Superhero in Turkey

As we say in Turkey: Merhaba!

To my great surprise I discovered that I was getting dangerously close to having nothing to do, and the weather forecast for the mountains in Norway where I'd like to go hiking wasn't looking good either. So there was only one thing to do, and I did it.

On Thursday I'll go to Istanbul, a major city, yet not the capital, in the homeland of Santa Claus. What I'm going to do there exactly is in the blue for now, but my travel philosophy is that what I don't know will probably benefit me. Maybe I'll just do a tour of places with intriguing names. If so, Batman in south-eastern Turkey is most likely to be on my itinerary!

The tourist-infested parts of Turkey are mighty warm right now, so to find a more accommodating climate I'll probably seek out elevated places. Turkey has mountains in all sizes up to and beyond 5000 metres of height, so I'm sure I'll find somewhere that suits me.

To prepare for my trip, which I have planned for hours now, I have learned not to draw cartoons, and I've made some feeble attempts at learning Turkish. It's not easy! The only word in that language that I have yet found to be anywhere near anything in other languages is "greyfurt". And even that's not very close to grapefruit, come to think of it.

Still, I'm pretty sure I'll be fine. If so, I'll be back in Norway by the end of August.

Güle güle!

Ayıgiller / Bear / Bjørn

Cold and sunny

After having suffered through a long week with temperatures around 30 degrees centigrades, further amplified by having some Polish construction workers wrapping my house in some kind of tin foil, I decided to travel north at least until wearing a jumper would be necessary.

As it happens, a jumper was required just as I came to Brønnøysund, where I am fortunate enough to have parents I can visit. So I did. To keep them alive and healthy (although they may suspect otherwise), I forced them to go on hikes in the wild pretty much every day.

The result is a number of photos, mainly from the mountains of Northern Norway. These mountains are lower than they may look like in the photos. Trees don't climb very high up the hills of Northern Norway. But they do look nice!

I have a month of summer vacation left, but I still don't know what to spend it on. Turkey is high on my list, but so are the temperatures there and the price of flights to the country. I'm probably better off waiting a bit before going. And if there's anything I've got more than enough of, apart from chocolate, navel fluff (although not as bad as this guy), cat fur on the underside of my sofa, a clean conscience, money and vaccines, it's time!

Now I'll just have to find something useful and/or fun to do in the meantime...