Just daily life things...

If you're wondering why you didn't get another "tiny hike" (the Norwegians among my friends would probably claim what I'm doing here isn't even remotely close to hiking, but never mind) post last weekend: that's because I didn't go on another Oslo adventure for once. It was my birthday on Sunday, so I decided to invite a few people to my student dorm to have waffles, cookies, summer rolls etc. (I actually taught one of my friends how to make summer rolls. That's an important element to have in your skill set! :D)

Two of them were so nice to make me a birthday cake:

(The photo was the result of my friends from my bachelor exchange asking me for a birthday selfie on my master exchange. Just saying, I usually don't do selfies.)

Anyway, since you won't get an article this weekend either - because I'm finally going to Tromsø! Don't expect to hear anything from me until next week! -, I thought I'd give you a bit of a summary of the "highlights" of my week or so.

Let me start with the obligatory comment(s) on the weather. Last week, we experienced the calendrical beginning of spring at around -10°. And that was not only the 1st of March, it was basically the whole week. I was talking to some Norwegians, and even they admitted that these are not standard temperatures for "spring". But at least you got a bit of a nice sky from time to time:

And after a period of cold, it started snowing again on Monday, I think. At Nydalen T-bane station, it finally occurred to the public transport provider that the entrance might get slippery if there's a lot of people coming in with snow at their shoes:

Seriously, it's been dangerous around there all the time! I've literally seen Norwegians slip and fall close to this spot (ok, it was icy outside and they were drunk, but still...)!

But yeah, there was some snow this week. When I walked from my place to the T-bane, I was actually able to observe the kind of vehicles which are used here to remove the snow that's piled up on the pavement:

In the meantime, things at BI went on as usual. Well, almost. There was supposed to be another one of the uncounted company events last week Thursday. However, "Coffee with Facebook" had to be postponed due to the weather conditions. Not the conditions in Norway though, but the ones in Ireland! It seemed like Dublin actually had more snow at the end of the week than Oslo.

(A fellow student of mine did a short trip to Ireland and wasn't exactly excited about this view.)

Obviously, since Ireland hardly ever experiences snow, they couldn't really deal with it. As in: Dublin airport was literally shut down for a while, which was why the Facebook people couldn't make it to Oslo. They still managed to have the event a few days later though:

Yeah, I collect free pens...

Oh, and speaking of stuff that happens at BI: there was also a big event called "Inspire" this week. Even though I did not go to any of the presentations (the interesting ones either clashed with my classes or were in Norwegian - and I fear having Jo Nesbø talk about his books in Norwegian wouldn't have been very satisfying for me, even less for most other exchange students...), it was hard to ignore the event. I mean, they decorated BI in purple and had a ship in front of the main entrance. xD

Seriously, they even decorated the bathroom!

(I think that had to do with some female leadership event, so it might have been the women's bathroom only...)

What I liked most about Inspire was that they had a cooperation with Kreftforeningen, the Norwegian Cancer Association. On BI's campus, you could get a bracelet or even make one yourself, and the money you had to pay for it went to Kreftforeningen. Most of them said "FUCK CANCER", which I didn't like too much, but I managed to find one that said "CURE CANCER" instead. :)

Sorry for the quality, I just took that photo in class. :P

I also tried to learn a bit more about Norwegian culture. Nope, I didn't attend the "Norwegian culture and history" class again. I went to the ESN movie night this week. This time, they actually showed a Norwegian movie (with English subtitles, fortunately):

Fjols til fjells is a Norwegian comedy film from 1957 and is supposed to be one of the most popular Norwegian movies ever. (According to Wikipedia, not necessarily actual Norwegians I talked to.) The name translates into something like "Morons to the mountains". And yeah, it takes place in a hotel somewhere in the Norwegian mountains. :D

Oh, and if you're wondering: yes, I also have classes! I'm literally just writing this article in my Strategic Management class. Nope, that's not the most interesting class ever, and I wouldn't do that in Change Management or Managing Workplace Diversity, as they are more interactive and/or more exciting.

But there's one good thing about Strategic Management (except for the fact that it's more of a "strategy for beginners" class, so I'm hoping to pass the exam nevertheless): there's only one session this week... Since the course didn't take place two weeks ago (that's when I seized the chance to go to the Natural History Museum) because of a concept called vinterferie, we had two sessions last week: one on Thursday afternoon, and another one on Friday afternoon. Boring class on Friday from 14:00 to 17:00, that's as bad as it can get, I guess...

But hey, our teacher at least made an effort and brought candy to the Friday session...! (His handwriting is a mess though. :P)

Norsk Folkemuseum and BI-nner (27.02.)

Ok, so I guess I should publish this article in the month to which it belongs, which ends today unfortunately. :D

Yesterday, the Norwegian Culture and History course for exchange students did a field trip to the Norsk Folkemuseum. I'm not really in that course, and I haven't been attending the sessions in the last few weeks anymore. (The teacher didn't seem particularly excited about teaching and therefore had the students hold presentations instead. I decided there's not much of a point in preparing presentations for a course I won't even get credits for, and I'd just consult books, the internet or Norwegians if I felt the need to find out something about Norway.) Still, the opportunity of visiting a museum and having BI pay for it was one I just couldn't miss. A friend who's officially in this course - but not attending the sessions anymore either - was so nice to share the details with me so we could go there together.

It turned out the Norsk Folkemuseum is mainly an outdoor museum. There are some indoor exhibitions which we had a brief look at before the tour started, but the heart of the museum are 160 buildings from different eras and regions of Norway that were brought to or reconstructed at the Norsk Folkemuseum, trying to show how people lived in Norway.

During the tour, we entered exemplary buildings from different centuries and social classes. I didn't take a lot of photos inside though, since I was busy warming up again. This week just happened to be one of the colder ones in Oslo. On one morning, it was close to -20° (nope, I didn't leave the house early in the morning). During the tour, it was "just" something around -10°. Which is still a bit too cold for an outdoor tour. I didn't see the teacher of the course anywhere before, during or after the tour, by the way...!

Anyway, here are a few pictures I managed to take during the tour:

The highlight of the tour came at the end, when we were slightly frozen already: the Gol Stave Church! Stave churches are medieval churches made out of wood and represent Norway's contribution to architectural history.

The stave church and our tour guide

Looks a bit like an element from the Viking ships.

The painting is the Last Supper.

After the tour, we were given the option to spend some more time in the museum, but my friend was frozen and I had to head directly to BI because I had an actual class afterwards. So we just took the bus back from Bygdøy peninsula to Oslo city.
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Speaking of stuff that BI pays for: once per month, there's an event at BI that's called BI-nner. Yes, that's a linguistic hybrid of "BI" and "dinner" - and I'm still not sure how to pronounce it correctly. But never mind. It's a free dinner organised by BI's studentprest, the chaplain, that also took place yesterday.

I've been bothering them to offer a vegan option for the BI-nner since January, and I might continue doing so for the rest of the semester. But unlike in January, I didn't refuse to go there this time. I realised nobody would join me for the quiz at Kroa student bar at the same time, as all potential candidates for my team went to BI-nner. So I figured I might as well go there, too, which led to the same result for me: no food, but a social life and a fun evening.

For some reason, they had named the event "Cupid's revenge"; however, the decoration was more like "Cupid's late by two weeks". Heart-shaped balloons, chocolate and what not everywhere. Plus a playlist with I Will Always Love You and the like.

At the entrance, we were given envelopes with numbers telling us which table we should join. Since that was not what we had signed up for, we ended up being rebels getting our own table. In the end, the envelopes were just for the Valentine's cards we were supposed to write for random people anyway.

My table turned out to be rather creative when it came to this assignment. :D

ESN "hiking and grilling" at Sognsvann (25.02.)

If you're wondering by now, "Hiking? Again?", then, yes, this is part of what Norway is all about! But don't worry, one of my fellow students here showed a quite similar reaction when I was talking about my plans for the weekend.

But yeah, ESN organised another event for international students on Sunday. We met at Sognsvann T-bane station, the final destination of the metro line 5.

If "Sognsvann" rings a bit of a bell: yup, that's where I went on my very first day in Oslo to experience my first adventure. However, this time, we did not just pass the lake and then walk up to the Vettakollen viewpoint. Instead, we walked around the lake. And as it was a really nice winter's day, have some photos here:

Not much of a lake to see, to be honest. :D

We didn't make a full round around the lake though (another one of these "hikes"). Instead, we stopped somewhere on the other side to start with the grilling part of "hiking and grilling". Which turned out to be not as easy as expected. I mean, there were a lot of people and a lot of snow:

The attempt to create a flat area, so that you wouldn't sink knee- or even thigh-deep into snow when you made just one wrong step, was semi-successful, I'd say. We ended up having sort of a safe space, but it was not really big, so we were having a fun time making our ways from A to B and back.

I didn't participate in the grilling, I have to mention. I had actually brought some eggplant slices, as ESN only provided sausages, but really didn't feel like fighting for a bit of space at the fire. But yeah, still, I was kind of impressed that they managed to get a fire up and burning in the snow. Although I came to the conclusion that I definitely prefer barbecuing in summer...

Anyway, for the way back, we (not the whole group of internationals, just some of us) decided to not walk around the lake - but on the lake. At the moment, the layer of ice on Sognsvann is so solid that you can actually walk or ski across the whole lake without being afraid of falling through the ice. That's how cold it is, or rather has been for quite a while!

People just ski everywhere.

And lastly, I guess it's time for a photo of proof that I've actually walked on Sognsvann:

Well, and I also made it back to solid ground - which was a bit of a challenge in the end, because the snow on the ice was rather deep and there was not as much of an established path anymore. But we left the lake and found the way back to the metro station to catch a metro back to Oslo city. (Fortunately, since I was kind of freezing at that point!)