Spring is coming - I think!?

Just in case the title left any uncertainties: yup, this is gonna be another blog article about the weather in Oslo. Why that? Well, because the weather here never fails to amaze me anew! :D

During the last couple of days (or rather the last two weeks - time just flies by...), the weather couldn't really decide what it wanted and kept skipping back and forth between winter and spring mode. Just to be clear: the "spring mode" was defined by the street looking something like this:

That means it's definitely above 0°!

However, just a few days later, the temperatures dropped to something around -5° again (no guarantees for the accuracy of that number, as I do not keep track of the exact temperatures). That led to a quite unique experience: St. Patrick's Day on ice - only in Oslo!

If you're not that familiar with Irish culture: St. Patrick's Day is celebrated on the death date of Ireland's patron saint Saint Patrick. That's the 17th of March (not to be be confused with 17th of May, the Norwegian constitution day!).

Icy ground posed a bit of a challenge to the Norwegian Irish Society when they wanted to do some Irish dancing with the visitors: "We're not insured against broken legs..." Well, I didn't participate in the dancing part anyway but just enjoyed the Irish music. :)

The next day, the temperatures didn't improve, which led to my way to the choir rehearsal day being a small adventure. Since it was a Sunday, the connection was a bit different, and changing from metro to tram became quite a challenge:

The only thing that was worse than going to rehearsal day was making it back home without falling. A fellow singer called her student village, Kringsjå, a "death trap". I can't claim Sogn felt any different that evening, and unlike her, I didn't purchase spikes for the specific purpose of making it back from the metro station to my place.

Well, maybe it wasn't that random that our conductor recently started introducing us to "some easy songs - in Norwegian" (great...) for the concert. Especially not this one:

That's what it sounds like, by the way:

Around the time of my student village becoming a death trap, I also received a belated birthday card. (This time, the delay was not only the Norwegian post's fault, I think.) One with a very accurate comment:

But yeah, just to clarify: it's not only me international weakling looking forward to spring. By now, it's also the Norwegians who do think that we've had enough of this - particularly cold & snowy - winter. How I know? Well, except for people telling me exactly this, there's also some "subtle" signs. Like the fact that on March 20th, the astronomical beginning of spring, there was another BI-nner - with the very inobvious motto "Spring is here, like, officially!"

They failed to provide anything vegan again, but the decoration was very Easter-y/spring-y with yellow napkins and everything, and the church people were running around in chicken costumes, so that was kind of cute.

Later this week, the weather went to spring mode again. And it might be the actual beginning of spring now! There's been a major melting process going on everywhere in Oslo, that's for sure!

In Sogn, that mainly means streams of water developing on the paths. But hey, you finally start seeing the ground instead of snow and ice!

I feel this process of the snow disappearing will change the whole urban look of Oslo. And it might actually cause some exchange students, who just got familiar with the city, to get lost again. No kidding, I recently got off public transport somewhere and was confused for the first few seconds because my surroundings looked so different without all the snow...!

P.S. As Easter is coming up, we're off from school for a week. It's probably supposed to be something like a "reading week" in Ireland, but yeah, you know what's gonna happen... :P The Norwegians are going home or/and skiing, and the internationals are travelling. Announcement: if you don't hear anything from me until after Easter, don't be surprised - I'm soon going to Trondheim for a few days! (And I also have a deadline shortly after that...)

Stortinget tour with ESN (15.03.)

For Thursday, ESN organised a tour of Stortinget, the Norwegian parliament. They claimed this would be our "once in a lifetime" chance to visit it - and the tour was free. Naturally, the 30 spots available (tours of the Stortinget are limited to 30 people) filled up pretty quickly: ESN closed the sign-up form just 4.5 hours after opening it, and by that time, there was already a waiting list.

However, as I signed up within the first ten minutes, I got a spot for the tour and am now able to tell you everything you never wanted to know!

The tour was supposed to start at 10:00, but we were required to show up at the back entrance by 9:45, supposedly to check-in/ register. Well, I was already stressing out because I was at a corporate activism breakfast seminar at BI before (they do a lot of these events here, and a few of them are actually interesting) and my metro was a little bit late - and then, nobody asked me for my ID anyway...

However, after standing around for a while, we were all asked to go through a security check before the tour started. "All" as in: all 21 persons who were there. General remark: I do not get people who just do not show up at events with limited capacity. If you signed up for an event but cannot go, then just fucking cancel, so that somebody from the waiting list gets to enjoy the event! Seriously, such a behaviour annoys me so much...

Anyway, after the airport-like security scan, including having to take off my shows, we were shown around Stortinget. If you don't remember how the Norwegian parliament looks like from the outside, check out my blog post about the Free Walking Tour which, of course, covered Stortinget. There was also a model of the parliament in the parliament. A Lego model, to be precise!

Norway has had its own parliament ever since 1814, although it was still in a union with Denmark until that year. With the Napoleonic Wars, in which Denmark-Norway unfortunately supported Napoleon, and the following Treaty of Kiel, Norway was to be given away "with flowers" from Denmark to Sweden. However, Norway, inspired by the enlightenment, declared itself a sovereign country and gave itself a constitution. Well, Sweden disapproved and started a war against Norway. This war lasted only for two weeks, because Norway didn't have a chance, and afterwards, Norway joined the union with Sweden which didn't end until 1905.

In short: the end of the union with Denmark, a very brief episode of independence and the beginning of the union with Sweden all took place in the same year, 1814.

In 1905, when Norway became independent for real, they had a referendum about whether they preferred to be a monarchy or a republic. Guess which form of government won...

The last two kings...

... and the 3rd and current king of independent Norway: Harald V.

However, Norway implemented parliamentarism instead of having its ministers appointed by the king. The king's power is more symbolic. He has to sign all laws before they become actual laws - but he can only postpone proposed laws three times maximally.

The Norwegian parliament consists of 169 members of parliament, coming from 9 different parties. The number of MPs per party varies greatly, but none of the parties ever has the absolute majority and can rule alone. Therefore, they have to form coalitions all the time. (Like in Germany, just that we have less parties.) At the moment, the cabinet consists of 3 parties - and it's still a minority government, if I got it right...

Although the Norwegian party system has been explained to me several times, I still had to google all the party names. I'm not gonna try to sort them by political position (left/centre/right), because I'd probably get something wrong. Therefore, here they are ordered by size according to the last election (2017):

Source: Wikipedia. :P

Just a few remarks. Høyre means right, Venstre means left. Not sure it makes sense calling a liberal party "left" though. And the name of the "Progress Party" makes even less sense, because they seem to be everything but progressive. They are the Norwegian equivalent of the right-populist Alternative for Germany, just a bit less right. Norwegian politics seem to be missing the extremes - and the political spectrum is generally moved a bit to the left compared to Germany.

Want to know how I come to that conclusion? Because the current cabinet of Prime Minister Erna Solberg consists of the Conservative Party (Solberg's party), the Progress Party and the Liberal Party - and it's working! And I mean "working" as in: they're not currently deconstructing all the social aspects of politics. In Germany, a cabinet consisting of the German equivalents of these parties would be unimaginable, because fortunately, all established parties refuse to form a coalition with the Alternative for Germany, although they became the third strongest party in our 2017 general elections.

Back to the topic: the tour!

We went to see what the parliament was doing for a few minutes.

They were actually busy with something called "strong critique" (i.e. basically one step before firing) of one of their ministers. They were discussing the most recent Facebook lapse of their minister of justice, a member of the Progress Party (what else?):

She claimed the Labour Party thinks the rights of terrorists are more important than the safety of Norway and asked people to "like and share". Considering that the youth organization of the Labour Party was the target of the biggest terrorist attack Norway experienced (the attacks of the 22nd July 2011, as you might remember from my visit to the center), that wasn't exactly the smartest move.

Afterwards, we went to the former second chamber of Stortinget. It's not used anymore because Norway now has a unicameral system, since the bicameral system wasn't really useful. (Everything that passed the first chamber also passed the second chamber. So now, the same people just get to vote twice.)

We ended the tour in a room I forgot to take notes about. :D

However, after a short round of googling, I figured out it's Eidsvollgalleriet, a gallery with portraits of politicians from the Norwegian Constitutional Assembly at Eidsvoll in 1814.

Another important element of the room is this:

At this desk, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates (the only Nobel Prize that's awarded in Oslo, not in Stockholm, remember?) sign the guestbook.

I refrained from having photos of myself trying to look very important taken there though. :P

Trip to see the northern lights!

Side remark: I renamed this article at least twice before settling for the current title. First, I wanted to name it "Tromsø weekend trip", analogously to the Stockholm one, but then, however, unlike Stockholm, this wasn't exactly just a trip to Tromsø city. "Trip to northern Norway" would have been more accurate on the one hand, but on the other hand, it might not have been my only trip to northern Norway: I still have this dream of experiencing the midnight sun in Norway in summer. Anyway, this was most likely the only trip to the north of Norway during the time period in which you can see the northern lights, so that's what ended up giving this post its name.

Enough introductional blah blah, I kind of need to keep this short, because life continues, I'm doing other stuff as well - and I also have a bit of school, just saying...

So we went to Tromsø last weekend, hoping to see the northern lights there. They are also called polar lights or Aurora borealis, so don't be confused if I'm using these terms interchangeably. These bright and colourful lights in the sky can sometimes be seen in the winter months if you're far up north. (Or far down south, but then the phenomenon is called Aurora australis.) If you're interested in how the polar lights occur: I'm not gonna explain it in this blog post, as the article is gonna be too long due to a lot of pictures already, but feel free check out this website!

Northern lights

As the polar lights are the main reason to make a trip to Tromsø in winter, but it's always a gamble if you'll be able to see them - it's just always a gamble -, I'll start with them instead of artificially creating suspense by keeping them for the end. Plus, it also goes with the chronology of the events: we were able to see them on the very first night when we had basically just arrived in Tromsø! They were so strong that you didn't even have to go to a dark place outside of the city (which we still did afterwards), you could literally see them just outside our accommodation! And they were extremely bright and colourful, green and a bit of pink (the weak ones are just white streams in the sky), and they were actually "dancing". There's slow and fast northern lights, so I'd assume we witnessed the fast ones.

Still wondering how visible they were? Well, I was able to take photos of them with my old compact camera, and the others managed to capture them with their iPhones, I guess that tells you everything you need to know!

Tromsø

Ok, having ticked off this highlight of the Tromsø trip, let's move to the "but where were you anyway?"-part. Let me start with the usual Google Maps screenshot:

If you're wondering: nope, we didn't drive all the way up, I just wanted to illustrate the location and distance in relation to Oslo. We went from Oslo to Tromsø by plane, and even that took two hours, which is more or less the same as going from southern Germany to Oslo. By the way, thanks, UNDER26 campaign code, for making travelling with Nordic airlines such as Norwegian more affordable!

I'm not going to stick to the chronological order of events now but just add a few photos of Tromsø which I collected during our weekend there.

View from our accommodation.

Tromsø Cathedral

Tromsø city library

Probably the prettiest scenery for a gas station...

Tourist information with a ticketing system...

It was all quite nice, but if you wanted the really amazing view over Tromsø, you had to take the cable car!

Fjellheisen (cable car)

Going up...!

Yup, we stayed a bit longer after sunset.

Fjord cruise tour

We didn't stay in Tromsø for the whole weekend. For one day, we had booked tours. The others did a Sami experience tour. If you're not familiar with the word: the Sami people are the indigenous people in the north of Norway as well as Sweden, Finland and Russia.

From a cultural point of view, I might have been interested in that tour. However, I felt this tour was mostly about reindeer sledging, not about Sami culture. And since "just leaving animals alone" (partly inspired by PETA Germany) is kind of my "job description" as a vegan, I opted out of this event and booked a 5 hour fjord cruise tour instead.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to evade the issue of humans not leaving the animals alone there either. At some point of the tour, the boat stopped on the water for fishing activities. But at least, that was not the main attraction of the tour - the main point was still the stunning nature! Before I'll present the photos of the amazing views to you though, I want to make one point here:

So people were encouraged to try out fishing during this tour, and the fish at least partially ended up in the soup that was prepared for us during the tour. (They managed provide a vegan option for me, by the way!) However, when one of the boat crew members filleted the fish just recently removed from the sea, nobody wanted to watch that. Everybody but me (I happened to take photos at that time) was on the other side of the boat or under deck, which I found quite ironic.

I mean, if you can't stand their glassy dead eyes staring at you, maybe you would like to consider just not killing and/or eating them?

Anyway, except for that, the fjord cruise was really nice! We travelled the fjords even further north than we were already. I'm not sure how Norway does it, but during the whole tour, I still had internet and GPS, so I can actually show you how far north we made it:

From there, you could even see the open sea!

I did my best to stay outside and enjoy the view as much as possible. Despite the cold, it was an extremely beautiful day, and I definitely took a 3-digit number of photos during the tour. Don't worry though, I'm not gonna post all of them in the following. Just almost. :P

When my bachelor exchange friends asked me for more selfies...

Hi eagle!

The Arctic Cathedral (which we didn't manage to visit)

Senja

You might have figured it out already, but I should probably make it explicit at this point: we had rented a car for this weekend. Or rather two, as we were up to 9 people on this trip. However, we had rented one car under my name - mainly because I had turned 25 exactly five days before we went to northern Norway. For some reason, 25 is the magic age for car rentals. They don't check for how long you've had your driving license or how much driving experience you possess - they just check IF you have a license and what your age is. As it's only the age doing the trick of pretending you're a "mature driver", I ended up renting the car, but somebody else (who felt more comfortable driving on snow & ice) was the driver. However, may I present the very first car I ever rented:

Well, and as we were already somewhere in the north of Norway and had a car, we decided to make a road trip to Senja, Norway's second biggest island. Just for the record, that's here:

Nope, that's not exactly next to Tromsø. It was something like a 2.5-hour drive, plus some more time until we had figured out where exactly on Senja we wanted to go. But well, for Norwegian standards, that's probably kind of around the corner...

So we actually spent most of the time on the car, but that was great, as we got to see a lot of gorgeous landscape!

Hi reindeer?!

The final destination of our trip to Senja was this, by the way. And we made it there before it got dark! :)

Another selfie of proof. :P

Oh, and if you're interested in everybody's earworm or, if you will, the soundtrack of our trip (as in: the whole weekend, not only Senja!), that would be this one:

Do. Not. Ask.

The day after the Senja road trip, we had to go back to Oslo already. Most of us with the 8 a.m. flight - after 3 hours of sleep. I still don't know how I managed to go to school on the very same day and not fall asleep during class.

Anyway, I'm gonna end this post with the view at the airport at 7 a.m. or something...

Goodbye, Tromsø!