Carpe diem

There are certain days when the weather is so nice although the weather forecast said the opposite. Usually these days are Fridays and then everybody is really looking forward to a weekend with cool weather - however the weekend is usually foggy. Well, you can still do some things outside but it is not really inviting especially not when the whole week was really sunny and therefore you know that the pictures could be nicer . Anyway I made the experience for a few weeks and today I decided that I am not playing that game anymore - it was great outside so I didn't go to work but went biking. If the whole weekend it going to be foggy and/or rainy I will have enough time to work. I had planned for a long time to bike as further in the Nordmarka, so I picked a route which looked like this:

Sorry, the picture is not the best but when you look at the full size, you will be able to see the trail marked in yellow with a few stations.
Picture taken at point 1:



The lake at point 2 looked like this, I've been there before when I was out hiking but on the opposite shore:







The lake at point 3 is part of the drinking water suply for Oslo so people are asked to keep the water clean and not to swim or let the dogs swim.



Number 4 was the last picture taken when the weather was still nice ... it can be seen that some clouds are coming from the left. A few minutes after that picture was taken I had to bike in the fog. Unfortunatley that was the point the furthest away from home so my way back was foggy, cold and quite wet.





At point 5, I had to take a hiking trail in order to catch the biking trail back to Sognsvann. It is quite short so it was not really a problem and you could bike it if you really feel like it ... it was a little too rough for me ;). Anyway, any other trail would have been to far off the direction I really wanted to go but if there is more time and nicer weather there are probably other possibilities.

The last stop I made was at the same spot as stop 2 just to show the differnce of sunny and foggy:





All in all I am very glad that I biked today and tomorrow I can work since we are burried in fog ;)

Confusion

There are some things I will never learn like always running to the first floor of a building when I want to go to a room numbered 1(something). But here in Norway, the ground floor is the first floor so the first floor is the second floor already - it is also like this in the USA. In Germany however (at least most of the time), the ground level would have zeros in front of the room numbers and ones in front of the rooms on the first floor. The basement is then often -1 or -2 ;) Confused?
Recently I did that in the Geological Museum when looking for a room for a course and this time is was quite nice because I could see all the dinosaur bones ;)

Evening impression IV

Water can be consumed again.

Obviously it is safe again to drink the water without boiling - so we just do it again ;)

Anscheinend kann man das Wasser wieder trinken, ohne es abkochen zu müssen - also trinken wir es wieder ;)

Evening impression III

Evening impression II

Imagine...

... you are reading a paper or rather studying a diagram and suddenly you see something you really didn't expect to be there. So first, you rub your eyes because you believe that you are getting crazy and have some hallucination. But that certain object stays there and it is a completely serious paper and it has been reviewed by several people and it is published.

White et al., 2007

For non-geoscientists - it doen't really matter what that should be - we call it phase diagram and this is only a tiny little bit of the whole diagram but you can easily see (juding by the temperature and pressure) that the fish must be quite good boiled ;).

Man stelle sich vor, man liest eine wissenschaftlich Abhandlung oder besser ausgedrückt, man studiert gerade detailliert ein Diagramm und entdeckt plötzlich etwas, was da nicht hin gehört. Zuerst reibt man sich die Augen, weil man denkt, dass man verrückt geworden ist und Halluzinationen hat. Dann stellt man aber fest, dass dieses Objekt tatsächlich vorhanden ist und das in einem Paper mit sehr ernstem Inhalt, welches von mehreren Leuten durchgesehen wurde und auch veröffentlicht wurde.
Für Nicht-Geowissenschaftler - man muss nicht wirklich wissen, was das nun ist - wir nennen das ein Phasendiagramm und das ist auch nur ein winziger Ausschnitt aber ich denke, dass es relativ einfach zu sehen ist (wenn man die Temperatur und den Druck abliest), dass der Fisch gut gekocht wurde ;).

Für Alke!

Gefunden in Berlin am S-Bahnhof Lichterfelde-Ost. Gerüchten zufolge sollen da auch S-Bahnen vorbeikommen sofern nicht gestreikt wird.

Found in Berlin at the Station Lichterfelde-Ost. There are some rumors that some trams pass by whenever there is not a strike in Germany.

So...

... I write just a few lines about this water problem in Oslo and I feel like I hit the keyword jackpot or something like that ;)That is what people looked for recently:

2 tab water oslo
2 two days in oslo
2 impressions of norway museums
1 oslo ju
1 oslo in two days
1 http://oslo-ju.blogspot.com/
1 oslo parasiten
1 parasites in oslo water
1 it's getting cold and
1 what do norwegians look like?
1 red hair vikings
1 problem with drinking water oslo
1 how do norwegians look like
1 water tab oslo
1 germ water oslo
1 odysseye
1 giardia lamblia in oslo
1 andersnatten anders
1 oslo drinking water

Well I am not really a good source of information in that respect but I would refer to the wikipedia entry from the last post and in addition the following links:
in english:

http://www.vann-og-avlopsetaten.oslo.kommune.no/
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article2052645.ece

norsk:
http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/oslo/article2052121.ece

und Deutsch:
http://www.heute-online.ch/news/oslo-parasiten-im-trinkwasser

P.S. For the person who really wants to know how Norwegians look like - maybe like read hair vikings? (just a thought).

Ikke drikk vannet i Oslo...

... don't drink tab water in Oslo was todays warning in the newspapers and at every public place (I guess also on TV but I don't have one). These suckers (Giardia lamblia) were found in the Oslo drinking water. The only effective way to get rid of these complete needless organisms is to cook the water for at least three minutes. Even all the coffee machines cannot be used anymore because most of these machines don't boil the water but just heat it up to 70-80°C which is not enough. Of course there is also the possibility to buy water but the Norwegians in general do not really buy a lot of water - they usually drink the water out of the tab. So naturally there are no bigger water bottles avaiable in the shops and all the supplies od smaller bottles seemed to be enough for only a day - almost everything sold out. The only way to get those parasites out of the water is by radiation (as far as I am informed) and there is a special water treatment facility in construction here in Oslo but it will not be finished until next year (but the year is long). So I wonder for how long we have to boil water. For those who ask why Norway has this problem: most of the drinking water is stored in lakes as surface water where these protozoans can grow fast. Unfortunatley there is not much deep ground water available in Norway.

Evening impression

Taken from my balcony.

The small differences...

...between two countries probably can only be seen when you go to an unknown place in your home country. At least that is what I realized when I went to Berlin last week. Not even two months before I was also in Germany but at home where I am so used to my surroundings that I probably didn't pay attention to differences between Germany and Norway. Apart from that I just don't like big cities - too much traffic, noise, polluted air and you need hours to go from one place to another (changing busses and trams und subways several times).
Anyway, I was quite surprised how fast I got used to Norway since I always wanted to say unnskyld instead of entschuldigung or even sorry. I was also quite surprised when passing by some people and they were actually speaking German ;). In addition I was quite surprised to see cars without lights when it is almost dark or very rainy weather (something which happens almost never in Norway)and cigarette commercials on these huge poster boards. I also caught myself trying to ignore the red lights for pedestrians since here in Oslo people just don't care - in Berlin most people still wait patiently. In addition everything seemed to be so cheap - especially food (and that in Berlin which is for sure not the cheapest place in Germany). It is quite unnecessary to say that I like the German alcohol policy better (no special shops you just get wahtever you like as long as the shop is open) and I don't think that Germans have more of an alcohol problem than other countries.
Otherwise I have to state that generally Germans (even in Berlin) actually are more friendly. It starts at the airport: the Norwegian just gives you a ticket with a seat number, the German asks where you would like to sit. One guy at the airport in Berlin was really worried about me sitting on the floor and getting too cold so he asked me where I wanted to go and checked when the check-in desk would open and since there was still some time he even wanted to give me a newspaper to sit on.
Besides it happens quite often that complete strangers talk to you on the street - maybe that was a coincidence, I don't know.
One really funny thing is that the people at the Oslo airport always claim that my backpack is extra size luggage (I never had that problem at any other airport - even not Norwegian ones). I don't have to pay more but I just have to check it in at another desk - this time I even had to put it in a plastic bag - very strange.
All in all I have to admit that I was missing Oslo(and Norway) the second day already but I think that is mostly connected to my dislike of big cities and to the fact that a small hotel room just does not really feel like home.

Thermodynamikkhytteturen...

... as it was called by the organizer (Anders) ;) - just to show that Norwegian words can also be long.
I recently uploaded pictures taken in July - so now you can compare.
This actually was a workshop so we had several computers, a beamer and a generator in order to run them in the nice nature. The first day was a little foggy but that is also nice for cool pictures:





The second evening we had a fire and food outside - the food was prepared by Yuri- the master of the fire:



On the second day the weather was fantastic:





After a few people had left to go back to Oslo, the Russians were addicted to fishing and the rest (3 of us) ran up the hill to see the sunset - well the Norwegian was running the other two trying to catch up ;) But it was great!

Answer

to that question:
Germans generally go shopping with reusable bags (often cloth bags). I do that myself and I realized that in Germany most of the people do ;) While here in Norway you are asked if you want some (plastic) bags, in Germany they don't even ask anymore. In addition most German shops offer these cloth bags in addition to the regular plastic bags and I think that is actually a very nice thing because these bags are quite useful. Crazy Germans and their environmentalism ;)

Capital hopping

For the next week I will change my place of residence from the lovely capital of Norway to the (too big for my taste) capital of Germany. Luckily it is only for a week and I guess I will listen to talks and doing excercices most of the time so the location doesn't matter that much.
So long!

Høsten

Forgotten pictures!

Some picture taken in July which were already prepared for the blog and then I forgot to put them in. Now it is the right time because I will go to the place for a second time this week - we will have a workshop there. The cabin belongs to Anders and his parents and it is just huge with a great fireplace in the living room and a sauna (not that I would need one - I am happy enough that it is not warm anymore so why should I sweat voluntarily ;)).


The first night I slept outside which was great except for the damn mosquitoes very early in the morning. But it was quite nice to be awake that early since I could take this very nice picture of the lake.


In the morning, we hiked up to the highest place above the lake and had breakfast there - the view was just fantastic.


In the afternoon, people wanted to go fishing but there was not enough space for all in the rowing boat so Marcus had to perform some physical exercises.


A nap after a day of very hard work (fishing).


Just leave me alone.


The very nice hytta including the owners ;)


And the beginning of a new friendship.


Late afternoon impression.

It's getting cold! Part 2

Nice weather naturally will not occur on weekends.