Drazen Certified

August 7, 2008
Dave, Bennett and I take off driving to Maryland tomorrow afternoon. After a month and a half in Massachusetts, it’s time to get settled. We are driving to New Jersey and spending the night at Cathy Ward’s and then continue on to Maryland on Friday morning. We are staying with my grandfather’s home for a while in Potomac MD. We probably won’t have internet until further notice. (Although we did ordered it already) Read more »

July 4, 2008
Nantucket has to be one of greatest places for the 4th of July. So many fun things to do for kids and adults. It was a perfect home coming fiesta with so much Americana it would make you sick.

I started the morning with running the Firecracker 5K with Jeff. We had run it before in past years and it was the same. Dave and Dan played tennis. Then Dave, Bennett and I went downtown on the bus to check out the Main Street festivities. Every 4th the firefighters have dueling water fights with fire trucks. The kids take over the trucks and they spray all the crowd down. It’s really funny. I am looking forward to the day when Bennett gets to jump on the truck and hose down some Northeast Yuppies! When the time came, we all went to the Camera Shop where Dave used to work. We were upstairs away from the action. OK - so I thought. I still got hit with water through the open window. Read more »

June 20 - 23, 2008

Dave, Ana, Bennett and I visited Lofoten after Bergen. Lofoten Islands are an archipelago that is often considered one of the most scenic parts of Norway. This was our little “farewell to Norway” splurge vacation. We flew up to Bodø and spent a night there at a local campground called Bodøsjøen Camping. We rented a little little cabin and watched the soccer game that Croatia was in. Croatia tragically lost and Ana drank her sorrow away in the midnight sun. Read more »

June 18 - 20, 2008
I am super slow at going through vacation photos now that I’m lounging around in Nantucket. It’s Bennett - I swear! Anyways, to continue the story of Ana’s trip to Norway I’ll pick up where I left off. Ana went from Olso to Bergen for her conference on Fisheries and Acoustics (something like that). We caught up with her a couple days later because we had never been to Bergen. Bergen is the 2nd largest city in Norway and was founded around 1070 AD. It is known as the city of rain, having a big commercial harbor, being surrounded by seven mountains and hosting large oil companies. They also have a unique dialect which I found a little difficult to understand. Read more »

June 17, 2008
Dave, Bennett and I leave tomorrow morning for 3 days in Bergen on the west coast and then about 4 days in Lofoten near the Arctic Circle. From there, we have 1 day to clean our apartment in Oslo (Tuesday 24th) and then we fly to St. Petersburg for 5 days. So no more internet for us until we make it to Boston on June 30th. We will catch up on all our overdue postings when we reach Nantucket over the month of July.

Until then, Adios Oslo!

June 13-15, 2008
Ana Sirovic came to Oslo. She had a conference in Bergen to go to. So she made a vacation out of it! Lucky her. For Ana’s 1st day in Olso, we walked up Karl Johans Gate and went to all the main sights. Some sights were Aker Brygge (water front), the Akerhus Festning (old castle), National Gallery to see the Scream by Edvard Munch etc. We met up with Dave at a brew pub and Katie and Kevin joined us. This was the 1st time for baby James to be in a bar. Oh yeah! Read more »

June 10, 2008
It’s going to be hard to leave all our good friends! Our bags are almost all packed for the movers on Thursday. We are trying our best to see all our friends before we go. It’s busy and time is running out. We are in a bit of shock. This photo is from today when Bennett had some quality time with Jan Andrea. Their personalities are like the Road Runner and the Walrus. Too cute. Read more »

May 16 - 19, 2008
Dave, Bennett and I went to Stockholm with Regula, Andi and Jon Andrea for a short weekend. Jon Andrea and Bennett were born 4 days apart and hang out a lot. We decided to go on May 17th weekend (Norwegian Independence Day from Sweden) because flights were cheap. This is like an American going to London on the 4th of July. Our opinion was that the Norwegian children’s parade looks the same every year. Kids just keep walking by. It’s very different from American parades where there is variety: fire trucks, floats, bands, horses etc. Read more »

We did a quick weekend trip to Göteborg about 4 weeks ago. Katie wanted to get a trip in before it was too late in her pregnancy. So we combined Dave’s interest in seeing where his great grandparents where originally from and Katie’s need to explore before her baby arrived.

We rented a car and drove out Friday night to Göteborg and stayed in a cabin on the outskirts of town. We took the metro downtown on Saturday morning to meet up with Tanya, Svein and their son, Per. We walked around the city and went into a Photo museum. We had lunch by the canal and took the ferry around town. In the evening we did some shopping (because Norway is more expensive) and went out for dinner. Göteborg is Sweden’s 2nd largest city. It seemed nice. There were lots of parks and open space within the city. I felt this city had potential to be cool like Copenhagen, but it’s not yet. I mean that Copenhagen had cool cafe’s on the canal and Göteborg could, but doesn’t. We had a good time just hanging around town. It was the 1st really nice spring day this year. So everyone was out getting sun and lounging.

Read more »

It’s official, Dave accepted a job as an Oceanographer at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) in West Bethesda Maryland. NSWC has the largest indoor wave tank in the US. Dave will enjoy playing with all the government’s big science toys. His start date is in the middle of August.

Our plans until then are to pack up in the month of May, travel in Europe a little in June, relax on Nantucket in July and move from Boston to Maryland in the beginning of August. At first we’ll stay with my grandfather Bill Bennett until we decide where we want to live. Read more »