A letter from Oslo too

Dear Vincent,

I was hoping to share some spectacular good news but the good never materialized. So there is no good news, or, at least, no exceptional good news as life continues much the same as it did before. Of course, my normal and regular life is rather swell, which sixty percent of the time prevents me all the time from committing suicide.

I read books, work out, study too little and drink too much, for which I might as well have stayed home, as life is really much the same only twice as expensive. It is quite beyond me why companies value "experience abroad" so highly. Is it because romanticised notions of adventures in foreign territory? Or that we are suddenly emerged in an entirely different culture? That we are all alone and must use our social proficiencies to acquire a group of friends and acquintances about us?

What nonsense! The biggest adventure was, when I was hunting for an Elk with my camera in the forested hills, to find a big frosted Elk turd. Norwegians are basically Dutch only with less tact and manners (and that is saying something) and other than that the people are just as uninteresting here as they are in the Netherlands; acutely lacking in intelligence and superficial. After enthousiastically visiting several parties, inviting people over for dinner and generally displaying my own good nature, I find I have little in common with most, barring a few notable exceptions which I’m sure I’ll come to below.

Last week I bought a set of beautiful, flashy red skis. While I was waiting for them to affix the bindings I went for a bite at a Vietnamese restaurant where I had eaten before with Nicholas. I'm becoming a bit of a regular there, since the food is cheap and - more importantly - very good.

After I was done with lunch I passed by a piano store. Seeing I still had some time before the skis were finished I stepped inside, hoping to play a little bit. I was in luck; the store was entirely empty except for the salesperson. He quickly showed me his best work which was a perfectly working Steinway & Sons grand piano from 1915. This grand piano had a touch that is so light and direct that every single mistake - no matter how slight! - was heard. This might sound like a bad thing but in reality, once you get used to the feeling and sound, you play so much more accurately. Within ten minutes of practice I was playing my notes so straight and clear that the only way to describe the precision with which I was playing is to imagine a fully automatic MP30 discharging – except beautiful. I spent close to an hour there.

Finally, I was able to pick up my skis with bindings, boots, poles and goggles and haggled some more about the price. So, you can imagine that I was a very happy man when I got home: good food, good music and a good deal. At home a good book was waiting for me, so it was all good. Apparently my hapinness was visible on the outside as well, because when Paolo entered it was the first thing he noticed. I just realised I haven't introduced Paolo yet.

Paolo - one of my roommates - returned from making some exams in Perugia since my last letter. The past two weeks I mostly spend time with them. Paolo deserves notice with his interesting insights in international politics and a better grasp of history in most areas than I have, which means he is a great subject for me to question. And then he also has that Italian flair when speaking...

"A favour. This is the beginning and end of Maffia." Paolo explained and I listened intently as he continued in his thick Italian accent, all the while gesturing with his hands. "They say Maffia is the State within the State. It is a way of life. For instance, you have a bad son, a lazy son, who when he is 22 has no job and no education. Perhaps he did drugs as well. Then sometimes in Italy you go to a man, a man you know is Maffia, and you say 'can you do me a favour?'. Now this man is a man of honour. So, of course, when you ask him, he will do this favour for you, as all men of honour will. This favour does not have to be criminal. It can be that he knows a man in an office and he asks him to do him a favour. And he also being a man of honour he does this for him. It is the beginning and end of Maffia - the favour."

Of course, as befits students, we’ve been to a few parties as well. A couple of Fridays ago I went with 77 other foreign students and a few guides to what they call a studentenhyttar, basically a large cabin. As I wasn't sure who of the students would be joining (Paolo was skiing cross country there instead of walking) I decided to talk to the very first person I saw that was wearing a large backpack at the station of Majorstuen. This happened to be an Italian girl whose name I have forgotten because Paolo and I always refer to her as 'pesce fracico' – which means something like 'girl-with-eyes-of-a-three-day-old-dead-and-smelly-fish'. That's dialect. The girl has a certified divine bottom that would make Michelangelo bluss – and she was sitting on it – but unfortunately she constantly looks as if she's as stoned as a king prawn.

Since her conversational proficiency did not rise above mono-syllabic replies and my Italian is non-existent barring poignant dialect learned from Paolo, I put on my headphones back onduring the walk. After a few minutes another girl started talking to me. Sighing inwardly I took off my headphones again, cutting of a song by Diana Krall (a mediocre Jazz artist), when she exclaimed: "This feels like a death march." Puzzled I queried: "Really? How so?" "No reason. By the way, I am Russian." "No you're not. You're American.": I stated with conviction (she was American). "No really, my name is Sascha." (Caitlinn) I ground my teeth.

We actually talked a bit more after that but then forming words isn't necessarily the same as communicating. In that respect I never understood Derrida when he asked himself 'how not to communicate?'. I expect he was a lonely man. In any event, Caitlinn, of course, was not alone. She had three more girls about her whose sole purpose on this trip was to convince everybody of their coolness and party spirit. Jennie, Caitlinn, Emily and "that fucking french girl" (don't ask, they insisted) apparently thought they should pretend to be fourteen and jump up and down like excited puppies all. the. bloody. time.

I had kitchen duty for dinner and nobody knew what they were doing. Although the various food extravagancas of our dorm had been excellent practice, unfortunately the ingredients were absolutely terrible and not enough could be salvaged that anybody in his right mind would think of the result as "dinner". This particular dish more or less resembled chunky Mexican runs. I ate a salad.

The evening started with dancing in the living room on the second floor. The fireplace had been lighted and now that the chimney was finally warm the smoke actually escaped instead of choking us to death. Around nine o'clock I decided I would go to the sauna on the first floor. Anticipating the prude sentimentalities of my fellows, I wrapped a towel. I had guessed correctly because everyone was wearing either a bikini or swimming trunks. It is interesting to me why my generation is so paradoxal about nudity. All forms of nudity are immediately associated with sexuality and sex and they squirm and wriggle uncomfortably whenever confronted with nudity in other permissive contexts. At the same time sex has become such a readily available "commodity" that you would expect that nudity is no longer considered as something extraordinary. It really amounts to nothing more than hypocrisy.

In any event, "when in Rome...” I charged outside, tossed my towel aside and threw myself headfirst into a high snowbank. Letting the cold work into my skin I turned onto my back, brushed the snow out of my eyes and was greeted with an audience of about six people in front of the windows on the second floor. I should have charged for the show.

Later in the evening a very, very drunk and not so good-looking Finnish girl was trying to seduce Paolo. She wouldn't take a hint as Paolo wasn’t interested. At one point I decided to help him out. I stepped up to him and started to talk to him, slowly putting myself between him and her. We talked like that for ten minutes and still she came back. I rolled off my chair from laughing at the grimace Paolo made when she sat on his lap. Paolo was sitting rigidly upright with his hands wide in surrender, making sure he wasn't touching her in any way. She never noticed a thing but wonders of wonders, eventually she did leave.

This was near the end of the party, so that left Paolo, me and a couple further up on the couch, a Mexican girl if I recall correctly. The relation on the couch was quickly evolving into something Paolo and I weren't particularly keen on witnessing. We decided to play one more song, the girl in the other room, and then make a bathroom stop before retiring for the night. During that song the two left. Since we had already made up our minds to leave we also got up when the song ended. However, when we tried to get into the hallway the door wouldn't budge. We tried again. Nothing. Somewhat annoyed Paolo threw his weight into it and it finally opened.

As it opened we heard a girl scream in pain. Opening it fully, we saw the Mexican girl jumping on one leg, holding her right foot in her hand while cursing under her breath and moaning from the pain. At the same time the guy was still in the process of pulling his zipper up. Paolo and I struggled not to laugh and Paolo apologised profusely to the Mexican girl. As we walked outside towards the toilets, laughing mirthfully, the fire alarm also went off. Curses quickly filled the air and when we returned from giving our trouser snakes a hand we were still laughing and therefore the first suspects for tripping the fire alarm. We waved everyone off and ignored their accusations and slept for some two hours.

The morning after the Mexican girl was limping badly. At one point she and I were both lounging on a couch and I asked her how her foot was.
"It hurts. I was with a girlfriend last night and my foot got under a door."
"Yes, I know. I was there when Paolo opened the door and you were making out with that guy."
"A guy... ? I don't remember."
"Well, if it was a girl, she certainly was big, broader in the shoulders than I at least.": I replied, letting her off easily.

After a short silence she took off her sock and said: "I think it is broken. Could you take a look?"
I raised my right eyebrow slightly but took her foot nonetheless, replying with a curt "certainly".
She immediately cried out in pain as soon as I gently held her foot. Raising my eyebrow further I ascertained that that did not hurt at all. "Typical", I thought.

As I returned my attention to her dark blue toe I did notice that she had very nice feet. After I had made sure it was not broken I decided I would give her a foot massage, devilishly thinking that she quite possibly was easy and that the small investment of a few minutes of rubbing her feet might reap quite the benefits. She obviously didn't mind, lying down all the way and relaxing as I asked her little questions about Vera Cruz, where she was from. When she closed her eyes contentedly after a few minutes I stopped. She opened her eyes and asked: "Why did you stop?". "Why should I continue?", I retorted and sat back.

Another of those moments where I don’t quite know why I really did stop. Boredom I suppose; it somehow felt to easy. Meh. Unlike Gloria, who I didn’t meet anymore, I never gave her a second thought.

And as they say, plenty of fish, so it was that friday after that I had dinner with three girls, one of which I was somewhat stricken with due to her playful nature. The food was Indonesian and very well prepared. We had fried rice with saté, eggrolls and spiced longbeans. A colourful and tasty display with which the women were obliviously drinking wine, not realising that soy sauce interfered in a particular nasty way with the wine. They eclaimed that the wine was not of a good make but as I had picked it out myself and had drunk two glasses before dinner I was happily aware of the opposite. Holding my tongue I finished the rest of the bottle after dinner.

During dinnner our conversation shifted at one point to music. I shared my preference of Muse over Coldplay because the latter is too simple for my taste while Muse borrowed many complicated compositional aspects of Bach (particularly the solution of diminishing sevenths; that I did not share to avoid everybody nodding off). To which Laurien replied that the borrowing of Bach was to be expected, since Bach wrote so much in the C- and G-key, which are easy keys to copy.

I looked at her quizically and opened my mouth to say something devastatingly rude but looking around I realised the company I was in and the good impression I wished to make on Rachelann and closed it again. For those somewhat familiar with musical history the ludicrous nonsense of her remark must be apparent. During Bach's time the Werckmeister tunings (four of them) had just been invented, allowing composers to make use of the full range of the piano. Bach was purportedly so happy with this that he wrote Das Wohltemperierte Klavier I and II, which both go through every key. In general he made wide use of every key, which most likely also forced him to start playing with his thumbs (something frowned upon before that time as it was considered unsightly).

Much as I wished to ridicule her, I preserved the peace. Something not too disagreeable since quickly after dinner I left with Rachelann to a concert of the Dears. It was an entirely unimaginative concert but I suppose most people were impressed with the flangers, phasers and distortions which gave it an air of avant garde. The singers were mediocre and needed reverb effects just to pretend they had timbre in their voice. The whole thing was a rather dishevelled and confusing racket of sound, especially considering the arhythmic pianist who kept lagging behind the rest.

The next few days were filled with unexplainable female behaviour (not mine!), which I have decided I will not analyse and certainly not bother you with. Suffice is to say that I should learn when to zip and unzip it, both my mouth and pants.

Love, or what you will,



Roland