Vigelandspark and Grefsenkollen reloaded

Just a short update: my friend arrived last night and we made it back to my place without any icy accidents. (Yes, it's still slippery, and it's basically getting worse with every day people walk on the paths. I'm kind of waiting for snow by now - but currently it's just way too cold for that...)

So today, I took her first to Frognerparken/Vigelandsparken (the sculpture park from the free bus tour) and then to Grefsenkollen (the hill from our "tiny hike"). As I've already talked about these places in earlier articles, I'm just gonna add a bunch of photos here. The weather was really nice (as in: clear blue sky at around -10°), so I felt like taking a lot of new photos, although the places themselves weren't new to me.

Frognerparken/Vigelandsparken

Oh, and by the way, it was icy:

Grefsenkollen

We went there in the afternoon to see the sunset, so once again, you're getting some phases of sunset.

Just after sunset, the last bus back to civilization (i.e. BI) departed from the top of the hill. And unlike last time, it was actually running!

(Which I was quite thankful for, since walking down the hill on ice might have become hazardous...)

BI library view

The title of this article might be a bit ambiguous, thus for clarification: no, I did not do library sightseeing at BI - at least not in the first place. :D I went to the library because it's on the two top floors of the building (the fancy futuristic campus, if you remember) and the view was supposed to be nice from there.

Well, yeah, it is, I'd say:

If you're worried about my state of health, let me assure you that I did not come to BI to study at the library today. In fact, I mainly went there to go to the gym. And I have proof for my claim:

Yes, it was quite empty there...

(If you're now even more worried about my state of health, then I can't help you. :P)

Anyway, as the day had started with a blue sky, the original plan was to see the sunset from the top floor of BI. Unfortunately, the sky got cloudy at some point in the afternoon, which is why there was not much of a sunset to see. But the view from the library was still quite nice.

And yeah, to be honest, the library is not bad either.

Very cozy!

If you don't feel like reading business literature.

The photo with the panorama view at the beginning of this post was taken in the Master area, by the way. Because here, unlike in Mannheim, master students enjoy the privilege of designated areas!

There's also a Master area in the countless open study spaces throughout BI (by now, I understand what people mean when they text me stuff like, "we're meeting in the masters area in C2" :D). However, for the Master area in the library, you actually need a code to enter:

This way, the school tries to make sure that only actual master students enter this area. The code was made known to master students on BI's online portal - with a (common knowledge?) note to not share the code with any non-master students.

That's it for today. Don't expect much activity on this blog in the upcoming days, because I'll have my first visitor here in Oslo! (Oh, and classes, I'll also have classes...)

P.S. Totally forgot to talk about the weather. What would an Oslo blog post be without a comment regarding the weather? It got even colder, like -10°, and the ice on the ground got worse, I feel. Every time I leave the house to go take the T-bane, I feel like I'm going on an adventurous journey:

(This is a path in my student village. So actually, even waste disposal and doing laundry are adventurous these days.)

My slippery path to sunset

When I looked out of the window this morning (Friday, it just happens to be past midnight once again), I realised that this would be one of the rare beautifully sunny days in Oslo. Quoting our Australian tour guide in Stockholm at the end of January, "You managed to get the first sunny day this year!" - and I doubt Oslo has many more days of sunshine...

Therefore, I decided today was the perfect opportunity to pursue the plan that had been at the back of my mind for a while: being on the rooftop of Operahuset (the futuristic glass opera house at the Oslofjord, if you remember from the free bus tour?) at sunset.

Spoiler alert: I managed!

But first things first. Which meant in my case: first go to BI for the first meeting of my group for the Managing Workplace Diversity paper. (Group work is definitely a thing here, even for papers. And yeah, we're starting early - because the deadline is early.)

Anyway, the group meeting was not the only "but first". Another aspect of my quest to see the sunset from the Opera House rooftop was, once again, the weather. There had been degrees above zero in the middle of the week, causing snow and ice to melt. And I'm talking about snow like this:

Thus, it had been all wet and muddy for about two days. However, naturally, that's not a sustainable status in Oslo in January/February. The temperature fell to something in between -5° and -10° (there might even be double digit freezing temperatures this weekend!). I assume you can imagine what happened: water and mud turning into solid ice. Everywhere.

On the way to the metro stop, for example. I even took the bus because I didn't feel like sliding downhill in my student village, but that didn't help much. The short walk from the bus stop to the T-bane station was quite an adventure in itself:

(That's not even the worst spot. At the worst spot, I didn't take photos, as I was focusing on not falling.)

Around BI and its T-bane station, Nydalen:

Even in the city centre! The Opera House is just a short walk from the central station, right in the middle of the city, where there's usually not so much snow and ice. Well, today, there was...

I made it to Operahuset without any accidents, but - surprise, surprise! - there was also ice on the rooftop...!

Fortunately, some parts of the roof were free of ice, and I managed to take some quite nice photos from there. I guess I'm just gonna spam you with a bunch of photos again.

Again, like at the Grefsenkollen viewpoint, basically all phases of sunset. I'm ending this post with a seagull watching the sunset and a (not particularly good) selfie of proof I was there. (Yeah, I usually don't take selfies, but as I went there on my own and didn't feel like asking random people to take a photo of me, you know...)

Hi seagull!

Yes, it was cold.