Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Gate to Warsaw Old Town

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Warsaw’s Old Town got brick walls around it in 1339.

And again, much more recently.

The Old Town’s cobbled streets, dignified marketplace, and medieval townhouses had to be rebuilt from heaps of rubble. Nazis terror-bombed it in 1939, then dynamited much of what was left in 1944 as revenge for the Warsaw Uprising.

The Old Town was rebuilt from the rubble. Our guide’s grandfather was one of many Polish citizens who would go every night after a full day of work elsewhere to help, as a volunteer, on the reconstruction.

By 1980 the restoration was so complete that UNESCO added it to their list of World Heritage Sites.

A beautiful place, a history to inspire pride.

Warsaw Mermaid, Old Town, Warsaw, Poland

Originally uploaded by wronaphoto

…stands guard over Old Town.

Frank and I are staying instead in New Town (outside the old city walls) which was settled by upstarts in the mere 15th century.

Marya Sklodowska (better known, even with two Nobel Prizes, under her married name, Marie Curie) was born in the New Town. And the beautiful Hotel Le Regina, whose recent guests signing its Golden Book include Michael Palin (wow), John Malkovich (ooo), and the Bee Gees (really?), is also in the New Town.

It was too dark for me to take photos when we walked around today, under the expert guidance of professional Warsaw guide Malgorzata Binkowska. But wait until tomorrow!

Billie and Walter at Nobel parties

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Frank’s Aunt Billie and Uncle Walter came with us to all the Nobel fun in 2004. Now a new adventure–Uncle Walter (although, I’m sad to say, not Aunt Billie) will be joining us in Poland to visit the village where his mother was born, Babice near Cracow.

In the photo, Uncle Walter is getting ready to say something funny, as is so often true in real life. This is going to be a lot of fun! Many thanks to Adam Zielinski and to the Foundation for Polish Science for arranging this journey of discovery.

Blogging this, as so often, from yet another airport!

Arrrr, matey!

Across the wide ocean these days from my kin and crewmates, I was hoping to replace some Skyping with some skullduggery.

That is, we could team up online to chase treasure and glory in that thar new online Pirates of the Caribbean game. To demo how it works, I set up my account just last week.

I started with just “Besty”–not a misspelling so much as a family tease-name. She had battled her way up to level 3 by the time I added “Sven.” What a surprise! Low-level Sven has had more than 10 invitations (to friendship or crew); the more-skilled and longer-played Besty only got two. Invitations really help get to higher-level game play–I hadn’t realized how much Besty was missing out on.

Scurvy dogs! What part of “avatar” don’t pirates understand?

Sun god Ra on Kon-Tiki sail

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

…in a balsa raft with the sun god on your sail.

Talk about adventure! And Kon-Tiki was an adventure my father talked about, with enormous enthusiasm.

And, from all the books my father urged me to read in my pre-teen years, Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl wrote two of the ones I loved best.

So visiting Oslo’s Kon-Tiki Museum with Frank was both sweet and sad. It was sweet when I thought how my father would have loved to be there with us. It was sad when I added this to oh-so-many adventures I’d love to have shared with him, in all the years since he died.

Here’s what I still share with him–sailing the paths of the universe with every one of your friends, every one of the people who have shaped your life. Some of them, when you are lucky, will be by your side. All of them, always, will shape your future adventures.

Not even Kon-Tiki’s sun god could be more powerful.

Happy in the Asylet

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

This Oslo restaurant used to be a home for orphans (“asylet“) but now they serve codfish, moose (“elg”), and ice cream with hot berry sauce.

I also enjoyed the conversation where I learned quite a few new things including that Dirac liked to spend time reading Sanskrit, that when Pauli called weapons work the “böse Hinterseite” of science that translates from German as the “evil backside” and that Norway’s moose season comes in October.

If any of these new facts of mine are things I heard wrong, blame the house red wine, which was almost as good as the elg.

Fokke, I still think life is worth living

Originally uploaded by katzarella

… and I mean that in a good way.

Rough travel day yesterday, though Stockholm to Oslo flight takes only an hour.

I never have trouble falling asleep at bedtime, but sometimes a hotel room wakes me up long before dawn. Getting up to “check email” or news ends up in surfing webstuff for braindead hours and spending the day afterward in zombie mode.

Two things often work, in case you’re ever in the same boat.

First, silly peaceful alphabet games as I lie in bed with my eyes shut, trying to sleep. My favorite is “Alabaster Botticelli”–four-syllable words such that syllables one and three start with two successive alphabet letters. I don’t have the whole sequence yet–no, no, don’t tell me!–but I like to keep trying. If that gets frustrating, thinking up a tree or flower name for every letter works just as well.

Second, if that doesn’t work, some work reading (hard-copy only) or writing (on paper) relaxes me with the feeling I’m being productive but doesn’t galvanize bits of me into let’s-do-this-for hours.

Last night I exhausted (haha) both methods in sequence–but still did not get enough hours of zzzz. This cat, however, has just given me a truly great idea…

Elf lessons!

Starting in April … and only in northern Finland … there’s now one-year vocational course in elfing! (Will Orlando Bloom be teaching it? One can but dream.)

If the course includes blonde hair and archery skills, I’m there!

Thanks to always-improbable Ig-nateer Marc Abrahams for yet another truly informative email, and to Shamus Young for the great webcomic seen here, “DM of the Rings.”

Outdoors playing with cold wet leaves

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Today’s NYT says that even monkeys “rationalize” past decisions–so that, for example, expressing mild preference for blue candy rather than red quickly transforms itself into strong preference for those blue candies.

In my American middle-class life, my car is blue candy. It’s so easy to drive to the grocery store instead of walking, to drive into Boston instead of taking the subway, even to drive the kilometer to Harvard Square if I know Harvard Book Store will tempt me to buy lots of books.

Living in Stockholm, my car got turned into red candy. Parking is expensive. Buses and subways go everywhere, and go there often. Besides, walking and biking and busing are what people do here. So the one-plus kilometer walk back and forth to work, time spent outside in every kind of weather, is no longer an “inconvenience” to avoid, it’s just something I do–and more-or-less enjoy.

Because I can rationalize, just like anyone else!

Reason to love Stockholm #87

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Hilarious ads in the subway.

The funniest of these three ads for Åhlens department stores is the one in the middle. Sadly, my camera flash makes it hard to see.

On a sofa with lots of Åhlens pillows (“kuddar” in Swedish, and what a nice cuddly word for a pillow that sounds to English-speaking Betsy) a sweet white-haired grandma is beaming, her teenage grandson looks wide-eyed at the DVD she got at Åhlens to watch with him…a favorite “old” movie she loved once and now wants to share … “Basic Instinct.”