Selfmade whisky tasting

We cycled (directly) past only two breweries this summer, the first of which was Glenglassaugh. They didn’t do tastings, but sold small bottles in their shop, so we decided to make our own tasting on their front step.

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First, deciding which to taste.

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We chose that box that had three different types of whisky.

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We borrowed glasses and a water pipette and sat down in the sun.

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I was working very hard dividing tiny bottles on five people.

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It was a tiny bit difficult doing some of the steep hills later that day, so we all decided that beer would be enough while cycling, whisky was maybe too much.

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Globetrotter

Jeg er en globetrotter. Jeg har i hvert fall vært i flere land enn jeg er gammel. Selv før interrail, så har jeg egentlig vært i et nytt land hvert år i ganske mange år nå. Lista mi akkurat nå er som følger:

  1. Norge
  2. Sverige
  3. Danmark
  4. Island
  5. Storbritannia
  6. Irland
  7. Estland
  8. Latvia
  9. Tyskland
  10. Nederland
  11. Belgia
  12. Frankrike
  13. Spania
  14. Italia
  15. Sveits
  16. Østerrike
  17. Tsjekkia
  18. Slovakia
  19. Ungarn
  20. Romania
  21. Bulgaria
  22. Kroatia
  23. Montenegro
  24. Tyrkia
  25. Malta
  26. Tunisia
  27. Egypt
  28. USA (+ Puerto Rico)
  29. Australia
  30. New Zealand
  31. Singapore
  32. Thailand
  33. Sør-Korea

Jeg er ganske fornøyd med lista mi. Jeg er jo bare 27 år, så jeg ligger 6 land i forkant, det er fint. Jeg var i 4 nye land på interrailen; Tsjekkia, Slovakia, Bulgaria og Tyrkia. Jeg har ennå ikke vært i Hellas og knapt vært utenfor Europa. Jeg har ennå ikke vært i Sør-Amerika eller Afrika sør for Sahara, men det kommer nok. Og så begynner Norwegian å fly direkte til Karibien i vinter, det blir bra.

Noen land jeg vil til:

  • Brasil
  • Venezuela
  • Sør-Afrika
  • Bali (Indonesia)

Det som gjør at jeg vil reise steder er for det meste mat og natur. Dvs spennende, god og annerledes mat og variert og annerledes natur. Jeg vil oppleve nye ting og lære mer om verden når jeg reiser. Det er lenge siden jeg reiste bare for å gjøre ingenting.

Pride in Istanbul

While in Istanbul we happend over the Istanbul pride parade. First we didn’t know what was happening. Just a lot of people and police standing around.

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Then we weren’t alowed to go down the street we wanted to because of all the police with guns and shields. So we went down the next street.
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There were a lot of people and we started to see rainbow coloured  flags, so I realised it had to be pride (as it had been in Oslo the day before). But we were hungry, so we sat down for lunch.
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A lot of people walked past the cafe and I took teir pictures.
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Sometimes parts of the parade walked past us, but we didn’t really understand why. Parades are usually best when it is one big one, not many small ones.
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Most people were happy and determined.
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Then suddenly people started running, tear gas flowed through the window of our cafe and police in gas masks walked past. Not something I see often, so it was a little bit scary and exhiting at the same time.
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News photographers and other important people were also walking around.
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A lot of police. We wondered why there was so much police, there were no people who were violent that we could see.
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Then we had finished lunch and were headed to the spa, so we had to follow all the people for a while.
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Then I had to argue my way through this police line, because we really needed to go down this road. And the police could see that I was just a tourist and let me through. Yay, tourist privilege…
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Just after we had passed the police line, a big water cannon truck hit everyone, including the police in the line. I am happy we missed that.
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We passed a lot of these people, with those red wests. Looks like their from the red cross, but it says police, so?
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Further down the street we found groups of young people who were part of pride. I really like this girl who got a pride flag made into a tear gas mask over her shawl.
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When we arrived at the spa, we didn’t have enough cash, so we had to go out in the crazy again to get more.
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We found more police, more people and some cash.
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We also found a small arm of the parade.
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You can see that very few people were dressed “fabuously”, I think it was just crazy enough to walk in the parade with slogans in Istanbul pride.
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The next day we went back to Norway and then I read that the pride parade had in fact not been allowed that year, for no good reason and what we were seeng was all the people who walked the parade anyway. Very interesting to see the heavy police presence and how the Turkish government is dealing with all the tumults in the country lately. This week they started fighting the ISIS and the PKK and it seems like they are just going to fight everybody instead of trying to be open. Anywhay, it was a dramatic few hours.

Mák – Michelin mentioned in Budapest

While in Budapest, we were lucky to find Mák, a Michelin mentioned restaurant just around the corner from where we stayed. We ordered the full tasting menu with the wine menu and it was glorious. We only had Hungarian wine and it was all so wonderful and tasty and complex that we are now on a constant hunt for more (almost nothing to find in Norway) and we need to go back to Hungary for more wine tasting. So, the food was wonderful, sort of based on traditional Hungarian food, but with that magnificent twist that you need to be mentioned by Michelin.

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It is a fancy restaurant when even the butter is fancy. I didn’t note down all the dishes, I’m sorry.

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I think this was a clear calf soup.
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I think this was mussels and asparagus.
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This was pea soup.
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This fish was the best dish of them all. Gah.
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This meat was so tender and what you see a traditional cabbage roll here too.
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This was a sorbet with a shaved ice sort of consistency.
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The dessert was really good, but tasted a lot like a traditional cake.
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The last coffie and minor bites of the dinner.
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After this dinner we went out to a super cool bar and had a blast (it got late).

Peters house on the hill

One night on our cycling trip we stayed with Peter, who I had found trhough Warmshowers. I didn’t know that he lived in a magnificent house with his family, that he was an artist or that to stay there would be such an experience.

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Karl, Erik and I stayed in “the poolhouse”, a house built on stilts in the garden. It was made entirely of windows and it felt like sleeping in a tree house without walls.

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There were beautiful bouquets from the garden everywhere.

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And small tables with crystal- and glassware.

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Our view of the main house (from 1711).

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We had a monkey puzzle (the tree) just outside our window.

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The was no grass at the back of the house, only flowers.

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That is the entrance to the kitchen.

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And this the way into the green house. We had dinner there, among all the flowers.

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All the china was stacked in the window sill, as the cupboards were full of antiques.

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They had an old coal stove for cooking.

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A gas one too. And the working bench was marble.

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There were clocks and old boxes everywhere.

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They barely had any electricity, but there were lamps everywhere. None of them worked. But there were flowers.

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The view from the kitchen sink.

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My new favorite china (sorry, pinstripe).

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The second bathroom was just a nook in the hall, with a grandfather clock and a mirror.

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There was a lead stained glass in the roof of the main stair case.

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And art (on account of the three artists in the house) and an insane amopunt of lamps, not considering the lack of electrisity.

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There was so much that I wish I could have brought home, this chair, for instance and the large red and white painting further up…

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There were multiple sofa groups in one room.

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That window, doe.

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Of course they had a large collection of boxes too.

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There vere rugs and blankets everywhere.

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And pillows.

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Mom and dad could see the see from their room.

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How do you manage to buy so many lamps?

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Love this one, though. And they made the painting themselves, ironically 🙂

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The main bathroom was hand painted by Peter’s mum. Beautiful, but the bathtub was without a shower. Unpractical when you have been cycling.

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I snapped these pictures the morning before we left for Edinburgh, I wish I could have stayed longer just to have shown you the rest of it.

The Village museum in Bucarest, Romania

We went quite overboard at the village museum in Bucarest. It is an outdoor ethnographic museum in one of the large parks in the city and consists of over 200 historic buildings. They all had perfect gardens and looked like there vere still people living in them. We spent hours peeking into windows, as you can see from the number of pictures. I really loved the colourful textiles and that they not only had houses, but also barns and wells.

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Golden treasures in Sofia

Bulgaria is the country that has had the longest human settlement in Europe and has a rich arcaeological history. The archaeological museum has a very interesting exhibition from the earliest settlements and up to the written word, including rich pottery and metal work. There is one farm (Tell Karanovo) that has produces incredible amounts of artefacts.

The richest prehistoric collection in the Museum from Tell Karanovo, Nova Zagora region, excavated from 1946 to 1957, is the highlight of this section. Tell Karanovo produced artifacts from almost all prehistoric periods, Early and Late Neolithic, Early and Late Chalcolithic, and Early Bronze Age. The exhibits from Tell Karanovo illustrate the basic prehistoric periods with emphasis upon the development and the typology of the ceramics as a ground for working up the chronology. The chronology of this tell, where archaeological research continues even nowadays, is the ground for the chronology of South-Eastern Europe. Rich collection of tools from the Neolithic and the Chalcolitic layer of the same tell are also on display. Thus the section provides valuable information necessary for students and specialists in Prehistory. Various ritual artifacts of Tell Karanovo collection are distinguished in two chronological groups, Neolithic and Chalcolitic. Unique anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines, a stamp with inscribed pre-written signs, small ceramic altars and other ritual artifacts are on display in the cases.

There were treasures from Roman times and earlier. As a Norwegian I was very impressed with how low there have been human settlements here and how rich their societies were.

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Praha (1)

I god gammel ånd har jeg plukket ut noen bilder fra første dagen på #kormerail, Praha. Vi ankom tidlig og det var supervarmt. Begge bagene er bryllupsgaver vi allerede har brukt mye.

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Første måltid ble italiensk. Nam, nam, nam. Trenger man egentlig mer enn brød, olivenolje og rosevin? (ja, pasta er digg)

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Vi gikk til torget i gamlebyen. Fargerikt og travelt.

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Segwaytours var veldig populært. Men var man ikke guide måtte man ha på hjelm..

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Ett av kanskje tre bilder med oss begge på…

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Vakter ser mye hyggeligere ut i lyseblått.

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Vi dro opp på skottet (et must) sammen med alle de abndre turistene.

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Så basilikaen.

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Drakk øl på torget.

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Sa hei til St. Georg (Erik måtte obbe litt med hvilken hånd som var riktig for speiderhilsen)

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Kirka er fra tidlig 1900-tall og glassmaleriene er art deco, utrolig kult.

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Den gyldne veien inne på slottsområdet, ganske trangt og nusselig.

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Titt tei!

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Det begynte å styrtregne, så vi spiste tremat for å ha noe å gjøre.

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Til middag ble det tradisjonelt tsjekkisk, kjøtt, saus og “dumplings” som egentlig smakte som hvetebolle.

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Til slutt var vi innom mikrobryggeriet Lókal. De hadde krysselister (veldig Samfundet) og Erik skilte seg ut som lite manne-mannete som bestile små øl.

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Men de hadde øltanker under disken da, det var fint.

Snart er bildene ute på bilder.korme.no 🙂