Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Two days in paradise

Once upon a time in Norway on a Friday afternoon, two Germans started to drive from Oslo to a fantastic place since they had been invited to a hytta owned by Anders. The drive was quite nice and relaxed and the weather very nice. The navigator was reliable most of the time and provided the driver with different kinds of drops which he found in the French (but not so sporty) car. As soon as the navigator started to drink his first beer, his mood improved greatly and he started to think about offering drops to a guy whose car broke down. He also had the great idea to eat all kinds of drops after each other which in combination with the beer affected his stomach and he had to ask the driver to slow down a bit (which was very hard for the driver). The description the two got to go to the cabin was quite clear to follow except that the two turned one road to early and therefore took the scenery route parallel to the major road through the forest. At a lake they were supposed to wait to be picked up by two russian women, who were already at the cabin and volunteered to get the German team. At the cabin, they were greeted by Yuri with the comment: but this is not a sport car. The driver was slightly irritated and said that the car is the extreme opposite of a sport car and it turned out that Luiza had told Yuri that the crazy Germans would come in a sport car (Supra would have been nice ;)).
There was some fog on the lake so the first thing the driver had to do was getting out the camera and the tripod and taking a picture (no sorry not completely true - the first thing was opening a can of beer to catch up with the navigator and the rest of the company).



to be continued

Monday, July 16, 2007

Le Tour de Ju...

... is about 3 km long but feels like 10 when going home. In addition I feel as if I need hours for going up that hill and that I have to drag about 150 kg with me. And although I do this for quite a while my shape is not really improving - the only things which improved are that I recover more easily after biking and that my ass doesn't hurt so much because of the saddle.
Well since I didn't manage to hike here some pictures from work ...
So let's start with my working place. It is already a mess ;) No wonder, I am printing out something between 10 and 20 papers a week so they lie around everywhere and wait to be read (some of them are kind of "used" and their condition is accordingly). The small fish on the computer was brought today by my office mate - she was in Genova for a conference.



Well, we continue with my door and I still think that it is quite empty - any suggestions what to put there? I didn't take a picture of the nameplate to proof that this is actually my office because I thought it is quite clear that I am sitting there:



We are "living" on the 4th floor of the physics building and from out balcony we have a really nice view of Oslo and the fjord:



Daily I pass by the huge pendulum in the hall of the physics building:



The university area in Blindern is quite green and looks like this:



And last but not least the physics building from the outside:

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Walking in Oslo

... in the middle of the night after a day of heavy rain is just perfect. Nobody walks or bikes on a Saturday around 1 am. There are only a few cars on the road and these are mostly taxis. The clouds made the night actually dark and there was some fog forming after the rain stopped. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera with me.

Monday, July 9, 2007

Third weekend of rain in a row

... and usually July is such a nice month in Norway (at least that is what everybody tells me ;)). I know that geologists always keep saying that we have to go out not matter what the weather is like but it is just not very pleasant to hike a whole day in the rain. In addtion I would not find any volunteers to join me and alone on slippery rocks is just noch very wise. So unfortunately there will be no pictures. Otherwise there is not much interesting going on so I will not bore you with that - just be patient: there will be new pics at some point ;)

Sunday, July 1, 2007

Never trust the weather forecast ;)

At least I tried: the destination for the hike was chosen two weeks ago and it is supposed to be really cool (of course only when it is not constantly raining), the alarmclock was set to half past 9, I tried to motivate people but they all decided to work on a Sunday so the plan was to go alone. Yesterday evening the weather looked promising after a whole day of rain the clouds cleared and the sun came out - luckily I took some pictures between 10 and 11 pm at the lake of this special atmosphere which can be seen below. In addition the weatherforecast said that it should be half cloudy, half sunny (but not really rain) - well that is not the case for sure today. Instead, I decided to sleep in - also needed from time to time. So now the promised pictures from the lake closest to my home which is called Sognsvann: