Nordkapp

Just thought I'd post a few more pictures. Driving from Alta to the Nordkapp in April which resulted in a Nordkapp free of people - only acceptable way ;)

Nordic Ski World Championship 2011

For those who are not much into winter sports: Oslo was the location of the nordic ski world championships this year and we had cross-country, nordic combined and ski-jumping competitions for the past two weeks. Initally I was debating about going since I was right at the source and the new ski jump was built especially for this event but I didn't want to go alone so didn't buy a ticket early on. Retrospective that was a good thing because I spent the first week of the WC in bed with a feverish cold and I couldn't have stood outside for hours. In addition, we had the worst fog for about a week, so people must have had difficulties even seeing the athletes. Yet, when I heard that a few people from Uni were going and I felt a little better , I bought a ticket for the large hill ski jumping team competition on the second last day of the WC.

The whole week we were completely covered in dense fog and we were quite worried about the weather but we couldn't have gotten a better day.

Here, a side view of the ski jump. Although they were running express trains to the WC area, some people have had problems to reach the competitions in time so we started out really early and caught the very first train up there which wasn't bad at all. At almost every corner you get free food/drink/stuff from companies advertising their products.

That picture was taken a few hours before the competition. By the start of the competition the "stadium" was completely full.

The only downside of the good weather was the wind causing problems to the jumpers. Yet the competition started quite promising for the German team ...

Severin Freund just below the OSLO writing if you don't see him ;)
Unfortunately the competition was terminated after the first round (apparently due to the constantly changing wind conditions but it came quite unexpected even to the coaches etc.). It was quite unfortunate for the German team, since their last jumper, Michael Uhrmann, had bad luck with the wind and they missed 3rd place by 0.7 points or a mere 39 cm. And that was his very last jump since he plans to end his career this year.
For us it was quite disappointing to see only one round and the very abrupt ending was actually the only downside of an overall very nice experience. Although I am not really a fan of people in masses, it didn't feel as overwhelming as I feared - you still had space around you and people didn't seem to be as much in a rush as they usually are.

Before the snow melts ...

... a few pictures of all the snow we had this winter :) Best Norwegian winter I have had.

The entrance to my flat.


My street.

On the way to the T-bane station.