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Solfrid Cristin TAC 2012 Team Sputnik | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 209 of 270 29 July 2012 at 2:11am | IP Logged | ||
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Iiik - I have to get up in 4 hours to catch a flight to Helsinki tomorrow. I have had another amazing day in
Iceland, but I will have to give you that update later. But Iceland: I will be back!!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 210 of 270 06 August 2012 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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LAST DAYS ON ICELAND
So – at my last update I was going to finish my story about my stay at Iceland. The last day was dedicated to the real reason for my visit to Island: Roses. And I must admit that when we planned on going there, my thoughts were: Ok, they won’t have any interesting roses or any real gardens in the European sense, but we’ll go there anyway, to show solidarity with our Icelandic sister organization and to see a bit of the country. Boy, was I wrong. We visited 6 gardens in one day, one more exquisite than the other. And not only did we see roses, we even saw palm trees. Granted, they were kept indoors in the winter, but even so. The whole thing was most impressive. Our Nordic rose community kept chatting happily along, each one in his own tongue, and with the Icelanders speaking what I found out was called “blandinavisk” or “Blendinavian” – a blend of the three Scandinavian languages. I asked out of curiosity, one of our hosts which Scandinavian languages he was actually aiming for, but he said he couldn’t even tell, as he had learned Danish at school, then lived a year in Sweden and then finished his studies in Norway. What he could say, was that the Icelanders were a bit puzzled that the Norwegians were the only ones among the Scandinavians who always understood them, but since they mostly speak Danish with an Icelandic pronunciation, which is very close to Norwegian, we were not the least bit surprised. We consider them to be practically family anyway, since the original settlers in Iceland were Norwegians, and their language is very similar to what we spoke in the 12th century. Oh and the food – I have been praising it to high heaven, and just to give you a little example, I’ll tell you about the salad we got for lunch one of the days. Now a simple salad for lunch does not usually make much an impression on me, but this one was special. It consisted of chicken marinated in a sweet, dark sauce, which made it taste like duck, and then fried, ice salad, ruccola, strawberries, mango, cashew nuts, marinated sweet red onion, melon and sesame seeds. The whole thing served with freshly baked bread in large chunks, with a paste of olive oil, garlic and sun dried tomatoes. I had to stop myself from licking my fingers. I have already told the following in one of my previous posts, but I’ll repeat it for any new readers: I asked one of the waiters how much I would have to pay for the exact recipe for that dish, and was told that it was free, on the one condition that I married the chef. I am still thinking… In the evening before I left Iceland, my cousin called me and was so excited, that at first I could not understand what he was saying. When I did, it turned out that a flock of whales had managed to come into the little bay where he lives. “Great” said I. “No, terrible!”, said he. It turned out that a flock of whales in a small bay, though exciting to look at, was not a particularly good idea for the whales, so he had taken his boat out, and managed to turn them away, to the applause and cheering from some tourists who overlooked and took pictures of the whole thing. Now since I had seen the boat, and it was really small, perhaps three-four meters long, it sounded like an extremely dangerous affair, but the whales were safely out of the bay, and he was safe and sound, so all was well. As a city girl, going out in a little boat to change the mind of a bunch of whales sounds too exotic for words. Now generally I like most of the countries I go to, I really love Italy, Spain and Greece, I have a soft spot for Ukraine, and I adored St. Petersburg, but I can safely say that never have I fallen in love with any country so quickly, and so unexpectedly as with Iceland. The combination of nice people, a clean, well organized community, a language where I can understand a lot, but where everybody speaks English when I don’t, wonderful food and spectacular nature, is hard to beat. Unfortunately they apparently suffer under the delusion that Norwegians are dimwitted, but hey, nobody is perfect. :-) This last piece of information is according to a little booklet called “Xenophobe’s guide to the Icelanders”, which is hilarious by the way. As a plant lover, I particularly enjoyed the following: “The climate is harsh. Plants die quickly unless carefully cared for, in which case they die slowly”. Or this one: “Dancing was outlawed by the Danes who believed that the high level of illegitimate births in Iceland was attributable to it. After Home Rule had been established, the ban was lifted. The Icelanders, being a more intelligent people, had worked out that dancing was not the cause.” Since I am also a cat lover I also enjoyed this one: “In the summer months the fire brigade deals with a few fires. It cannot fill in its time by rescuing the odd cat stuck in a tree. There are no trees for it to get stuck in. Still on the off chance that I might decide to do half a Super Challenge in Icelandic, my last act on Icelandic soil was to buy a couple of books more in Icelandic. One by Candace Bushnell called “Bedmall i borginni”. I have no clue what that means, but the undertitle is “Jane Austin med martiniglass i hönd” which should mean “Jane Austin with a martini glass in her hand”, and the other one was a Swedish crime novel by Hjort & Rosenfeldt. I am a sucker for Jane Austin, so anything which resembles her novels should be great, and I like Candace Bushnell too. Crime novels in general are interesting too, so if only I can manage to find an alternative universe whit an extra 16 days per week, I should have read them both in no time. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 211 of 270 08 August 2012 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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FIRST DAY OF THE CRUISE IN THE BALTIC SEA
So I left Iceland with a new found love for that country, and flew to Finland to catch up with my family. And in Helsinki I found what must be a one of a kind: A Finn with verbal diarrhoea. Now not to insult the Finns in any way, but as a general rule they are not the chattiest of people. My taxi driver turned out to be the most talkative Finn I had ever met, to the point where I almost asked him if he happened to have Mediterranean blood in his veins. He was dark haired, and could have passed for a Spaniard, but since my (discrete) inquiries revealed that he spoke English, Finnish, Swedish, some German and a little Russian, but no hint of any southern language I did not dare to ask him. I was happy enough to have found a taxi driver who was both talkative and with whom I could speak in 4 different languages (ok. the Russian part may not quite have qualified as conversation, more as an exchange of expressions of politeness)not to want to risk offending him by going too far deep into his family history. Usually I always ask where people are from, or even where they are originally from, if their first answer do not correspond with what they speak, but I am a little hesitant to ask for it based on looks and talking speed alone. Besides, if he asked why I wanted to know, I would have felt a bit embarrassed to say it was because he talked so much... When talking about our kids he said that he was a generation older than me, and I asked how old he was and he turned to be just 4 years older than me. When he then turned around (while still driving in 90 km an hour) and said I looked at least 15 years younger he turned into my favourite Finn ever :-) I managed to get on the cruise ship without too much trouble, and was greeted by children who I had not seen for 1-5 weeks which was a joyful affair, and then of course the rest of my extended family. I have to admit something. I am not a big fan of cruises. I dislike having to get up really early every morning to be transported like sheep into a new city every day or to drag children, for whom going to a museum is considered a punishment, around. Then shows, casinos and a never ending drive to get even more money from you, makes me sick to the stomach. We ended up paying as much for extras as we would have for a vacation on our own, and a system where you pay tips three times for the same thing makes me slightly uncomfortable. Plus you always end up eating too much and sleeping too little. I like peace and quiet and a nice beach for my holidays, but since the cruise was a gift, and my children absolutely adore it, I did my best to look happy. I tried to look at it from a linguistic angle, and I did get to speak Spanish, a little German and masses of English. I also got invited to stay in her house in Istanbul from a lady I spoke with a little bit. We were both eagerly taking pictures of the magnificent sunset, and exchanged pictures on sunsets in Reykjavik and Istanbul, our cats and gardens, and have become Facebook friends. A lot of the Spanish we were speaking was due to the two extra Spanish daughters I was bringing on the cruise. We are supposed to speak English, but one of them speaks really broken English, so we had to do it in Spanish - well - more Spanish practise for me! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 212 of 270 11 August 2012 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Some days you get some really good news, and some really bad news. The good news is that thanks to the
visit to Iceland I now have a lot of Icelandic relatives who are heavy Facebook users, so that I get a steady supply of Icelandic every day. I also got added by someone on the Faroe Islands that I can see from the name is my relative, but who I have no idea who is. I'll find out, and learn some Faroese in the process I hope. The second good news is that my sister and I have now got visas to both Russia, Mongolia and China. Yeah!!! Trans -Siberian express, here I come! And the really, really sad news, is that thanks to the multilingual video, one of my old friends from Italy tracked me down, and told me that one of my three Italian ex- boyfriends passed away 10 years ago. That may not sound like anything which would bother me, since we have not been in touch for more than 20 years, but he was a really, really nice guy, and so young and full of life when I knew him, that the thought that he would die just 12 years later was shocking to me. He never smoked, and drank very little, but he had a brain tumour and died from that, and left a wife and a small kid. It is true what they say, that the best go first. Edited due to really clumsy wording. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 12 August 2012 at 1:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5224 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 213 of 270 12 August 2012 at 12:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Cristina, I think you may want to revise your wording, but if you don't, dying from that must be a really nasty way to go :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 214 of 270 12 August 2012 at 1:19am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for pointing that out to me. I am afraid I took a too literal translation from Norwegian here. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 215 of 270 23 August 2012 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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My girls and I have just had the best day ever with Luca, the Italian polyglot and another polyglot friend of his. This will surely push the girls into learning more languages!! We have spoken in Spanish, Italian, English, French and Swedish, and we have laughed so much my ribs hurt!
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 216 of 270 02 September 2012 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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So - I am going to Moscow to take the Trans-Siberian Railway tomorrow. And I am so excited to do that, at the same time I have a really bad conscience about having studied next to nothing over the last month, when I was supposed to become better at Russian and learn basic Mandarin and Mongolian. Oh well. No point beating myself up about it. I am bringing a Mandarin book and my Mongolian book on the train, so at least I can have a look.
It feels like I have been packing for a month. Traveling for 16 days,going from 3 degrees (Mongolia) to 30 degrees (Xian), having no access to a washing machine and having to bring lots of food is difficult to combine with the weight and measure constraints of modern air lines, so I have been packing, unpacking and repacking for days. Plus my work situation has been beyond crazy busy the last week, so I think I will spend half an hour watching Russian forests, and then I'll sleep for the next 72 hours straight. We will have one day with sight seeing in Moscow before we go on the train which should be nice. I have not been there since it was the Soviet Union. St. Petersburg had changed so much it was like a miracle, I wonder whether it will be the same with Moscow. I have no idea whether I'll get any internet access at all, but if I do, I'll try to make a quick post here. If not, I'll just write my notes on an old fashioned peace of paper, and write it all up once I get home. Since I am going to be away for so long, and I do not know what it will cost to have the threads forwarded to my phone, I will unfollow most of the threads here. In 12 hours I will be in the air to Moscow. See you, guys! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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