leaving hjelms gate

...and on to the next battle

The Charles de Gaulle airport is hell. Manoeuvring around it with a group of anxious Type A's in the maze of ridiculous interiors and useless 'service'/'security' staff and nonsensical signage is the closest I've ever come to the Inferno. Dante must've changed connections often in Paris. Couple that with waking at 4am, climbing into a taxi by 5 and getting bags checked and boarding passes secured by 6 and on to a plane by 8, hitting M. de Gaulle just after 10 and having to wait two hours longer for the connecting flight (after being redirected four or five times to different lifts to get to Bus number 1 that would take us to Terminal 2 that would take us to 2a that would take us to Gate 22) and we were all a little worse for wear. Hitting Montréal soil and seeing M was the most beautiful thing I'd experienced all day long.

A few lingering thoughts on Oslo:

• I think that my fascination with Norwegian women has less to do with their beauty than with the ease at which they achieve normative femininity.
• I really want to know how their maternity wear manages to not infantilize the bodies that wear it.
• And why bikes are driven on the sidewalks instead of on the bike lanes that are provided for them on virtually every road.
• Scandinavia has become a definite place for potential posts post-PhD.
  

Home, exhausted and exhilarated. Have a lot of decompressing and sleeping and thinking to do.