Nowhere

Something blue

2011-06-13T15:49:00.002+02:00

Crane's bill.

Beauty

2011-06-06T13:13:00.012+02:00

Teeth

2011-06-05T21:31:00.002+02:00

18-19 Ma year old shark teeth when the area close to my home in Germany was coverd by an ocean. These are the biggest ones we have found over the years - sometimes you're not that lucky.

Wanted

2011-05-18T16:04:00.002+02:00

Field Work!

Instead: writing, writing, writing ... deleting, deleting, deleting

Can I have my life back?

Time for reflection

2011-05-16T19:36:00.002+02:00

Rachelle Van Zanten - My Country (Official Video) from Taylor F. on Vimeo.

This video shows which fantastic places on Earth humanity is about to destroy in search for the last drop of oil (or gas in this case) and the last bit of coal.

Circus frog

2011-05-15T17:02:00.001+02:00

And those nasty people made it jump through the hose which is supposed to connect the water tank and the drill (and which they carried up the mountain together with the drill, the equipment, the petrol canister, and the 30l water tank - luckily without the water - just to find out on top that the drill head was too worn off to be used for hard rocks):

Language confusion

2011-05-09T23:31:00.001+02:00

At the moment, I use German mostly when talking to my mother on the phone or on days when I stop by the office and have a chat with the office mate. Work is in English so I use it every day particularly now since I have to write papers . That sometimes results in writing English shopping lists for example ... I fear that some of the geological terms I could not even express in German anymore but that's probably not much of a problem since I do not plan my future in Germany. At the same time of course I am staying in Norway which results in having things such as a Norwegian bank account and sometimes having to fill out some Norwegian forms. Unfortunately, I don't really know many Norwegians I could practise with but at least I can read Norwegian books and I would not want to read a translation of Norwegian authors such as Jo Nesbø anymore.
Sometimes when you book a ticket or make a payment you have these drop-down menus where you have to choose the nationality or country and if I am not careful I am looking at the completely wrong end of the alphabet.
If you are French you would look for France (French), Frankreich (German), France (English) Frankrike (Norwegian and probably similar in Danish and Swedish), Francia (Spanish and Italian) ... I do not intend to list all languages but you get the picture - you look for F. France is a nice simple example of course, there are some countries where you have to look for two letters but being German it turns out like that:
Allemagne (French - ok I don't use this too much)
Deutschland (German)
Germany (English)
Tyskland (Norwegian)
The Spanish and Italians keep at least the A and G with Alemania and Germania but why on earth is German in Italian tedesco?
The other day I was looking for Germany in a Norwegian drop-down menu ... I nearly gave up until I realised ... wrong language :D

And that's ...

2011-05-07T20:51:00.001+02:00

... what we think about you not having anything nice for us:

What you've got?

2011-05-04T20:03:00.001+02:00

How disappointing - nothing to eat!

(Poor things - do they really need two of these clips in the ears?)
Found this while looking at field work pictures for my last paper.

Things the world doesn't need

2011-04-29T14:42:00.001+02:00

Royals!

Nordkapp

2011-03-07T22:10:00.001+01:00

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

2011-03-05T23:18:00.001+01:00

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 ...

2011-03-05T23:00:00.001+01:00

... 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.

Disgrace

2011-02-25T00:28:00.001+01:00

I am not really closely following German politics lately but THIS man is a disgrace to every honest PhD student going through all the trouble and pain to write their thesis.
Finding all these excuses and playing it down as citing mistakes is one thing but being allowed to keep his post as defensive minister and even still being supported by most Germans is just too much - please Germans wake up! Whenever he opens his mouth he's lying. Show that Germany is still the country of Goethe and Schiller where degrees are not faked.

Nasty copy machine

2011-02-20T14:42:00.001+01:00

Since I am usually teaching Friday morning and we are now dealing with really complicated diagrams, I thought it would be the best idea to use overhead projector films on which I could draw. So I went to the copy machine which has two trays with paper and just put the film into the first tray since the machine only tells you the tray it uses after it has copied ... And of course I got the copy on a normal sheet of paper because the copy machine took the paper from the second tray. Therfore I put the film into the second tray ... and the copy machine decided to take the paper from the first tray so I had another copy on a normal sheet of paper.
So I put films into both trays and almost expected that the machine would refuse to copy because it may not like film BUT it actually copied on film ... YEAH!

Where would I be ...

2011-02-17T01:38:00.001+01:00

... without facebook. I really would have forgotten this important date without facebook reminding me. And no, I don't really like facebook that much and I usually only log in when I get a message, that's when I saw this important information: "Today is your birthday"

30

2011-02-17T01:04:00.001+01:00

There is the new decade. It will only be celebrated after I have managed to hand in the PhD thesis - so I may end up celbrating two birthdays at once (hopefully not!). Since I have been in Germany for a few days and my actual birthday will be a normal work day, my mother insisted to have at least a few candles and a cake. It was a little earlier than the real birthday but I am not superstitious anyway. She also gave me loads of provisions - sweets, cookies, tea so that my big backpack was completely filled with good things to make the last phase of the PhD easier.
Thanks Mom, you are the best!

Snø

2011-02-10T00:11:00.001+01:00

Finally we had some more fresh snow and skiing is now fun again because there is a small trail with lights which is mostly used by hikers, runners and people walking their dog. I really like that trail but after a while the snow is so trampled down that skiing is not that much fun on it anymore.
A really great thing here in Norway is the "lysloipe" - illuminated ski tracks so that you can go skiing even after work in the dark. The only thing I do not like so much about the main lysloipe is the amount of people - it sometimes feels like on a highway and many people also take their dogs who then just run into your path while in great speed downhill. Since I prefer to make my own tracks and less people, this small lysloipe is perfect for me - almost no people and you can ski at your preferred speed.
Here a few pictures but since it was dark and I had been doing some exercise it was rather hard to keep the camera steady which resulted in the pictures either being blurred or too dark when I changed the exposure. But they are enough to get at least an impression.

Scientists ?

2011-02-09T15:18:00.001+01:00

Sorry this is in German and very hard to explain.

Zwei Geowissenschaftler unterhalten sich über Skype. Dabei geht es darum, die richtigen Zahlen in ein Programm einzugeben, um das gewünschte Ergebnis zu erhalten. Hierbei ist A der Fragende und J der angebliche Experte (zumindest wird J immer gefragt). Weiterhin sollte man noch wissen - A kommt aus Franken, spricht aber kein richtiges Fränkisch und J kommt aus Schwaben, kann aber auch nur ein paar Wörter Schwäbisch.

A: dees is doof
J: ja musst halt auch einfach das richtige eingeben :P
A: na freilich
J: und ned son lällabäbl
J: du musst erst 2 angeben für den denominator
A: hehe genau
A: hab ich
A: bin dran
A: jetzt der demoninator
J: und dann die beiden nummern
A: also 1 1
J: wat?
J: erst 2
A: ne falsch
A: 1
A: einfach
A: ne 2
A: oh mann

Goodbye

2011-02-09T00:04:00.001+01:00

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;

William Shakespeare (Hamlet, 3/1)

Saying goodbye forever is never easy. Especially when the person has been a constant part of your life the past 30 years. Yet, the last few years were rather difficult and to live much longer than the (almost) 90 years would have brought more suffering with each day.
Rest in peace you will be in my memories.

It's the best one I could find on youtube ... would prefer it without the pictures but the music is what counts!

Word add on for writing articles ;)

2011-02-04T20:09:00.001+01:00

50%...

2011-02-04T19:37:00.001+01:00

... of the students showed up for my first lecture (or rather exercises) today. Since it is the very first time I am lecturing, I assume that this is not connected to my person ;).
Funnily enough we had only one Norwegian in the room - the other nationalities being Latvian, Czech, Polish and German (me). The rest of the Norwegian students probably thought that they wouldn't need any practise ...
I talked loads and felt like completely dried out in the end despite the liter of tea but I really liked it despite the early hour and the nicest part is to see them getting the hang of the topic :)

Vegetarian

2011-01-28T14:46:00.001+01:00

Yes, I am a vegetarian for about 18 years and yes that means that I made the decision to not eat meat and fish when I was about 12. My mother accepted it right away and more or less ate vegetarian meals with me at home - of course she was a little worried that I may miss some important nutrients but we had all kinds of books listing vegetables which are good for vegetarians and my mother just cooked more of those. My grandmother didn't really want to accept it but I strictly only ate the side dishes and the salad (no, I don't want the sauce where the duck was baked in...). Going to a restaurant at that time was somewhat harder since traditional German cuisine is mostly with meat or fish. Luckily it was just about the time when more and more people started to become more conscious about what they ate, so most restaurants offered at least two choices of vegetarian meals. During school times, I even got a vegetarian kebab - which is baked feta cheese instead of the meat (that was really good actually). I think that Germany is now a very vegetarian friendly country - most restaurants have a vegetarian section on the menu and you have such a big choice of cheese and other dairy products that you can choose the cheese without the rennet and the yoghurt without the gelatin (seriously what does gelatin do in yoghurt?).
So it was a little bit like going to the middle ages when coming to Norway. There are a few vegetarian restaurants and at most international places (Indian, Italian, Chinese ..) it is usually quite easy to find vegetarian choices. However, when people go out for a meal, they don't ask the ONLY vegetarian (of ~50 people) where she would prefer to eat and I don't blame them (since I am not fanatic about vegetarianism - it is my choice). So I ended up at places where they had not a single dish without any dead animal (not even the salads or soups). Of course then I try to negotiate with the waiters if they could make me something without the meat and they are quite friendly and co-operative but at times you end up with only half cooked vegetables or a strange sauce, etc.... Oh and a real vegetarian doesn't eat fish - that is something which people here have problems to understand - probably because there are many people who say that they are vegetarians but eat fish. Of course that is fine with me but they could say that they are a pescetarian or a semi-vegetarian ... then a real vegetarian wouldn't constantly get served fish. Well I have learned and now will not forget to mention this fact.
The choices in the supermarkets are also not really that great - cheese is usually quite tasteless and so you just go for the one with the most taste (whatever rennet it has). A majority of yoghurts still have gelatin so I stay away from those, there are usually only two producers of milk (both of course not ecological), the only thing you really get is free-range biological eggs. And if you don't go to the really big supermarkets or the Turkish shops (which are quite far away for me so I would need at least half a day only to go shopping there), then the choice of vegetables and fruits is also quite limited.
I am sorry for the somewhat long essay but it still seems to be a certain issue at least here in Norway. Of course you may ask why I am still eating vegetarian if it is so hard here, so here are my reasons:

1. I don't like meat and fish and actually never did eat much as a child. I put this as the very first reason to show that for me it is not a hardship to not eat meat out of principles which, of course, I also have.

2. Ethics. This is mostly about factory farming (mass animal farming) and the treatmeant of animals like transport and slaughtering techniques. Of course something is about the ethics of killing because I also wouldn't eat game out of principal (not because of reason 1).

3. Environmental issues. This is about what people feed to animals in factory farming so that they get fat and what medicaments and hormones they inject. Logically, this also effects animal products and that's why I buy eggs and milk and cheese from organic farming if I have the choice. I could go as far as not buying milk and cheese but I think that would be going too far at the moment. Something like the recent dioxine scandal in Germany will not affect you if you buy organic products.

4. Diseases. Only a minor point but since there have been a few scandals about old meat being repacked and sold, there is a chance you can get some parasites or other nasty stuff ...

Oh yes and I do eat gummy bears - without gelatin of course (imported from Germany, as usual)
During school times we went to visit a factory which produces gelatin. It stank horribly but what really shocked me was the fact that they took leather pieces coming from a shoe factory which already had been coloured. So first they put in chemicals to remove the colour which surely wasn't that harmless either and then they produced the gelatin out of it ... yummy!

Mission travel bug completed!

2011-01-23T17:19:00.001+01:00

This time I was successful reaching the destination AND finding the cache. It was a hiking trip in the snow - according to the GPS ~5.2 km in a nice round trip. Since a few people have used the path, hiking was fairly easy except for a few rare areas where I sank in. And the big advantage: no people on the trails at all - they are all skiing on the illuminated track. Since it was getting dark I even saw two moose which is the very first time I've ever seen them close to Oslo. Due to the lack of light and them moving away from me very fast and a missing zoom lens I couldn't take a picture to proove I've seen them :(
Yet I can show some other moose pictures from Alaska:

Running ...

... looking...

... picking up junior...

... and into the woods.

All taken from the car in the middle of the day (on a road with no cars though). We didn't understand why she was running parallel to the road but after the small one turned up to our surprise it was clear where she was running to.

Full moon

2011-01-22T17:49:00.001+01:00

Some experiments with tripod and zoom lens. Not as perfect as I wanted them but not too bad ;)

Geocaching

2011-01-19T19:06:00.001+01:00

Actually I have been infected by him a while ago. Several times, we went out geocaching together and it was great fun to look for the hidden boxes :). Yet, I hadn't quite made up my mind if I wanted to buy a GPS or not. Things changed when my quite old mobile phone gave up to work and I needed a new one so I decided to get one with GPS receiver. The GPS itself was actually quite accurate once it worked but it always needed some time until it started to work and the biggest disadvantage was the battery - it was only good for about half a day and of course a phone doesn't use normal batteries, you could easily take with you. So, finally I got a real GPS and am really happy with it.
Between Christmas and New Year, I picked up a travel bug which had Norway as one of it's preferred destinations so I took it with me and am now trying to set it out.
The first time I went skiing on the illuminated track since it was already dark and unfortunately couldn't find the cache although I must have been close to it.
The second time I tried to ski in the backcountry on a hiking trail and didn't come very far - snowshoes would have been better because the top of the snow cover was frozen and the ground rather uneven - oh well at least I didn't meet any people and that was the main goal :)

Looks like fluffy nice snow but it is more like cement ;)

That's the so called Swedish wall - normally out of rocks.

The sky looked very nice unfortunately I didn't really get a good spot completely without trees.

And a blurred moon ... looked much better of course

Tea

2011-01-19T13:30:00.001+01:00

Well, I really love tea! In the mornings, I prefer black tea but I also like green tea and all kinds of herbal teas. The only condition for the black tea especially: it has to be REAL tea - not those small cheap tea bags with an almost indefinable powder which hardly tastes like anything - no loose tea where you actually still can see the leaves. To have some variety in the mornings, I usually have quite some assortment of flavoured black tea (vanilla, earl grey, amaretto, cherry, cranberry, caramel ....) so that I can choose a different one each day and will not get tired of one type.
Unfortunately, Norway is not really a "tea" country (although I start to wonder if it is good for any type of food at all) so among the few teas you get in the normal supermarked, you usually have the choice between 5 different bag teas. In the very good supermarkets, you get one loose tea but usually only one brand which is not that good. I recently was in a medium sized German supermarked and the tea section is now ~ 10-15 m long, 2 m high all densely packed with all kinds of tea (herabal, ecological, loose, bags).
Alternatively of course, you can go to a tea shop and they have a very good choice and very friendly people working there (like in almost every tea shop) but as most good things here in Norway they are REALLY expensive.
So, everytime I come back from Germany, I import loads of tea. Some of it I buy in the German supermarked and some I order at a quite good German online shop (they probably would deliver to Norway as well but then you never know if they put additional tax on it or if they keep the tea at the customs - a lot has happened here).
Of course it's not only the tea I have to take with me, so I usually have to go home with at least a half empty bag to fill it up once I return and still I have to do without many things which I really like but I have to make choices and one of them is the tea ;)

High Hopes

2011-01-14T14:31:00.001+01:00

Beyond the horizon of the place we lived when we were young
In a world of magnets and miracles
Our thoughts strayed constantly and without boundary
The ringing of the division bell had begun
Along the long road and on down to the causeway
Do they still LIVE there by the cut
There was a ragged band that followed in our footsteps
Running before time took our dreams away
Leaving the myriad small creatures trying to tie us to the ground
To a life consumed by slow decay

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
With friends surrounded
The nights of wonder ...

Tongue out!

2011-01-12T18:43:00.001+01:00

White Christmas

2011-01-10T19:33:00.001+01:00

Since I haven't posted too many pictures lately and since a white Christmas is not that common anymore, here proof of snow on the 25th of December 2010 ;)

Re-re-re-revised revision

2011-01-10T14:51:00.001+01:00

Found this while cleaning up my e-mail account:

Sample Cover Letter for Journal Manuscript Resubmissions by Roy F.
Baumeister

Dear Sir, Madame, or Other:
Enclosed is our latest version of Ms # 85-02-22-RRRRR, that is, the
re-re-re-revised revision of our paper. Choke on it. We have again
rewritten the entire manuscript from start to finish. We even changed
the goddamn running head! Hopefully we have suffered enough by now to satisfy even you and your bloodthirsty reviewers.

I shall skip the usual point-by-point description of every single change
we made in response to the critiques. After all, it is fairly clear that
your reviewers are less interested in details of scientific procedure
than in working out their personality problems and sexual frustrations
by seeking some kind of demented glee in the sadistic and arbitrary
exercise of tyrannical power over helpless authors like ourselves who
happen to fall into their clutches. We do understand that, in view of
the misanthropic psychopaths you have on your editorial board, you need to keep sending them papers, for if they weren't reviewing manuscripts they'd probably be out mugging old ladies or clubbing baby seals to death. Still, from this batch of reviewers, C was clearly the most hostile, and we request that you not ask him or her to review this revision. Indeed, we have mailed letter bombs to four or five people we suspected of being reviewer C, so if you send the manuscript back to them the review process could be unduly delayed.

Some of the reviewers' comments we couldn't do anything about. For example, if (as review C suggested) several of my recent ancestors were indeed drawn from other species, it is too late to change that. Other suggestions were implemented, however, and the paper has improved and benefited. Thus, you suggested that we shorten the manuscript by 5 pages, and we were able to accomplish this very effectively by altering the margins and printing the paper in a different font with a smaller typeface. We agree with you that the paper is much better this way.

One perplexing problem was dealing with suggestions #13-28 by Reviewer B. As you may recall (that is, if you even bother reading the reviews before doing your decision letter), that reviewer listed 16 works that he/she felt we should cite in this paper. These were on a variety of different topics, none of which had any relevance to our work that we could see. Indeed, one was an essay on the Spanish-American War from a high school literary magazine. The only common thread was that all 16 were by the same author, presumably someone whom Reviewer B greatly admires and feels should be more widely cited. To handle this, we have modified the Introduction and added, after the review of relevant literature, a subsection entitled "Review of Irrelevant Literature" that discusses these articles and also duly addresses some of the more asinine suggestions in the other reviews.

We hope that you will be pleased with this revision and will finally recognize how urgently deserving of publication this work is. If not, then you are an unscrupulous, depraved monster with no shred of human decency. You ought to be in a cage. May whatever heritage you come from be the butt of the next round of ethnic jokes. If you do accept it, however, we wish to thank you for your patience and wisdom throughout this process and to express our appreciation of your scholarly insights. To repay you, we would be happy to review some manuscripts for you;
please send us the next manuscript that any of these reviewers submits to your journal.

Assuming you accept this paper, we would also like to add a footnote
acknowledging your help with this manuscript and to point out that we
liked the paper much better the way we originally wrote it but you held
the editorial shotgun to our heads and forced us to chop, reshuffle,
restate, hedge, expand, shorten, and in general convert a meaty paper
into stir-fried vegetables. We couldn't, or wouldn't, have done it
without your input.

Sincerely,
...

Happy New Year!

2011-01-06T23:53:00.001+01:00

Yes, I'm a little late but I would also like to take the opportunity to wish everybody a successful and especially healthy year 2011. Actually I had similar thoughts like the ones expressed in the quote below.

"New Year's eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that coome with thte coming of drakness on other nights." ~Hamilton Wright Mabie

For some reason, humans need this repetitive celebration at a random time once set by some of our ancestors (of course not completely random since our planet travels around the sun in approximately that time). But we could as well celebrate the new year in the middle of summer or in March or any other month. Or we could celebrate the beginning of every single day. Then we could also wish each other a happy new day, we could have new day's resolutions which may be more realistic than the plans we have at the beginning of a year and which we will have forgotten by the end of January. Maybe we could live in the moment instead of the past or the future and every day could be special. Maybe we would succeed to seize the day instead of following the monotonous daily routine while forgetting which day of the week and which week of the month we have.
So I wish you 365 happy new days, that most days may be successful and special to you and a lot of strength and support for the demanding, unhappy, tough days we all have to survive as well.
Or expressing it in the words of Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65 BC - 8 BC) commonly known as Horace:
Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
"Pluck the day, putting as little trust as possible in the future"
which have become even more famous due to being quoted in the " Dead Poet's Society" (an extraordinary and excellent film in my opinion).

PhD

2010-09-06T19:47:00.001+02:00

I knew it! They've been pulling my leg.

WHAT PHD REALLY STANDS FOR

P h D
Patiently hoping for a Degree
Piled higher and Deeper (after BS = Bull..., MS = More of the Same...)
Professorship? hah! Dream on!
Please hire. Desperate.
Physiologically Deficient
Pour him (or her) a Drink
Philosophically Disturbed
Probably headed for Divorce
Pathetically hopeless Dweeb
Probably heavily in Debt
Parents have Doubts
Professors had Doubts
Pheromone Deprived
Probably hard to Describe
Patiently headed Downhill...
Permanent head Damage
Pulsating heaving Disaster?
Pretty homely Dork
Potential heavy Drinker
Professional hamburger Dispenser... "Would you like fries with that?"

So true

2010-08-27T19:16:00.001+02:00

How do they know that?

2010-05-16T15:59:00.001+02:00

" I didn't doubt the correctness of the information for an instant - I still tend to trust the pronouncements of scientist in the way I trust those of surgeons, plumber, and other possessors of arcane and privilaged information - but I couldn't for the life of me conceive how any human mind could work out what spaces thousands of miles below us, that no eye had ever seen and no X-ray could penetrate could look like and be made of. To me that was just a miracle. That has been my position with science ever since. "
Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

Dear Bill,

the answer is very simple. Nobody knows. The fact that scientists claim to know doesn't actually imply that they do. Today, science is like business - you manage to sell your product and you can make people believe that our planet is expanding, that the inner core is empty space or whatever you are convinced is the truth. You're not selling - bad luck- why should anybody believe you. Even worse - industry will believe the scientists who promise profit - who cares about the evaluation of the facts anymore?
So where is the purist believe in science today? There is none - science is bullshitting crap just in order to publish something because that is all that matters - quantity not quality.

May 4th

2010-05-04T23:16:00.001+02:00

Direct route - Oslo-Scotland

2010-02-25T03:04:00.001+01:00

Just some random late night fun ....
and please note ... there might not be any sidewalks or pedestrian paths :D

Insects

2010-01-03T02:05:00.001+01:00

More mountains and oceans ;)

2010-01-02T23:52:00.001+01:00

West coast II

2009-11-29T02:37:00.001+01:00

Pseudo-volcano.

Perfect folds.

Mooooooo!

I have a cow.

Lovely West coast

2009-11-26T02:32:00.001+01:00

Fur

2009-11-24T02:08:00.001+01:00

It's getting somewhat colder again and I am as shocked as every year to see so many women with fur coats here in Norway.
Maybe it's just my perception but I think somebody else mentioned it as well.
I never saw that many fur coats in Germany - maybe it's partly because I was not really living in a 'fashionable' neighbourhood?
I'm sure that the few regular readers of this blog wouldn't wear fur so don't watch the video - it almost makes you vomit. For everybody who thinks that it's ok to have a fur coat - go watch it and tell me afterwards that you have a good conscience!
Just one last comment - there are no limits to human cruelty.
And I better don't embed it here ... here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVvqX6maKjA

Stuck Between

2009-11-22T01:57:00.001+01:00

Riverside just write the perfect music for waiting at the underground station. At least I find them very relaxing:

I'm stuck between myself and me
Pretty sure at this time
The more I see the less I feel
But I don't want it to stop

Read my fortune
Now I can
Know you forever will be there
I'm arising
I will stay for you
And I know I will CARE

Please tell me why I still recall
Know it has to be good
It wouldn't be so hard if I
Were not so frightened for you

Read my fortune
Now I can
Know you forever will be there
I'm arising
I will stay for you
And I know I will CARE

West coast - Otterøya

2009-11-21T02:50:00.001+01:00

A good photographer never rests until he found the right spot to take a picture while at the same time being almost invisible - or: look for the crazy Russian.

This is a garnet. Well actually a Majorite which is a very special garnet only found at ultra high pressures in the earth's mantle.

Beauty

2009-11-14T16:55:00.001+01:00

I'm pretty sure that I wanted to take a picture of something else ... daft bugger ;)

Moments and Murphy

2009-11-14T16:41:00.001+01:00

Almost everybody knows these moments ... once you carry the camera with you for the whole trip and there is not even a nice landscape worth a picture. The next time you don't have it with you and there is the opportunity to get a nice shot.
Three years ago, I bought a digital single lens reflex camera and while I really enjoyed having it, it's just too valuable to take it with me all the time.
Sometimes though I wish, I had a cheap digital camera with me - like that one time around the end of October when I saw a small hedgehog in the middle of Oslo when walking home from work (at 3 am *cough*). It didn't even bother to coil up when I was standing right next to it.
Anyway, since my mobile is starting to die (I can charge it for hours and it still claims that it needs to be recharged) and buying a new battery is not really worth the investment and most people complain that they cannot reach me, I am debating now if I should get myself a mobile with a camera...
But I hate mobiles .... d'oh!

Somewhere between Trondheim and Oppdal (roughly)

2009-11-12T23:41:00.001+01:00

Still working on 2008 ... lol.

This could have been a perfect picture if it wouldn't be for that modern boat.

Perfect fold! Even with scale.

Two minds

2009-11-11T00:59:00.001+01:00

You walked away and destroyed the basic trust of a child. You never hurt me physically but the psychological damage follows me for the rest of my life. The ratio says that it is not my fault but yours. Yet it's just impossible to ignore that feeling of being neglected. Why? Sometimes I feel like shouting at you - do you feel guilty at all?
Did you just choose to completely ignore what you've done?
Sometimes I wish you were dead, then maybe the thoughts would stop. Virtually you are not existing anymore anyway. It's impossible to go back so all that is left is to accept that the past cannot be changed and the urge for harmony will never be satisfied. All I wanted was a little bit of your time ....

Norway - West Coast close to Trondheim

2009-08-22T23:16:00.001+02:00

Guess it's obvious why we call this Augengneiss:

Sweden III

2009-08-19T23:42:00.001+02:00

Moooo! (Sweden II)

2009-07-27T00:10:00.001+02:00

These are graptolites:
(and I don't know more about them than the name ... I am not a palaeontologist ;))

We visited the 'elg' people:

And now the rock carvings which make clear why 'elg' (moose) people:

Somewhere in Sweden

2009-07-26T01:35:00.001+02:00

Just too lazy to look up where exactly so I just post a few pictures:

Impressions of Oslo VIII

2009-07-02T18:52:00.001+02:00

Another series of pictures from Oslo - I played tour guide for an Australian friend last summer. This was almost a year ago, lol, I am so up-to-date ;)

Ornaments on a viking ship in the famous viking ship museum:

After a long time of restauration, they had the extraordinary sledges displayed again - first time I saw them but it was quite hard to take pictures because of the glass.

I tried to capture the eye made of amber:

Gjøa - the first ship sailing through the Northwest Passage:

And another impression of Åkershus ... they change the flowers every year:

Oslo Fjord Cruise

2009-06-01T22:57:00.001+02:00

For some mysterious reason I ended up on the invite list of a cruise dinner on the Oslo Fjord. The weather wasn't really that nice but here just a few pictures ... and yes the ugly town hall is taken with an angle ... was hard to find a good spot for the camera ;)

Minerals

2009-06-01T21:08:00.001+02:00

Just couldn't resist ;)

Here we have some garnet:

And all this slightly blue-green stuff is apatite - the same mineral your teeth are made of:

The dark bluegreen grains are most likely Winchite:

So that's the place where the apatite is mined:

Russian roads ...

2009-06-01T19:56:00.001+02:00

you gotta love them ;)
and this is good condition - really ...

This is what we call a banded iron formation, not that spectacular when it's not red though:

Here is a closer view of the rock ... some parts are red = oxidized ... (geologist noob mistake though - THERE IS NO SCALE!!!!!)

And here we have a spinifex texture ... I just found out that spinifex is also a genus of coastal grasses
(note: there is a shiny coin as scale):

Finally this is the giant's ass print ... well just another of those fluffy pillow lavas:

Still Finland from last summer

2009-05-09T20:58:00.001+02:00

Magnetite :D

And some lakes ;)

A lake in Russia ...

2009-03-16T00:56:00.001+01:00

Just some more impressions of the Karelian field trip:

The art of Geology II

2009-03-16T00:38:00.001+01:00

This is what geologist call an eclogite one of my favourite rocks.
And the one on this picture is claimed to be the oldest found on earth - just imagine that!

White Sea - second part

2009-03-15T01:39:00.001+01:00

Unfortunately it wasn't the nicest day when we were supposed to take boats out to some islands to see some very old rocks. It was raining and quite cold and not even the rain gear kept us completely dry so in the end everybody was freezing and we could just barely listen to the explanations of the russian geologist who had his private translator.
It is amazing that even at such a remote place, you can find some people and I also added a picture of the small village at the boarder of the White Sea.

The art of Geology I

2009-03-15T01:02:00.001+01:00

That's what geologists call pillow lava ;) Soft and fluffy ;)

Trash

2009-01-29T02:42:00.001+01:00

Well, I am more than willing to pay for the music I want to listen to but since I am moving a lot, I favor everything in an mp3 format and not on a CD.
In addition, I would have to order some CDs from other courntries and after some really nice experience with the Norwegian customs I will just not order anything anymore. Anyway, the mp3 provider I usually use (quite decent prizes and well equipped with my preferred music) shows a fantastic error when I want to pay with credit card ... it says: , , (very informative). And it does that since December I've been trying to get music from there since then, I tried different browsers, I made others to try it because I thought it might be the credit card, I wrote them - nothing. Ok I thought, I waited long enough, let's try another provider, the next one just didn't want to add albums to the basket so it was useless, the third one did all that and had even music I'd never expect they would have - I made it to the registration and then it said that I cannot download music because my IP address is not German and they provide their service only for Germans.
AND NOW PLEASE TELL ME WHY PEOPLE DOWNLOAD MUSIC ILLEGALLY?

When it rains ...

2009-01-18T01:53:00.001+01:00

... it pours like hell. However, we have some of the lucky days and it is cold enough to snow ;)
But this post is not supposed to be about the weather - it is about the song 'The Gale' which is just awesome although it is too short. I had it on my mp3 player yesterday when I was coming home from a meeting - it was snowing and I was dancing home.
The Gale is a fantastic entrance song for Insomnium's album 'Above the Weeping World'. On their homepage they promise that they work on new material - that sounds really promising :D
Caution do not listen if you don't like metal. I have to quote a friend: they growl into a destorted microphone over 50 dB of background noise.
The video is of course not official so I mainly post it because of the music and they don't growl that much in that song.

Russian roads and the White Sea

2009-01-17T23:19:00.001+01:00

The night at the White Sea was just the best of the whole trip - wild camping directly at the ocean. Good food, extremely nice people, guitar music at the campfire and a lot of vodka. The only annoying thing was the armada of mosquitos, the usual companions in the North. The last picture is taken around 1 am if I remember that correctly ;)

Karelian Craton field trip

2009-01-11T23:13:00.001+01:00

These are still pictures from July (extreme 'back-blogging', I know)
It was the first time in Finland and Russia for me and it was the first field trip after a long, desperate time. The group was so fantastic - wonderful people and we all got along so well. The weather was extremely good for the North as you can see on most pictures. The geology was fantastic - it was such a pleasure to take part in this event and although I enjoyed every single minute of the trip, it was all over too fast. We were a group of 14 people and travelled in a small bus with a fridge which was always filled with beer (and other beverages). At the end of the day we then all had a beer (or two, or three) in the bus. In Russia, we had to drive a lot on gravel roads and at times we felt more like sitting in a horse carriage than in a comfortable bus. The Russian toilet was a stop in the middle of nowhere - women to the left and men to the right ;)

The first night, we spend at a quite fancy, historic place called Karolinenburg. There was even a privat sauna in the bathroom of the suite where 4 of us stayed but we were too tired to use it.
This is the place:

And the history to it:

There was also a river castle and as one of the Finnish guys in the group pointed out: this is one of a few river castles left in Finland and what did they do? They built a bridge over it.

The view from the balcony of the suite:

Inside:

Reindeer lichen:

Lunch break at one of the numerous lakes ;)

Happy New Year

2009-01-10T21:54:00.001+01:00

how time flies ...
anyway, I wish you all a successful, peaceful and above all healthy new year.
May millions of legions be behind you:

sorry, there will not be a translation although I tried one but it was impossible for me to express it in a poetic way (I guess one of the reasons why I quit translation and interpretation studies ;)

Snowballfight ...

2008-12-17T03:05:00.001+01:00

... even in summer
Just thought I'd post a picture of myself once in a while since usually I am behind the camera.
This one is stolen from Artyom but I'm sure he'll forgive me.

White Mountains

2008-12-17T02:47:00.001+01:00

I had this sudden urge to blog something about Alaska. So here some pictures of a ski trip in the White Mountains. The plan was to ski 20 miles a day but we expected some tracks - there weren't any so from time to time I sank into the snow up to my hips - ok I'm short but still. The night we stayed ouside with a fantastic aurora. The trip was quite tough but really nice.

P.S. The camera at that time was not really good so please excuse the picture quality

I need...

2008-12-16T01:00:00.001+01:00

... that book:

'Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you.'

Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

Thanks Enno for leaving books next to the toilet although the habit of reading while 4 other people might need the bathroom is not a good one ;)

Oslo in 'winter' ...

2008-12-15T02:18:00.001+01:00

...is warm and cold and cold and warm. There is snow which melts and freezes and sometimes I wonder if it is safer to ice scate to work than to walk. The sidewalks are covered with a thick ice sheet and the little gravel thrown on it doesn't really help that much.

Helsinki

2008-12-15T00:49:00.001+01:00

It is one of these summer evenings with this special golden light you can only experience in the North. Being in the city for the first time, I am sitting on a small pillar on Senate Square in front of Helsinki Cathedral. While soaking in the atmosphere and watching the tourists taking pictures and a few locals strolling around, I am looking at the tourist guides in order to figure out what I could still see that evening and how to combine it with getting some food. Suddenly there is this man next to me, long gray hair, glasses, looking quite intellectual, asking me if he could help me finding my way. The answer was more or less: no thanks. I do not really feel like chitchat and company but he wants to know which country I am from. When he hears that I am from Germany, he suddenly looks extremely anxious, takes out a mansucript and tells me that he is writing a book and the person who helps him with his German is on vacation so if it would be possible to correct only a few sentences for him he would be so glad. I'm slightly confused about the fact that he has this manuscript with him and why he writes in German but well, why not having a look. The mansucript is handwritten and looks like every sentence has been scratched out and rewritten several times so I am quite amazed how he still finds the correct sentence. The topic is something about how many troops the Russian and Germans had in the Second World War. As he gets quite excited how fast this correction goes, I expect somebody with a camera showing up any time and telling me that this is a joke. We go through about 3 pages then he asks me what I do in Helsinki. Well, I am here for just one evening, tomorrow I will go on a field trip to Karelia, I'm a geologist. A geologist? That is fantastic I always wanted to know how the world works but I never had enough time to read it all so I am hoping you can give me a short lesson - I'll invite you to some drink! Generally, if you are alone in another city and a man invites you for a drink, nowadays you have to become careful. It is sad but I would never want to be in a dangerous situation. So I am a little reluctant and tell him that I just wanted to find something to eat and then get some good night's sleep. Well, we can surely find a place with food for you - there is one nice place I know of. Fine, there are still people on the streets and after all it is a public place, so we move on. Unfortunately the restaurant he has in mind, is closed already and it seems to be hard to find a place which still offers food at around 9 pm on a Sunday evening. So here I am, walking though Helsinki with a complete stranger who tells me that he was an architect and grew up in Austria. Finally we find a place and we get some food - I try to give him a short introduction about geology but he seems to be disappointed that I cannot answer all his questions within the short time. At the table next to us, there is a group of American and Australian students and the architect start a cross table conversation with them. The food is good and he insists to pay but for some reason his card does not work. Well, so I pay in cash and we stop by a bancomat so he can get the cash and give it to me.
Finally, it's time to say bye he asks for my name and tells me that I remind him of some girl in a tribe in Siberia who had also that look as if she understands the world and he only wished that he was younger. I feel a bit awkward and walk back to the hostel, thinking that I maybe shouldn't have been that rude and at least exchanged addresses but in this world you don't know whom to trust anymore.

Bye Rockies

2008-12-07T19:36:00.001+01:00

Not a good pictures but hey ... out of the plane and against the sun and after all
the Rockies !!!

Botanical Garden at UBC

2008-12-06T22:22:00.001+01:00

UBC - campus and beach for the last time

2008-12-06T21:09:00.001+01:00

That was the last evening in Vancouver, one week was definitely not enough to see enough AND go to the conference ... after all I had a presentation of my work there ;)
At the beach I found a model but it wanted more my food than pictures taken ...

Whistler

2008-12-05T02:00:00.001+01:00

Whistler and Vancouver will host the Olympic Winter Games in 2010 an since there were some railroad tracks on the map, I though great let's just get a train ticket and go there.

Well not so easy on that continent ... the only thing one could get was a whole day train trip with food on the train and a stop of about 2 hours in Whistler ... not really what I had in mind. So we (two girls and I) took the good old Greyhound bus to go there. We got some nice mountain scenery.

Isn't it ...

2008-12-05T01:29:00.001+01:00

... exciting to live in Boring?

Thanks to the visitor Boring you might have been bored and klicked on my blog! Now I know that there is a place called Boring in Oregon, USA.

Grouse Mountain

2008-12-02T00:37:00.001+01:00

Obviously the attraction in Van. However too touristy for me with bird shows, grizzly sanctuary, helicopter flights, tandem paragliding, lumberjack show, restaurant, gift shop and ....whatever. Ok, the grizzly area was nice because they were orphants and would have died and they got quite an area to roam around.
Due to the limited time I had, I took the aerial tram up the mountain and started right for some trails which seemed to be unpaved and were therefore not taken by the 'high-heel-look-at-me-I-am-so-pretty-but-completely-dumb'people. Well you might think now that I am intolerant but please who goes up a mountain to WALK or HIKE with a skirt and high-heels? For a party - sure but not any activity outdoors.
Anayway, the Vancouver guide promised a good view ... problem was that the air was quite dusty. However, just a few meters away from the main attractions, I was almost alone and there was still snow left(probably as much as there is in Oslo during the whole year - well that was only a slight exaggeration). There was even so much snow that the trails were still closed and I couldn't hike on.

The aerial tram up.

The dusty view.

The bleeding heart.

Patches of snow.

Mountains.

Funny bird, who was always flying away so the pic is not that good.

UBC - Museum of Anthropology

2008-12-02T00:07:00.001+01:00

A very nice museum indeed. Unfortunately the light conditions were not perfect to take good pictures but here just a few impressions:

Vancouver downtown

2008-11-24T23:49:00.001+01:00

Some pictures (still from July !!!):

The bay.

And the other side.

Totem pole in Stanley park.

More poles.

Time for a break!

And back to the skyscrapers.

Oslo - the hole

2008-11-13T23:05:00.001+01:00

We can easily agree on the fact that Oslo is not beautiful but recently it became even worse - they are destroying almost every road to put in some heating pipes. It seems like the whole of Oslo is one huge dig hole. Bah!

Vancouver - UBC rose garden and beach II

2008-10-23T19:00:00.001+02:00

Heading says it all ;)

Where is the heron?

Presidential elections

2008-10-20T23:58:00.001+02:00

Being somewhat close to the States since I spent some wonderful time there I cannot stop myself from following what happens in the last weeks before the elections. What has been a concern in the beginning is more or less becoming a fear: watch the movie and then imagine that there might be a chance that this woman might be the president of a world power with access to nuclear weapons. Experienced or not - if you want to be the president of a country that big you should have a profound knowledge about politics and economy. Hockey rules and moose hunting are not really sufficient. Unfortunately many Americans didn't (do) not feel that way as we could see the last two elections. Btw moose hunting SUCKS!
Please be nice to the world and don't elect a fool again!
Thank you.

Voting machine

2008-10-17T22:58:00.001+02:00

This stuff is really fantastic:

For the election in 2004 they had this one:

And this year there is a continuation:

This idea is just fantastic !

Brittania Mine

2008-09-12T00:46:00.001+02:00

The mine is about an hour away from Vancouver on the way to Whistler. In combination with the Goldschmidt congress it was possible to go there (and I couldn't miss that opportunity). The mine is not active anymore and the former processing mill is a museum now. They have a problem with metals being flushed into the bay closeby so they have to control all the water going through the mine and clean the ground water with special facilities.

The processing mill - later you can see the inside.

We went to one of the tunnels and on the walls you can clearly see what ore you can find in the mine ;) Too easy for geologists I guess - copper and iron mainly.

One of these transport tunnels.

The mill from the inside - not in the best condition (last production was in the 1970s)

And the nice scenery around.

Vanvouver - beach at UBC I

2008-09-12T00:33:00.001+02:00

Some pictures of the sunset this time far away in Vancouver ;)

Biking in Østmarka

2008-09-08T00:04:00.001+02:00

One weekend in June (yes I am extremly back-blogging !!!) we went out for a biking tour - well it was biking and hiking with the bike since the biking trail was not completely continuous. It was a nice tour but I forgot to take a picture of the whole group (as usual Julia always goes for the landscapes and animals).

Mining in the Oslo region

2008-09-07T23:52:00.001+02:00

Thanks to Enno and geocaching I now know that there are serveral iron and copper pits in the oslo region which are not in use anymore tody - we went to a few of them and also to the granite quarry where the material for the castle came from. One of these pits is now a refuge for bats - this is actually the coolest ;)

Hiking tour - Grua to Sørkedalen

2008-09-05T22:55:00.001+02:00

This was a nice hike - fantastic weather and a very nice cabin to stay overnight right next to a lake with canoes ;)
The crew was French and German and we had a lot of fun!

Hardangervidda in May

2008-09-05T21:44:00.001+02:00

Fjords and how to confuse your GPS

2008-09-03T01:35:00.001+02:00

First the pictures of the Fjord and then the confusion ;)

Blubbblubb - we drowned - at least according to our navigation device. And no we do not drive a pickup it just was too tempting to change the car to something ridiculous.

Bergen

2008-09-01T00:29:00.001+02:00

Just a few impressions of the city where is supposedly rains the most and where we unexpectedly had nice weather ;)

Bryggen - world heritage.

Bryggen - behind the shining front ;)

The romanic St. Mary's church - the oldest building in Bergen.

Rosenkrantz tower.

Håkon's Hall.

Borgund Stavkirke

2008-09-01T00:08:00.001+02:00

This stave church is the most original one meaning that today it still looks like when it was built. The wood was cut in 1180 and supposedly shortly after, the church was constructed. The main reason why it was preserved is that the village never had enough money to renovate or extend the church.

A perfect summer

2008-08-31T23:54:00.001+02:00

A summer, I will never forget and I could get used to being out in the field - no wrong: I really missed being out and seeing rocks. It was quite tough being out for 10+ hours a day - being in cars, listening to concepts, hiking, hammering, more discussions, moving to another place, sharing rooms with 3 other people, having a queue for the shower, listening to evening talks after dinner (while almost falling asleep)and getting up really early. BUT: the rocks were fantastic, I learned as much as I couldn't have within half a year spending in the office (and this just in 10 days), the scenery was also splendid and I met really nice and interesting people. Picture will be posted gradually (maybe also after my vacation - yeah right I still have 3 weeks of vacation ;))

Another one

2008-08-14T13:33:00.001+02:00

Once again I am off for a field trip - this time I will mostly stay in Norway. Hopefully the weather will not be too bad - it doesn't really look that promising.
This summer is so fantastic - maybe I'll have some time for more picture posts when I come back.

Jostedalsbreen - Nigardsbreen

2008-08-12T18:06:00.001+02:00

First of all - I am still around just extremely busy - it is a FANTASTIC summer ;)
This is the last glacier tongue we've seen and it is the most spectacular. Once again we were extremely lucky to be there in May and there were not too many tourists. Plan in to hike to the glacier - it is really nice to enjoy the glacier coming closer. There are also these stupid glacier tours - it was hard to get a picture of the glacier without this rows of black dots connected by ropes on top of the ice (sometimes you'd wish they all fall into the next crack (yeah I'm mean).
Needless to say that I looooove the ice.

Feigefossen and Lustrefjorden

2008-07-22T01:36:00.001+02:00

Still working on pictures from May ;)

If you go on a journey...

2008-07-13T08:45:00.001+02:00

... something MUST go wrong otherwise it would not be fun eh?
Well the good points first - I am in Vancouver, it is fantastic here and now the fact why I am still awake after 24 hours - I am waiting for my bag.
Sure, I got this Overnight Kit from Air Canada BUT I will not find any solution for contact lenses in there ... and putting them in chlorined water - no thank you.
I always used to bring a bottle in my backpack but because some shithole thought it was a fantastic idea to forbid all fluids and nowadays they even check small stuff I just don't do that anymore. In addition I want my hiking boots for the field trip tomorrow ... we are going to a mine and sandals are not really fantastic.
So I am waiting for my bag which I still had in Calgary and it takes them about 6 hours to get the bag on the next flight and bring it to me, although I was told at 7 p.m. at the airport that the flight the bag is on will arrive at 9.
So whoever wonders why I didn't fly with my bag ... that is very simple - the whole day I had flight of immense delays. If you think 2 hours of stay at the airport is enough - don't count on that, might get really tight.
It all started with a sick passenger (why did the intelligent person board the airplane anyway?)who needed medical treatment when the machine was about to take-off in London, so they had to go back to the gate and couldn't start in time for Oslo, where I was waiting for the flight. When they finally were in Oslo, they were not allowed to start because of heavy traffic and then they were not allowed to land in London because of ... guess .. .heavy traffic. Fortunately, I was not the only one who wanted to catch the flight to Calgary (and the transatlantic flight was the most important one because I had a field trip the next day and I didn't want to miss it). Luckily it was the same terminal in London, but it was a lot of walking and going through security again and walking and walking. We made it finally 10 minutes before the flight was supposed to start - the airplane was fully ready when we arrived BUT ...heavy traffic. So we did not arrive in time and I had just one hour in Calgary which was almost used up with the delay - not talking about having to go through customs, waiting for my bag to arrive and checking it in again and then finding the gate. So they put me on a waiting list for all flights going to Vancouver. I almost gave up on the next one because they said it was full and then they put me on in the very last minute. I was already in the plane when they informed me, that my bag could not be put into the plain but I just had to fill out a claim in Vancouver and it will be on the next flight anyway.
At least people were quite friendly .. but please I want my bag !!!

Urnes Stavkirke

2008-07-09T01:19:00.001+02:00

The stavechurch of Urnes is not only one of the oldest in Norway but also one of the Unesco world-heritage sites. The fantastic wood carvings are thought ot be of a former building which dates back to the 11th century. The animal-ornamentation is quite unique because it represents Viking art on a Christian building.

Sognefjellvegen - 'Road over the roof of Norway'

2008-07-09T00:26:00.001+02:00

The road goes from Lom to the Lustrafjorden along the border of Jotunheimen National Park. The highest point is at 1434 m height and the view would probably be even better if one could see more of the highest mountains of Norway ;)

Lom Stavkirke

2008-07-03T00:00:00.001+02:00

Just one picture - we didn't go inside since we had to continue driving.

It was constructed form 1170 on and there were some additional parts added in 1634.