astridjournal.com

Dear reader of my blog.

I now have a new site

astridjournal.com

Still in its infancy, still under development, but it's a new and exciting beginning for both it and me.

It is with a little sadness I say goodby to my dear blog, but AstridInTheWorld will go on living, albeit in a more laid back manner.

I always enjoy and learn from your comments and your feedback, and hope both will be easier on my new site

For those of you who subscribe to my blog pr mail, I will notify you here every time a post is "released". I appreciate any comment concerning content or nature of my new site, as I always hope and wish to improve both.

Some of your are my friends on many levels; personal, FB, Blog, Mail..., and I beg you to forgive me if I in my endavour to make people aware of my new site happen to notify you twice, thrice...

Astrid

Mon Ami La Lune

Mon Ami La Lune

… the moon

Hovering in the sky

Outside my window

Far away,

yet close

Watching over me

Friendly, familiar

No matter

Where I am

Wherever you are

Connecting us

Through time and space

Claire de Lune-Debussy

Fin Flapping In Cefalu

Cefalu  is well worth a visit. We did not, by any means, give it the credit it deserves as we were only staying for a few days and had some very basic needs to satisfy before starting to explore the town and the area: The need for soaking up as much sunshine as possible without getting our eyebrows singed. For two days, happily exposing ourselves to UV A, B, C and what felt like a fair amount of x- and gamma rays, we lolled like immobile skin-shedding sea elephants on the sunbeds in the beautiful Kalura Bay. Like the afore mentioned sea elephants, lifting a “fin” only to scratch our thighs, and unlike them to splash sun lotion on each other’s backs or lift our water bottle, not really caring that half of its content missed the target and trickled down our bodies.

Once in a hot while we would roll off our beds and into the sea, wallowing in the underwater world of colorful fish, shells and plants, before again retreating to our incubators.

When we after a couple of days eventually mustered the will and strength to lift our heads and look up, we discovered dazzling sights of mountains, rolling hills, and an amazing diversity of colorful trees, bushes and flowers. Rocks and cliffs were decoratively protruding into the sea, one of the closest ones occupied by remnants of a Byzantine fortress.

And from there it was all gloriously uphill: On my next swimming spree I went ashore and started climbing the stairs towards the ruins. Almost there, I was met with signs of Privado. Usually, that’s something I don’t take very personally, but being in the land of the Godfather...

Read more...Cefalu

Jaws

“Jaws” was nothing like I expected. Actually I hadn’t expected anything. I had merely accepted an invitation from a boy my age to see a movie, and neither of us really cared what it was about as long as we got to sit in the back row.

When I stumbled out of the movie theater a couple of hours later, I was so numb with shock, I couldn’t have cared less if I’d been with The Incredible Hulk or Pinoccio. No amount of sweet talk and kisses could shake me out of the zombie-like state I was in, and I hardly remember how I got home. My young and still fairly innocent mind was totally occupied with trying to digest the horrors that were now forever engraved in my brain.

The aftermaths of the quake stayed with me for years to come. In the beginning I felt way in over my head in the ocean, but fine in swimming pools. Until I watched action movies featuring shark basin constructed for the sole purpose of taking care of any unlucky fellow who happened to cross the gangsters, and of course eventually the gangsters themselves if the movie had just a tinge of justice.

Now I started looking over my shoulder (a potential shark snack) in all kinds of bodies of water. And always having someone, friends, foes, unassuming strangers, swim next to me. I, of course, always staying closest to the shore. Not only “better safe than sorry”, but also “better them than me”, were my mottoes.

Great was my astonishment... 

read more... Jaws