Hjemme igjen

I am back from my five-day trip to Oslo. I visited the new opera house, which was designed by the architecture firm Snøhetta, and hit some old favorites, such as the National Gallery and the National Library. The interview and lecture for the postdoctoral fellowship went just fine. I won't know the results until after 22 August, which seems an awful long time to wait (Okay, it's an eternity!). But such is life.

It was a tiring trip, and nerves kept me from sleeping well. I did get to catch up with some friends and with some students from the early 1990s, which was really a blast. But here is what I was missing out on:

So sweet! It was great to come home to the boys!

Tigerstaden!

I fly out tomorrow for my interview in Oslo. Yippee!

The lecture is in a form that I could present in a pinch, and I'll have three days there to tinker before the actual delivery.

I know pretty much what to expect at the interview (although the lunch with the committee members and the other candidate may be challenging!), and I have a list of fun (for me) activities I want to do in museums and archives. Plus I have to find the coolest Norwegian toy in Oslo to bring home for E.

In the lecture I'm going to have some fun doing things with texts. I'm going to deal with three: Knutsen og Ludvigsen's "Eventyret om en melodi," Knut Hamsun's Pan (1894), and Erlend Loe's Doppler (2004). The assigned topic for the lecture is "Forskning og undervisning i nordisk litteratur i en globalisert verden."

Somewhat surprisingly, the University is putting me up in what appears to be a very nice, super-modern hotel, Hotel Thon Gyldenløve, which bills itself as a "designhotell" (that's "design hotel" for those of you unable to figure out the incredibly complex orthography of Norwegian). Totally unnecessary to shell out for a $200/night room, but I have to admit I'm looking forward to five nights there. I'm almost considering it as a mini vacation as much as an interview--not that I haven't been madly preparing for the past two weeks, but I just really want to have my head in the right space. This position would mean so much for me both personally and professionally. To say that it's a dream job is an understatement. But jobs come and go, so I'm trying to remain sanguine.