This Way to Hans Christian Andersen's House

This street art tells the tourist where Hans Christian Andersen's house is located.  A rather brilliant way of directing how to get there since this art work is a graffiti on a temporary wall where construction is being done.  Pretty soon, I'm sure the wall will be removed and so will the graffiti.  Quite frankly, the house is not that remarkable so I'm not even going to post an image of it.

HCA was a prolific writer but better known for his fairy tales like "The Ugly Ducking" and "The Little Mermaid".  The stories are channels of his life.  He was ugly.  And he was gay.

The often melancholic Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard remarks that Andersen is characterized as, “... a possibility of a personality, wrapped up in such a web of arbitrary moods and moving through an elegiac duo-decimal scale [i.e., a chromatic scale. Proceeding by semitones, and therefore including sharps as well as flats, such a scale is associated more with lament or elegy than is an ordinary diatonic scale] of almost echoless, dying tones just as easily roused as subdued, who, in order to become a personality, needs a strong life-development.”  Somebody please explain that to me.  

Hope you are enjoying your day.

Liquid Lunch at Odense

This was at Odense in Denmark.  Home to Hans Christian Andersen.  You know the guy who wrote all those fairy tales.  He was a bit of a fairy himself.  But that's another story.

Restaurant Grønttorvet.  I was surprised that the restaurant had Indian Pale Ale on tap, which I tried.  I think Rose ordered some light fruity beer.  At this time, my mind is foggy about what had taken place.  I also think we shared a salad or something because the service in Scandinavia was very slow and we had to catch our tour bus in less than half an hour.  So for the most part, our source of nutrition was the beer.  An old German guy we met in Munich told us that beer is liquid lunch.  Good enough for us for the time being.

Hope your day is going well.

Existential Thoughts in Oslo

So I have been thinking - like I always do.  Why does the sun shine brighter in Norway?  A country that has a lot of resources.  They are big agricultural producers.  They are sitting on an oil mine. The country is financially the envy of the world.  The Norwegians are one of the happiest people on earth.  Why is it that they get to enjoy all these while the rest of the world suffers.  Surely they are not religious - even though majority of people are register Lutherans but so few ever worship or visit the church.

Then you may ask: What does this post have to do with the above image?  Actually, nothing.  It's my blog so I get to post anything I want.  Heh.

Hope your day is going well.

You A'int Seen Nothin' Yet

Crazy weather in Georgetown, Texas.  It's normal from what I've been told.  It's going to get worse in the coming days.

It was late in the afternoon - closer to the evening, and the temperature was still hot, and yet it was raining, and the thunderstorm are causing the mushrooms to sprout on random places, the critters are looking for shelter.

This morning we found a lazy scorpion crawling straight to our bedroom.  It was a good three inches with its pointy pincher ready to find a soft human flesh - preferably that of a non-Texan native.  Freaked out the rest of the day.  I'm not one of those eco-activist who loves to hug trees and leave the rattle snake alone.  I mashed the scorpion to smithereens with one of my old sneakers that was laying next to it.  So now we are forced to wear shoes inside the house.

Hope you are having a wonderful day.

City of Umbrellas

In my previous post, I mentioned that Bergen is called the City of Umbrellas.  Indeed.  It rains a lot.  This image is proof of persistent rain.  No kidding.  I ended buying a raincoat to get through the rainy weather.

But the moments of intense rain is quickly forgotten when the sun breaks through and the city glows and twinkles.  As they say: get an umbrella, wear water repellent shoes, a light water repellent jacket and a good attitude looking forward the rain. Experienced Bergen-people don't leave home without their umbrellas.

Hope your day is going well.