First Snow

Today I woke up to a thick cake of snow on everything outside!  Last night I saw some snow fluttering down , but only on-and-off, then this morning everything was white!  Here are some photos.

From my window in the morning

From my afternoon walk in the Cemetery.
Can you find the Moose?

   In other news, classes just finished!  I had my last class on 25 Nov, and now it's just study time until my first exam on 5 Dec.  I've got 4 exams (on 5, 9, 16, and 20 Dec), then I'm really done.  Unfortunately, these exams are all I've got for my final grade in each class, so I've really got to do a lot of studying.  I love studying... in my room... alone... for hours...

   Also, I hosted a great Thanksgiving feast on Thursday!  I introduced all the people in my program to the joy of gorging oneself on turkey, potatoes, green beans, and pie.  I cooked all day, and ended up with a whole turkey, 2 green bean casseroles, a sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and 2 pies (apple and crapple).

Thanksgiving!

More Thanksgiving!

PIE!

Time in Trondheim

Alrighty!  Two weeks in Trondheim, and now it's time to head to Oslo!

These haven't been great weeks.  There hasn't been much work to do, but I pulled my Achilles tendon, so I've been out of commission.  It's tough to sit at my desk on a clear day looking at the tree-lined hills of Bekken and not be able to walk downstairs without taking a break . :-\

But that's done now!  I did plenty of indoor stuff, like cooking Mexican food and making a Pancake breakfast for the gang (after a night on the town, mind you).  I'm battling with a cold right now, but it's not half as bad as a bum ankle, so I can't complain much.

Plus, I finally got a bank account, so I can receive my scholarship!  THAT certainly took long enough...

This weekend we're off to Oslo!  It's only a weekend, and cities aren't usually my favorite travel destinations, but it's about the last thing on my list of To-See places in Norway.  Last is Tromso, but I don't think I'm going to make it up there...  There's time, but exams are looming closer every day, and we've got to travel to Stockholm for Dutch Residency Permits sometime between now and Christmas.  Preferably before exams start in December...

More to follow!  And I'll try to take some pictures this time!

Design Update

Hey, folks,

I upload a bunch more photos than are shown in the posts here.  If you want to see more, click on the photo on the right sidebar!  (That's the one of me writing)

Stavanger & Bergen

   So I arrived from Lofoten on the 10th.  We left for Bergen on the 12th, but the 11th was Bojan's birthday!  I baked a chocolate cake, topped with After Eight mint squares, which was pretty good.  He asked everyone to bring something from their home country, so the food was really good!  (I don't know that cake is an American thing, but I couldn't let a birthday pass without cake!)

   There was also a lot of drinking, and I (fortunately for you) have no photos.  The next morning we were leaving for Bergen at about 7am, so I left early, but not everyone did.  In the morning Aline was in a terrible state, but we all made it to the plane, so it was just fine.  We flew to Bergen, then drove to Stavanger and on to a cabin near Preikestolen.

Cabin Microwave: The Space Cube.
Awesome.

Jose brought fancy Belgian beer from Ghent!

   In the morning we drove to the trailhead for Preikestolen, a HUGE cliff protruding over Lysenfjord.  We hiked about 2 hours to reach the rock, and it was spectacular.

Me on the edge, 604 m from the fjord.

Relaxing above Pulpit Rock

   It was awesome up there.  The next day we drove back to Stavanger and got free omelets from a booth advertising International Egg Day.  Who would've thought?  Then we drove back to Bergen area and stayed in a TINY cabin.  After dinner we had chocolate pudding:

   Next day we spent in Bergen trying to decide what to do.  This was probably the hardest part of the trip.  It's always hectic to realize you don't know what you want to do and don't have a place to spend the night.  Bergen was a city...  I liked the nature parts of the trip a lot better.  There was a funicular up into the hills, though that was pretty cool.  At the top there was a good view and a troll forest.

Top of the town!  And introducing... Moholt the Moose!

Be one with the Troll Spirits

  That afternoon Bojan left us to play coach the NTNU basketball team (he was actually there for a match; that's why we picked this weekend).  As the day wound down we drove to Hardangerfjord, east of Bergen.  THAT was beautiful.  We stayed in a cabin (with a sauna!) and made pizza for dinner.  In the morning we ran down to the fjord and jumped in.  It was pretty cold but totally worth it!  I'm still waiting on photos from Jose...

   We drove to the nearest "big" town and took the ferry to the east side of the fjord, where we drove up into the mountains toward the glacier.  Eventually the roads were too icy and we had to hike, and that got tough when the road was REALLY steep and we were already calf-deep in snow.  We didn't make it all the way to the glacier - we just weren't prepared.  However, the view at lunchtime was great, so I can't really complain.

Ice expedition team.
Left to Right: Isa, Aline, Shirin, Jose Ruben, Alex, Marcio

Lunch on the glacier road.  Oh, yeah.

That night we drove back to Bergen and collected Bojan.  We drove to the airport, and most slept on the chairs in the baggage claim area.  Marcio and I went back out to the van we still had rented (until 8am or something).  He crashed on the bench and I got the trunk.

   Thus, at 5:30 am on the 17th I woke up in the trunk of a black van.  We caught the flight back and arrived in time to shower before class at 10am!  Whew!  It was a great trip, and we saw all kinds of cool stuff.  I think we also learned that it's good to have some time off - you can't spend 10 days together non-stop without going a little crazy.

   The last couple weeks have been low-key.  Lots of catch-up work and assignments.  I'm pretty much caught up, though, so it's about time to travel again!  Oh, and we were able to book a room in the CE department on the weekends, so we can watch movies on the projector!  Oh, and study...

Lofoten

Oh, my!  I've been VERY behind!  I was out of town from Okt 7-17, and it's taken until now for me to go through the pictures for a good post.

Part of the CoMEM experience in Norway is an excursion up to the Lofoten islands in the northern half od Norway.  That took me north of the Arctic Circle for the first time, and it was amazing.  First we spent Friday and Saturday on Polarlys, a cruise ship with delicious food.

The Ship

Food and Folks.  From Left to right: Shirin, Fitri, Isa, Trisno,
Aline, Bojan, Alex, Saud, Lijie, Ushanth, Rohit, Dimitri

We landed in Svolvaer, a small town on the east side of Lofoten.  That's where I saw the Northern Lights at last!  We stood for over an hour in the windy, 2 C night, watching greens and lavenders pour across the sky.  The aurora is truly surreal, and I can't do it justice.  It's like a rippling ribbon, or a flowing river, or a brush stroke across the whole sky.  It's constantly changing, and it's totally mesmerizing.  If you ever get a chance, go see it!

The next day we went traveled the island, visiting a few museums, coolest of all a Viking Heritage Museum.  The whole thing was in an 83 m Longhouse, shaped like a ship on top.  Everything inside was hewn to look like viking times.  They made lunch for us there in the main hall.  We were given cloaks when we walked in (the place wasn't well insulated) and sat along the walls while they cooked lamb stew over a fire in the center and served mead and tough bread.

Eating at the Viking Table.
It actually has a catch trough carved in for spilled mead and stew.

We went back to the hotel and after a delicious dinner we went to bed because we had to be on a ferry back to the mainland at 6am!  From there (Bodo), we hopped on a train and rode for 10 hours.  It was a comfortable one, and the views were beautiful for stretches of it, but 10 hrs is a LONG time...

My home for 10 hours...

We finally got back to Trondheim, and I slept hard.  The next day was Bojan's birthday, and I had to be well-rested!

A Few Quiet Weeks

So I've spent the last couple weekends in Trondheim.  I suppose sometimes you have to catch up with your studies.  The courses aren't very well organized, which can be quite frustrating.  I've got one where the professor clearly doesn't want to be teaching at all, one where there is a visiting professor who has a hard time explaining things or answering questions, and one where the lectures are given by someone different every week, leading to a predictable lack of continuity.  Soil Mechanics is still good, though!  Interesting that that's what I would've studied at Berkeley...

But being in Trondheim hasn't kept me from doing interesting things!  In fact, this past weekend I hiked out to a lake (Tømmerholtdammen), which I found by accident while running.  It's about 20 min hiking from my door to get to the park where the lake is located, and it took less than an hour to get to the lake itself.  That's something really great about Norway.  There are 3 more lakes as you hike deeper into the forest, so I've got plenty to explore... though maybe with skis...

Swimming in Bekken (a regional park)

I also got a haircut, which isn't that interesting, but it led to a funny picture.

Marcio the Maniac

This weekend we're going to Lofoten, a set of islands just north of the Arctic Circle!  I'm really psyched, though there will be a lot of transportation time (ferry north then bus tour then train south).  The following weekend I'll be headed south to Bergen and Stravanger to see some more fjords!

Taagaabu

Late post.  Last weekend (that of Sept 16-18) I went with Aline, Bojan, and Marcio to Taagaabu, a cabin (Koiene in Norsk) SSE of Trondheim.  We parked at a little farm (with a REALLY scary wolf tied up at the gate) then hiked our way into the woods to find the little cabin up by a stream.  It was really pretty, with a climbing tree next to it, a wood-fire stove inside, and a roof covered in blueberry bushes.  Here are some photos:

Me at Taagaabu... with an ax.

The Pit Toilet.
It has a giant sign because it gets buried in the winter.

We arrived Friday afternoon then went hiking on Saturday through a big marsh-land (I think everything here is a big marsh-land) to a pristine lake.

Then I introduced our crew to an American Tradition: Smores!  We had to get marshmallows, chocolate, and No-Taste Cookies, but it was all worth it.  As a side note, they wrap hay bales in plastic here to protect them from the winter, so I took a photo of me with little marshmallows and BIG ones!

Marshmallows of every size

Although the hiking was great and living in a cabin is fun, the best part was the clear sky.  Since arriving I haven't had a really clear night to stargaze, but at Taagaabu it was breathtaking.  I saw a couple shooting stars, the Milky Way, a dozen constellations, and about 3 satellite passes every minute.  THAT was the best part.

Stakkslettbua

Another weekend, another trip!  This weekend I was out at Stakkslettbua, a cabin owned by the Sports Center at NTNU (called NTNUI).  I went with the student group from St. Olav's Catholic Church.  It was an interesting trip, and it was neat to be off the beaten path.  I feel I've spoiled myself with the trip to Geiranger, though.  Nothing quite matches that.

There were no paths to the cabin, so we hiked across about 1.5km of marshy terrain to get there.  This would've been fine, but we weren't really told about it until we had arrived.  We had to carry plastic grocery bags of food plus whatever bag we had packed for ourselves (not knowing how far or through what we'd be hiking), and that was a little frustrating.  Basically, it felt like the whole thing operated on an every-man-for-himself basis.  There were organizers, but no one seemed to take responsibility for distributing information or any serious degree of logistical planning.  But I should've seen it coming; that seems to be the norm here.

But on to the good stuff!  We arrived Saturday and hiked to the cabin, then a few of us hiked on to an 850m peak.  From there we could see a peak just over 1000m, so we hiked there!

Nice terrain.  Site form one of the peaks we climbed

Finally we made it back to the cabin hungry and exhausted to find that cooking pasta for 14 on a woodfire stove isn't as simple as it is on a gas range.  Who would've thought?  That took us to sunset (very nice) then moonrise (nice, as well).

Sunset from Stakkslettbua

Now, that looks pretty sweet, and I was pretty pleased to see it.  I was planning on telling my buddies back it Moholt what a cool view I'd had, when I got a text telling me to run outside because you could see the AURORA BOREALIS from the student village.  I ran out, but by then it was cloudy at the cabin.  This is what I missed:

Aurora from Moholt.
I MISSED THIS!!!  UNGH!

I was extremely disappointed.

This has been another week of class with little to report.  This weekend I'll be off to yet another cabin for camping & hiking, this time with some of my CoMEM buddies!

Geiranger Fjord

Now for the weekend of Sept 2-4!  I suppose I should begin by noting that classes are alright but instruction is different from that at Berkeley.  I hate to say it's not as good, but many of the instructors at Berkeley were VERY good.  It's especially weird to take Soil Mechanics here, since they teach it "The Norwegian Way."

On another note, I had to take my passport back to the Police Station to get my residency permit corrected - someone wrote "Today's Date" in the space for "Expiration Date", which makes me an illegal!  They'll fix it, but it'll take a few more weeks to get all registered (which means a few more weeks before this whole scholarship thing gets rolling...).

Tuesday or Wednesday Marcio and Aline proposed we go to Geiranger Fjord, after hearing the idea from Ruben and Shirin.  Within 24 hours we were setting up a route, renting a car, and reserving a cabin.  Seven of us went: Alex (me), Aline, Bojan, Isabel, Marcio, Ruben, and Shirin.  We drove west to the ocean then south along the coast to cross The Atlantic Road, which hops from island to island across a large inlet from the Atlantic (I don't think it's actually a fjord...)  Check it out; here's us at the biggest bridge:

Then we drove on until we got to a city - okay a town at most - called Helset, where we spent the night.  We rented a cabin there, and it was AWESOME.  There were 3 rooms and a loft.  The kitchen had all the equipment to cook for and serve about 10 people, and outside you could see the glacial mountains rising on either side of a river (about 100 m away) that emptied into the fjord.  We made a delicious dinner of quesadillas then played Cosmic Wimp-out - just like home!  Take a look:

The next morning we took a 60 minute ferry ride through Geirangerfjorden into Geiranger (the town).  It was amazing.  It was as beautiful as Bryce or Zion, but in a totally different way (and without the crowds).  Uncountable waterfalls drop from steep cliffs, the water is strikingly blue, and the formations in the rock are breathtaking.  Some photos looking from the bow (doesn't do it justice!)

When we got to Geiranger, the town at the end of the fjord, we hunted around and found a cabin about half way up the cliffs.  Okay maybe it was a third, and that doesn't really count the peaks.  We hiked out way to Grinddalsaetra, a cabin in the saddle between 2 peaks, and the view was AMAZING.  Again.

Here are a few photos:  1) Marcio at the top.  2) Me at the Troll Sign (behind is the nearest peak).  3) Grindda the Troll at the top.

Needless to say, they like their Trolls here.  The signs are very knobbly and troll-like, and there are GIANT trolls in town, like this one with Shirin and Ruben:

After our hike we had dinner then slept.  The following morning we went on a hike around the edge of the fjord.  The mist would sweep in and be gone in cycles lasting only 15 to 20 minutes; it was pretty neat.  So here's me at the top.  I mean, it was only sort of SPECTACULAR...

After that we were off to Trondheim once again!  We drove for about 6.5 hours through central (rainy farm-country) Norway, though we crossed a really impressive ridge along the way and went through Trollsidda to boot.

Road at Trollsida

Lake at the top of the ridge we crossed

And then we were back!  What a trip!  Since then it's been classes once again, which are just fine.  Subjects are interesting and instruction is still fine.  This weekend I'm off again, this time to a cabin out west with the student group at St. Olav's.  More pictures to come!

Maritime Heritage Trip

Well, it's been a while, but I'm back.  I'll do this in two posts, one for each week I've neglected.

The weekend of August 26-28, the coordinators of CoMEM came to visit.  We met them over pizza on Friday afternoon.  There were representatives from Barcelona, Delft, and London (Southampton couldn't make it) plus some staff from NTNU.  On Saturday our coordinator here, Oivind, took all of us north of Trondheimsfjorden to the region where he grew up.  We visited a maritime cultural history museum, a castle, and a farm & fishing village.

At the maritime museum they had replicas of all sorts of things Norwegian fisherman would use back in the old days, but they coolest thing was the ship yard.  Okay, it was more like a barn, but inside they were making Clinker Boats (Viking style ships) in the same way the old Norse used to do it!  Big hammers and big iron nails held the whole thing together.  First is me with traditional Norwegian hat & gloves, second is the ship barn:

Then we were off to the Austrått Castle.  It was actually just like a big stone house with a nice enclosed courtyard, but it was the biggest thing for kilometers.  In fact, you could easily mistake it for a large church from a distance.  In the courtyard, though, all the pillars were painted to look like figures out of biblical stories, including the major patriarchs standing over the entrance.  First is the Castle, second is me in The Court of the Patriarchs (!!!) :

Now on to the farm!  Oivind's father actually lived there for 7 years, and he grew up a short walk away, so he chatted with people there about all the folks in the pictures on the walls.  That was probably the most interesting part.  We had lunch there then walked down to the waterfront and saw the fishing harbor.  It used to be one of the only ports with an international export license, so it was REALLY busy.  Now it's pretty calm.  Here's me with a tiny pycnopodia (sunstar) I found, then Shirin watching the waves at the end of the breakwater.

So that was our trip!  We rode the bus home then went back to classes for another week!

One Down!

This marks the end of the first week of classes! So far it looks like I've got 3 good ones and one that may be a bit slow, but that's just how it goes. They teach in blocks, so most of my courses only meet twice a week but for 2 or 3 hours. This has been a little rough, but I'm getting used to it. They give us a break every hour so we can step out for 15 min.

In other news, I've been exploring a little more. There's a big mall called City Syd ("City South") where we found a HUGE market - the subtitle on the sign was "Hypermarked". It's a lot like a Super Walmart, actually, though it pains me to say that. The fruits and vegetables were notably cheaper there (only about $3/lb for tomatoes!), so we got some veggies, and Marcio, Aline, and I had a delicious dinner - cheese w/ bread, salad with tomato basil, rice, and salmon. Check it out:

One thing's for sure: I'm learning to cook fish like you wouldn't believe. Land-meat costs a fortune here...

And, having mentioned Aline and Marcio, I'll quickly hash out the people in the program:

Those two are oceanographers from Brazil.

Bojan is a shipping manager from Serbia.

Shirin is an oceanologist from Mexico (Baja)

Ushanth is a CE from Sri Lanka

Lijie is a CE from China

Isabel is a CE from Spain

Rohit and Saud are engineers from India

Dmitry is an engineer from Russia

Fitriani and Sutrisno are engineers from Indonesia.

All told we have 9 engineers, 3 oceanographers, and Bojan for a total of 13.

Thus far much of my activity has been class, cooking/eating (we're trying to cook foods from our native cultures. I'm open for any ideas in the American Food category!), running, and sleeping. It's not a bad life, though it will all be indoors in a few months (which is standard for all but the running).

NTNU Orientation

Orientation week is almost over, but I've done a lot. There were a lot of presentations about how to get set up in Trondheim and groups you could join. The Sports Center (Idrettsbygget) is really cool here. They've got a 30m climbing wall at the Dragvoll campus and a bouldering cave at Golshaugen (it's about 3m tall and across but the floor is covered with crash pads and the walls and ceiling with climbing traverses).

Even cooler are the Cabins owned by NTNUI (the Sports Center Association). They're out in the country or along the fjords, and students can rent them for 30nok per person per night. You can take a bus part way there then hike or ski to the cabins and stay for the weekend. That's pretty much the coolest thing ever.

There seem to be two primary pass times here in Trondheim: Drinking and Hiking. I can't do too much of the former (with beer at 12nok at its cheepest), but I love the latter. People like to get out of town and be in nature, and to illustrate this part of Orientation Week was to hike in Bymarka, the park west of Trondheim. It was muddy (it always rains here), but beautiful nonetheless. We climbed to a ridge overlooking the fjord north of Trondheim:

That was Thursday, and after hiking and dinner I got to go to my FIRST EVER football match! Did you know that in other countries they call soccer football and people play professionally? It's like American football or baseball or something! And it's not just the World Cup; people play all the time! I went to see Rosenborg (the Trondheim club) and Aek (from Cyprus) play a qualifying match for Euroleague. Neither team was very good, but it was fun to go; I've wanted to go to a match for a long time, but they're not so common in the US. Here's me at the game:

Classes start on Monday. I'll be taking "The Marine Physical Environment", "Spreading of Pollution" (is that an Art of... or Practice of... kind of class?), "Port & Coastal Facilities", and either "Safety/Reliability Analysis" or "Dynamic Response of Marine Structures." More on that to come.

Arrival

Hello, there,

So I departed the San Diego Airport at about 2:45 pm on 10 Aug and flew to Chicago. There I had to exit through security, take a tram through all three other terminals (I had already walked through one and I was bound for #5), go back through security (international this time), then board my plane. That flight ran from about 10pm Chicago time (GMT -6) to 1:30 pm Copenhagen time (GMT +1), for a flight time of about 8.5 hrs. THEN I waited for a delayed flight to Trondheim, which eventually got me there at about 6:30pm, Trondheim Time. By 8:00pm I finally got to Moholt student housing. Another of the CoMEM students (Bojan from Serbia) had prepared dinner, so I joined him, Dr. Arnsten, and a number of other CoMEM students (see below) to eat before sleeping on a real bed at least.

It was 23:30 by the time I went to bed, but the sunset had BARELY faded to a dusky blue-purple. At 4:30 in the morning it was already bright enough to call it daylight. This place is crazy; I can only imagine the darkness of Winter.

There are 4 rooms in my suite, but I've only met one of the guys living here. His name is Per, and he's from Norway. He just finished his degree and is hunting for a job. It's nice because he's been living here a while and has collected all the cookware one could need over the past year or so. I've included a couple pictures from the place (including the super-cool fold-away shower!).

I spent today walking the campus and Central Trondheim. Bojan led a bunch of the new arrivals around to different places to take care of a series of upon-arrival tasks, like getting phones, course registration, and bus passes. Along the way we got to see the Cathedral. I know this kind of building is all over Europe, but it's still impressive to me.