Thursday - August 18, 2005
Eclectic Dining
Jürg found out this week that a large portion of us (Christian, ElTigani, Emmett, Orwah, me) will be leaving in the next two weeks and just couldn't stand it that he wouldn't be able to cook for us. To remedy the conflicting schedules he jumped onboard with Christian for this weeks meal. Christian served the Austrian main course and Jürg, a Swiss desert.
I though Emmett and I were going to founder on stuff that Christian cooked - an excellent vegetable soup with broccoli, potatoes, cream and all sorts of herbs. Marry that with the excellent Austrian wine that he was able to find and I was happy as a clam. (Until I couldn't fit any of the deserts made by Jürg in my belly after having two full bowls of the stuff.)
For desert Jürg made pancakes. Not "pancakes" in the sense that I'm used to, but I really don't know what else to call them. I might also be inclined to call them crepes, but that was mentioned at dinner and debunked as well. No matter the name, they were good. These pancake/crepe thingies were used them to make a sort of desert burrito. There were all sorts of sauces to fill with; vanilla, cherry, banana, chocolate, even ice cream. On the side there were bits of Swiss chocolate and marzipan, a blend of almonds and sugar. Washing it down with a port wine and it was all I could do to stay awake.
Posted by gchandler at 09:41 PM
Wednesday - August 17, 2005
Not Much
Seriously, the pickin's are getting slim around here for subjects to blog on. My days are filled with preparing for my upcoming trip and writing code. (i.e. Nothing worth blogging home about.)
We were supposed to go out tonight, but no one could formulate a plan that had a high enough probability of fun to get anyone charged enough to go. The weekly soccer game was earlier in the evening but it's rained so much lately that my participation was a sure bet I would get nasty and/or ruin a good pair of jeans. That in combination with the notion that we were going to go out this evening kept me off the field.
Really the only interesting thing that happened today is the remix of the pictures that Jürg put together and posted on his site. He did a very nice job. Check it out for yourself here.
Posted by gchandler at 10:24 PM
Tuesday - August 16, 2005
Splish Splash
Our newly self-elected director of activities is Christian. I don't know what the real reason is, but it seems like as of late that he is dead-set on finding and doing every single thing that can be done here in Trondheim. The mark today - Pirbadet. Let's break that down in Norwegian. Pir: pier. Bad: bath. Et... who knows.
This place was a regular scaled-down Wet-n-Wild, but with a twist - it is all indoors. And when I say "indoors," I should be saying "in-windows." All that separates you from the Trondheimsfjorden is 55 thousand square feet of glass. We lucked out with our choice of days to go as well. Today was very soggy in general, but as we were in the Pirbadet a handful of storms came at us across the fjord. It was so great to watch the cold rain as is raced at me and then hit the glass wall to totally obscure the view, while all the time I was suspended in the warm waters of the many hot tubs that dotted the place.
This next part I hate to admit. After the pirbadet closed at 8:00 we all went all our separate ways to get back up the hill. Ines and I took a bus to the center where we could catch another that went to Moholt. While waiting for the second bus Ines convinced me to go with her to Burger King. I had made it this far in my trip without eating at any American fast food chains, and although I really didn't want to start now, it was impossible to deny that it is cheap hot food.
Although there is a party at the club Down Town this evening (no cover for international students) I don't think that I am going to be able to make it. I had every intent of going until coming in the door to my flat a few minutes ago but the exhaustion of swimming and playing for three hours is getting the best of me. I'm quite sure that I will be asleep in another half hour.
Posted by gchandler at 09:44 PM
Sunday - August 14, 2005
Going "Down Town"
Well, the rumors yesterday - whether a self-fulfilling prophecy or otherwise - turned out to be absolutely true. Last night was a blast.
The kickoff for me was at "half-six" when Emmett, Jürg and I met up at Christian's. Originally we had planned on meeting at Bunnpris at half-eight but Christian was so excited about his own birthday that he baked himself a cake and invited us up early. He was in the middle of eating dinner when we arrived so we naturally helped him raid his own refrigerator.
Man, when this guy visits a new place he goes all out. I had seen most of the foods that he had stocked up on but was always a little afraid to try them. On the list was liver paste, raw fish cured in cinnamon and sugar, and the most intriguing, Gjetost cheese. The national cheese of Norway, this stuff is nothing like cheese at all. Often eaten as a desert at every meal, (and as the main course in childrens' breakfast) it is sliced paper thin and served on the traditional flat bread. A semi-hard cheese, it is made with a blend of goats and cows milk, is brown in color, non-perishable, and has no ripening period which makes it have a "sweet, fishy, caramel" flavor.
I have to interject something here. As I was doing a tad bit of internet research about the Gjetost cheese (as I often do with these posts) I came across a mystery-solver for myself. Reading through the Wikipedia entry on the cheese I came across the part that talked about the variation of this stuff called prim. Boiled for less time than the cheese version, the result is softer and therefore spreadable. Wow, that sounds just like some stuff that I bought way back when I first got to Norway. And now that I think about it, it tastes just like it too. I had searched and searched the internet trying to figure out what that stuff was but finally gave up. What a great feeling to finally have that resolved!
Back on track now. For the first time since I have lived here, the spirits this evening were not in short supply. (And interestingly enough, neither were the birthday cakes. More on that in a minute.) I had brought along a few (three) beers for myself, as did Emmett and Jürg. Christian had stocked up too, but was refined enough to grab a fine bottle of red wine as well. And Emmett, in traditional Irish style, produced a fine bottle of Irish whiskey. Sad as it may be, most of the party supplies had been consumed by the time the rest of the crew began trickling in, although the bottle of wine almost escaped the same fate. Christian broke the bottle opener off in the cork and it took all four of us (with an array of tools), an hour of time and each individuals' know-how (none of us really knew anything of course) to get the thing out.
Around the time that we had planned to meet up at Bunnpris it was decided that we were not quite ready so Christian went down to meet everyone else and bring them back up to the flat. A good thing too, we might have missed Erika who showed up a little later to add a third birthday cake to the mix. (Jürg had baked one as well.) There's really nothing like beer and birthday cake.
By this time the camera had found it's way out of my pocket and developed a life of it's own. The pictures from this point on out are available here.
I'm trying like crazy to remember (guess) the time that we left for the city center, but I am having no luck at all. It will have to suffice to say that it was sometime between half-eight and half-three (when I got back home).
Wow, what a beautiful evening for a walk! (You can find a short clip of the walk here.) The sun had disappeared behind the hills on the north side of the fjord (yes, to the north) and a heavy blanket of cloud cover was chasing it. The city was very much dark, but there was still a ring of light to the north and this both created a fantastic backdrop as we descended the hill to the center, as well as a magnificent deep blue tinge to everything as it reflected off of the trees and buildings. It was during this time that I captured what I think is one of my absolute best photos since beeing here in Norway. After the first glance, look back and find the crew walking towards the center of the frame from the right.
After a bit of geein' and hawin' we finally ended up down in the main entertainment district at a club called Down Town. Turned out to be a great place - my favorite kind in fact. It was a labyrinth of bars and dance floors. At the other end of every staircase, the turn of every corner, and the terminus of every corridor was another totally different environment. Although I explored the thing from top to bottom, our crew stayed mainly on the dance floor where the techno and club music were being played. Loud, no doubt - but what a great feeling.
I decided that I needed to head for the hills before the DJ finished spinning so I bowed out around 2:30. Besides, I knew that I needed to get rested so I could go to the boat races again with Emmett today and Norwegian street-food was calling my name. Thankfully, I learned my lesson last time and was able to catch the Nattbussen this time, although I must admit that I did not nail it as well as I should have.
Unfortunately I knew just enough about the Nattbussen to be dangerous; they run from 1am to 4am on the hour and there is a map of the departure points and the routes near the central bus stop. I figured that would be enough to get me home, but there was still a bit of a challenge to overcome. I remembered from being downtown late before (or thought I remembered) that the busses left from the central bus station, but as I looked at the map plastered there on the wall I was not recognizing any of the street names. Back and forth my mind flipped... Do the roads change names at night? Was I somewhere else when I saw the busses leaving last time? What are all these people doing waiting around if the bus is not leaving from here? All the time, the clock was getting nearer and nearer to 3am - go time.
I was finally able to find a landmark on the map that I knew was not near the point that I was standing. Actually, it was closer to the club that I left half an hour ago - nearer to all the clubs for that matter. (Wow, what a concept for them to leave from the entertainment district.) I jogged back to the north a few blocks and as I made the corner I saw the promised land - rows and rows of Nattbussen as far as the eye could see. I was back to my flat in no time at all (yes, the bus made a stop at the central bus station) and was in bed by 4am. What a night!
And - what a morning. The combination of exhaustion from dancing and saying out late got the best of me. That, and my head and stomach were not quite on par come sunup this morn either. (My ears are still ringing from the loud music as well.) Sadly I was not of the condition to venture away from my bed and my bathroom down to the screaming noise of the boat races with Emmett after all. Thankfully though, this did nothing to hold him back and he was able to catch the race anyway. And from what I hear it was a good one. Catching up via the wonders of the internet, the Spirit of Noway was able to come back from the hardships of last weekend and post another win, even with one of their engines cutting out during the last laps of the race.
As for the rest of the crew, many of them left shortly after I did (the clubs close at 3:30) and even others (unnamed to protect the guilty) have still yet to be heard from. I'm confident they will re-appear unharmed by Monday. Me, I think I am going to go back to bed for a little more rest.
Posted by gchandler at 02:41 PM
Saturday - August 13, 2005
Lazy Saturday
The title is completely correct, although I really don't know why today is special enough to single out as a lazy day. Looking back on my time here in Norway I really think it might be more appropriate to re-title the whole blog "Lazy Summer."
My day, although generally lackadaisical, was spent doing laundry, composing e-mails, talking on the phone, and entranced by my one of my favorite past times, writing code. While not the most exciting of days it served two purposes very well.
First off, rumor has it that we are in for a big time tonight. Christian's birthday is tomorrow and we will be taking advantage of the closest Saturday night to celebrate. From the sounds of things I will be needing all the rest that I can get.
Secondly, I was able to dust off some old PHP projects of mine and put some time in on them. Nerdy, I know, but I really can not describe how great it feels to work on this stuff. Today I re-worked some code for the picture gallery script that runs in many places on my server (the most prominent of which right now is the Norway PhoBlog). I was able to get the script to run significantly faster, to maintain the proportions of pictures that are not at a 4:3 aspect ratio, and to gracefully handle pictures which have a maximum dimension less than 800 pixels, among many other things.
Time is ticking down for the party to get started so I've got to keep this entry short. Expect something a little more exciting tomorrow!
Posted by gchandler at 06:05 PM
Friday - August 12, 2005
Cheaper Beer
Christian is on a roll. If only he could have accelerated the growth of his knowledge of pubs for the frugal so we could have been doing this all summer! Well, actually I suppose that it's good he's a late-bloomer for a couple of reasons. First off, my liver is likely enjoying the much-needed break, and second, although I say the beer is cheap, it is only relatively cheap; it still costs around $4 a pint.
This time the Studentersamfundet was the target of our evening. On Friday night from 8 to 10 they have draft Dahl's beer on special for 25 kroner. IAESTE members that joined us or we ran into were, Emmett, Ines, Flohas (by association), and Jürg (the new guy).
As an aside, I need to introduce the "new guy" into this story line. Jürg joined the gang on Wednesday during the soccer match. Although he's been here since last weekend he had not been able to catch up with us until then. Joining us from Switzerland, he will be working on the NTNU Gløshaugen campus in the department of mathematics. That might not be so bad if he was studying math, but as a mechanical engineer he is already realizing that he has a long row to hoe ahead of him. And one more interesting tidbit; he's a fellow blogger. Don't expect to read everything on his site (it's mostly in German) but check it out anyway.
The outing was worth the time not only for the frosty beverages but for the atmosphere as well. Although I've been out a few times here in Trondheim, it is no secret that the large majority of the students that constitute a significant portion of the population here disappear during the summer. This was by far the largest gathering of younger people I have been a part of in some time.
Posted by gchandler at 11:30 PM