Actually, no one else really cares, but there you go.

A 18-year-old girl from Norway is officially Europe's best poker player. Yay. We sponsored the event, so I guess I'm more interested in it than most other people.

And I watched the World's Greatest Elvis or whatever tonight, just because a Norwegian was in it. And I quite ashamedly have to admit that I spontaneously shouted "YES" and started applauding when Kjell Elvis went to the finals. Thank god for that, as he was quite rubbish in last week's The Weakest Link (the poor guy speaks horrible English).

All we need now is for the Norwegian ladies to take home the soccer World Cup. Fingers crossed!

I also watched Ant and Dec's Saturday Takeaway and In It to Win It (Dale's back! He/hey!) tonight. So shoot me.

My trip to Norway was nice; I fell in love with Oslo again, and I must say it's a real treat going there when you've become used to the very noisy, crowded, dirty and run-down city of London. It was even more expensive when last I was there, though. And unfortunately for me, some of the things I bought...ok, MOST of the things I bought, in fact, are only available in Scandinavia, so I sort of had to pay through my nose. And then airport security seized my mustard! The bastards! ;-) I hadn't even considered it to be fluid, so shame on me.

The plays were very good. Arsenic and Old Lace had a quite modern take when it comes to theatricality, and it was of course great fun to see Johannes Joner and Anders Hatlo together on stage again. I still owe them a lot for prolonging my life by several years, I'm sure, after having watched Mysteriet Myrna Vep and Sound of Musvik (too) many times. Breaking the Waves had a modern feel as well, but this was much more in the same mold as the original Lars von Trier film. It got to me, and even though I know the story well, I felt quite cross there at the end, which is actually quite a feat for the actors, especially considering the fact that I was sitting at the very back of the balcony and with my shortsightedness didn't see much of their facial expressions. I had to switch seats because they had made this "interesting" set which basically obstructed the view for most of those sitting at the edge of the first few rows. So my front row seat became a back row one, not quite what I had in mind for the trip, but at least I got to see the play.

And the worst thing is that the highlight of my trip was buying a couple of DVD's I couldn't get anywhere else, and also to FINALLY make use of Torill's great Christmas present from a few years back--a gift certificate for the Oslo cinemas. So I went to see Tatt av kvinnen, a Norwegian film I'm sure they won't screen here other than in arty-farty-way-too-expensive indie cinemas, even though it may become Norway's Oscar contender for next year. I also got to spend seven hours at Gardermoen Airport, which was quite excruciatingly tedious and should not be attempted by anyone EVER! And THEN the plane didn't leave until 50 minutes after the scheduled time of take-off. Since I had checked in four hours before the plane was scheduled to leave, I was also without my quite vital nasal spray, as for some reason they didn't seem to sell anything even remotely like a nasal spray anywhere within the secured zone, so by the time of landing I thought my ear drums were going to explode. The upside was that the plane had caught some tail-wind and thus we didn't land long after the scheduled time. In addition to this, the passport control didn't take more than 5-10 minutes--the queue started moving just after the pessimistic guy behind me had hung up on his wife, complaining about "the joke of a passport control" and how his "ETA now seemed closer to 11 PM than 10". This complaint started literally a minute after getting into the queue, so not a very patient man. Then I had some luck with the luggage as it arrived one minute, tops, after I got through the passport control. And my nose was finally free! All in all a nice trip.

I would also recommend the Thon Hotel Spectrum for a budget stay in Oslo. Well-kept, good service, clean, and they had free internet access downstairs and cable in the room. I even got to see a film I hadn't seen before! Amazing!

Labels: anders hatlo, dennis storhøi, film, Norway, personal, theatre, TV