More daily life: BI-nner, exam time, Italian Liberation Day

Or: a blog article about anything and everything that has recently been going on in my life.

I have no idea what happened to this semester, but for some reason, I'm already right in the middle of exam time, I feel. What makes me feel so? I got kicked out of the library at some point because they were closing. Ok, to be fair, that was before exam time had even begun according to BI's definition - so the library closed at 17:30 at the weekends. I remember complaining to a Norwegian fellow student of mine about the shit weekend opening hours - being fully aware of the irony of an exchange student complaining about having to leave the library.

Anyway, now, exam time has officially started, so the library is open until 21:00 at the weekends. (That's still earlier than the library of Mannheim university, even during the worst times of "oh, shit, we're having a financial deficit!", just saying. xD). However, the library opening hours were not the most obvious thing telling you that exam time had begun. When entering BI some point during the week, you basically walked right into these posters asking people to share their tips of "nice things to do during exam time":

Not that I needed any reminders of exam time, as I was basically dealing with the first of my exams, the one group term paper I had, most of the time. Group meetings are more or less the only thing that can make me enter campus at 9 in the morning and make me stay for the whole day on several days in one week... But hey, I guess it paid off, as we managed to finish and submit the paper without me getting into serious last-minute panic. :D And I was even able to contribute some of my background knowledge on rainbow topics (we renamed LGBTQ+ or whatever combination of letters), since it was the paper for the Managing Workplace Diversity course.

Anyway, in between, I also managed to do some other stuff this week. Going to the last (at least for us) BI-nner, for example. I'm not gonna comment on the food, except for: they didn't manage to make an Asian dish vegan, like, seriously, how hard can it be? But it was a nice evening anyway. The motto was "Søttendemai", which is, you might have guessed it, 17th of May, the Norwegian constitution day. However, according to my Norwegian fellow student who joined (we didn't win the quiz preceding the dinner regardless), that's either an incomprehensible pun or "they're just stupid". It's supposed to be spelled "Syttendemai", although the pronunciation of 17 has changed from "sytten" to "søtten"...

Obviously, no food photos. But the view from the top floor of BI was really great on that evening!

And there's also a selfie featuring all the people at our big table. The opinions about how great this photo is differ a bit though. :P

The day after, April 25, was the Italian Liberation Day. So we commemorated the end of the Nazi occupation of the country by eating lots of Italian food, like homemade pizza. :) ("homemade" as in: the Italian among us made the pizza, the rest of us ate the pizza.)

Nationalities present - artistic credits to Eileen. :P

Well, and on Friday, there was an international event called "end of the semester ball". Not sure why the "ball" part in the name, as it was a party in a club in the centre of Oslo.

More high-quality selfies. :P

I could elaborate on how "having a fun night out with friends and without any sexual interest" does not seem to be a thing here, but I decided to refrain from that. However, speaking of "in the city centre": it's full of high school graduates in Super Mario style doing strange stuff at the moment:

The concept is called "russeknuter" (I hope) and basically means that the high schoolers all over Norway party their way to graduation for almost a full month. During this time, they wear these interesting outfits, drink a lot despite of having final exams (they are way less important than in Germany, I was told), and do strange things from a list of dares, collecting rewards for it. It even ended up in the German news, with a headline like, "Norwegian authorities ask high school graduates to not have sex on roundabouts", because, apparently, that's on the list of tasks. The climax of this custom is, not surprisingly, the 17th of May.

Oh, and on Saturday, I went to the cinema in Norway for the first time! We just went to the cinema that's basically next to BI, but it turned out to be the biggest in Norway (kind of automatically, as it's the biggest in Oslo).

(If you're wondering about the sticker on the folder in the background: that's the logo of my choir; our concert is this week Thursday. :))

Return visit from Bergen (20.-23-04.)

Exactly two weeks after my weekend trip to Bergen, Cornelia came to Oslo for a return visit. (She had booked her trip before I booked mine though, but shhh...)

She had literally just arrived and dropped her stuff at my place on Friday evening, when we already left again for the first adventure: going up Vettakollen! You might remember that that was also my very first adventure in Oslo in January; however, things were a bit different this time. I'll keep it short: less snow and less daylight...

We kind of missed sunset waiting for the T-bane:

Anyway, it was still quite nice, although I was barely able to recognize the path, since I only knew it covered in snow.

The very famous Holmenkollen ski jumping ramp again!

The way down again was... interesting. As you can tell from the photos, it was already getting dark. By the time we arrived back at the metro stop, it was basically completely dark. But hey, we made it without any injuries or instances of getting lost in the woods!

On Saturday, we went out to explore Oslo - by foot! Cornelia had thoroughly prepared and elaborated a route from my place to the city centre via all the stuff she wanted to see. So basically, she guided me, since I had only been to these places by public transport. When I had had my first visitor in early February (for the posts about this week, see here, here, and here), walking everywhere was just not an option. If I have to remind you: it was something like -12 degrees and super icy everywhere... :P

The weather was really nice on that day, so I'll just post photos from the places we went to, although I had been there already. I mean, look at all the blue sky in the background!

Hi birds! (Vigelandsparken)

Det kongelige slott (the royal palace)

OMG, flowers!!

Fountain with rainbow :) (at Nationaltheatret)

Then we went to Aker brygge...

... where we got the first ice-cream of the season. At least for me, it was the first. Nope, it definitely wasn't cheap, but why would you expect anything different in Oslo? :P Also, props to Paradis Gelateria: they understood the word "vegan", could point out all the vegan flavours when I asked (all the fruit sorbets and a vegan chocolate flavour!), and even the cones were vegan! :) (I don't like taking my ice-cream in a cup because of the unnecessary waste, but I don't want unnecessary animal products in my cone either...)

Chocolate & strawberry :)

Afterwards, we took the ferry for a round trip in the Oslofjord. This time, it was possible to stay outside for the whole trip for the first time. Ok, it was also much more crowded than in February and March. But at least, there wasn't a massive queue for our ferry - unlike for the Hovedøya ferry. (They changed the ferry schedule a bit, with a separate ferry for this island, while the Øyene round trip ferry doesn't go there anymore.) I'm kind of looking forward to the "summer" timetable for the ferries though. :D

After the ferry trip, we continued walking through the city centre:

Operahuset, once again. :P

Barcode area

Full disclosure: we did take the T-bane instead of walking back to my place for 1.5 hours. ;)

Yeah, and that was the day when I got my first sunburn in Oslo. It was well-deserved (and it usually happens in March already when I'm in Germany. The issues of being pale and underestimating the strength of the sun in spring...)

On Sunday (and Monday...), I left Cornelia my key cards so she could continue to explore Oslo on her own while I had to go to school and deal with my group term paper. (I'm proud to announce that we finished and submitted it by now!) To compensate, we had a waffle night at my place on Sunday, properly celebrating the last evening, since Cornelia went back to Bergen on Monday. I heard the weather was quite Bergen-like on the whole train ride...

"Turist i egen by" - free sightseeing! (15.04.)

And here is the separate article about last Sunday that I announced in the "spring mood" post. I felt I should finally get that done before my next weekend visitor is arriving tomorrow. :D

On Sunday, April 15th, the city of Oslo offered an event called - you might have guessed it: "turist i egen by", which translates into "tourist in your own city". If I got it right, it's an annual event, and on this particular day of the year, citizens of Oslo can explore their own city for free. As you can probably imagine, us temporary citizens were particularly interested in the "for free" aspect. And well, as exchange students, we're basically tourists in our temporary home for a full semester. :P

So a bunch of people got a free event pass (yeah, you need a pass to participate - but it seemed like everybody got it: at the tourist information centre, they didn't ask for proof of residency or questioned why I was approaching them in English rather than Norwegian) - and most of us also made use of it in one or the other way. I'm just gonna list the stuff I did though.

Nobel Peace Center

You might remember that I was already there with my visitor from Mannheim in February - coincidentally also for free. However, this time, they offered guided tours in English language every hour. This way, we got some more background information on the Nobel Peace Prize and this year's topic, the nuclear bomb.

For example, the photographer who took the pictures for the exhibition wanted to compare the United States and North Korea. For this, she travelled to the U.S., where she was shown around centres for atomic weapons. However, North Korea didn't allow her into the country, so she had to travel along the border on the South Korean side and take photos from there. In order to not raise suspicion (which happened anyway), she was carrying a selfie stick with her, pretending to be an innocent tourist. An interesting aspect about the photo exhibition was that some pictures were taken in a way that you couldn't immediately tell if they showed North Korea or the United States. The idea was that when considering the similarities rather than the differences, it gets harder to kill each other.

The Nobel Field is still fascinating, although not new to me any more. :)

Båtservice: Bygdøy ferry

Not only the regular public transport (metro, tram, bus and ferry, of course) were free on Sunday. The boat service to the Bygdøy peninsula was also included in the pass. Conveniently, the boat departed from Aker brygge, directly outside the Nobel Peace Center. Less so, there had already been a queue when we had arrived for the tour, and it grew in the meantime. Therefore, we spent quite some time queuing for the boat.

Queuing selfie. 

Fortunately, it was a really nice warm and sunny day, so standing around outside by the water wasn't the worst thing I could have imagined. (Greetings to all the people who were writing their papers - or procrastinating like pros while pretending to be super busy. :P)

Eventually, we made it on a boat though.

We got off again at Dronningen, the first of two stops, in order to go to the Norsk Folkemuseum.

Norsk Folkemuseum (Norwegian Folk Museum)

If the name rings a bell: yes, that was the excursion with the Norwegian Culture & History class that BI paid for. However, the excursion was in February and we got into a bit of a snow storm. Now, with the great weather, the museum was much more inviting, and I only then realised how big the outside area with houses from everywhere in Norway from different centuries actually is!

The stave church looked much nicer, too!

Boat service (again)

As we got to take the boat for free and it was way fancier than taking the bus, we decided to make use of that opportunity again. :D From Dronningen, the boat was also a lot less crowded, allowing me to take some more photos.

During the boat trip, one of us saw an animal in the water which she thought was a dolphin. However, I really don't think there are dolphins in the Oslofjord, so the rest of us was rather skeptical. But yeah, the Norwegian news also reported on the sight: turned out it was something they call "spekkhogger" - which is an orca whale, I guess...?

Norsk Teknisk Museum (Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology)

Back at Aker brygge, we took the bus to Kjelsås. That's a suburb of Oslo I had never been to before. (Although I later realised that there's a lake in the area. Maridalsvannen, actually Oslo's biggest lake, immediately made it on my to do list.)

Anyway, we went there for the Norsk Teknisk Museum, a quite big museum with exhibitions on science, technology, industry and medicine.

I didn't manage to see everything - plus, the medicine part was in Norwegian only and after a day of travelling around Oslo, my brain didn't feel like the cognitive effort of reading Norwegian anymore. However, the exhibitions on the Norwegian oil as well as race/racism, in connection with the marginalisation of the Sami people, were my personal highlights.