Norway Trip 1 - Stavanger, Lysefjord and Sandnes

For those few (or none) who were seriously waiting for the next blog entry, I am sorry that it took me quiet a while. The past days have been busy as always and now I decided it is time to put my readings away and use the time my clothes take in the washing machine for a long blog entry. Correction: That was yesterday, obviously the break was not long enough..

By now, I am 42 days here. On the one hand it's like: Wow?! Only 42, but then it's also like already 42 days? I just thought about calculating the days that remain is my beautiful Oslo, but I decided not to. Too frustrating, and probably my international friends over here would also hate me for doing that cause then we all know that time is running too fast. I personally know already, that leaving in december will be so hard. On monday, one friend of mine, Alicia, uploaded a photo on facebook of my friends and I with the capture "family". It kept me thinking. Yes, they truely are family. Cause family for me is, when you feel welcomed and appreciated. When people are caring about you, realizing when you're not feeling well. When they know you're personality and who you really are. I'd say when you're all by yourself in a country that is far away from home, then this rather "extreme" situation makes 42 days enough  to recognize your new friends as your family. Whenever I started University back home in Mannheim, the first month was also exciting and great, but I would not have called my friends family back then. That does not mean that they are not by now, but it's probably the distance to your home country that makes you feel bonded already after a short while.

One of the best information in the last two weeks I should share is that I moved out of my apartment in my student village into a different one. Everything started with my friend Naomi telling me, that their roomate, who did an internship in Oslo, moved out of their flat. When I asked if they knew, who would move into afterwards, she replied that she had no clue. Funny as I am, I was joking that I would like to move in, since my flat in building 21 was so dirty and cold. Naomi kinda ignored the fact that I was joking and told me, that she would actually love the idea of having me as a flatmate. After talking to her second flatmate Marion, another friend of mine, they were both really sweet and encouraged me to go to our Student Housing and ask, if this would be even possible....to shorten up, the next day I moved into this beauuuuuuutiful flat!! It's clean, it's warm, it's pretty....but most importantly: I have the sweetest roomates ever!!! On the first day they were waiting for my with fruits and chocolate fondue and I knew immedeately, this was the right decision :-) Now I am getting settled here and I love having those sweet girls and Gogo as my roomate, cause all of them are really warm-hearted. And also it's a pleasure to live with 3 girls and chatting all the time. Not sure if my exams will like that though, haha :)

The second good thing happening the last days was our beautiful trip to Stavanger on the weekend. We planned this trip only a week before, but everything turned out really nice. We splitted our group of 16 people into different teams, to facilitate the organization. The accomodation team found those small white wooden cabins with grass roofs in Sandnes, a small village close to Stavanger. Those cabins were the sweetest. The car group had booked three cars and drove us safely to Sandnes and back. The food team was taking care of the food for 16 people. Since it included myself I can tell you, now I am ready to have my four kids, cause cooking for 16 people was quiet a challenge, but we made it (somehow at least), so four seems really easy now haha! And I don't want to forget the cleaning team, doing a great job as well. So far we didn't hear anything from the accomodation adminsitration that complained about messing up the rooms, so I guess it was well cleaned..wohoo!

SO back to the trip, which is probably more relevant to you. Stavanger is close to the Lysefjord, a nice fjord offering quiet a few highlights of Norway. Those are particularly the Preikestolen and the Kjerag. The first is a rock that offers a view over a large part of the fjord and the second a stone that looks like it fell in between two mountains.The first photo is before we climbed up that mountain, the second is taken from the preikestolen (thanks to Miriam) and the last is me at the Preikestolen (thanks Claudia). The landscape was simply amazing, I still can't belive how impressing and untouched everything was. I could have stopped every five minutes on the way up, cause everything we passed looked crazy. It's hard to describe for people who haven't seen such a beauty of nature yet, but it's crazy. Up at the Preikestolen we had this amazing view and I felt sooo incredibly small in between this massive and big fjord and mountain area. It was really wonderful that nothing touristic was on top of the mountain, no shop with Preikestolen pendants or photobox or overexpensive Preikestolen Mountain restaurant. Just nature and us (and a few other tourists, of course).

On our second day we divided our group. While the others went to the Kjerag (I can just retell that they were really amazed) I made a boat tour as well as a tour around Stavanger and its harbor, afterwards we also had a coffee break. I really enjoyed the three hours on the fjords, getting the ..let's say water perspective of the fjord and just sitting down while enjoing the view. At the end of our day we ended up at a sandy beach close to Sandnes. It was so nice to sit down and look at the sea and not being busy. The last weeks were always full, alaways surrounded by tons of people (which is of course great). Therefore it was so relaxing to just grab some cake and sit down at the water and enjoy the last sun shines.
All in all it was a great trip with my Norwegian family, games, hiking, nature and the beach.

 

Other than that there was an ABC (Anything but clothes) party last week, which was fun and showed the amazing creativity people put forward when planning outfits that don't include actual clothes (okay, here and there you did see a sweater, shorts etc.). This picture shows my friends Nils (Germany), Eva (Netherlands), Brent (USA), Emre (Australia) and I before we were headed to the party.

I also had my first working shift at the U1 café (Social Science café), which was fun. But I definetly have to try out my broken pieces of Norwegian next time, the first time was too overwhelming that I dared to try talking in Norwegian. Making 10 different sorts of coffee was enough for the first day! :-D

Other than that unviersity is capturing me quiet a bit, on monday I have to turn in my first proposal for my final paper in the class "Scandinavian Welfare Society". Therefore, since another trip to the Glacier close to Laerdal starts tomorrow (yes, Manon turns into a nature explorer!!!), I'll go back to workkkkk.

Have a great day, an even better week, and talk to you soon (if the ice on the glacier hike doesn't break)

Home sweet home

Hey folks!!

Another week is over, and again, too much happened to write everything down. But this week was slightly different, because university life started and therefore some seriousness was taking over my life!
Now that I go regularly to the Universitetet i Oslo (that's how you say it in Norwegian) I am continuing to realize: this here is for real!! This is not two weeks summer vacation --- my life is taking place here! When I know that my girls are going to our home University while I am sitting here (or to other universities all over the world ;-)), I really miss them. It is strange not to be able to enjoy this upcoming fall semester with them in Mannheim! I love all our little traditions - Café Sammo, Sunday Brunch, Tiffany ( a club, not regular shopping trips at Tifffany's - no worries dad), Schneckenhof, Christmas Market, ... - and sure miss them and my friends! I guess that is good though, cause we all have something to look forward to when we get back home and it is a great gift to have that, I suppose. And then Café Sammo will be occupied even longer - cause there are stories of the past 5 months to share :-)

Back to Norway though. I was really excited for my classes to begin, cause all of them sounded really interesting and different from what my home university offers. When on monday, the 26th of August my "Norwegian Life and Society" class started, I was concentrated, motivated and ready to study....but this mental status remained fifteen minutes I'd say. The content of the course starts with Norwegian History back before Christ...whoop...so.....schnarchhhhhh. I know I should be interested in the history of the country I am living in, but I look much more forward to the classes about the political system, the welfare state etc.. After class we came to the conclusion, that the course instructor is somehow awkward. He really tried to make some jokes, but I guess it just didn't work out so well. Let's see how the second lecture will be - I haven't give up on this class yet!

My second class was called "Scandinavian Welfare Society" and took place monday evening. I enjoyed it a lot. The course highlights not only the Scandinavian Welfare System in general, but also differences among all the Scandinavian countries. This makes it in my opinion much more exciting! After that I had my first class of the Norwegian language course. It's been quiet a while for me since I started to learn a new language (okay..wow..that's was in 7th grade actually). I totally forgot those funny conversations you start off with. But it soo nice to be finally starting to speak just a little little tiny bit of the language of the country you live in. :-) On friday evening I even tried out my Norwegian in a pub (yes, always works better with alcohol, like every language) when I said "Jeg snakker ikke norsk" - I don't speak Norwegian) and the guy understood me!! WHOOOHOO! SO PROUD!

On wednesday I went to some information meeting about two student organizations - Model United Nations and SVFF (the student organization of the social science faculty). Especially the role of the social science student organization here in Norway is really intersting. The students run a café/pub by themselves, organize several parties, have dj lessons, a quiz orga team, etc.. I went with some friends from my buddy group, and Joanna, Kristen and I finally signed up to work in the café voluntarily and joined the party planning team, while Emre is probably going to be the next DJ legend ;-). This wednesday we are having our first Barista course, and on saturday is the welcome party. I am looking forward to it, cause it will be nice to meet both International and Norwegians, while I can also try out my Norwegian during my work shifts in the café! Oh, and there's going to be our Halloween party by the end of october - so cool!

Thursday we had our second international dinner. After Brent's Mac&Cheese last week, it was Simona's turn to cook something typically Czech. I should mention that her food was not out of the package (this goes to Brent :-P). I came late because of my Norwegian language course, but still got some delicious dumblings Simona saved up for me :-). Loved it. We booked a trip to Kopenhagen that night  for the end of september. We'll be going by cruise to Kopenhagen and stay about 8 hours there, while we spent the rest of the time on the cruise, which offers a party (which we probably won't attend anyways :P). The club we went to afterwards was not able to compete with the greatness of the dumblings, and when the DJ played YMCA, we were sure that the bottle of champagne next to his dj desk is probably empty and he himselve drunk!

Wow..I wrote so much, but the weekend is not even included yet. After our our new Zumba tradition friday morning, I went with some girlfriends to the Munch Museum to attend a free guided tour in English. Some of the paintings presented were really nice. Especially those showing Norwegian landscapes, ora painting that was showing the circle of life of a women.

In the evening some girls and I went to a pub in Grynerlokka called Kaikola. I told you already that they have three beer for 120 NOK, so this is like really cheap here in Norway (5 Euro per beer, still...). We all had two, met some Norwegian people, checked out alternative clubs for the next weekend and then went to take over the dance floor. It was a fun night out!! We didn't stay too long though, cause saturday morning started the big cabin trip.

Spending weekends on cabin trips is really typical and popular in Norway. People from the city hike out into the woods, grap some beers and have a good time in the nowhere of the Norwegian forests. My friends and I attended a cabin trip that was planned by the University. So 49 students, two people working at the university and I started our legendary trip saturday morning. After a one hour hike and an hour public transportation, we came to our beautiful accomodation.

Nearby was a beautiful lake that some of the brave ones in our group swam in (both during day..and night).

After lunch, playing cards, walking up to the lake and dinner, the quiz started. At first we had to answer questions about Norway, and guess song titles etc.. Our group (Sogn Allstars) performed not too bad, and at least we were not last :-D The winning teams in each round got free shots, so by the end of the game everyone was quiet cheerful. The last game therefore turned out to be crazy!! We had to dance and catch the attention of the jury in order to win shots. Our group and another team joined together, and we won all rounds by making a "Polonaise" , a human pyramid etc.. So I guess by the end both of our teams were at least the winners of hearts. haha. The night ended with crazy dances, night swimming and 20 people in one Sauna. I had soo much fun and loved this whole weekend a lot! :) Can't wait for more journeys with these awesome people.

Now I am still tired as hell and go back to my readings, because monday is no fun day!

Best greetings to all of you and a good start for the week!!