Blue Praha

At the airport in Praha I admired the Blue Praha shops selling beautiful modern glass products like these. You can check their website and the galleries there for more details of their products.

http://www.bluepraha.cz

I am no expert, but felt the designs and colors reminded me of Scandinavian design.

Blue and green glass bowl

Hunting for the Aztec cutlery at Fretex I found this blue and green glass bowl, brand new, with the artist's name Harriet Stensrud .
I liked it.
It reminded me of what I had seen at the Praha airport in shops called Praha Blue.
I bought it and brought it home, though in general I am trying not to add a lot of "stuff" to my apartment.

Assignment: Aztec cutlery by Don Wallance

Many years ago, friends abroad got a Scandinavian cutlery named Aztec as a wedding present.

One knife is now broken, and six dessert spoons missing.

Will I be able to locate the replacements?

Today I visited both Fretex and Masvo here in Moss, rummaging through their baskets with assorted cutlery. If the number of knives, forks , spoons and teaspoons ending up in those shops, can indicate which pieces of cutlery get lost the least, the clear winner would be the forks.

In particular there were very few teaspoons.

At Fretex I found one Aztec knife, but as long as I am looking for the dessert spoons, I may look a little further to find a more perfect specimen.

I discovered that IKEA had made a cutlery with a knife that seems to be inspired by Aztec.

Then I became curious about this cutlery and found that an American designer named Don Wallance had designed the cutlery in 1965 and the Norwegian factory Norstaal had produced it.

What I had thought of as a big teaspoon was called a dessert spoon.

http://www.norstaal.no/aztec.htm

http://www.stelton.se/ProductView.aspx?id=202

I will also find out if you can buy this cutlery in single pieces, new, and the price.

Nice surprise

When I was away, the owner of my house painted my bathroom, installed a new shower stall and a new mirror. It was a wonderful surprise that I am very thankful for.
The bathroom still smells of fresh paint!

Living in a little town

Most of my life I have lived on the countryside.
Small rural villages.
Beautiful nature. Quietness.

But the shops, the hairdresser, the dentist and other services, in addition to cinemas, museums, public offices, galleries, concert halls etc. have all been somewhere else.
And transportation has always been a problem.

So now, living in a little town like Moss, I find such pleasure in living in a place where transportation is not a problem and where I easily can get to what I need.

Excellent!

My days on the countryside are over!

More thoughts

Waiting for six hours in the transit hall in Praha in the end of December, I wrote a little story about The Man, the Woman and the Blue Car.
I will still have to work on the end of the story, and I will probably never publish it here.
But one part of that story has a connection to what I wrote yesterday about the "advantage" of sitting in the plane between my two countries. "Advantage" and not advantage.

I once used a lot of money to learn how to drive, but I found out I didn't want to drive.
I was afraid of making a terrible mistake while driving, a mistake that would cause somebody else harm.

On the negative side, I have learnt the advantage of being a passenger.
Somebody else is driving.
Somebody else is most of the time chosing the destination.
To my defense I can say I am good at being a navigator, giving directions.

On the positive side, I have found that if I do not drive myself, I can get where I want by chosing public transportation - taxis, trains, ferries and planes.

Sitting on a plane between my two countries, and feeling some kind of relief, is - as far as I see it just now - again not chosing the destination, but being a passenger.

Thoughts on a plane

On my trip back from my other country to Norway, I remembered something that happened when I studied, many years ago.
Some of the students were already mothers with young children, often frustrated with sharing their time between being a student and a mother.
Our psychology teacher tried to explain: "When you are home, you are feeling bad that you are not at school. When you are at school, you are feeling bad you are not with your children. The only time you feel some kind of peace, is sitting on the bus, going back and forth."

Having two countries is something like that.
So perhaps the only time one feels some kind of peace is sitting on a plane going from one country to the other?