More about Tromso

So, Thursday night was another rehearsal. We helped the kids get into makeup and basically everything went fine. In fact, most all the performances were uneventful. The only thing maybe that was unusual was my broken toe hurting, which made things a little more difficult, but otherwise, fine.

Things were okay in Tromso. I felt kind of strange, though, because it seemed like the beginning of the project was only yesterday and suddenly is was a month and a half later, and what had happened?

Time seemed to have stopped, or been non-existant for the past several weeks. It was a little upsetting, although I'm not sure why. But over-all things were good.
On Friday, we had some time between the morning rehearsal and the evening performance, so Seth, Sina, and I went walking up the street to the Perspektives Museum. It is a museum dedicated to documentary photgraphy and exhibitions about the lives of minorities in Norway. The two in the exhibit at the time were an exhibit about the Sami people and their nomadic reindeer breeding and Russian trawler fishermen. A hundred years ago, there were strong, friendly ties between the Russian fishermen and the Norwegian town of Tromso, but now there is a prejudice against the Russians and the museum is trying to help people understand both sides of the story. It was one of the best types of exhibitions I've seen. Because, it didn't try to be, "We are so awful for judging them because they are really great!", they simply put the facts forward, and let people make their own conclusions.
Like Dostoyevsky said, "the novelist should only be a presenter of facts and the reader can draw his own meaning." or something to that effect. I forget the exact quote.
And so, it was pleasant and thought-provoking, and not overly sentimental, although it did have a vein of humanity running through it. But humanity is different from sentimentality anyway.

But, moving on.

Before we went to the musem, we were walking along the street, and passed in front of a yarn shop. There was a bassinet with a baby crying softly from inside. There was a purse hanging from the handle, but no mother was in sight.
We paused.
Well, we couldn't leave a crying baby sitting there all by itself. There was a kind looking man standing near by who watched us intently. I figure he must have been there first. I discovered he was waiting for his wife, but stayed outside to look after the mysterious baby. Sina rocked the buggy and the baby stopped crying instantly.
We stood there for 10 minutes, waiting for someone to show up.
Eventually we became slightly more alarmed than originally and determined to find out where the mother was. She was inside, and I guess had lost track of time, or something. But anyway, so, she was very thankful and apologetic, but at the same time insisted on leaving it there until she had paid because it was too much trouble to take it inside the shop. So, we waited for her to pay and then went on our merry way.
It felt a little weird that the mother was not in the slightest bit remorseful or frightened that there were three strange kids looking after her baby while she was inside. It was almost as if she expected it. This worried me a bit but not for too long. I suppose we were supposed to be there, in a way, to look after the baby. Who knows.

The production makeup included the use of UV light reflecting makeup. Seth had bright orange and blue reflective makeup up from the rehearsal, which he hastily removed, so there were still traces of blue and orange on his skin. It looked slightly like a large bruise. As we were standing in the street, a woman passed by and exclaimed to Seth, "Your face!"
"Yes, I know. It's only makeup."
She gave him a slanted look and walked away.

Then, on the way back to the theatre, a German couple asked us some information of the bus system. But we had no idea how it actually worked.

That night we had the first performance in Tromso, and it went well. After the performance, we went to "Lotus", the Chinese/Japanese restaurant. They had fried lamb, which I thought was a little unusal, so I tried it. It was tasty, however unusual. Otherwise, the evening was uneventful. I excused myself early, not wanting to celebrate too much. Stein came to that performance and said hello to us at lunch.
He seemed to be pleased with the performance in Tromso and liked the 1m wall extensions for the set. He had never seen them in Narvik because the stage was so much smaller.

Friday night we missed one of the sound effects we were supposed to produce. This made the conductor very annoyed. Which is understandable. The choreographer was also dissatisfied with the mouse-trap, and so requested very abruptly and rudely (I thought at the time) that it be moved. I told her I wasn't sure if it were possible, but I would check, which she thought, I suppose, that I was trying to make an excuse not to do anything. So she proceded to explain to me that it had to be moved because it looked bad where it was. She knew that the trap was unpredictable and squirrely.
This, for some reason, upset me. And I got quite angry at her, which I'm not very proud of. I tried really hard not to show it, but I think I did accidentally all the same. I told her we would move it if it were possible. I think my anger was not in proportion to what she was asking. I mean, I didn't really have a reason to be angry, but I was all the same. It took a little to cool down. But I got over it pretty quickly.
Although, that along with missing the sound effect, I was pretty thoroughly disappointed in myself for being so unprofessional and had bad dreams of being disappointing to everyone I looked up to (Mom, Dad, Pavel, Stein, Dean, Elin, etc.).
This made me a little anxious on Saturday, so, after the matinee, and after lunch, since my foot was feeling better, I went for a walk around Tromso. I was surprised by some of the ruins there were among and between nicer houses. It was a strange mix of nice modern architecture for the library and Kulturhus and some of the shopping centers, with the older buildings, then the totally decrepid and nearly squalid buildings. I guess it was the non-uniformity which was unusual: most of my experience of Norway up to that point being more uniform, or at least less choppy in so short a space.
But it added to it's interestingness. If that's a word. I don't know.
Tromso was interesting.
I went shopping and bought some ice-cream, walked around, then went back to the theatre for the final performance, packing the set, and saying good-bye.
Everything went perfectly. Although, I don't really like saying good-bye.
I shared some Sake with Liv-Kari, Nils, Sina, and Seth. I had lamb again. But lamb-chops this time with the best fried potatoes I have ever had in my whole life. THEY WERE SO GOOD. Maybe they were fried in goose fat, I don't know. "They say" that goose fat is the best thing to fry food in. But, I don't really know because I've never had it. But it would be hard to believe--if those potatoes weren't fried in goose fat--that goose fat could taste much better.

But, I said good-bye to all that were left at the restaurant and went to the hotel. I felt a little melancholy for it all. But happy all the same, and not sad. Just, I knew I was going to miss them, and we had spent so much time together. But I was also very excited to leave and see things on my own again.

The next day, Palm Sunday, Seth and I awoke early and got a taxi to the airport. We got there way too early. But that was okay. We couldn't do much else, anyway. It was snowing and cold. We got on the plane and I instantly fell asleep. Then I woke up for breakfast, and fell asleep again.
The flight was nice.

We got into Oslo and it was bright, sunny, and about 18C. Seth and I went to the National Gallery while we waited to check into the Anker Hostel. I thought I would be staying in another hotel since there was a sign that said, "SORRY NO VACANCY" on the front desk. We inquired about other hostels or hotels in the area,
"Oh! Sorry! That's an old sign from yesterday. You can stay here."
I am so lucky.

At the National Gallery, we saw Flannish Baroque paintings of Jordaens, Ruebens, and Van Dyke. It was very impressive, although seeing people in such ridiculous and overly-romanticised fashion is a little weird. Of course, in 500 years from now, the kids will think we look ridiculous, too.
Anyway, it was still a good exhibit. I was a little sad that the permanent exhibit of Munch was closed, though. Oh well.

I will finish this later.
Enrico just showed up. So I'll probably finish this in England. I'm flying there tonight.