Boring February

Being back to Tromsø was different, but very nice. The weather wasn’t so much. I first drove to University to meet Minna for lunch and after that home and started unpacking. The afternoon was lazy, catching up with stuff I missed, called my mum to see she arrived home safely and in the evening I met people in Driv. We all had a lot of news, so the evening was soon too short. I also met Laura, another international student who just arrived when I was gone and happened to be Eva’s roommate. I spent the whole Tuesday at the university, mostly lectures, but also delivering my new learning agreement. My home university is usually killing me with all of their deadlines and inflexibility, but this time they surprised me and sent it to me… Yeah, on the last day. Late in the afternoon a French CouchSurfer came, I showed him around a little, but then I was ready to go to sleep. I had Wednesday reserved for skiing with Nieves, so we were in Kroken at 10 sharp. Somehow I didn’t know they don’t open until 3 PM during the week. So we drove back to study in the morning and returned in the afternoon. Up and down, up and down until 7 PM was enough for us to feel our tights. After a shower we felt better and people started coming for our Svalbard meeting. We were 10, so a lot of food and talk, but we somehow also managed to make some plans. On Thursday morning Julien left for his 2-days Dogsledding trip and I was at the university again. Gym in the afternoon, answering emails after the shower and dinner at Mary’s place in the evening. Delicious lasagna – Italians, what else would you expect.  On first Friday in February I afforded waking up late and my breakfast ware waffles at the International Coffee hour. We stayed until 1 PM chatting and afterwards did research about Svalbard – me and Minna decided we are going on a snowmobile trip for sure, no matter the costs and company. At 4 PM my last CSer came – Jim from Australia. We got to know each other and in the evening he joined us for Italian dinner in Mortensnes. But before going there Eva and I had picked up Carlos – Eva’s CSer from Madeira.

Saturday was one of the coldest days here. At least it seemed so when we went downtown to see the lasso finals at Sami festival. We were spread between competition area, coffee place, post office and competition area again. After we saw the winners in men and women’s categories it was already time for lunch and with both, Carlos and Jim, we chose a new place to eat – Knoll og Troll. They have amazing sandwiches and I really want kitchen with so many choices at all times. With stomachs full they decided to freeze a bit more and headed for cable car when I went home. I washed my hair in no time and already I was at Kathleen’s place. She was already sitting in the chair, getting fresh haircut, which I was also here for. Susann’s sister, Renate was the one doing us a favour. I thought I would go through the year without getting my hair cut, especially in Norway where this costs a small fortune, but since it got unbearable, I decided to try something new and got banks Happy with my new hairstyle I got home 3 hours later and after the dinner it was time to get ready for party. One of the French guys was celebrating his birthday in Mortensnes, so this meant our preparty is happening there. Party continued in Driv and finished in Ørndalen at 4 in the morning.

Reindeer & me

If I thought Saturday was the coldest day, Sunday assured me this wasn’t the case. Not enough sleep, a bit of hangover and minus temperatures outside made the last day of the week even colder. When we reached city centre, a nice guy stopped us, saying we needed to pay the entrance. 60 kroners per person changed into 50 for whole family of 6. Athletes on skis were pulled by reindeers from Main Square down the main street to Burger King where the Finish line was. Crazy ride!! I don’t know if I would dare try this with even half of the speed they had. Btw, this year’s champion comes from Finland. We warmed us up in the city hall, where there was a small reception and fashion show with a lot of Sami clothes from different regions. In the evening we returned back home and spent the evening in house 15, playing Jungle Speed and running out for northern lights.

On Monday it was time to be serious again – university and one of the most interesting topics to me – alternative medicine. At 4 in the afternoon my mind was exhausted from following interesting lectures in Norwegian for the whole day, so I decided to do the same to my body in gym. Shower, dinner, bed and the day was over. Tuesday was same old – university, gym and dinner, but afterwards we went out bowling with our Buddy programme and 3 hours of competitive bowling later everybody was ready to go home. 🙂

9^th February was time to test Zumba classes in our gym. At least that’s what I and Nieves decided. So after the morning at the university, writing one of my blogs and answering to the emails, we ate our lunch in Bodega and then we were ready to dance. It seemed too easy at the beginning, but a wet shirt at the end was proof of successful training. I showered at home and then started with the most hated assignment – laundry. I put everything in the washing machines and drove to Mortensnes, where MariaGrazia was already waiting with suitcases. She was moving to our student place. I helped her pack the rest of the things and go through her cupboard and when we started our first ride to Ørndalen; Rudolf looked like a gipsy car. There probably wasn’t a thing you couldn’t find there.  When we unloaded the car in front of her car, she went to her new neighbours for a cigarette and I ran to put the laundry from the washing machines to drying ones. It took another trip to Mortensnes, loading the car and driving to our final destination again. Somewhere in the middle it started snowing heavily, so having everything moved, made us feel even better. I for sure was ready for a tight sleep. Thursday offered interesting lectures about Sami medicine, so I was glued to my sit from 8 AM till 4 in the afternoon, when I really needed to move, so I visited my beloved gym. Step 2 became one of my favourite classes this semester – Aerobics with complicated step combinations motivate me more and I don’t think about working out so much. A looot of fun! I came home for a shower and since I was too lazy to make myself a dinner, I decided to just take the bus downtown where I was meeting Ulrik for a beer. I think we were supposed to go for a coffee, but ended up drinking couple of beers and me missing the bus. Next morning the beers from an evening before didn’t seem such a great idea anymore. Nice weather made it a bit easier to make it to the university, but no sun in the lecture’s hall wasn’t much of a support. Gym in the afternoon and I met Minna for a coffee and to give her Lonely Planet of Norway. In the evening we wanted to sing Karaoke, but no bar offered this on that evening, so we ended up in Driv playing board games. We got so competitive that our beers were in dangerous from time to time. Not bad at all. The beginning of the weekend was time to clean my room, but in the break I checked out some series. Later I prepared for the pirate party in Mortensnes and Eva made my vodka to pirate rum.

Pirates

We caught the last bus to the centre and in Driv I danced my ass out. Next morning started at 11, when I had breakfast and then a coffee at Eva’s place. I took a bus to Mortensnes to get back my car and I just picked up my roommate Ingrid to go to Kraft for a Sunday class of Step interval. Hangover workout feels 3 times more difficult than it really is, but we got through. After the shower we met in the kitchen and prepared Mexican dinner for us two. 90 minutes later we figured out that our feeling of talking for hours wasn’t true, but still decided to call it a night. But since I was not ready to go to sleep yet, I went to a friend’s house to see The King’s Speech.

Monday was a usual day at the university with gym in the late afternoon, shower, dinner and a beer at Driv in the evening. Tuesday I was babysitting from 7 AM till 4 PM, sent a birthday card to Anja and worked out in the evening. Boring February 🙂 finished on Wednesday, when I was reading the book for the next course the whole day, went babysitting in the afternoon and went for Svalbard meeting/dinner in the evening. I didn’t want to cook anything this time, since it takes so much time, that’s why I bought 2 chocolate cakes the day before, unwrapped them and when the girls said: “Good job, it’s really delicious!” I only replied with a simple thank you. Sorry girls, but sometimes it works. 🙂 Well, I said that the boring part of February finished. It was so because at 9 in the evening I picked up Sabina from the airport. We know eaxch other from translation studies; since she had a month off from the university, she came up to the North.

The End (of the boring period)

København (Copenhagen, Denmark)

My flight left on 25^th January at 7 PM to Oslo, but I was going to reach Copenhagen, capital of Denmark, next day in the morning. When bored at the airport in Oslo, looking for a place to sleep, I was, once again, wondering why the hell did I need to book flights on different days, but 100€ more on my account made me feel better again. So I got up early, not that I slept much anyway, cleaned my teeth, did the make-up, went to the international zone and got myself a chai latte. Interesting how, as soon as you come out of only Norwegian zone, chai latte gets normal and tasty again. 😛 An hour and a half long flight to Copenhagen – I slept the whole time and got out to not very nice weather.

Starbucks...

Firstly I orientated myself at the airport and right away spotted Accessorize (where I got some stuff for really cheap price ;)) and Starbucks. Yesss! 😀 Ride to the centre, tourist info, train station, where I left my suitcase, and already was I sightseeing. I stopped at the Black Diamond – Library, where I bought Lonely Planet of Denmark and started starring cafes we needed to visit in this week. A coffee and a snack an hour before my mum came gave me extra energy, but the boost seeing part of my family again was incredible! We first walked to our CSer hostess’s place and after that back to the city for a dinner. We chose a restaurant in Nyhavn and later discovered we chose one of Lonely Planet’s suggestions. How convenient! 😉 After that we walked back home and I fell in the bed.

My mum & me with Little Mermaid

Next morning, on 27^th, I woke up still a bit tired. My mum wasn’t, but I wouldn’t be either if I didn’t sleep at the airport or could sleep in the plane like she did. When we got out of the house, I realized I don’t have my camera on me, so I went back and searched everything through. 3 times. Nothing. I was sure I lost it, but my mum suggested going for the breakfast to exact same place I was the day before. I didn’t even believe that it’s possible, but I still asked the waiter about the camera and when I came for a glass of water 15 minutes later, he pulled out blue bag saying: “This one?” Me jumping and thanking him all the time was an obvious sign I can’t believe how lucky I am finding my camera. So ready for some photo shooting we started our tour in Tivoli; or better said, in front of it since it is closed in winter. From there we just figured out the better is too nice to be inside, so we headed a bit out of the centre, where Little Mermaid sits.  From there we took a walk around, stopped at Gefion Fountain and after the main street reached Amalienborg Palace, the winter Royal residence and just 100 meters from this palace we have Slovenian embassy.  We spend the afternoon wandering around the Medieval part of the city, in Nyhavn, at the University and accidentally crashing festival, where an amazing group Ignug was performing.

Lagkages at La Glace

Friday morning we had breakfast at home, but we were too early for entering the Rosenborg Castle, so we stopped at Juice bar. I got some great ideas for hangover-smoothies. 😉 Crown Jewellery and Museum occupied us for quite a long time, so we left change of the guards out and went to Carlsberg, local brewery. Obviously we had to spend there a couple of hours and got out… a bit tipsy. 🙂 Saturday started with a walk through the city and a lagkage at La Glace, more than a century old bakery recommended by our hostess and my Lonely Planet. At 11 we rushed to Gothersgade to see the whole march of the guards to Amalienborg. In the afternoon we reached the top of  the 209m high Round Tower to see Copenhagen from up above, got some energy with a lunch at Steakers and visited National Museum (mostly because of the Vikings’ history, but somehow there wasn’t that much about them).

The last day in Copenhagen was the reason we came here in the first place and wasn’t in Copenhagen at all. Moreover, it was another country. So we took a train over to Malmöin the morning, had a nice walk around among City Hall, church, closed shopping malls, when we headed to Malmo Arena after the lunch. With help of my sister, who posted on Facebook that I have 2 spare tickets, I managed to sell them. What I thought it would be a nice walk turned out to be trip to another part of the city, so we were really happy to sit down and watch an amazing game for Bronze between Sweden and Spain. After tight score the whole match Spain won after the regular time with 24:23.

Last seconds of regular time of the final match

It was time for fiiiinal game!!! Denmark and France started warming up and game could not be more interesting. Plus it was my first finale match I saw live. I was, logically, cheering for Denmark, since that’s where I’d party the hardest if champions. Nerve braking game ended with 31:31 after the regular time. Extra time made the expensive tickets so much more worth their price and in the end we saw Frenchmen defending their title (and winning their 4^th after 1995, 2007 and 2009) by beating Denmark with 37:35. Train ride back to Denmark was full of sad faces, but still they were celebrating silver medal.

We woke up at 5 AM the last day, took bus at 5:20 and quarter to six we were already at the airport. My flight was one hour earlier than my mum’s, so we said goodbye and I went through security control. I thought they would be bugging me about my contact lenses liquid, but I was surprisingly allowed to take it with me. One last Starbucks coffee and I caught the end of check-in queue, but with too much hand luggage. 2 is not 1, whatever and I sent one down to the cargo. An hour and a half later I was already buying cheap alcohol and cigarettes in Duty Free. The maximum amount, what else. 😛 It cost me quite some nerves before I finally saw my luggage on the belt, so I grabbed it immediately and ran to security check. I waited the line when I could talk to security and they would have let me through and for my morning to be perfect – my gate was 18, so at the other end of the Inland zone plus the escalators were broken. All of them! At least the flight attendant didn’t ask me anything, so I could board with all my 4 bags and felt pretty good about myself up until Tromsø.

New semester

January in Tromsø started crazy. Early morning seemed too early because of the darkness. I was wondering when the sun is going to come out, but forgot we still have polar night. University the whole morning was exhausting, but I got some energy with lunch and by seeing familiar faces at volunteer meeting. New students were coming to the North and we were helping making the first days easier for them. Organising my life in the evening and starting the Introductory Programme next morning. Quite interesting seing how people are confused at the beginning as we were exactly like this in August and know more or less everything about this place by now. Free food, new people, coffees with old ones was finished with improvised Quiz night. I left early because first two of my CSers were coming to town – Selena and Lukasz. We had a nice chat and went to sleep.

Bowling with new international students

Thursday, 6th of January is holiday in Austria. I was making money by babysitting in the morning and after another free lunch (how I love Introductory programme! 😉 ) we took students from Health university for a faculty and campus tour. In the evening we saw a movieand after I came home quite tired, Éva called if we want to do a small party at her kitchen. We got up and when we came out Selena asked me if the light green light on the sky is northern light. I didn’t want to disappoint her by telling these are very, very light ones, so I just said yes. But 15 seconds later the whole sky was green, the shapes were dancing and we just stood there and admired it. When we managed to reach Éva’s house, everybody already knew there were northern lights and we continued watching them, also through the kitchen window. Since I had to wake up early, for babysitting, I called it a night quite soon. My 2 CSers left for Narvik and when I finished playing with children, I went home, changed and drove to Driv for cultural presentation. I left the party out for a bit of rest and hanging out with my next CSer Jupijn from Netherlands. He was coming to Tromsø for Polar night Half marathon the next day. I was also babysitting on this day, so I didn’t see it, but a lot of my friends ran it and I am quite jealous they did it. Evening was time for bowling and party at Wael’s place. Sunday morning was lazy, I was babysitting in the afternoon and we cooked Štruklji together, which I later took to the first international dinner of this semester to Åsgardsveien I started new week with babysitting in the morning, university in the afternoon and beer at Blå Rock in the evening. Tuesday I was at the university and in the afternoon I welcomed 3 German CouchSurfers: Henriette, Martin and Felix. After showing them around for a while, we joined Éva and her CSer Nico from Argentina for a dinner. On Wednesday I was searching for base layer underwear in the city, picked up Minna at the airport coming back from a month holidays at home and went skiing for the rest of the day. Both Thursday and Friday I was mostly at the university but managed to get my cross-country skis done, got the accreditation for Tromsø International Film Festival (TIFF), said goodbye to German CSers and welcomed 2 new one from the same country – Bente and Claudia. On Friday evening they joined me on CSers meeting at Verdensteathret, but I ended up going to Italian dinner in Mortensnes.

"Horrible" skiing conditions in Tromsø - view over the sea and the city.

Weekend was amazing – I spent the whole Saturday in Kroken, on the ski slopes with Henning, Eva and Ruth. There we met many more and when we decided to leave at 4 PM, we were all pretty done. Risotto gave us girls some energy, so we got out our high heels and crashed downtown. Sunday morning was providing us with missing hours of sleep and the rest of the day was more or less the same – lazy. Monday was time for university again, the same as Tuesday. In the evening I had the last practical part for the general medicine course. Just before I went babysitting for 2 hours, I met 3 Spanish CSers and otherwise I was mostly only worrying about the practical part that was in front of me. This time I could not avoid speaking Norwegian with the patients, which turned out to be very difficult and most horrifying thing for me. Got over it and drove to Kulturhuset, where I saw first TIFF movie with Eva: My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done. Wednesday I spent at the university and in the city, babysitting in the afternoon, watching Incendies at TIFF and picking up my new roommate Ingrid from the airport. A glass of wine with her and Kristin for catching up and off we were to bed. On Thursday and Friday I was working as volunteer at TIFF and after checking the tickets at the entrance on Thursday and babysitting in the afternoon, I met Eva, Marta, and Stefano for the most expected movie of this festival – Black Swan. Amazing!! The next day I was taking care of the cinema hall, so I was able to see Bulgarian movie Shelter, Italian Loose Cannons (which was one of my favourite ones) and French Hands Up. When I was done with my shift I met Emilia – Finnish movie junkie, who happened to be my CS guest for the weekend. We exchanged our numbers and I went to see Run If You Can with Eva, but later we met her again for Slovenian Movie The Slovenian Girl. Emilia also brought a friend, Slovenian girl from Maribor. Funny, how small the world is.  They liked the movie; I left the hall with mixed feelings. A beer at circa and we ready to go home. We had all these great plans to wake up at 8, get the tickets for the next day and catch the movie at , but we overslept. Luckily Eva was nice and got e the tickets, so I and Emilia were able to have breakfast and went to see the movie at 11 AM Basilicata Coast to Coast. A lunch break and we saw another Italian movie Our Life and Precious Lifeafter that, but left everything else out and went home to get ready for a party.

Healing time in Burger King

Coming home at 4 in the morning didn’t make waking up 4 hours later any easier as we assumed. 😀 I also did the mistake of driving to Eva’s house, so I couldn’t get up the hill with my car anymore. But we fought the slippery hill with pushing the car a bit and made it to the centre in time for Russian movie Silent Souls. Slow movie was the perfect start of a bit hangover day, but Australian Brand Nue Dae woke us up and filled with positive energy and happiness. After this one Emilia returned to bus that took them on a long way to Finland, me and Eva sat down in Burger King to get rid of our hangover with a fat meal. 🙂 We started watching The Poetry at 3 PM, but mostly slept through it, so we left it earlier in order to see 127 Hours at the other side of downtown. A bus took us back again and we saw Romanian movie First Of All, Felicia, which is the only one I regret not going out in the middle of it. At 10 PM we drove home, a bit tired of sitting in the comfortable cinema chairs for the whole week. Monday was time to be student and we spent couple of hours practicing the general examination of muscles and joints. The other couple of hours I spent in Bodega and in the evening I hosted a Swiss CSer, who started his tour to film the northern lights the next day and joined me and the other students for a beer at Blå Rock. Tuesday we were practicing the examination at the university again and I was packing in the afternoon for my trip to Copenhagen, Denmark. First time out of Norway after 6 months, seeing my mum and I was proud owner of tickets for Handball Finals of World Championship. I was more than looking forward to it!

Holidays in Norway

Friday, the 24^th December meant the beginning of the real holidays. Of course it was the Christmas’ Eve day, but for me – my family was coming. OK, not my-blood-family, but one of my closest friends, which for me feels like family.

Christmas tree at Tromsø's Main Square

I woke up at 8 AM and after a shower started my way to pick her up. I planned to stop in the city to correct the new address and to buy a travel-sized hair dryer. But I completely underestimated the snowing that hit Tromsø previous evening and was not about to stop soon.  After getting my car out of at least 25 cm snow cover I rushed to the airport hoping of not being too late. And I wasn’t – I even managed to knit couple of lines of the new scarf while waiting. 😀 But then finally people started coming out and I saw Jožica. Probably people thought we were crazy (OK, at least me), but I couldn’t be happier seeing her so far away from home. We did buy a hair dryer even if I hate drying my hair this way since one hair dryer literally exploded in my hands, but after that went for a city tour. I’ve heard before that everything is closed between Christmas and New Year’s Eve (they call it a silent week), so I showed her all the attractions of my home town of the North. Since the museums were closed, we managed to see everything (except museums) before lunch and I mean everything. A quick stop at home, picked up map and off we were on the way to our Norwegian family.

First 100 kilometres went by without any problems and with lots of singing, gossiping and laughing. A call to ask where to continue, but simple instructions turned out to be a nightmare in this polar-night-time. Everything was black and with the Norwegian pronunciation of Norwegian names, which is very different from any other nation’s one, gave us some tough time and in the end we finished on the wrong side of the lake, stuck in snow. At least it wasthe right lake. So trying to get Rudolf out of snow, visiting 3 empty and dark houses and almost no signal on our phones ended in Alf and Heinrich saving us. I bet they were thinking stupid city girls, which was with small attachment of shitted pants, the exact description of us at that point. We were already starving, so when we got to the right side of the lake, into the house and met everybody, we finally started with our dinner. Traditional Norwegian – Pinnekjøtt and strooong alcohol. 🙂 In the evening we exchanged Christmas presents – me and Jožica got home made honey. Mmmm! Funny thing is that we brought traditional Slovenian dessert potica and 1 beehive ending without knowing they have bees in this family. After couple of hours of opening the presents Jožica went to bed, dead from the long way to the North.

Our hosts & us

Me and the kids started playing board games and left for bed just after 3 AM. On Saturday we woke up at 11 AM and felt quite guilty for sleeping such a long time. But we were actually the first ones to get up, so we just sneaked back to bed, where our next Christmas presents were waiting. It’s funny how none of us do Christmas presents, but this year we both gt something to each other. So Jožica got very warm typical Norwegian gloves and I got my own little electronic device. Late breakfast continued outside on the farm and after a dinner we had a long board game evening. Sunday started late again, but this tempo suited us very nicely. Loaded after big brunch we headed to the lake. Frozen and with 20 cm snow on top of it, it was the perfect playground for the next 3 hours, when we started wishing for staying longer, but didn’t want to miss the plane for Trondheim. So we headed back to Tromsø and this time we made it in an hour and a half. Woohoo! So took a shower, washed some clothes, cooked a risotto and caught a bus to the airport. Another 2 hours later we took another bus, just this time from Trondheim airport to student dorm, where Guenther lives. Unluckily almost all the buildings were red and we had to search for the right number 24. But we did find it and fell into the bed.

Trondheim

Monday started late in the morning. We bought breakfast on our way to tourist office, where we got the schedule of opening times during the holidays. It’s hard to travel in this time! But we saw some attractions and when we passed the cinema and bought tickets for Ben Affleck’s movie The Town. Since we had some time before the beginning, we had a quick shopping tour and discovered a nice shop with even nicer lingerie. But we didn’t have much time and they were closing anyway, so we decided to come back the following day. Before going home from the centre we stopped at Rema and bought salmon, rice and some vegetables. Luxurious cooking in Norway. 🙂 Tuesday was cathedral time – we woke up later than planned (but that’s what holidays are about, right? ;)), had breakfast and got going to Nidaros cathedral, its museum and Crown’s Jewellery. Through the museum we debated Vikings, Runes, history of connections between Scandinavian countries and more. We learned that Norway came under Denmark in 1521 after Sweden broke out of the Kalmar Union. After Denmark was attacked by the UK, it entered into an alliance with Napoleon and had to give Norway away as it found itself on the losing side in 1814. Norway was from now on part of Sweden, but Denmark kept the old Norwegian provinces of Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. A tour to the other side of the city, a coffee in Dromedar and it was finally time for shopping. Our first destination: Lingerie!! 😀 A walk through the shop and when we couldn’t hold it anymore we headed for cabins. We occupied 2 of them for next 2 hours deciding what colour, what combination of top and bottom and laughing. When they announced they are closing in 10 we came out with a mountain of clothes, but took some of them to the paying point. Salmon for dinner again and early in bed. Yeah, right. 😛 The next morning we climbed to Fortress, where you get a nice view over the city. Later we did sightseeing in the part east from the centre, but after first 200 meters of small shops and cafes didn’t like so much more and returned to our relaxing point – Dromedar – on one other way, where we stopped in Ting and Åhlens. Planned shopping tour fell into the water because the lack of time, so we drove home, packed, had a dinner and came back to the centre to take Flybussen. Since we were to early we afforded a McFlurry in McDonalds and realized we were surrounded almost by black people. Interesting. At 11 PM we  reached Oslo central station after an hour flight and 20 minutes of express train. When we looked at the map of the capital in Trondheim, we realized our room was very close to the centre, so we decided to walk the whole time and spare money for more lingerie. 😀 Half an hour walk because of all the luggage, getting our keys and loving new beds. 🙂

Our first day in Oslo was actually the last day of opened museums, so we didn’t waste time. We woke up very early and had breakfast on our way to Munch museum. The Norwegian painter is one of my favourite ones, so I was nervous what Jožica would think about him. But worries were superfluous because she loved it. We went through twice, picked our favourites and got some souvenirs from the museum shop. Second target was the Cultural History Museum, which was a bit disappointing. We expected a lot more from Vikings era, but luckily the temporal exhibition about runes saved it. After a round in National Gallery, which was quite interesting, we visited our last museum – Nobel Peace prize museum. First floor is exhibition about this year’s price winner Liu Xiabo, his work, imprisonment, manifestations, China, people’s rights and much more. Being an outsideror living in the world of free speech (at least comparing with China) I was swallowing word after word after word. Second floor started with plays for children we couldn’t skip and continued with Alfred Nobel’s life and Peace laureates. Closing time was the reason we left the museum much earlier than we wanted to. In search for a dinner and exhausted from too much culture Jožica received a call from her boyfriend. He was supposed to be flying to Oslo at the moment he was calling so something didn’t seem quite right. And I could read it from her face – missed plane. We headed home and after dinner and shower it was time for bed. Last day of old year we woke up late in the morning and after brunch we went out for a walk.

Change of The Guard

Our destinations were Tourist Info and all the sights on the main street, from Train Station to Royal Palace. When the sun went down and it got colder, we headed to our room, relaxed with a movie and prepared reindeer with sour cabbage and potatoes. Very tasty New Year’s Eve dinner gave us energy to wait outside for the New Year. Walking fast was not helpful when we had no idea where to go, so we did the final countdown on the street of Oslo, but then rushed to the top of the Opera and admired at least 15 fireworks over the city with couple of hundreds of people. But eventually cold got to us and we returned back home.  New Year started amazingly – looong sleep and a nice breakfast. 🙂 When we finally managed to get out, a sunny day was waiting for us. Program for today started with cemetery and all the famous Norwegian that are buried there. After Krogh, Amundsen and many more the only one we kept missing was Ibsen. After half an hour of walking her, there and back here and there we gave up and went to see the change of the guards at Royal Palace and spent most of the afternoon in Vigeland’s Park. A coffee and closed City Hall later we were on our way home. We had some more reindeer for the dinner and we decided to finish these holidays with a beer in a bar close to our hotel, where they had good music and foreign beer. Jožica was returning home on the next morning, so I walked her to the main station and afterwards I headed alone close to where we were staying the last couple of days, where my CSer host lived. A nice guy, who first gave me the key of his apartment and we sat down for a coffee afterwards. He was working on his new apartment and I was out the whole day. First I spent 4 hours in now my favourite museum – Nobel Peace Prize Museum, went to see the City Hall from the inside and had a long coffee break, reading the news and writing this blog. When I finally didn’t want to write anymore I headed home, where I met my host’s roommate and together we saw a movie. Don’t remember the title but it’s because it was not worth it. I had tons of plans for the next day, but a long warm shower washed away half of them and the other half was ruined by shopping. Sales got me 3 new dresses and lots of fun.

Northern light from the airplane

When I was just thinking whether I do or do not have enough time to go to an exhibition in The National Library, I saw 2 familiar faces on the street, Nadi and Johanna. All very pleasantly surprised walked together to Grünerløkka, chatting and catching up on our Erasmus stays. When they decided they want to go for a coffee, I returned back to the apartment, packed the last stuff and took a train to te airport. A small delay and already was I flying back to Tromsø and polar night. But nights up here have their own magic and I saw amazing polar lights from the airplane – this time also in pink. Landing under the clouds meant all the people on the ground could not see them so it made me feel special coming back home.

Happy New Year! :*

Lazy Interregnum

On December 15th I woke up before alarm clock started beeping. It’s because Anne-Sophie has this wonderful waking up light with birds singing, which starts half an hour before you should wake up. Waaay better than my crazy alarm clock on the phone I start hating every evening before waking up on the next morning. 😀 Bus to the airport and flight to Tromsø, photo here, photo there, lunch and off we were – my guest and Jula to my favourite museum here, University museum of Tromsø, and me to the university for the meeting about spending Christmas with Norwegian families. A lot of gløgg, sweets and I got my information. Christmas close to Fjellfroskvatn, sounded like a good plan. 🙂  Our programme for the evening was Home Alone in Verdenstheatret and later dinner at Jula’s place. She was leaving next morning and we gathered for some tacos and tortillas.

With Anne-Sophie on top of Storsteinen

On the next morning I overslept for the last time in this year, went to get keys of my new house and brought Jula to the airport. She was not the only one flying away, so we spent at least 2 hours saying goodbye to everybody. Late lunch at the northernmost Burger King with Anne-Sophie continued with a beer at the northernmost brewery. In the evening we drove to Åsgardsveien – Anja made štrudelj and it was served with ice-cream.  After lazy Friday morning we took the cable car to amazing, but his time freezing, view over Tromsø. Frozen we went on a shopping tour for typical Norwegian products and chocolate to Sweet Heart. In these days I learned my guest is also in Swiss army, so the logical thing was to visit Military museum, but unfortunately it was closed for the winter. A delicious dinner finished Anne-Sophie’s really nice stay here and off she was to the airport.

Saturday and Sunday were my off days when I was suppose to move. But a bit of partying, skiing and saying goodbye to some more people made me move everything on Sunday afternoon. Luckily Stefano was there to help me move my big bed – can’t live without it anymore. I thought I would be done in couple of hours, but it took these couple of hours just to get everything from one place to another and almost the whole Monday to sort things out in my new room. In-between I brought back my old and Arve’s keys. In the late afternoon i got another visit – this time combined from my home university and EILC in Oslo, since Günter was part of both. He felt like at home immediately which made my hosting so much easier. A dinner in the evening to say goodbye to Oana, Kriszti and Franci. Tuesday I was trying to get my address changed everywhere needed and in the afternoon I went babysitting. When I start in the afternoon I usually stay 2 hours, but this time 4 were planed. And what was supposed to be 4 hours, ended just little before midnight. Getting kids to bed required some convincing since playing makes so much more fun (I knoooow, I remember!), but also kids run out of energy some time. So I had time to see a German movie Rabbit Without Ears¹. So many truths! 🙂 I met Günter at Verdenstheatret and after a tea on my and a beer on his side we drove back to Ørndalen. Wednesday, 22^nd December, I woke up at 5 to bring Stefano and Arianna to the airport and  babysitting the whole day. I was hosting a dinner at my new place in the evening for those still in Tromsø so close to Christmas. Besides me and my guest Günter, also Ruth, Alexey, Éva and Niels from Sweden (who I actually knew from CouchSurfing). We finished the six pack of beers I got for giving the ride in the morning and Günter flew to Oslo before going home for the holidays.

My last day before the holidays I just wanted to do nothing. I have this habit of doing nothing the whole day once in a while and when I’m bored of that it means I have enough energy for couple of weeks. Usually this lazy day comes just after the exams, but this time I didn’t have a chance to have one because of travelling and having people over in Tromsø. Not complaining at all! Just doing exactly what I needed to on this particular Thursday – recharging my batteries.

¹German: KeinOhrHasen

Lillehammer

After exams you usually need a break. Ok, I try to take my whole life one big break and enjoy it as much as possible. But after the exam I wanted to travel a bit and also see European Handball Championship. It would be a pity to have it in the country where I am at the moment and not take the chance. And since Slovenia was playing in Lillehammer, this Olympic town was logical choice.

Destination: Lillehammer

After the dinner with Minna and Henning, we went for a beer with a lot of Erasmus students to Driv. I came back home half past midnight and, of course, nothing was packed. So for an hour I chatted with Kinga and Giorgia and packed my little suitcase. How hard can it be to pack  a hand baggage-sized suitcase for not even a week, right? Well, I still find it impossible!! My mum woke me up at 5 AM and I asked myself once again, why the hell do I always need to fly so early?! And the answer was clear – because the tickets are the cheapest at this time. I took a shower, had a breakfast and warmed up my car, which was covered with 20 cm of snow from the evening before. Also Jula joined me – so she could bring Rudolf back home and take care of him while I’m gone. I was too late for check-in for the first time and when they gave me a seat at boarding gate, I realized I will also be sitting in the front of the plane for the first time. I could have slept the whole flight, that this time lasted for 3 hours since we couldn’t lend right away because of the fog in Oslo, but I stupidly knitted the whole time. From time to time even I don’t understand myself, so good luck to everybody who tries it! 😛

Norwegian Olympic Museum: Sarajevo 1984

At the airport I bought a train ticket to Lillehammer and off I was reaching this small city around noon. I called my CS host Nicolai and we met at his College where we chatted for a long time, while I also replied to some emails and got to know a lot of his friends. Nicolai told me he’s writing his home assignment about Argentinean regime and he got me really interested and we went from Argentina over Europe’s old dictator regimes to deciding we are hungry. 🙂 After shopping in Kiwi, we prepared the dinner and at 9 PM I was already half asleep. After sleeping only 4 hours the night before was this expected.

Slovenia vs. France

Friday morning was relaxed – late waking up, breakfast and online newspapers, some emails and I then my destination was Norwegian Olympic Museum – from the very early beginnings of modern Olympic games until last ones in Vancouver. Couple of hours went by extremely fast and since I forgot Slovenian flag at CSers place, I bought my lunch and went back to cook it. Nicolai returned home with his sister and her boyfriend. They both study in Poland and came to Lillehammer just for the championship. The first game we all cheered for Slovenia who lost again France and the second one for Norway, who beat Hungary by 21 goals. Saturday I was up early and took a long walk to other side of the city, destination Maihaugen. Examples of Norwegian architecture from all over the country kept me busy for the whole morning and just after noon I paid a visit to their souvenir shop. I got some ideas for Christmas present I wanted to send home and stupidly decided to by it somewhere else,  but didn’t see it nowhere else. An afternoon in the city centre and evening in front of TV, computer in my lap and an endless debate with my host and my initial hostess Marte, who just returned from London.

View over Lillehammer from the top of K120

Sunny Sunday morning I spent between Lillehammer’s houses and  at Lysgårdsbakkene – ski jumping area. This site was built for the Olympics in 1994 and has a chairlift to the top. I walked all the 954 stairs to the top and watched practice held on the K120 jumping hill (the other one is K90). In the afternoon I firstly bought a ticket for Sunday’s matches, visited Christmas market in the centre and took a walk to lake Mjøsa, Norway’s largest lake. Lunch and it was already time for the matches. King Harald V of Norway was expected on Friday’s matches, when the hall was also sold out, but this happened first on Sunday. In first one France beat Netherlands by 2, second ended with win for Hungary against, and in the last match Norway lost its first (and as later seen also only) match on this championship against Sweden. Definitely saw enough handball for a long, long time.

Norwegians are amazing fans!

I planned trying out the Olympic ski slopes, but since I forgot everything, I decided to shorten my stay in Lillehammer and so I took a train to Hamar in the morning. After a short orientation walk I visited the Vikingship (named so because of its shape)  – Olympic arena, where long track speed skating and bandy of 1994 Winter Olympics were held. A long walk to the other site of the city – Domkirkeodden, where a well known outdoor Heldmark museum is and late in the afternoon I continued my trip to Oslo.

My host for the evening was Michael, Czech friend from EILC in July. Since he was not at home from his job, I first rang a bell at Andrea’s room, another friend from the same country and same course. I gave her an excellent excuse not to study, but after catching up by a cup of tea, we finally started being more productive – she studying, me knitting. When Miša returned home it was like the language course finished yesterday. Priceless! At 11 PM when we were almost sleeping, Nadi knocked on his door and what was supposed to be just quick hello finished 2 hours later. 🙂 Tuesday Miša was gone very early because of his exam, I joined Nadi for breakfast and met her brother. He was leaving today and after a city tour we waved him goodbye from Oslo S. From there we continued on Karl Johans gate to Royal Palace and to harbour, where Christmas market was situated. I like Christmas market in Ljubljana and I just love those in Austria, but this one… It started with the price for one glass of mulled wine – 60 kroner, which is more than double the price of the strongest one in Graz. OK, nothing else expected for Norway, but still ruined Christmas spirit a bit. So me and Nadi found a nice café, I don’t remember the name of, for a tea and after some window shopping returned to Sogn. Cancelled dinner was replaced with a kitchen party and improvised drunkenness just to shock one of my hosts’ roommate. Just before going to sleep I said goodbye to these friends and changed the accommodation to Anne-Sophie, whom I was flying to Tromsø with on the next morning.

Studying period

Me and my promises… 🙂 One of my friends’ new year’s promise to himself was not to quit smoking, since the opposite one never works. I think mine should be “My blog should NOT be updated regularly” since this obviously works fantastic for me. 🙂 But I’m not skipping anything, so even if I forgot a lot of things, I am continuing where I left. 22^nd November – start of boring period, called Studying.

Monday I spent at home and read a lot about Gynaecology and Obstetrics. In the afternoon I had enough of it and went to Fitness centre for Kondisjon class. Tuesday started better – Anja and me met in the centre and went for a tee to Åsgarden. We both agreed we missed coffee-times with our friends in the city. Not because of the coffee, but because it’s so great to catch up and discuss everything from time to time. She also recommended me a book – The Secret, which I will read soon. Before we knew it, it was 2 and she went babysitting and I went to Giæverbukta. On same morning I found bill lying on my table and still had time to return it, so I did this since it was still not working in my car. I checked in Coop if they have wool, but instead found a hand-luggage-sized suitcase for only 100 NOK. After so much shopping I returned to the university for my Norwegian class and after that went to Kraft again. On Wednesday I was studying in the morning, then went to pay my cars service and off I was to Student Counselling centre. I wanted to hear about an email I got couple of days before about spending the Christmas with a Norwegian family. Line, our International Coordinator explained us that every student who applies is suppose to get a family based on our interests, wishes etc. And they invite you to their homes for a day or two. It sounded awesome and a girl who was a part of this project last year described her experience so nicely, I decided I wanted to try. We just finished in time for my Kondisjon class in fitness centre. After a quick shower Maja came to my place and we baked chestnuts.

First skiing - through Ørndalen

Thursday was all about studying in the morning, but in the afternoon I met Mikel in the centre to buy the handball tickets. Norway was playing a tournament before the World Championship and they played one match in Tromsø. Perfect opportunity to see them, but guess what – the tickets were sold out! I think this never happens in Slovenia or any other country, specially for the women’s game, but handball is too popular in Norway. So sadly we were doomed to watching the game in home sofa, which is, on second thought, not so bad as well. 🙂 On my way to the car I passed H&M and couldn’t resist going inside and once again I promised to myself not to do it ever again. 🙂 Rushed to Norwegian class and my day improved when I got home and got a positive reply on my CouchSurfing request for Lillehammer. I based my travel there on getting a place to sleep first, since the hostel was occupied already. So with a provided place to sleep I booked the flight tickets and went to get some exercise – skiing through Ørndalen with Henning. On Friday we repeated what we’ve been doing the whole week – lights with the coffee in the morning, studying most of the day, but evening was time to relax. It was Maja’s farewell party. Almost Slovenian girl was going back to Croatia to finish her studies after successful IAESTE practice here.

Bad photo of amazing northern lights

Saturday was not very productive, but I managed to read couple of pages and I also knitted a bit. In the evening Andrea was celebrating his 20^th birthday, the day when he was officially allowed to enter Boccaccio without sneaking in. 🙂 He made 6 courses dinner – of course all of them were pasta – and they were amazing. We all were trying not to get full after trying the first one. My plan for this evening was to go to the dinner, have a beer or two, but go home after that in order to study next day. But I fell for a stupid idea and started playing “If I were you” with Henning, whose first challenge was: “If I were you, I’d go out tonight.” Mean, right? After some drinks somebody shouted: “Aurora borealis!” and we went freezing in front of the house to see the most amazing northern light we had by that time. It was green all over the sky and they were moving like snakes. AMAZING!!

Thanksgiving

So we headed to the city with the last bus and since Driv was empty we didn’t feel like waiting for it to fill up and went to Gründer instead. My early night ended in bed very early, just in the morning. That made my waking up a bit harder on Sunday, but somehow I still managed to make my plan work. In the afternoon I tried 2 new recepees – one for spinach with pine nuts and second one for eggplants with tomatoes. These were my side dishes for my first American Thanksgiving. I had no idea what to expect, only what I knew from movies, but it was even better. Jula’s place was full with international student and everybody brought something. Ingrid, Jula, Sarah and Kristin prepared turkey and it was, like Benjamin desribed it, frightfully lovely.

On Monday, 29^th November, I woke up already at 6 AM, made the lunch while eating breakfast and so Jula and me headed to Kraft to get some exercise before sitting in the library studying the whole day long. In the afternoon I met with Minna and Henning to study some more., but after that it was no-more-books time and I met Jula again to go to Verdenstheatret to see movie Anonyma. It is about the 2^nd World War, but not the typical one – this one tells a story about the last month of the war in Berlin and the first month after the war was finished. Definitely recommend it! Tuesday started in the library, what else. In the afternoon we had the first meeting for the Introductory Programme of spring semester. New students were coming and we, the “oldies”,  were part of it. The schedule was the same as it was for our week with one exception – no fjord trip, which is understandable in the winter, but still…  kind of sad, because this trip really is nice. Norwegian class and Jinglestep and Kraft and my day was finished. Wednesday morning we needed some extra energy, so we went to the Artificial Sunlight lamps. I met Anja and planed 10 minutes developed to a very interesting debate on Yugoslavia, Slovenian independence and much more political aspects. We don’t learn about the recent history in the school and I was only 3 when my country got independent, so I find it very important and very pity not to know more about it. I still managed to study a lot and with our study group we covered Medical Genetics this time. When we got out of the building an unpleasant surprise waited for us . it was raining! We had already a lot of snow, but it started melting and rain was washing it away. A look to the temperature scale showed +5°C and I couldn’t believe my eyes! I overslept a bit on Thursday , so I did my super-speed getting dressed and met Benjamin in Coop. We both got the coffee and drove to the lamps. Anja was there again and we got into our debate again, this time including other nations, since people from Switzerland, Poland , Germany and more were there. After productive studying it was time for our last Norwegian class this semester. We got our certificates and ate a lot. And by a lot I really mean a lot! Friday we again repeated what we’ve been doing the whole week again – lamps and studying. The evening was reserved for Finnish dinner in our laundry. On Saturday me, Minna and Henning met already in the morning. It was the last weekend before the exam, so we were taking it very seriously and studied the whole day. In the afternoon me and Arve, my roommate, drove to Coop to get ribs for our Norwegian Christmas dinner on Sunday. After calculating how much we need, we decided to take “only” 7 kg of meat.

My first sushi

Evening it was time for Sushi dinner with the girls. We finished also a lot of wine and with some other drinks in hands we headed to town a bit after 10 PM. We missed the bus just for some minutes, so the time we would  spent waiting for the bus, we walked to Stakkevollan, where one preparty was happening. After 3 days of plus degrees it was -8°C again and everything was slippery as hell and me and Ingrid needed almost half an hour to walk 10 minutes distance. Tempted by going out I resisted when Jula was definitely going home and on Sunday morning I was very happy doing so. Me and Arve started Sunday with waffles and music from former Soviet Union countries. Refreshing.  We spent the day preparing ribs in traditional Norwegian way and welcomed our guests at 6 PM. Talking, laughing and eating finished late and after everybody left, Arve convinced me to watch a movie and I first went to bed when I couldn’t keep my eyes opened to follow the story on the screen.

Dance show Frikar

Last 2 days before the exams we spent in the medical building, going through everything from this semester. Beside studying I only visited Kraft to relax from sitting behind the books and saying goodbye to Ingrid, who was leaving for the holidays or hello to another friend from EILC course on Oslo Kinga and her friend Giorgia, who came so far north to see the northern lights. Wednesday was THE day and we met in front of our exam room already at 8:30 AM. I didn’t expect to sit in the room from 9 til noon, but that was exactly what happened. Our exam was not as easy as expected, but it was done and it was time to relax. Waffles and board games in the afternoon in Bodega, afterwards a coffee with Erik, a Slovenian guy on Erasmus in Kristiansand and I rushed home to get ready for the dance show Frikar and dinner. Studying period and the exam were done so we were celebrating!

Bergen

Bryggen, Bergen

I should definitely be studying, but done that today, so I can update my blog. 🙂

On 11th November me and Minna were flying to Bergen for 4 days. I wanted to visit Jessi and Anna – two girls I met at the EILC in Oslo and spent a lot of my time with. Anna is in Norway only for one semester and Jessi was also planning to do so at the time of our booking (later she extended her stay here). We were also pretty lucky, because Norwegian cancelled their direct line between Tromsø and Bergen after 29th October and they changed our reservation for free.

The night before our departure I slept very bad. I was waking up every hour and since there’s mostly darkness in Tromsø at this time, I was always convinced it’s time to get up. At 2:20, 3:10, 4:10, 4:50, but 5:10 AM we finally got up. We picked up Henning, who was bringing back my car after leaving us at the airport. For the first time I tried these check in machines everybody is talking about and I like them – got the window seats. And also for the first time I wasn’t additionally checked at the security, as I usually am. I suppose I look suspicious or something. On our first flight to Tromsø I already read the whole magazine I had with me, so I started with this magazine they have in every seat. Got some new travelling ideas, again. 😛 We had an hour free at the Oslo airport and I finally figured out how to make Norwegian Chai Latte better. You should just add some sugar. OK, it still won’t taste as that from Barista in Graz, but if you know how Norwegian coffee tastes like … Well, not one of their strongest points.

Minna, Jessi & me on the top of Mt Fløyen

We landed in Bergen late in the morning. Deep fjords, sun, less snow then we were used to. We took the bus to the centre where we met Jessi. Yeiii, really nice to see her again. We bought tickets for the whole week and off we were in the new bybanen. It’s like a tram, they built it first in June and it only has one line so far. There we also met Anna and some of their friends, mostly Spanish. 🙂 After introducing round and some catching up we reached Fantoft. Hmmm, interesting. It’s typical student block, but the thing is that we got a bit spoilt here in Ørndalen with this cute, small houses. Not that Fantoft wouldn’t be nice, it’s just… grey. 🙂 Unloaded we had lunch and made the plan to go to the top of Mt Fløyen, one of the 7 hills surrounding Bergen,  after that with a Spanish guy Alex and his visiting friends from back home. Of course this meant that we did it a bit Spanish style – late. 🙂 We walked our way up and in that time it got dark and I really liked the city with all the lights. Tromsø is great, but a break in a bit bigger city is nice. We took the Fløibanen funicular to get back down and after huge muffins in Narvesen and buying the food in Rema 1000, we returned back home. I had a cold for 2 days already plus lack of sleep and the whole day around – I was dead and after talking, facebooking and relaxing in Jessi’s room we found 5th Harry Potter and watched it before falling asleep.

On Friday morning my throat was bad. Really bad. Shower, breakfast, bybanen to the centre, final destination tourist office. First sightseeing point was Bryggen, the most known and photographed part of Bergen. In my head this was some kind of entrance to Bergen. I don’t know why, but I thought here Bergen starts and there’s nothing on the left or right side, but it’s not quite like this. These houses on the eastern shore of Vågen Harbour are city’s oldest part and  were once a major Hanseatic commercial centre for northern Europe. After a fire in 1955 some houses were destroyed, but you can also see how the sea is damaging them as almost none of the walls stands straight. But since 1979 Bryggen has been on UNESCO’s list for World Cultural Heritage, so they are saving it.

Hopping off and on a bus gave resultst like this one

My first "real" coffee in Norway

If you are ever in Bergen – don’t only admire the houses from the harbour, but also walk between them and enter them. Most of them houses today different pubs, shops and more. The weather this day was also nice – Bergen is one of the rainiest cities – and since we didn’t want to gamble, we decided to visit the 642 meters high Mt Ulriken on the same day. Cable car took us to an amazing view and from here we finally saw how big Bergen is. But since cable car didn’t take us to the very top of the hill, we hiked for another 15 minutes to get to the real one. Not good for my cold at all, but worth the view. 3 hours later we caught the bus to the centre and hopped off somewhere in the middle. A walk on the streets not so central offered us lovely houses. Back on bus and we met Anna close to Domkirken. I was on holidays and this means also chilling out with a coffee.

Even in expensive Norway. Lonely Planet suggested Det Lille Kaffe Kompaniet and as it’s name says – it was really small! Somehow we managed to get a table and waited in the queue to get the coffee. I ordered Kaffe Cortado and their speciality- eplemost (warm apple juice with cream and cinnamon). My first real coffee in Norway and it was delicious! A bit shopping and we were back home, eating dinner and watching the rest of Harry Potter. I was tired again and not up for a party at all and I think Minna and Jessi were just too lazy, but used me as an excuse not to party. 😛

Saturday’s sightseeing started with shopping in Julehuset in Bryggen. So much Christmas in one place over the whole year – wow! After that we continued to Kjøttmarkt and through Fish Market to western side of the harbour. I was disappointed by the Fish Market already on the first day when I only saw the tents. I don’t know what’s wrong with my imagination, but again I expected huge, old building with fishermen yelling one over another inside. White tent, very calm and quiet. Minna took one exit sooner and I just answered my phone, when I heard: “Where are you from?” and after telling he guy I come from Slovenia, he replied: Dober dan!” I was very surprised so I didn’t even ask how come he knows such a good Slovenian, but we chatted a bit and I got to try whale and a really tasty salmon. It’s always good to know Slovene. 😛 We continued on the west shore, through couple of small streets and finished in Lonely Planet’s second suggestion Dromedar Kaffebar. I had a cookie and Kaffe Mocca and while enjoying it, we managed to write the postcards and I observed the people in the Café and those walking by – always fun. 🙂 Some more sweet Bergen’s streets and we caught first Seal Show in Aquarium and feeding of penguins just after that. This evening we decided to eat out and trusted my tourist guide’s pick on that again. On our way we saw Elefanten but then realized it’s the wrong animal and looked for Pingvinen. 119 NOK for the main plate was reasonable and veeeery good. We returned home and got ready for the party, which started in the kitchen and continued in the city. First we tried Legal, as it was on top of the Lonely Planet’s list, but it turned out not to be the best pick. At least not for our partying mood. We met a Croatian girl Maja, who I met just couple of days before, in Garagen. With her were also Barbara, a girl from our Norwegian class in Tromsø, and Felix, another IAESTE trainee. A beer there and we headed to Scotsman to meet other Erasmus students and dance our night out.

Gamlehaugen

Ubongo 3D 🙂

Waking up early on Saturday is mission impossible, but we managed to visit the other side of Fantoft – Stave Church and Gamlehaugen, Royal Summer Residence. I was hungry as hell, so I suggested to have a break in front of this residence until Japanese came and were a bit annoyed since each and every one of them couldn’t take a proper picture with their Sony cameras. We returned to Fantoft through the rain, 1^st since we had been here. Tee, muffin and we were ready for the city again. The ceremonial hall Håkonshallen was closed, but we visited Rosenkrantz Tower, which was mostly defence post. The afternoon woke up the child in me 😀 as we visited VilVite¹ – a science discovery centre for the promotion of science and technology among children and people of all ages². I think I don’t need to stress, we were one of the rare people older than 10 (parents observing the children don’t count!). So despite this fact, we tried EVERYTHING – from creating rain, getting our temperature picture or putting organ to the right place in human body (which was a bit challenging even if we are medical students, haha) to using Tetris shapes to build a cube. We probably left just before they closed it, returned for a dinner and started to watch movie in Fantoft.

Monday was our last morning and I wanted to try if the 3^rd coffee shop would have as delicious coffee the previous two had, but there was no time, so we drove directly to the airport, where we relaxed with a Narvesen coffee and Cosmopolitan (magazine, not cocktail). Flight to Oslo went by incredibly fast, so an hour later we were already solving some mind games, reading Cosmo, drinking Chai Latte and Tea and having a lunch. Oh, Accessorize sadly didn’t have any discounts this time. 😉 But as the display above the Boarding gate said, there was sunny day waiting for us in Tromsø. Well, nice to hope, but at 4 PM, when we landed, there was already dark night. I got home and after some catching up and getting my room in order again, I met 3 girls from Bergen who stayed at my place while I was in Bergen. 2 Spanish and 1 Slovenian – awesome! It’s always amazing to speak Slovenian up here, so 1 hour went by extremely fast. Another hour later I said goodbye to them, since they were staying at another CouchSurfer’s place for the rest of the days, I got to bed and felt asleep 2 TV series later.

Tuesday was working day from 7 AM until 5 AM – playing, cooking, eating, watching cartoons, throwing snowballs at each other, jumping to the deepest snow and much more. I don’t remember the evening, because I fell asleep just after my dinner still tired from my cold, trip and work. Wednesday was already better – studied a bit in the morning and in the afternoon I expected the girls who were at my place before for a lunch. But just before I wanted to go shopping the missing ingredients, I realized I have no idea where my wallet is, so I searched for it half an hour before I found it on the floor, obviously fell from the bed. At least I didn’t need to visit the police station. So I cooked a nice lunch and had even nicer time with Živa, Nerea and Lucia. They were also the first visitors that used colours when writing in my guest book, so they made it really pretty. In the evening I came to the kitchen to make some popcorn and met my new roommate. Hadn’t seen him much before, since I was out our travelling, but this time we started chatting and ended having coffee and more talking. Finally I got a roommate who stays in the kitchen from time to time. 🙂

So Finally Thursday arrived – the day when Bergen came to me. Well, not exactly the city, but girls who I was visiting there came to Tromsø. We first drove to Minna’s place and made great fajita, but it was just too much and we couldn’t move for another hour. 🙂 We got our asses moving for a short trip around Kvaløya, but then went to our final destination – Ørndalen. Jessi and Anna were taking a shower and then joined me in the kitchen talking to my new roommate again. Somehow we started making 2 cakes, which we ate during a movie. I was sleeping already on the couch in the kitchen so I decided to move to my bed. Too late and result was being late for babysitting the next morning. Horrible! I rarely oversleep and this was not a good occasion to do it, but luckily the parents of 2 razbojnikov I’m taking care of are awesome and understood what happened. Ufff, don’t want to repeat it though. So I had another day of cartoons, games, drawing, but this time we went for a loooong walk and returned first two hours, when we already felt our stomachs grunting. Jessi and Anna were sightseeing and when I met them they were exploring if H&M here in North has the same clothes as it does in Bergen. 😛 This night was planned for Northern lights, so we got some food, one-time barbeque, warm clothes, called Henning if he wants to join us and drove to Kvaløya. From there we walked a bit up the hill and started preparing the food. But after two hours we seriously started freezing and realizing there were no lights that night, so we returned home and after kitchen discussions went to bed a bit earlier. Dog sledging is one very interesting thing you can do here in the North and my two visitor went for a tour like this on Saturday morning. I left them in the centre and 5 hours later, when we met again, I didn’t have much studying done, only H&M visit, a shower and some wasting of time. 🙂 But they wanted to go to H&M, but didn’t buy anything – at least I thought so. We decided to go for a tea to student house Driv and first there I noticed they had a bag from H6M. Of course, curious as I am, I had to ask what they had bought, surprised I didn’t know anything about it. So they told me to have a look and after some “no, it’s done like a present, I can’t open it” I did open it and blushed a bit, I guess. The present was for me and it was lingerie they knew I wanted to buy, but was not sure. Anna, Jessi – if you read this: Thaaaank you soo much again!!! 😉 And just afterwards I also stopped worrying how to make enough pizzas for 15 people as Arve, my roommate, called me and cancelled our dinner party. So I sent a cancellation message to everybody and received 5 invitations to a dinner. But instead of going somewhere we made our own at my place and before we knew it, it was already 11 o’clock. With an almost 2-hour delay we got to the centre to a jam session, which was actually the reason Arve cancelled the dinner for . After a beer and really cool improvisations on guitars and also saxophone (this one by Ruth), we checked how the dance party in Kulturhuset was going. We were on the guest list, but luckily we didn’t pay for the entrance, because this party… Well, I would say this wasn’t a party! We got back even our money for the wardrobe and got home, continuing the evening until 4 AM by playing ukulele, singing, talking and more singing. 😉

Sunday started at noon – we had to get enough sleeping somehow! We had a late breakfast and after couple of messages by Norwegian postponing the flight because of heavy snowing we drove to the airport. I said goodbye to Anna and Jessi and my expedition “Bergen” ended. In the evening I was invited to Arianna’s for a dinner and it was the perfect way to finish the day before intensive studying for the exam.

Ha det godt!

¹ en: want to know

² Copied from their home page. 🙂

Lofoten, Halloween & CouchSurfing

It’s been almost another month and I am back with my blog. A lot was happening on the outside and also in my head. I think I have my mind cleared up, so I can put it on the paper. Here is my travelling blog, my thoughts are probably coming in another one.

A while ago I talked to one of my friends why and when I started writing it and it was extremely interesting to read my own old posts. So I love doing it now, even if takes a lot of time, as I will love remembering it when back home.

On Thursday, 14th October, finally my visit from Slovenia arrived. During the day I still had some lectures and Minna, Marta and me went to the city after those to pay membership with Norwegian Trekking Association. After that back to the university and soon to the airport. I was glad to see Jaka coming through the gate as I hadn’t believed he’d really come. And OK, he also brought cheap alcohol. 🙂 So we had a nice dinner and cosy evening. Friday started as lazy as Thursday ended. I was babysitting in the afternoon, so after late breakfast we headed out. First to the post office to change € to NOK and then to the mainland. We had some big misunderstandings just before I left, so I was relieved to have my head off for two hours. When I was finished I came to shopping done, so no worries about dinner, and we went for a walk, this time Kvaløya. After one hour I think I was freezing since it was snowing quite hard and stupid me took only leather jacket with me. But hot chocolate solved everything. Saturday’s weather was much better and we went to discover the city. Somehow we ended in Mack’s Brewery and had the first beer, followed by the second and the third. The third was too much – Mack is stronger than Laško, but since in Norway my liver is also getting healthier. Damn.  So when we got home I almost literally fell into the bed and 2-hours planed sleep turned into 4-hours long one. So we missed the first 2 hours of Hungarian dinner and got there when everybody was already wasted. Gosh, people, couldn’t you wait?  But Steffen offered his kitchen to continue the party to those who didn’t want to go to the clubs. Sunday morning offered perfect weather for a lazy day, but it didn’t really feel Sunday after having already 2 days off. I couldn’t sleep, so I was thinking the whole morning and I made a plan. A plan which was suppose to work for me. Start was simple – no fighting and enjoying the next week. And it started working completely fine. For the first time I was on the ski slopes, just too bad they were not covered with enough snow for skiing yet. We also decided to do a road trip to Lofoten and started planning it on Monday. Waffles in Bodega helped to get our plan started and we wanted to try CouchSurfing, so we sent out about 30 requests. Well, this doesn’t work as well as I expected. Jaka also helped me checked if Rudolf is doing well up here – oil and stuff. I know I should do this on my own but it’s easier to leave it to a guy.

On Tuesday morning we packed a small suitcase and started our trip to the south. After Nordkjosbotn we headed to Bardufoss and Setermoen. The weather was crap, but we kept singing, playing games and so on. On the way Jaka even tried to make the radio working, but ended burning fuse and changing it on the next petrol station. We were also playing with the idea of visiting Polar Zoo, but threw that away when they told us it costs 250 NOK to get it. We reached beginning of Lofoten around 5 PM and first headed to find the cabin. We drove around Storvanet and it surprised me how many houses were there. I was expecting only the DNT cabin there, but had no idea, this working part is full of them. So we decided to ask where the cabin is and man in the only house, where it seemed to be someone inside, sent us back to the other side of the lake. Since we pretty sure it was suppose to be on this side, we left Rudolf on the side of the road and started searching on foot. We probably had a look at all of the small houses in that area for more than an hour and when almost decided to give up, tried to ask for directions in another house. The man who opened the door knew what we were looking for right away and he told us to continue going on the road for 200 meters and we’ll see it on the left side. It was exactly where he told us and ironically also only 100 meters from the first house, where we had asked the first time. The cabin was awesome, a lot of room and cosy and heating started working in a second. After that we went to see what Harstad has to offer and had a walk and a Chai Latte there. When we got back we also made a fire, just to make it look better.

Me on Lofoten

On Wednesday morning trip through Lofoten was planed, so we headed south and reached Lødningen to get some breakfast and coffee. After our stomachs were full again, we drove in way of Svolvær and Kabelvåg, with one obligatory stop at the local airport. There was some awesome sceneries and I wished one of those small houses was mine. We continued more to the south and in the middle went off way, to reach Henningsvær. Nice place where not much happens, of course.  But we enjoyed the view the whole time and it was amazing.

View from the balcony of one of the houses near Svolsvær.

Around 6 PM it started getting dark and I started getting tired. We stopped in Leknes for a drink and a hamburger and full of new energies continued our way to Moskenes and Å, which we reached late in the evening. At least late enough to find everything closed. We wanted to stay in another DNT cabin, but couldn’t find it. After looking for other accommodations for some time we bumped into closed Youth Hostel, but there was a telephone number. We called and the owner answered, but he was in Gran Canaria. Totally diferent from all the snow that was surrounding us.  But he told us where the rooms are and the front door was opened. Relieved with found accommodation we drove back to Moskenes and luckily that we did, because there are only 2 ferries driving to our next stop Bodø a day – one at 7 AM and one at 9 PM. We chose the first one, which meant I had to go back sometime again to explore Lofoten a bit more, but we had the whole day in Bodø.

So we woke up at 6:15 on Thursday morning and got to the car. In my half sleep I slipped for the first time on this icy ground, but so far has this also been the only one. We got to the queue 5 to 7 and paid almost 100 € for 4 hours drive, which we mostly overslept. But we needed it. When we arrived to Bodø another sunny day was waiting for us. But we had a museum day ahead and we drove straight there. I think I would never go to an aviation museum on my own, but having one pilot-to-be with me, this was a must. We both paid the student price  and got to know whole civil and military Norwegian aviation, from beginnings to World War II and modern flying. We were done with it late in the afternoon and when we came out I didn’t want to repeat the experience from the previous day, so we first searched for the accommodation. CouchSurfing didn’t work out here, so our next ry was camping. We called and the guy told us it’s closed in the winter, but opened one cabin extra for us. Not a luxury, but enough for one night. So with accommodation provided we went for a bit sightseeing and to see if we can buy a cheap radio for my car. But as figured out already couple of times before – Norway’s expensive and the cheapest radio cost 80 €.

On Friday we woke up really late and our trip was planed back to the North. I wanted to have a coffee in Fauske and they even had a road sign for a Café, but strangely there was none. The road was bad – full of snow and it kept snowing for most of the time we were driving. So we continued without having a coffee on road E6 through Vassmo and after ice-cream, chip and probably one whole chocolate (yeah, I know – only junk food!) we reached Storfjord around 5:30 PM. We had to take another ferry, which took only 25 minutes to get us on the other side, but wasn’t leaving until 6:40 PM. We finally found a place with coffee and they also gave us internet access. So in the hour we were waiting we finally checked all the Facebook messages. 😛 When ferry unloaded us on the other side of Tysfjorden, I started panicking, cause there was no petrol station and kilometres we’d done were soooo many. Garmin showed there’s one petrol station in 35 kilometres and I was praying we make it until there. And we did, luckily, but it cost me quite some nerves. After another hour we reached Narvik and since we haven’t heard anything from Polish girl who was suppose to host us, we decided to look for the camp. And just in the moment we were about to go to this place, Kasia called us and confirmed our CouchSurfing. Nice. So we drove another 30 kilometres to Bjerkvik.

CouchSurfing in Bjerkvik

I think you can’t find this place in any tourist guide, but Kasia made it very interesting for us. First we could unload our things in her room and after that we sat to the dinner. Typical Polish soup, very spicy and a lot of vegetables. After eating sandwiches for 4 days my stomach was very happy. Also her landlord was very interesting and nice. Almost 70 year old man, former officer, could speak only Norwegian, so while Jaka helped Kasia practice her Serbian, I was improving my Norwegian. We also had glass or two of wine and I called it a night before everyone else, but I was dead from driving. We had bad conscious when we woke up first at 9 o’clock on the next morning, but after taking a shower I figured out no one is awake yet anyway. We had a brunch around 11 AM and after that our two hosts took us to hotel where Kasia works for a coffee and we kept talking for some hours. Also about hotel in Zanzibar, that their friend owns. Maybe someday… Without noticing it, it was already 4 PM and after taking us on a tour around Bjerkvik and some photos together, we had to get on our way back home. A bit more than 3 hours and we were in Tromsø again.

Sunday was lazy. A bit of catching up on sleep, a bit hanging around and cooking a lot. We found one store which is opened on Sundays and decided to prepare jota, traditional Slovenian dish. We also found sour cabbage, which has to be there for me in jota, but it wasn’t really sour in the end, but it still was tasty. Monday was the last day of Jaka’s stay here and we meant to find a radio for my car. So we were driving around the city for most of the afternoon and found one for a reasonable price. But after more than one hour he had to give up, as radio wasn’t prepared to cooperate with Rudolf at all. No music in my car I guess. Jaka finished packing really fast and we drove to the airport and I was really sad to see him go through the security. Partly because it mean I had to go back to normal student life, university and studying, partly because he was cooking for me the whole time and he did it well, but mostly because I will miss him. I guess this chapter ended. I talked for a while with Ingrid, whose ex-boyfriend was coming to visit her from US. We drove home together and I was a bit jealous, cause my vacations just ended when her started. And as I was standing in front of my door again I couldn’t find the keys. Shit! After thinking about the ways Jaka could send them back to Tromsø and looking for them everywhere for more than half an hour, I found them in my pocket. Stupid me. I ended the evening with a movie at Eva’s place.

Tuesday and the rest of the week I spent getting back to the normal rhythm, following the lectures every day, going to Kraft and doing some dinners. The first one was on Wednesday at Walter’s place, when he cooked for us. Beside bread with bacon, we had pasta, meat balls and tiramisu for desert. Italian tiramisu? Love it!! And it also felt good to be back with people I hadn’t seen in previous days and talk with them. On Wednesday and Thursday we also had study group – exam in December is getting closer. On Friday I was back to babysitting and Saturday was laundry day. Around 11 AM I was going back from laundry where I just put my clothes from washing machine to drier and caught the sunrise. Day is obviously getting shorter and shorter. In the afternoon I jumped to the city to get my first Halloween costume and when I got back I prepared dinner for Stefano, Walter, Alec, Minna and me.

I spent my first Halloween partying as a pirate

Minna was staying at my place – we got our costumes ready, went to Hungarians to have some drinks and afterwards to Driv. We came back early in the morning, so the last Sunday of October had to be lazy. In the morning me and Minna woke up at 10 AM and I was really happy, that we set the clock back one hour – it meant an extra hour of sleeping.  After the breakfast we started knitting. I hadn’t done that before, but it seems to be popular in Norway. I also have been looking for one headband on the internet for quite some time, but haven’t found one I would like, so I think I will just make one. She showed me and I picked it up really fast. I suppose I really am talented. 😛 So after 2 hours of knitting she said I could start knitting for real, as I don’t need to practice much more. I am doing a scarf now and I have started 3 times already, but the last version is just wide enough, so I’ll continue with that. I also got addicted a bit, so I think I can manage to finish it until our trip to Bergen next week. In the afternoon I was invited to Tarja’s birthday party. She’s one of the children I’m babysitting and she just turned 4. I met Anja before and we went there together. After a moody start, Tarja became herself again and between playing, eating sweets and talking we forgot we only wanted to stay there for an hour and we said goodbye after 3 hours. Anja invited me for a tea to her place and as I was invited to a dinner and didn’t want to drive home in-between, I was very happy to accept it. She’s the other Slovenian girl here, as I already mentioned and we don’t see each other much. But it’s always happy to talk in your mother tongue and it’s even better if you have a great person to talk to! So we processed life in Tromsø, love problems, Norway, exchange students, studies and much more. It was awesome and it made me feel incredibly calm! 😮 I think it’s from explaining what’s on your mind in your own language – totally different. I would love to stay more, but I was already late for the dinner, so I rushed there and apologised. While apologising, everybody had this expression on their face, like »What is she apologising for??«, which I understood when i read Anja’s message later – nobody changed the clock in their kitchen, so I actually wasn’t late. Haha, also good. I returned back home at midnight, called my mum, if she can wake me up next morning and rushed into my bed.

1st of November was a holiday in most of the Europe. Well, for me it meant last week of practical part in this year, Gynaecology. We started with a morning meeting and after that we went to the skills lab, where we learned how to do a gynaecological exam. It was on models, but at my university I think we don’t even do that. Before the lectures in the afternoon I had some free time, so I went to the centre to made an appointment for car service and to buy my own knitting needles. When returning to my car from the last shop, a really cute Norwegian guy stopped me when crossing the street and said: »Så kult du er kleddt!« He caught me completely off guard, since I would never expect Norwegians to be so spontaneous, but totally made my day! OK, it also helped that he was cute…  After the lectures I went to Kraft for an hour. When I came back I saw cookies on my table, but wasn’t allowed to eat them – I also decided to do a month without chocolate, so no cookies with chocolate. I’m doing great in these first 3 days, so I am optimistic. On Tuesday morning I was knitting and met with Benjamin to try the spectrum light. It is suppose to help when there’s polar night and no sun. It’s enough to have it twice a week for 10 minutes, but we were caught chatting there for one hour. So full of energy I continued my day with lectures and Norwegian course. I was suppose to go to Kraft after that, but lost the motivation somewhere in the afternoon, but Leo ( a German guy) said he would join me, so I didn’t have an excuse not to go. After one hour there I felt great and was ready for cozy evening in the cinema. This time we saw The Social Network, a movie about Facebook. I loved it and I don’t hate Facebook because of the movie now. If you have time, you definitely have to see it, especially if you use this social network. 😉

On Wednesday I was suppose to have a seminar, but I got lost in the hospital and never made it. I don’t know how I manage to get lost, seriously!! So instead of that I did some knitting and had a proper breakfast. At 10:30 I was driving towards the airport, because there was Australian Couch Surfer Joel coming to Tromsø. So far I knew he’s finishing his travel around the world in the Northern Europe, but I was more of a “looks good, should have been OK” accepting his couch request. So I picked him up and have to admit – almost didn’t recognise him live. :¤ But I just dropped him in the centre, as I had to get back to the university. After lectures and Kraft, where I almost died doing Step, I met Joel back in the city and we headed to Mack’s brewery, what else!  I loooove this place and I love their Micro Beer, because I never know what I’ll get. So we sat down and I found this guy had Canada, Mexico, US, Spain, Italy, Germany, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia, Greece and many other places I know, love or would like to go behind him. The more I tried to get some connection to Slovenia, the more I realised he has no idea, where this country should have been.

Me and couch surfer Joel on top of Storstein Mountain (btw: Joel says "Hi!")

But we got to chat about all the other stuff to until he went for a tour to see the northern lights. I came home, unloaded my car and wanted to do something for the university. But, too bad, fell asleep after the dinner and woke up just when Joel rang that he’s in front of the house. Shit, already?? But nothing helped and I had to be at the university 8 AM sharp, so I wasn’t much of a good hostess and continued my beauty sleep. 😛 On Thursday I left home at 7:30 AM and returned 11 hours later, after lectures, practice and Norwegian course, to an awesome smelling kitchen. Joel was already back from his trip and he was cooking!! I love men who can cook and I think I should put it into my CouchSurfing profile.  So we had this nice dinner and I think I told him far too much you should tell a stranger you picked up at the airport one day before, but it just felt right. And we had a bottle of wine, which also helped. 😀 After that we started the Havanna Club bottle, which I got from my last visitor. I would prefer wine, but that’s what happens in country with really expensive alcohol (and everything else). More laugh, talk and great stories were about to end on the next morning when he was suppose to fly back to Oslo. But we discovered that the girls from Sweden cancelled their trip to Tromsø the previous morning, which lead us to the crazy idea him staying another day. So we threw a coin and changed the flight. We fell asleep quite late, but I was up very early on Friday for Kraft. Low energy level I would say. But after taking a shower I felt almost as new and was ready for another day of hosting an Aussie. We went to Bodega for some free waffles. I love them!! Of course everybody was there, since it was 1st Friday of the month and International Coffee was happening. After couple of hours there, we joined Hungarians Eva and Franci and one Canadian girl Kathleen and took the cable car to the top of Storstein Mountain. We got a nice view on Tromsø and surroundings on 420 meters above sea level. In the late afternoon me and Joel were discovering city a bit more and also bought some fish for the dinner. Of course we needed some alcohol too and this time I didn’t get asked for ID in Vinmonopolet.

I brought Joel to the airport on Saturday morning and then spent the day trying to study, organise the photos to put them on Facebook, did some homework and knitting and in the afternoon I received a SMS from Xavier, my next Couch Surfer. I met him and his Latvian friend Julia in front if the library and we went for a tea to Driv.

Julia, me and Xaver

They are working and/or studying in Alta, “a bit” northern from Tromsø. After getting to know each other we went to my place and had a dinner. Hungarians invited us to see a movie, but we didn’t make it, ut we did join them afterwards. After a while they decided to go down town and Xavier joined them. I wanted to get some rest and Julia was also tired, so we called it a night. On Sunday we got to see the sunrise at the southern part of the island, but it was damn cold with all the wind. I left them in front od Museum of Tromsø and got myself doing some useful stuff. At least I convinced myself they were useful. At 2 PM me and Jula were going to Step time in Kraft and luckily I survived this time. After a shower I met Minna to see the basketball game, but it was cancelled because team from Bergen couldn’t fly in (storm in the South of Norway). Pity, but I had dinner at Jula’s at 7 PM, so I went home and shortly after that Lucile came to me and we made an apple pie. My first apple pie, cool!! We went to Jula, where she and Ingrid were already waiting for us. We started chatting, opened the wine and talked, talked, talked. It was refreshingly to have a girls-only dinner, have a talk about guys and how life here is. And I realised I changed. The things I want changed. And I wasn’t even expecting it to happen so fast. Awesome!

Dinner at Jula's place

So we had a great dinner and Ingrid told me also that she’s moving in Jula’s place at the end of semester and also one other room is getting free, which got me to the idea of moving there. I wasn’t sure if I would want to give up my awesome view, but on the other hand I don’t really feel like home in this house. We live in the same flat, but I don’t really know my roommates and I hate it. So we decided to go to the accommodation office on Monday morning and I had time to think about it. On Monday morning my mind wasn’t much clearer so I decided to ask about that some people. I got the same answer every single time so this made my decision a lot easier. I met Ingrid at 11 AM and on our ride to University we discussed the whole thing through and when we finally got there we both applied for the other house. We’re going to be roommates from December on, yiipii. After lectures in the afternoon I went to Kraft (I try to do something every day and not get lazy in the winter) and home to my homework and finally uploading the pictures on Facebook afterwards. And I found out that Slovenian team, that one of best friends Tina is part of, won this year’s Grand Prize on iGEM competition. 3rd time in last 5 years victory goes to our country, crazy!! So I have to congratulate her here as well!! 

Tuesday started with lazy morning and at noon I met Minna at the university. We studied a bit, talked a lot and I’ m slowly starting to get panic attacks, as I feel I don’t have enough time since the exam is coming closer and closer extremely fast. No CouchSurfing after my trip t Bergen, sorry guys. Today I first brought my car to the service, because I needed to change the oil and filter. In the morning Minna, Henning and me were studying at the university and in the afternoon I was running around, but already knew they have to be careful because of the cars. Awesome! Now I’m finishing with my blog and I swear I will never ever wait so long to write another one. It just takes too much time. And tomorrow me and Minna are flying to Bergen, yeiii. And, of course, I haven’t packed yet. I’m running to do that now.

Ha det bra!

La det snø! (Let in snow!)

The first week (since my last post, of course) I had my second week of practice in Paediatrics. First day I woke up 5 to 8. Bad, if you have seminar at 8 o’clock. But the rest of the week was better, except for Thursday. We kept playing Jungle Speed until very late and so I woke up too late to get to the last seminar. First I was feeling guilty, but then I met Finnish girl from my class Minna in the afternoon and she told me it wasn´t the best seminar at all. They were describing some pictures in Norwegian and it was also not one of my favourite professors. And so I changed my mind: Luckily I overslept and since I already have enough signatures for this class I´m not going there at all. Ever.

Weekend was really fun. On Friday Alec celebrated his birthday, so we bought him a sweater and partied until late in the evening (or was it already morning?). Well, I meant to leave the party 2 or 3 times in between, but changed my mind the same amount of times. We also played traditional American game – Beer ping pong.

 

Minna & I at French dinner

 

And we won once. 🙂 Saturday was shopping day. We had some vouchers from H&M and we had to get rid of them before the end of September. So me, Marta an Arianna met in the city and occupied H&M´s changing cabins. I love it when my new sweater costs 200 NOK (ca. 25€) and I only pay half of the price. In the evening the French people were organizing French dinner. Everybody had to wear something in French colours or at least French. I still think they are crazy because all of the food they prepared. Typical French food, of course! 🙂 And we also did some barbeque etc. Amazing evening, which we continued at Driv, partying… Yeah, again until the morning. So considering all the partying, I was quite proud of myself to do all the Norwegian homework and also studied a bit on Sunday.

 

Stefano & I on the ship

 

 

Discovering the ship

 

Second week was a normal student week. Studying, university, Norwegian, Café Bodega, sports. That weekend I didn´t want to party, but I worked at Driv in security on Saturday and it was quite fun. The only problem was getting to bed at 6 AM and waking up at 9 AM. But I wanted to see the ship, which just returned from Svalbard. They explained us a lot about it and one of the guys was really cute (really, really cute!).

I started the last September week with clinical practice in Geriatrics. I was supposed to have it later in October, but I switched it up with Henning, so I can have an entire week in October free. I was there very early, because I had no idea where to go. And when I came to the table with stations written on it, there was Geriatrics on C4 and A9. Yeah, like connection between floors 4 and 9 really makes sense. But in the end I found it and it was great. Everything was in Norwegian and professor even asked me, which language do I prefer. But I love to practice my Norwegian and this one went very well. In the evening we discovered that Andrea got addicted to Jungle Speed, because he invited us t his place to play it.

Tuesday I woke up at 6, even if I didn’t have any class. But me and Ingrid had planned to go to do some Spinning time at 7:10, which is crazy early to do sports. So I studied the whole morning after that and then went to lectures. After Norwegian in the evening some of us met at Andrea’s place again to play Jungle Speed. We also created a group, called L´appartamento dei Wajuni, and made plans for maybe whole semester in advance. We start on Monday with Blå rock.

Wednesday was the MOST stressful day of the week. I had video consultation with a patient in the afternoon and I was stressing about it already from the morning on. So, guys, I’m sorry, I know I wasn’t the best company. So »the best company« includes meeting also Minna and Marta in Cafe Bodega at 2 P.M. We made plans for a hiking trip for the weekend. With plans made we played couple of rounds of some game. And after that it was already time for the video thing. I am doing course on general medicine in next semester and part of this is consulting a patient, when he comes to your ordination. Next week we’re going to analyze it in our group. It turned out, that stressing was not necessary and I did well. In the evening it was movie night with L’auberge espagniol. It’s about an Erasmus student from France, going to Barcelona. Towards the end of the movie, when he was returning back home, I realised, this is going to be us next year and it made me sad. I already know now, I don’t want to go home. Hmmm…

On Thursday I started to love Orakelet – IT service at the university. My internet browsers were not working since Sunday and I couldn’t get them work on my own. They repaired it in 10 minutes and they did it for free. So, of course, I started to love them! ❤ In the afternoon I got my next visit, this time from Oslo. A German girl Nadi, who we did language course in Oslo together came by Hurtigruten.

 

Nadi's arrival

 

I´m starting to like this ship – it brings me visitors quite often. 🙂 We left her things in my car and walked through Tromsø. In the evening we drove home and she had this crazy idea: I was telling her about a bigger bed in our storage room, which I would like to bring in my room and she decided, we could do it now and then. So we went down and did it. Now I have 2 beds and enough space for more visitors. 🙂 After cleaning the bed, we ran to Jysk, a shop with linings and other stuff, to get the new bed ready to sleep on it. Nice dinner was followed by an late evening at Stefano´s place, again playing Jungle Speed and also doing a video with Slovenian birthday wishes for Stefano´s friend.

 

Finnish lunch

 

On Friday we slept a long, looong time. So when we woke up, we slowly got ready for Finnish lunch Minna prepared for us. Nadi, Ruth, Bea, Henning and me had opportunity to taste delicious Finnish dishes. I was surprised, because I didn´t expect to like Finnish cuisine so much. And I definitely have to get a recipe for one of those dishes I tasted. We also spent afternoon at Minna´s and then went for a walk on Kvaløya. »Real tourist« as Nadi described us, we, of course, took some photos and then went back on Tromsøya (=Tromsø island). We drove to the southernmost point of the island, where I hadn´t been before, and I loved it. But we slowly started freezing, so we ran back to Rudolf (my car) and drove to the city. First we just wanted to stop at Driv for a coffee, but we ended up playing a very interesting and funny game Ubongo until 11 PM.

On Saturday afternoon we were going on the planed hiking trip to Blåkollkoia, where we were going to spend the night. We started at 2 PM and I couldn´t believe the weather. When we were planning it, Minna told me, that the weather forecast is good, but with all the rain at that time I didn’t really believe her. But it luckily came true and we were hiking in the sun, with only a T-Shirt on.

 

Break after the largest emerging on Saturday

 

 

Stafano & I in front of the cabin

 

We reached the hut at 17:15 and were fascinated, how well stuffed the cabin was. We cooked pasta and pesto for dinner, but we also had a lot of chocolate, cookies and other sweets. In between it got darker and we used our lamps and candles to get enough light to play Jungle Speed, Dame, Yatzy and other games.

 

Games

 

While playing, Nadi scared us quite a lot, when she saw someone walking around the house and we didn´t see that person anymore. But it turned out to be true, as just seconds after that, Ellena walked in to the cabin. So we had some company. 🙂 We also hoped, we could see some northern lights, as the sky was clear, but we were not so fortunate that weekend.

 

Blåkollkoia hiking crew (Minna, Nadi, Stefano, I & Marta)

 

On Sunday we continued our hiking to the top of Hesteskovatnet and then back to Tromsø. On our way down we kind of missed the path and took a really steep way, but in the end we made it.

 

On the top of Hesteskovatnet

 

 

On our way down

 

At home me and Nadi had a shower and a small dinner, but then we ran to catch the bus to the city. Unluckily we missed it and the same happened when we were already in the city. It wouldn’t be such a problem, if Nadi didn’t have a plane to catch. But in the end everything worked out just fine, but a nice weekend was over.

The first Monday of this October I spent cleaning and learning in the morning, at the university in the afternoon, in Kraft at late afternoon and at Blå Rock in the evening. I thought I will be able to do one hour of condition training and another hour of yoga, but while sitting in yoga class, I realised hiking and condition training just before that left their mark on me. I was dead and I really needed a beer. Luckily for me, we were planning to go out anyway. First Blå Rock visit was plan of our group L’appartamento dei Wajuni. And beer was also cheep.

On Tuesday I finally got everything cleared with my car insurance, but I spent the rest of my day worrying about the CD I had made a week before. Eva, my »patient«, forgot to burn the CD, so none of the computer recognised it. As I had tried some options before and they hadn’t work, I turned for help to Orakelet. They told me, that »they have the equipment to do it, but they just don’t do it«. So from loving them one week before I went to hating them a lot this week. I wasn’t sure, if I could make it work until next day in the morning, when I had the presentation and I was freaking out. So in the evening I went to the room where we did the filming, to try to do it on my own. But my day was saved as I found out, they were filming next round on that day instead of Wednesday. So they helped me finish my CD and I ran home and started working on my presentation. I had to skip on Jungle Speed though.

Wednesday started with this video group. I was the first one to present my consultation and than the others commented on it. After both two parts of presentation, also the 2 doctors commented on it and I have to say – not bad at all. I even got a comment: »Nice! You should do this as your specialisation, you really have feeling for it.« Yeah, right, like I’m interested in this one! So after the morning class with all the stress gone, it felt like a beginning of a weekend for me. In the evening Minna came to my place, as she was flying to Sweden really early next morning and I promised her to bring her to the airport. We skipped the movie night and went to Prestvanet to have a Reindeer for the dinner.

 

Reindeer dinner

 

Sara and Arianna, both Italians, was cooking for us and it was delicious. After the dinner we talked and talked and talked, until we realised it was really late and we should go if we want to wake up so early next day. But we managed it – on Thursday at 5:45 we were sitting in the car, driving to airport. When I came home I wanted to study or something else, but I just fell asleep until 10 AM. After that I got ready and went to the University. After doing my Norwegian homework, I met Arianna at Café Bodega and we booked some bus tickets for Oslo. I had some lectures and Norwegian course in the afternoon. In the evening we were meeting at my place for another movie night. This time Pocahontas. Some of us discussed, that we’ve never seen Disney’s movies, which others found impossible, so now we have a lot of cartoons to watch. And it is a lot of fun! 🙂 While playing Jungle Speed (again :)) it got late again and I, once again, fell dead to my bed.

Friday started late and it was time for free waffles soon. International coffee took place at Café Bodega. We laughed, ate and played some games. After the lectures in the afternoon I went home to cook lunch. Finally lunch at home and not just warmed up at the university. In the evening we planned to go to a Goodbye-Sun-party in Mortesnes, but just before that Jula, a German girl, invited me to join them at opened stage at Café Sånn in the centre. We didn’t participate, but had much fun watching other people perform, each 3 minutes each round. Saturday morning I spent changing tires of my car and ordering two new ones for Monday. In the evening there was a party at Steffen’s place. I left early, as I invited people over on Sunday afternoon for coffee and cake. I wanted to bake something, so I had to get up early. Well, early… Before noon. 😉

 

My 1st Štrudelj

 

And I did – I woke up at 9:30 AM and started baking at 10 AM. I had this crazy idea to make one Slovenian sweet dish and I decided to make Štrudelj. My mum told me I’m crazy when she heard about my idea. But while doing brownies and London cake, I even managed to make my crazy idea work. So we had a nice afternoon together and it was awesome to have some many people over. They ate everything (so my baking skills are actually quite good, if we remain modest) and they even liked my Štrudelj. Iiiiiiiihaaa! 😀

 

Coffee'n'Cake Sunday afternoon

 

In the evening we met at Éva and Franziska’s place. They are Hungarians, so they decided to show us a Hungarian movie Kontroll. I liked it!

 

Rudolf getting covered with 1st snow

 

Another Monday – I woke up at 9 o’clock and didn’t feel like doing anything at all. Typical Monday. So I took my computer and turned it on. On Facebook I saw Alec’s status, which said snow is finally settling down in Tromsø. My first thought: SNOW?!?!  I jumped out of my bed and opened the curtains and there it was – S.N.O.W. Yeiiii. I quickly took a picture and send it to some people. My sister wrote me back: »Whaaaat?? Snowww?? Merry X-Mas!! :)« Yeah, it feels like Christmas a bit actually. So after that I ran to Hungarians and ask them to take photo with me, sending greetings from Tromsø.

 

Greetings from Tromsø

 

And I went to the city and did some shopping. I wasn’t sure, if the roads were going to be OK to drive, but I can sure say I’m in Norway and they know what to do when snow comes. There was NO snow on the roads. Amazing! In the afternoon I replied to some emails, did none of my homework, went to Kraft and then to change my tires. Home, dinner, shower and off to Blå Rock.

 

Ørndalen in snow

 

Tuesday was pretty normal – doing Norwegian homework and studying. Somewhere in between I opened my blog, just to check it out. Then I saw the date of the last post: 12th September. WHAAAAAT??? Then it hit me – September flew by extremely fast (which means I´m having fun ;)) and I haven´t written anything in a month. Better do something today. So I did much of this Blog yesterday, but then couldn’t finish it because of Norwegian course, Aerobics and Cinema in the evening. We saw Julia Roberts’ Eat Pray Love. When I came home I rushed into my bed, because I made another early trip to the airport this morning – Henning was flying home. My next ride to the airport will be much, much better. 🙂 So my morning was also very early and gave me the opportunity to finish this extremely long post. Now I can do something else.

Ha det bra! (I definitely will ;))