Okay Britain

Here’s looking at you, Southern England.

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / A henge

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / Learning to swim

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / Cricket #1

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / UK’s no. 1 suicide spot

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / An ice cream truck in a national park

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / Summer night

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / England’s largest swannery has 800 swans and a pedal kart track

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / Low tide

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / Posing at Land’s End

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / Cricket #2

It’s January

Damn you, January.

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / I have never understood January.

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / I like biking. I have biked three times in the last 15 years: in 2008, 2010 and 2018. 18,812 people have biked past this sign so far I 2019. I’m impressed. Also horrified.

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / A winter coat of many colors. All of them black.

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / The name of this boat is «Sunrise» in Norwegian.

7A

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / The first of seven landscapes

Seven landscapes seen from seat 7A during the last seven minutes of flight DY617.

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / The second of seven landscapes

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / The third of seven landscapes

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / The fourth of seven landscapes

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / The fifth of seven landscapes

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / The sixth of seven landscapes

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Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / The last of seven landscapes (coming in for landing now)

Each A Glimpse And Gone Forever

Romania #1

A month of looking out windows, seeing Eastern Europe pass by, scene by scene.

I spent a month looking out the windows of trains and buses, passing great murders of crows, power plants and haystacks, empty billboards, roadside crosses and teenagers bored at weddings.

Some views repeated themselves: endless fields of sunflowers; railway workers not working.

On a late Saturday evening this July, I boarded the sleeper train from Istanbul to Sophia. From there on, I travelled through Bulgaria and Romania, to Hungary, Ukraine and Poland.

Through thousands of kilometres on rail and road I followed the passing landscapes of Eastern Europe and recorded some moments, some views: Each a glimpse and gone forever, to quote the closing line in Robert Louis Stevenson’s railway poem.

Ukraina #1

Ukraine #2

Bulgaria #1

Romania #2

Romania #3

Romania #4

Romania #5

Bulgaria #2

Romania #6

Romania #7

Romania #8

Ukraine #3

Romania #9

Romania #10

Ukraine #5

Ukraine #6

Ukraine #7

Bitey, Not Tasty

Pike. Bitey, according to some sources.

“That’s a pike. I don’t like pikes. They’re bitey but not tasty.” (American tourist couple overheard at the local public aquarium.)

Sea Lion. Fond of water. Which is one of the things that sets it apart from its African cousin; the land sea lion.

Herrings. Not red

Cayman. Also bitey

Green anaconda. Doing pilates, slightly out of frame

Queue Vadis?

The Great Wait #1

The Great Wait #1

Since acquiring its very first marble sculpture 500 years ago, the Vatican museums have grown to become one of the largest museums in the world with over 70,000 works attracting some 28 billion visitors a year.*

The Great Wait #2

The Great Wait #2

Behold the Laocöon sculpture, the Raphael rooms, the Transfiguration, St. Jerome in Wilderness and the ticket line longer than the 3.2 kilometre Vatican state perimeter!

The Great Wait #3

The Great Wait #3

See the Sistine Chapel with its ceiling and Last Supper by Michelangelo and its silence continuously broken by guards shouting Silenzio!

See the crowds, see the back of the person in front of you, get a contraband selfie stick poked in your ear.

The Great Wait #4

The Great Wait #4

So I recently visited the Vatican Museums for the first time in ten years. Not much have changed since my last time. I still love the place. I still tried to beat the crowds. I still failed spectacularly.

* number based on a rough guesstimate.

The Great Wait #5

The Great Wait #5

The Great Wait #6

The Great Wait #6

The Great Wait #7

The Great Wait #7

The Great Wait #8

The Great Wait #8

The Great Wait #9

The Great Wait #9

Rock Bottom. Fondling It.

Vigeland #1

Vigeland #1. (Among all the giggling tourists, this lady closed her eyes and put her head against the rock baby’s back, like if she was listening for a heartbeat.)

Giddy tourists petting stone genitalia. Families collecting pokemonkeys. Terrified small children whose fathers, inspired by the sculptures, try to juggle them. Yup. It’s the Vigeland sculpture park.

Vigeland #2

Vigeland #2

Vigeland #3

Vigeland #3

Vigeland #4

Vigeland #4

Vigeland #5

Vigeland #5

Vigeland #6

Vigeland #6

Vigeland #7

Vigeland #7

Vigeland #8

Vigeland #8

Vigeland #9

Vigeland #9

1:1280

Geiranger #1

Geiranger #1

That’s the ratio between townsfolk living in Geiranger year-round and cruise passengers visiting during the tourist season.

Geiranger #2

Geiranger #2

When Wikipedia declares the place a “tourist village” you know it’s going to be bad. Cruise tourism in Geiranger can be traced back to summer of ’69. That’s 1869, of course. Since then, Geiranger, with its year-round population of 255, has grown to be the second busiest cruise port in all of Norway, with an estimated 320,000 passengers from close to 200 ships. Jeez.

Geiranger #3

Geiranger #3

Geiranger #4

Geiranger #4

Geiranger #5

Geiranger #5

Geiranger #6

Geiranger #6

Geiranger #7

Geiranger #7

Geiranger #8

Geiranger #8

Geiranger #9

Geiranger #9

Geiranger #10

Geiranger #10

Geiranger #11

Geiranger #11

Geiranger #12

Geiranger #12