considered heading back downstairs after the break and spending the rest of the evening at the event, but around then my legs started cramping up a bit, and I was kinda tired, so I used the shower (I forgot to mention that each room had, in addition to beds for three people, its own private bathroom with toilet, sink and shower!) and went to sleep by 22:30, thereby missing the evening meal, and the "toasts" (which, as one of the higher ranking people on site, I would have been expected to be giving one of).
On Sunday morning I woke up at 07:30 (which would have been 06:30 if Europe hadn’t switched to Daylight savings this weekend), ate a quick breakfast, and went out for a half an hour walk in the misty morning. Then I packed up my stuff and started helping put the hall back together. All of us visitors from Sweden and Finland (five in total) pitched in with cleaning and packing up event stuff for much of the morning. Late in the morning, after I had packed all of the banners into their box, I realized I hadn’t seen any of the other Northern Invaders in a while, and went looking. Kaarina’s luggage was gone, and there was no sign of them in the building! I asked, and was told that they had already started walking to the train station, so I sent them a message, and they were still making their way slowly (T’s back needs her to take it gentle), so I hurried to catch up with them, and we took the train back to Dublin, where we left our luggage at a B&B and found a restaurant for “lunch” (the food was served at 14:44, so I considered it “dinner”). Everyone else was very happy with the food, but I, who am never so fond of restaurants, didn’t become a convert this time either. There was very little on the menu that I would consider putting into my mouth at all, so I opted for a vegetable pizza (after asking what was on it, and asking them to not give me the mushrooms). The pizza dough was described as being made fresh on premises, and baked in a wood fired stove. Sadly, while two of the three pizzas we ordered (the boys ordered fish in chips, but we girls got pizza) came out with crusts baked to a perfect pale just-golden colour, the third, mine, was over cooked and had dark black spots on the crust. They had also pre-grilled the vegetables before putting them on the pizza, so they were a bit over-cooked as well. Every time I am forced by circumstances to eat restaurant food I am reminded, yet again, how very much I love my own cooking!
After that meal T & E went off to see the Book of Kells before their flight, and the three of us went to pick up our luggage and check into the hotel (which meant walking first back most of the way to the train station, and then retracing our steps past the restaurant and some blocks further to the hotel, so my exercise log for the day is looking pretty good). We agreed to relax for an hour and then head back out together, so Erhart went to his room and Kaarina and I went to ours, where she took a bath, and I headed back out on a quest for desert (I had noticed on our way out the door that the restaurant had had on display a desert of some sort of white base (panna cotta?) with a layer of mixed berries on top that looked really good, and I wanted something like that). I asked at the front desk on my way back out and she suggested that I head further down the main street towards The Spire, as there were a couple of gelato places. I did, and stopped at the first one I came to. It wasn’t quite what I was hungry for, but it was nearly 17:00, and I didn’t know how much longer I would even be hungry, and I wanted to get back to the room on time to check messages before heading out, so I had a gelato anyway. Those of you who were wondering “what, gelato in Ireland?” will not be surprised to hear that while ok, it was nowhere near as good as even the worst gelato I have had in Italy. But it fulfilled the criteria of available just then so I could get back to the room.
After Kaarina was out of the tub and dressed we checked in for our flights the next morning (so that we could get seats together), and were nearly done with that when Erhart arrived. Then we went out to find a pub, since they both wanted to drink a whisky while in Ireland. We went first to the Temple Bar district, but those pubs were already (18:00 on a Sunday) packed to bursting, and really, really noisy, so we walked our way back towards the main street, checking out various pubs, and finally found one that only had a few people in it (and none at all in the room we choose to sit in), but was playing 1980’s music at a volume that was just loud enough to be able to hear the words if one pays attention, but quiet enough not to interfere with conversation. I sat at the table with our stuff while the went to the bar and soon came back with one beer and one whisky for each of them, and one each glass of water for me and Kaarina. They were both very happy with their beer choices (hers was sweeter, his was thicker and more bitter), and she was truly delighted with her whisky. She couldn’t resist the name, “Writer’s Tears”, so had to try it, and it turns out to be quite nice. I smelled all of their drinks, but her whisky smelled so nice I actually took a very tiny taste (just a drop or two to coat the tip of my tongue), and it even tasted pleasant. I think it would make an amazing banana flambé.
After that we walked some blocks to another pub, which we had been told would have a music session, and, in fact, they did. We managed to work our way through the crowd to where the musicians were, and soon after one of the stools opened up, so I sat down and happily worked on nålbinding, enjoying the Irish music for about 45 minutes, till I started feeling too tired to stay out. The others were content to stay out, so I went back to the room on my own, checked messages, did yoga, and was in bed by 22:50.
Of course, since I knew we needed to leave at 07:00 the next morning I kept waking up to look at my phone to see what time it was (though I never heard Kaarina come in, around midnight). At the 04:30 time check I told myself that if I woke again before 06:00 I was going to go to the gym. I did, so I did, getting in a quick 20 minute workout that finished at 6:05, which meant that I had plenty of time to shower and pack my things back up.
We caught the airport bus to the terminal. I was flying carry-on only, so I went straight to security while Kaarina got into line to check her luggage. After security I checked the duty-free shop to determine that, yes, they do carry Writer’s Tears, so I sent her a message with the good news and re-filled my water and put the toiletries back into the luggage, etc. I met up with her as she got through security and we bought her whisky and went to a café for breakfast (porridge, and, for once, I had no complaints about the food) before heading to our gate.
We both went to sleep pretty much as soon as we boarded, and managed to sleep for about 30 minutes before we even took off. But then we chatted for most of the flight, which meant I was tired again by the time we reached Helsinki. My plan was to find someplace to sleep first (or perhaps get a massage), and then find something for lunch before my flight to Kemi. It was a good plan. I would have loved to have accomplished it.
The Helsinki airport is one of those where one takes a bus from the plane to the terminal. The wind was blowing, so as we stood there on the bus, waiting for the last of the folk to get off the plane, my arms were getting quite cold, and I was wishing I had put on my nice blue Viking coat, instead of just holding it in my arms. I considered switching it to tossed over my shoulders, since there wasn’t really room to take off my backpack, but I didn’t, and kept holding it in my hands. Once we reached the building we took the escalator up the stairs, I hugged her goodbye and she headed to luggage claim, and I went towards the transfer terminal. Of course I paused in a loo soon after we went our separate ways, and then resumed walking. Very soon thereafter I realized that I no longer had my coat in my hands. I went back to the loo, no coat there. Went back to where I had entered the building, no coat there. I asked at the Finnair transfer desk, and they gave me the number for lost and found and also called the bus drivers of the two busses they use, neither of them had the coat either.
I tried calling the lost and found number, but they explained that the people who collect the lost and found don’t bring it to their office until the next morning at the earliest, which would be much too late to take with me. By this time more than an hour had elapsed (there was a delay before the bus drivers could call back with info), and it was already 17:00. So I went on through customs to find my gate and then get some food. The restaurants and cafés on that side of customs didn’t have anything tempting, so instead I bought a package of coffee cheese (the best juustuo ever!) and asked one of the cafés if they would be kind enough to sell me just one tomato instead of a sandwich. They did (for only 1€), and I happily had my cheese and tomato. Then I bought a pack of small rye “crisps” and a pack of peanuts and went to the gate. I ate a handful of each before boarding the plane, took a nap, and then ate the rest of the peanuts before we landed at the mid-way to Kemi stop (I never did hear the name of the place). After Kemi the guy sitting next to me moved across the aisle, and I lay down on the two seats and got one more nap before we landed.
Much to my delight the weather in Kemi had been just perfect so that I had no frost to scrape off my window (good thing too, as I only had sweaters and no coat!) before driving. I stopped at the grocery store in Haparanda to pick up a few things to eat this week, and made it home by 22:00. I was tempted to just do my yoga and go straight to bed, but thought it would be wise to check messages first.
Pretty much as soon as I opened the browser I got a message from my step sister in a group chat to we out of the US sisters, letting us know that mom was in the hospital. Apparently she has been visiting Amber in San Francisco for the past 4 or 5 days, and her health was fine. However, on her last night in town Amber woke up at 03:00 hearing mom groan, and went to check on her. She wasn’t able to rouse mom, so she called 911 and they took her straight in. She hadn’t brought her cpap machine with her this trip, but instead brought “a small nose thing she bought on the internet” . Amber told us that “She has some sort of infection and was vomiting last night but must have swallowed some of it. They diagnosed her with pneumonia and an oxygen deficit”.
The doctors were worried enough at first that Amber called Beth straight away, and Beth took (one of?) the next flight(s) down from Seattle. When Amber wrote at 22:00 my time (13:00 their time) it wasn’t looking so bad, saying “She’s still not great but is able to talk and move her arms and legs. She’s flirting with the male staff...”
Since mom was awake when I heard from them I quickly got my draft of the first half of the trip off of my phone and posted and sent the girls a link so they could read it to her, but I told them that I really needed to get to bed and sleep before I could type up the rest of it, so she would have to wait. However, at that point Amber said that mom was asleep, so they would read it later. I was feeling a bit worried, so rather than doing yoga straight away I called a cousin who happened to be on line, and we chatted for a bit before he had to return to working, then I did my yoga and went to bed.
As usual, once in bed I turned internet back on on my phone and did a duolingo Swedish practice session, before going to sleep. However, I failed to turn the internet connection back of (as I usually do). Normally, even if I leave it connected I sleep right through the little vibration sound that happens when a new message arrives. However, at 02:00 I happened to hear a message come in, and it was not good news “She was doing well and flirting with the male staff, but she went downhill in the last hour. Breathing challenges and very high heart rate. They’re putting her on morphine and doing a shock treatment I think. We liked it better when it was boring early on. Lots of medical staff surrounding her now. They just threw us out of the ICU, there’s 3 pulminologists among the many people surrounding her.”
Needless to say, reading that didn’t leave me feeling like going right back to sleep, but my cousin had gotten home from work in the meantime, so I called him again, and we talked for a couple of hours, during which I got occasional worrisome updates from Amber, but as the night progressed (early evening their time) things got a tiny bit better, and the girls were permitted to see her again, though at that point she was pretty heavily sedated and sleeping. Around 04:00 I finally hung up the phone and went back to sleep for a short nap before work, waking on time to get the “we are heading home from the hospital for the night” message.
I worked from 08:30 to 16:30 and then went home, careful not to activate internet on my phone before heading home, since there would be nothing I could do if bad news had arrived, and I didn’t want to risk any reactions to news (good or bad) while I was helping the student with his analyses. That turned out to be good timing, as the girls had woken up and were on their way back to the hospital about the time I got home, and as my evening has progressed more encouraging news has arrived. They still have her hooked to a breathing tube for the time being, but Amber says “They have her sitting up! Still attached to everything but it’s good progress".
Therefore I have taken the time to type this up (just over five pages!) so that they can read it to her. However, I suspect that they will need to take it in chapters.
Friday morning I took it easy, relaxed, ate yummy food (left over bread cooked into French toast, but with chopped spinach in it), re-packed my bag, and finally left the apartment around noon to catch the bus to the city center. I briefly considered taking the “hop on hop off” bus tour towards the train station, but the loop direction goes the long way from where the city bus dropped me off, and I decided I would rather do the 40 minute walk directly to the station, than take the bus first the wrong way and then loop back. This got me to the station quite early for my train, which gave me a chance to eat some more before Aidan, the local SCA guy I was to travel with, arrived. He and I had a very nice trip out to the event site, with much enjoyable conversation. We were (as planned) the first on site, so we set up the SCA signs on the way in.
Much to his surprise, the site owners weren’t ready for us when we arrived. The main hall is used as a gym most of the time, but when the SCA rents it they move all of the fitness machines to the back of the hall, to give us room for feasting tables. Apparently this is normally done before the first SCA person arrives on site, but this time there were still people working out! They assured us that they would get it clean and ready very quickly, and they did. The next surprise was upstairs, where the hallway was filled with old bunk bed frames in very bad shape waiting to go out, and there was a guy working in the rooms as fast as he could to put together the replacement frames (I am guessing it was one of those “it always takes longer than you think kind of days for the poor guy”. So Aidan and I helped out by carrying out the old frames and then getting started on cleaning the kitchen (along with the others in the autocrat group, who arrived only shortly after us). The kitchen was not left in a very good state by the last folk, but it didn’t take us long to set it to rights, so that they could start cooking the evening meal. Then I put on a costume and went downstairs and helped out with setting up the hall.
The SCA group there has tons of banners, so we covered the room with them. We hung all the long ones from a rope in front of the exercise equipment so that it didn’t show (and I also hung cloths on individual machines, so that they wouldn’t show through gaps between the banners), and the smaller ones along all the walls, covering (or removing) the modern “art” (mostly fitness posters). Then we set up the tables and unpacked and set out all the candle holders etc.
By the time the hall was ready there were already a fair few people there, and I spent the rest of the evening happily talking with people, most of whom I hadn’t met before. A surprising number of them, like me, have moved often and don’t really know what to answer when people ask “where do you come from?”
I went to bed a bit after midnight on Friday (many stayed up later, but I wanted to be awake for the morning’s classes).
Saturday morning breakfast was seriously medieval—all foods (indeed for the whole weekend) from the same Medieval German recipe manuscript, and the beverages included “small beer” and “small cider” (both typical medieval beverages—beer or cider watered down to a light, but still flavourfull (so they tell me, I didn’t taste them) beverage that was normal for breakfast). They did also offer two beverages (tea and coffee) that “comes from some centuries after when I was born, so I don’t know what they are” said the head cook.
I didn’t try all of the breakfast options (being a vegetarian I didn’t eat the meat options, and not eating things containing wine or vinegar I didn’t try the wine porridge), but the egg “sausages” (made by cooking scrambled eggs and then mixing them with raw egg and spinach and flour and then shaping them into sausage shapes and frying them in butter till cooked through) and the pasta (make an egg noodle dough, roll it out with almond flour, then cook it in milk till the milk is absorbed, then fry it in butter) were both really yummy! (Of course, one can’t go wrong with butter, eggs, flour, and spinach if one is feeding me.)
After breakfast the amazing Kaarina did her course in analyzing medieval music styles (to better be able to write songs and music in a specific period style, something she loves to do). Then we paused her course so that the improvisation class could happen on time (breakfast went over the planned time, but since it was a laid-back event, no one cared). I didn’t attend that class, which was held in a different building, but the ones who went said it was much fun. The teacher is one of Ireland’s leading improvisation artists and had never been to an SCA event before. He stayed for the midafternoon meal, and is said to have enjoyed it (I didn’t actually meet the man myself, since I was at a table on the other side of the hall for the meal).
The second half of Kaarina’s class was singing period songs. There were a number of ladies who already have a large number of period songs they know, but a number of the ones Kaarina had chosen for the class were new to them, so we had a great mix of songs we had to work on, and songs we could just sing. Oddly, only people who happen to be female attended that class. We got to one song where it would have been especially nice to have someone sing the bass part, and we asked the men paying a board game nearby, and they all said they don’t sing. Just then the Prince walked into the room, so I asked him if he sings. He does, and he happened to know that song already, so he came over and we were able to just sing the song straight away (having the bass really helped—we had been building up that one, first everyone singing the melody, then breaking off a few on the alto part, then adding a few on the tenor…). Sadly, his Highness had only just gotten over a bad cold, so he felt that one song was his limit for the day, but it was nice of him to join for that much.
That midafternoon meal was one of the event highlights for me—a chance to eat with friends, at a time when I am hungry! Most of the recipes from that part of the feast were meat based, so the kitchen cooked up a special plate of cooked grated carrots, mushrooms, and roasted asparagus and brocclini. Yum! (Well, I didn’t eat the mushrooms myself, but they were easy to pick out.) There was so much on that plate that after I had eaten as much as I wanted I took the plate around to the other tables until all the veg had been taken. That part of the feast didn’t really have any starch based dishes, so after everything had been served I asked the head cook if there was any of the pasta left over from breakfast, admitting that since I hadn’t eaten any of the meat (I think I was the only vegetarian on site) I needed a bit of starch to fill me up. He told me where in the fridge to find the pasta, and suggested that I put it in a bowl with more milk and microwave it. That worked really well, yum!
The Prince and Princess did a court during the midafternoon meal, and all of the awards they presented were very popular. Two of the award scrolls they presented were of extraordinary beauty (and Drachenwald scrolls are always really lovely), and after presenting them, they announced that they were also awarding the scribe admittance into a Principality Arts Order (the name of which I have already forgotten). Apparently the woman who made them has moved to Vancouver BC, where she is working as a special effects artist, making many different sorts of things, including calligraphed and illuminated manuscripts as needed. As a result she is busy enough that she isn’t really doing SCA with An Tir, nor is she making scrolls as gifts for anyone other than close friends (both recipients are such good friends that every image in the manuscripts had meaning for them), since she is enjoying being paid for such work.
I really enjoyed all of the music, good company, and progress on the embroidery and nålbinding projects I had brought with me. However, by 21:00 I was starting to feel like I had had enough of social time and I retreated to my room and checked messages and did my duolingo Swedish practice for the day. I had considered heading back downstairs after the break and spending the rest of the evening at the event, but around then my legs started cramping up a bit, and I was kinda tired, so I used the shower (I forgot to mention that each room had, in addition to beds for three people, its own private bathroom with toilet, sink and shower!) and went to sleep by 22:30, thereby missing the evening meal, and the "toasts" (which, as one of the higher ranking people on site, I would have been expected to be giving one of).
On Sunday morning I woke up at 07:30 (which would have been 06:30 if Europe hadn’t switched to Daylight savings this weekend), ate a quick breakfast, and went out for a half an hour walk in the misty morning. Then I packed up my stuff and started helping put the hall back together. All of us visitors from Sweden and Finland (five in total) pitched in with cleaning and packing up event stuff for much of the morning. Late in the morning, after I had packed all of the banners into their box, I realized I hadn’t seen any of the other Northern Invaders in a while, and went looking. Kaarina’s luggage was gone, and there was no sign of them in the building! I asked, and was told that they had already started walking to the train station, so I sent them a message, and they were still making their way slowly (T’s back needs her to take it gentle), so I hurried to catch up with them, and we took the train back to Dublin, where we left our luggage at a B&B and found a restaurant for “lunch” (the food was served at 14:44, so I considered it “dinner”). Everyone else was very happy with the food, but I, who am never so fond of restaurants, didn’t become a convert this time either. There was very little on the menu that I would consider putting into my mouth at all, so I opted for a vegetable pizza (after asking what was on it, and asking them to not give me the mushrooms). The pizza dough was described as being made fresh on premises, and baked in a wood fired stove. Sadly, while two of the three pizzas we ordered (the boys ordered fish in chips, but we girls got pizza) came out with crusts baked to a perfect pale just-golden colour, the third, mine, was over cooked and had dark black spots on the crust. They had also pre-grilled the vegetables before putting them on the pizza, so they were a bit over-cooked as well. Every time I am forced by circumstances to eat restaurant food I am reminded, yet again, how very much I love my own cooking!
After that meal T & E went off to see the Book of Kells before their flight, and the three of us went to pick up our luggage and check into the hotel (which meant walking first back most of the way to the train station, and then retracing our steps past the restaurant and some blocks further to the hotel, so my exercise log for the day is looking pretty good). We agreed to relax for an hour and then head back out together, so Erhart went to his room and Kaarina and I went to ours, where she took a bath, and I headed back out on a quest for desert (I had noticed on our way out the door that the restaurant had had on display a desert of some sort of white base (panna cotta?) with a layer of mixed berries on top that looked really good, and I wanted something like that). I asked at the front desk on my way back out and she suggested that I head further down the main street towards The Spire, as there were a couple of gelato places. I did, and stopped at the first one I came to. It wasn’t quite what I was hungry for, but it was nearly 17:00, and I didn’t know how much longer I would even be hungry, and I wanted to get back to the room on time to check messages before heading out, so I had a gelato anyway. Those of you who were wondering “what, gelato in Ireland?” will not be surprised to hear that while ok, it was nowhere near as good as even the worst gelato I have had in Italy. But it fulfilled the criteria of available just then so I could get back to the room.
After Kaarina was out of the tub and dressed we checked in for our flights the next morning (so that we could get seats together), and were nearly done with that when Erhart arrived. Then we went out to find a pub, since they both wanted to drink a whisky while in Ireland. We went first to the Temple Bar district, but those pubs were already (18:00 on a Sunday) packed to bursting, and really, really noisy, so we walked our way back towards the main street, checking out various pubs, and finally found one that only had a few people in it (and none at all in the room we choose to sit in), but was playing 1980’s music at a volume that was just loud enough to be able to hear the words if one pays attention, but quiet enough not to interfere with conversation. I sat at the table with our stuff while the went to the bar and soon came back with one beer and one whisky for each of them, and one each glass of water for me and Kaarina. They were both very happy with their beer choices (hers was sweeter, his was thicker and more bitter), and she was truly delighted with her whisky. She couldn’t resist the name, “Writer’s Tears”, so had to try it, and it turns out to be quite nice. I smelled all of their drinks, but her whisky smelled so nice I actually took a very tiny taste (just a drop or two to coat the tip of my tongue), and it even tasted pleasant. I think it would make an amazing banana flambé.
After that we walked some blocks to another pub, which we had been told would have a music session, and, in fact, they did. We managed to work our way through the crowd to where the musicians were, and soon after one of the stools opened up, so I sat down and happily worked on nålbinding, enjoying the Irish music for about 45 minutes, till I started feeling too tired to stay out. The others were content to stay out, so I went back to the room on my own, checked messages, did yoga, and was in bed by 22:50.
Of course, since I knew we needed to leave at 07:00 the next morning I kept waking up to look at my phone to see what time it was (though I never heard Kaarina come in, around midnight). At the 04:30 time check I told myself that if I woke again before 06:00 I was going to go to the gym. I did, so I did, getting in a quick 20 minute workout that finished at 6:05, which meant that I had plenty of time to shower and pack my things back up.
We caught the airport bus to the terminal. I was flying carry-on only, so I went straight to security while Kaarina got into line to check her luggage. After security I checked the duty-free shop to determine that, yes, they do carry Writer’s Tears, so I sent her a message with the good news and re-filled my water and put the toiletries back into the luggage, etc. I met up with her as she got through security and we bought her whisky and went to a café for breakfast (porridge, and, for once, I had no complaints about the food) before heading to our gate.
We both went to sleep pretty much as soon as we boarded, and managed to sleep for about 30 minutes before we even took off. But then we chatted for most of the flight, which meant I was tired again by the time we reached Helsinki. My plan was to find someplace to sleep first (or perhaps get a massage), and then find something for lunch before my flight to Kemi. It was a good plan. I would have loved to have accomplished it.
The Helsinki airport is one of those where one takes a bus from the plane to the terminal. The wind was blowing, so as we stood there on the bus, waiting for the last of the folk to get off the plane, my arms were getting quite cold, and I was wishing I had put on my nice blue Viking coat, instead of just holding it in my arms. I considered switching it to tossed over my shoulders, since there wasn’t really room to take off my backpack, but I didn’t, and kept holding it in my hands. Once we reached the building we took the escalator up the stairs, I hugged her goodbye and she headed to luggage claim, and I went towards the transfer terminal. Of course I paused in a loo soon after we went our separate ways, and then resumed walking. Very soon thereafter I realized that I no longer had my coat in my hands. I went back to the loo, no coat there. Went back to where I had entered the building, no coat there. I asked at the Finnair transfer desk, and they gave me the number for lost and found and also called the bus drivers of the two busses they use, neither of them had the coat either.
I tried calling the lost and found number, but they explained that the people who collect the lost and found don’t bring it to their office until the next morning at the earliest, which would be much too late to take with me. By this time more than an hour had elapsed (there was a delay before the bus drivers could call back with info), and it was already 17:00. So I went on through customs to find my gate and then get some food. The restaurants and cafés on that side of customs didn’t have anything tempting, so instead I bought a package of coffee cheese (the best juustuo ever!) and asked one of the cafés if they would be kind enough to sell me just one tomato instead of a sandwich. They did (for only 1€), and I happily had my cheese and tomato. Then I bought a pack of small rye “crisps” and a pack of peanuts and went to the gate. I ate a handful of each before boarding the plane, took a nap, and then ate the rest of the peanuts before we landed at the mid-way to Kemi stop (I never did hear the name of the place). After Kemi the guy sitting next to me moved across the aisle, and I lay down on the two seats and got one more nap before we landed.
Much to my delight the weather in Kemi had been just perfect so that I had no frost to scrape off my window (good thing too, as I only had sweaters and no coat!) before driving. I stopped at the grocery store in Haparanda to pick up a few things to eat this week, and made it home by 22:00. I was tempted to just do my yoga and go straight to bed, but thought it would be wise to check messages first.
Pretty much as soon as I opened the browser I got a message from my step sister in a group chat to we out of the US sisters, letting us know that mom was in the hospital. Apparently she has been visiting Amber in San Francisco for the past 4 or 5 days, and her health was fine. However, on her last night in town Amber woke up at 03:00 hearing mom groan, and went to check on her. She wasn’t able to rouse mom, so she called 911 and they took her straight in. She hadn’t brought her cpap machine with her this trip, but instead brought “a small nose thing she bought on the internet” . Amber told us that “She has some sort of infection and was vomiting last night but must have swallowed some of it. They diagnosed her with pneumonia and an oxygen deficit”.
The doctors were worried enough at first that Amber called Beth straight away, and Beth took (one of?) the next flight(s) down from Seattle. When Amber wrote at 22:00 my time (13:00 their time) it wasn’t looking so bad, saying “She’s still not great but is able to talk and move her arms and legs. She’s flirting with the male staff...”
Since mom was awake when I heard from them I quickly got my draft of the first half of the trip off of my phone and posted and sent the girls a link so they could read it to her, but I told them that I really needed to get to bed and sleep before I could type up the rest of it, so she would have to wait. However, at that point Amber said that mom was asleep, so they would read it later. I was feeling a bit worried, so rather than doing yoga straight away I called a cousin who happened to be on line, and we chatted for a bit before he had to return to working, then I did my yoga and went to bed.
As usual, once in bed I turned internet back on on my phone and did a duolingo Swedish practice session, before going to sleep. However, I failed to turn the internet connection back of (as I usually do). Normally, even if I leave it connected I sleep right through the little vibration sound that happens when a new message arrives. However, at 02:00 I happened to hear a message come in, and it was not good news “She was doing well and flirting with the male staff, but she went downhill in the last hour. Breathing challenges and very high heart rate. They’re putting her on morphine and doing a shock treatment I think. We liked it better when it was boring early on. Lots of medical staff surrounding her now. They just threw us out of the ICU, there’s 3 pulminologists among the many people surrounding her.”
Needless to say, reading that didn’t leave me feeling like going right back to sleep, but my cousin had gotten home from work in the meantime, so I called him again, and we talked for a couple of hours, during which I got occasional worrisome updates from Amber, but as the night progressed (early evening their time) things got a tiny bit better, and the girls were permitted to see her again, though at that point she was pretty heavily sedated and sleeping. Around 04:00 I finally hung up the phone and went back to sleep for a short nap before work, waking on time to get the “we are heading home from the hospital for the night” message.
I worked from 08:30 to 16:30 and then went home, careful not to activate internet on my phone before heading home, since there would be nothing I could do if bad news had arrived, and I didn’t want to risk any reactions to news (good or bad) while I was helping the student with his analyses. That turned out to be good timing, as the girls had woken up and were on their way back to the hospital about the time I got home, and as my evening has progressed more encouraging news has arrived. They still have her hooked to a breathing tube for the time being, but Amber says “They have her sitting up! Still attached to everything but it’s good progress".
Therefore I have taken the time to type this up (just over five pages!) so that they can read it to her. However, I suspect that they will need to take it in chapters.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-27 11:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-28 06:16 am (UTC)I really enjoyed reading about your vent and wish that I was as good as you at writign down my travels.
/Eva
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-28 08:12 pm (UTC)