Andreas

My sister still hates it too, but expects her daughter to eat it 🤣

Because it's literally 90% vegetables in broth and something you're as good as forced to eat as a kid because 'healthy'. As an adult, I love it. With the right spices it's delicious.

I made some delicious 'minestrone' for dinner tonight, that hearty vegetable soup hated by almost all Italian kids. As I also made some rather nice bread rolls today, I had a couple of those with Branston pickles and cheddar as accompaniment to the soup. Would do it again, sorry nonne!

A home-made bread roll with a somewhat puckered shape.

This one didn't quite get the final shape I had envisaged...

I'm watching a Lithuanian film and something is puzzling me: whenever someone replies 'yes' to a question, they say something that, to me, sounds like 'ja' where I'd expect to hear 'taip' ('yes' in Lithuanian). 'Jā' is Latvian for 'yes' - perhaps it's a colloquialism in Lithuanian? Nesuprantu.

Fellini! ❤️

Beardy and hairy man in his late 40's takes a selfie holding a glass of red wine in one hand. Some bookshelves and an armchair in the background. The man wears a dark blue vest and light blue pj bottoms.

A bottle of Italian red wine from the region of Molise. The name of the wine is 'Molí'.

The dress code for tonight is 'laid-back'.
I am sampling a really nice Italian wine from Molise. Alla salute!🥂

Beardy man in his late 40's takes a selfie in the sunshine. In the background, yellow and orange trees and traditional red Swedish cottages.

View of some traditional red Swedish cottages and a tree with pretty orange and yellow leaves. The sky is a vivid light blue with some patches of white clouds.

Autumnal view with red bushes and yellow leaves on the ground. The weather is sunny and the light warm.

The crown of a tree completely yellow against a blue sky and the sun.

Höst på Södermalm.
Autumn in Södermalm, (Stockholm).

A man takes a selfie with his cat, a blue-eyed snow Bengal. The face of the man isn't visible. He's scratching the cat under the chin.

Happy #Caturday

I had tapas in my favourite Spanish restaurant tonight and rounded the excellent dinner off with a glass of Calvados. Happiness is certainly ephemeral, but also definitely complete right now. :)

The poster of the film 'Sentimental Value" by the Norwegian director Joachim Trier.

I took the day off and this afternoon I went to see Joachim Trier's "Sentimental Value", and I can't even start to tell you how good it is. Renate Reinsve is divine.
Go see it if you get the chance!

Hungarian...not sure I'm interested in reading László Krasznahorkai in the original enough to learn his native language. I don't usually read literature in translation, but Hungarian feels like a steep hill to climb, far from the comfortable familiarity of Indo-European.

The example given is Swedish, but the same applies in Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese and Danish.

The Scandinavian languages don't have definite articles (English 'the'), and definiteness is expressed by means of endings that change according to gender, number and case instead.
'Dog' is 'hund', 'the dog' is 'hunden', 'the dogs' is 'hundarna', for example, where -en and -na are definite endings.

Have I ever told you about the indefinite and definite forms of Scandinavian nouns and how it all works? Yes? Yes. I'm sure at some point I must have. Never mind, reader.

You're putting us all on the same page. "Nordic" is a geopolitical concept, not a common identity.

A cat asleep between the legs of a man. The legs of the man are under the bedsheets. The cat is resting his head on his front paws.

A cat asleep between the legs of a man. The legs of the man are under the bedsheets. The cat is resting his head on his front paws.

A cat asleep between the legs of a man. The legs of the man are under the bedsheets. The cat is resting his head on his front paws.

Bedtime triptych.

Hlakka þegar til jólanna.

I love it too and read it every Christmas.😊

I'm making béchamel sauce like a pro.

Pierluigi

I don't remember.🫤

I HAD ONE FOR A WHILE! It was in the cold winter of 1985 and my dad and I found one freezing on the snowy pavement. We rescued it and kept it for a couple of days until my dad found out it had escaped and contacted the owner.

A collection of short stories by the Norwegian writer Hans E. Kinck. The title of the book is "Flaggermusvinger," Norwegian for "Bat wings." The cover of the book has a black-and-white drawing of a violin on some rocks with bushes all around. It's an edition from 1954.

Page of a book with only the title of a short story on: "Høstnætter", which in Norwegian means "autumn nights."

Pretty edition from 1954 of Norwegian Hans E. Kinck's collection of short stories "Flaggermusvinger" ("Bat wings"), originally published in 1895.
Reading "Høstnætter" ("Autumn nights") while storm Amy raged outside yesterday night was a more than charming experience.

Very well done!😊

Storm Amy is whipping Stockholm hard. I opened the window, and immediately the wind, the rain and the smell in the air took me back to a stormy night in the Yorkshire moors many, many, too many years ago. My friend found it miserable. I was elated. To feel the force of the elements is empowering.

And the wine! Trying a new Italian one from Molise tonight.

Fuck off.

I can't even conceive the notion of moving to another country, even just for a couple of months a year, and not learning the local language. Language is the key to a wider and richer world, to a better understanding and appreciation of other cultures.

Something that increasingly sends me round the bend is people who buy a home in another country and then just complain about how bad the locals' English is. Such a skewed perspective. If you buy a house in Italy or France, you should probably do your homework and learn the local language. Full stop.