I am not going too close to the edge this time

Jewish Memorial Berlin 

I have been up to my ears planning our trip to Norway in January so have been distracted from blogging. As you know we have this fetish about going to the coldest places on earth at the coldest times of the year in Europe - just because we come from a very hot country and now love wallowing about in snow and ice.

In Australia in the run up to Christmas the stores are full of what they think are Christmas trees and every store has a jolly Santa decked out in red and white - with a big white beard - and every store – and every shopping centre – and every car park – and every radio station – plays Christmas carols from the 1^st of October until the 25^th  December – all in the name of selling as much Christmas crap as possible.

On Christmas day – at least in the past – Australians sat down – in 40° heat – to tables groaning with mighty roasts and baked potatoes and pumpkins and traditional English puddings. Spare me!

In more recent times some sanity has crept into our behavior in Australia and we have started to realise that we are not in fact English or European and that it does not snow in Australia at Christmas and that we should actually behave like it is 40° outside – and not eat mountains of hot food.

We discovered when we got to Vienna that it is not like that at all here. There is no Santa Claus and there is not nearly as much crap as there is in Australia. The actually do have white Christmases here and do not need to spray ‘Santa Snow’ on the shop windows to try to fool people into buying their schlock. Most Viennese have not heard of Cliff Richard – do not own copies of his Christmas CDs – and do not play them endlessly in stores from October to December. It is bliss.

Now Cate and Gwenyth and I have perhaps overreacted because it is actually quite cool in Vienna and there is possibly no need for us to go to – and indeed inside the Arctic Circle – but we like to live life on the edge because - unlike some of our fellow travellers - we are of the firm view that this is all there is and we need to make the most of it.

And as my son once said to me ‘Papa – if you are not living life on the edge – you are taking up too much room.’ I think it was my son – it may have been my dealer.

I do not plan to go as close to the edge as I did last year when I fell off that damn Husky sled and broke five ribs and then collapsed with hypothermia after the reindeer sled ride before we actually collided with a reindeer on the ice covered road on the way back to our wilderness lodge where the outside temperate was -27° and if you faltered feeling your way through snow from your sleeping hut to the mess hut you died in your tracks.  

But anyway planning the Norway trip is a task that is taxing me to the limit. Cate worked on it for some months before shoveling it all over to me a week ago saying to was too hard and telling me it was now my job.

It involves boats, at least three different airplanes, three different trains and a snow hotel. The complication is that Cate won’t tell me some of the key ingredients – like everything she actually wants to do and the precise dates she wants to do them. This is so that I have a challenge to keep me busy while she is in Turkey.