This year being the 50th anniversary of the Norwegian heavy water sabotage operations, and the majority of my skiing companions being of military background, the year’s ski tour goes across the Hardangervidda to Rjukan. I’m interested enough in the backstory to be looking forward to the talk we’ve been promised for the night at Rjukan, but mostly I’m just here for the great skiing, the stunning views, and the good company.

Day 1 – Finse to Kjeldebu. This photo above shows the Finse hut.

The guide said today would be 19 km but that later turned out to be measured as the crow flies, not as the human skis, so the real distance was 29 km. Which is a tough distance to do on the first day when we’re all still somewhat uncertain on our skis and finding our footing.

With a full pack, somewhere around 20 km my body usually starts sending me signals that “maybe now would be a good time to call it a day” and “this is kind of enough, isn’t it”. I start feeling my knees and maybe my hips, and noticing various muscles that I otherwise don’t think about. So when I started getting that feeling when we we still had a good 9 km to go, I got a bit concerned. Am I so out of shape? Nope, our estimates were just so far off.

The weather forecast for Finse today was horrible, when I checked even as late as yesterday evening. We were promised –10°C and strong winds. Instead we got a day of brilliant sunshine, just a few degrees below freezing, and almost no wind. Absolutely perfect skiing weather, and beautiful views.


Gentle descents through soft snow are lovely. In the gentlest slopes you want to follow the tracks of the skier in front of you, to get the best glide – the soft snow acts as a brake. If the slope is slightly steeper but not steep enough to require turns, everyone tends to make their own tracks in order to have the most control. And then towards the bottom we all converge again, and take off in a row like a bunch of ducklings.

This is us arriving at the unmanned Kjeldebu hut, buried in snow. As with many alpine huts, there is also no source of fresh water, apart from melting snow. A bucket packed full of snow melts down to maybe a quarter-bucket’s worth of water at best, so there were a lot of trips out to fetch more snow.

On my way to a ski tour in Norway this year again.

Last year I missed my connecting train even though I was supposed to have an hour between the arrival of one train and the departure of the next one. That was not fun at all, so this time I left myself three hours in Oslo Sentralstasjon. Which is, honestly, not that much fun either, but at least it’s less stressful.

Last year I also discovered the upmarket end of the station. Previously I only knew about the main station concourse on the upper level, and the food options there were sorely disappointing, especially given Norwegian prices. But then I learned that if I go down and to the right and down again, I can at least get a nice Neapolitan style pizza, or expensive conveyor belt sushi. Norwegian restaurant prices are eye-watering when seen with Swedish eyes, but I tell myself that I’m on vacation, and I do have to eat, and I’d rather pay for an expensive, good meal than an almost as expensive but crappy one.

No snacks, though. When a small 250 ml bottle of juice costs 50 NOK (that’s about 4.5 EUR) and a croissant is 42 NOK, I’ll make do with my bottled water from home.

Looks like this is all I’m going to see of Kläppen. I’m still barely able to stand, and definitely not up to any skiing. Worst ski trip ever.

In the morning my colleague and I visited Urb-it’s delivery hub behind Waterloo station. Scruffy neighbourhood, but a shiny, tidy, well-organized hub on the inside, with snazzy-looking Urb-it-branded e-cargo bikes and trikes.

Later on we had more meetings, and then ate lunch at Borough Market – prize-winning fish’n’chips. Quite nostalgic.

Also it was super weird to travel around London with people who pronounce Westminster as “West Minster” and Southwark as rhyming with “fork”. Good thing we didn’t have a reason to even mention Leicester Square.

In London for work, to meet Urb-it’s UK team and to visit the London delivery hub. Landed this afternoon, took an hour’s walk along Waterloo Bridge and South Bank and back. Lots of colourful lights. I wish I had a few days – or weeks – to just walk around.

I visited the 13|37 Borlänge office today (and will be staying until tomorrow) to hold my multi-tenancy talk again. I did it live in Stockholm twice when it was fresh, and streamed it once during the quarantine years – you can watch it on YouTube if you’re interested. It’s a few years old but the content hasn’t aged at all; the architectural questions and choices are all still valid, and even the code examples are still fresh. The audience seemed to agree, because the feedback this evening was almost embarrassingly complimentary.

We’ve done canals and crooked houses, and an art museum and vintage shopping. Today we went to one of the larger parks in Amsterdam, and then tram-hopped our way back to the city via a circuitous route.

We wandered around Vondelpark and dodged cyclists. Adrian climbed a tree.

The rose garden in Vondelpark was still blooming.

Back in central Amsterdam we visited the lovely and peaceful Begijnhof.

Near our hotel the Beurspassage caught our eyes. The ceiling mosaic is filled with motifs inspired by the canals, including fish, rusty bicycles, and for some reason a tiger, and the chandeliers are made of bicycle parts.


We also went to see the allegedly famous floating flower market, which was much less impressive and interesting than it sounded. The shops were technically floating but they were just large booths that were open on one side, and you couldn’t even see that they floated. And the flowers were mostly seeds and bulbs this time of the year.

There was a cafe near the flower market, though, that sold macarons.


And then it was time to start heading home.

Amsterdam was an interesting city to visit, and parts of it were very pretty. But it’s not one of my favourite cities and I’m not sure I’d want to come back for a second visit. I didn’t like the crowds, or the ever-present smell or weed, or all the cigarette smoke.

In the end the best part of the weekend for me was simply spending three full days together as a family. At home we’re often each doing our own thing. Here we were together all the time.

We started both yesterday and today with luxurious breakfasts at a café that Ingrid had found online. Pluk on Berenstraat, in case you find yourself in that area. The online reviews are very mixed but we got very good food, though the service was rather slow.

We had seen enough canals and crooked houses and cute little streets yesterday and wanted something different today, so we went to the Rijksmuseum.

The museum was very visitor-friendly, with easy-to-read maps that guided people to the most popular paintings, but also to other parts of the collection. The popular works – like their one and only Van Gogh – had large crowds in front of them, so I didn’t even bother to try and look at those. There were plenty of other interesting things to see.

Even though we all walked in the same rooms, we often split up because of our diverging interests. Ingrid is interested in art and paints herself, so she looks at details and technical aspects that Adrian doesn’t care much about. So she and Eric (who also painted when he was young) looked at the paintings with artists’ eyes, while Adrian and I looked at them with general curiosity.

We noted, for example, the prevalence of grapes, glass bowls, and curls of lemon peel in 17th century still life paintings.

The curators at the Rijksmuseum had done a great job with the signage. All too often, museums label each work with its title, maker and year, and nothing more. Here there were often interesting background facts, and info sheets with even more facts and stories.

When we tired of paintings, we looked at cannons, porcelain, Delft pottery and ship models.

I liked this glass vase by Émile Gallé, with its irregular patterns borrowed from various cultures.

And this repeatedly darned sock, found in a seaman’s chest after a shipwreck.

From high culture to low. In the afternoon we took the boat to North Amsterdam to a large flea market that Ingrid wanted to browse for vintage clothing. She didn’t find anything that fit, but I bought a jacket.

Some of the most crooked, tilting, slanted houses I saw in Amsterdam.

I wonder what it feels like to live in one of them. They must even out the floors, or the houses would be unlivable. But do they do the same with the inside of the walls? Or do they just accept that furniture doesn’t stand flush with the wall, and kitchen cabinets are crooked?

Just a bunch of photos of Amsterdam’s canals.