Personal Weblog of Annett Thogersen

2008-08-03T19:35:00.007+02:00

I’m now sitting in the hotel lobby in Buenos Aires, a bit bored really…waiting for Georg to come back from the conference. We have been here for about three weeks now, and it’s time for us to go home. We had a wonderful time here, seen a lot… almost everything in Buenos Aires, and had time to relax. Georg has been to a summer school and a conference and he has learned a lot. Now we are looking forward to getting home, to our bed and of course my “tiny thing” (Inu).

First Impressions

Buenos Aires is covered with dogs, they are everywhere, I think almost everyone has a dog, so it is easy to miss Inu seeing them. When people are at work they have dog walkers that walk the dogs and keep them engaged all day until they get home. One dog walker can have more than ten dogs, and they behave remarkably well. Also, many of these dog walkers meet up in certain parks and let all of the dogs run around together. They seem to have a great life here. I really just wanted to cozy up with all of then, but I have resisted the urge as we did not take shots for that.

It is winter in Argentina and we expected the worst. Well, we heard that it was normally around 5-15 degrees Celsius. Last year they even had a bit of snow! So we brought winter jackets. The first week was mostly cold and foggy, with nice weather on some days. After that, the temperature went through the roof. Really warm, almost as warm as a Norwegian summer gets. T-shirt weather, so really nice, we were lucky.

The first week we browsed through most of Buenos Aires, drank a lot of wine, went shopping and had a great time. We walked a lot since we weren’t too sure about the taxis, they can try to rob you. A Peruvian from the summer school got his luggage stolen this way – be careful when you put your luggage in the trunk! – and a French guy almost got robbed by the old you-gave-me-a-five trick.

But we also love to walk and it is the only way to really get a feel for the city, together maybe with biking. Buenos Aires is about 20 km x 20 km, so in the center you can really get by by walking. Of course after walking all day we were exhausted and went to bed quite early. People here do not eat dinner before eight, and we are used to eating at five every day. Combine that with a jet-lag, and we ended up eating in an empty restaurant every evening – at least the first couple of days.

Everything is very cheap here, especially food. You get BIG meals with a LOT of food. The first evening Georg and I went out to treat ourselves a bit with delicious Argentinean food and wine. And that we got. I ordered a meat platter for one person. I thought that was a good idea, because I would then be able to taste many different meats so that I could taste a bit of the local specialties. I have never gotten this much food in my life. I got two BIG plates of meat I plate of fries and all I could eat of salad. The whole meal could easily feed a small family of five… for days :).

Our Crib

The hotel is very nice. We live on the 9^th floor with a view of Plaza Republica, which is easily recognized because of the huge obelisk in the middle. Several roads emanate from the plaza, the main of which, 9 de Julio, having seven lanes in each direction. Although this made quite some noise, it also provided an amazing view of continuous stream of taxis passing the hotel.

Even better, almost every day the people of Buenos Aires had some sort of demonstration outside. In the beginning of the millennium Argentina was hit by an economic crisis, of which they are slowly recovering. In the weeks that we were there the parliament voted for a new law on export taxes, and this created huge demonstrations … These were, naturally, right outside of our building, where people sprayed their (for us incomprehensible) message on El Obelisco. The police handled the crowd very well, so that everything went peacefully and nobody got hit by a taxi. When we saw the first bus of special units arrive we thought they would arrest the whole bunch, but instead they let them do their thing and protected them along the way.

So even though I had to stay inside quite some days, being hit by the Spanish flu, there was much to see outside… Quite some action :). The hotel also has its own spa, with a swimming pool, hot tub, sauna and a training room, which we used frequently until I got sick. All the walking, waking up early, and running in the mornings might not have helped.

The Home of the Rich and the Dead

One of the first days we walked to Recolleta, “home to the rich and the dead”. This area is very rich, with only high end stores and expensive hotels. The main street is claimed to be impeccably clean, so the first thing I did was stepping in dog-poo!! Clean ha! Good start:) After that we visited the Recolleta cemetery… It is truly an amazing place, probably modeled after a similar cemetery in Paris. Each grave is like a small house. Lots of famous people are buried here, among whom most famously Eva Peron (Evita). It was really a wonderful and peaceful place.

Villa 31

After strolling around the place we walked south towards the parks and the railway tracks. On the other side of the tracks is Villa 31. This place is not as fancy as it sounds, since it is probably the biggest slum in Buenos Aires. People living here made their own houses, and one such villa can house over 15,000 people. Surprisingly, it turns out to be well-organized with its own elected board and president. Getting to the end of the parks and closer to the railway it suddenly got very poor and not so nice a neighborhood, so we turned around.

The next thing on the agenda was the marked. Outside the Recolleta cemetery, on Saturdays, there is a big arts and craft marked, and they cell amazing things. They are really good at making things with leather, stone and clay. We bought a lot of nice stuff and headed home.

The next couple of days we walked through Palermo, a hip neighborhood with lots of bars, restaurants and high end stores, but also lots of nice parks and open spaces. We also went to the Sunday market in San Telmo. The market is known for antiques, but also for tango and lots of street musicians. It was quite touristy, but authentic nevertheless. People were dancing and playing music on the street, very rural and warm. It seems that the people here know how to have a good time, and almost all of them are honest and friendly.

Of course I had to do a bit of shopping here. I love to shop, and things here are relatively cheap, especially shoes. So I was really out to shop some nice shoes. But the thing that annoyed me a lot was that the stores are quite small and full with people, not with shopping people but with people working there, usually five people in a very small store. So you are trying to look at something and you just keep bumping into the shop attendants. And of course they follow you around, in case you want help, getting exactly in front of the shoes that you want to look at. It’s Japan all over again! Even if I intended to buy those shoes, I got so annoyed that I ended up buying nothing… I guess I shouldn’t complain too much sitting here with five new pairs of shoes :).

A Tango Show

One other thing we did was going to a Tango show that came with a course in Argentinean tango. The tango show was fantastic and it was fun to learn how to dance, we are so going to learn more when we get back to Oslo. Too bad the whole evening was very touristic. We booked the tour through the hotel, and they are probably used to people looking for that kind of evening… well we are definitively not one of them. We were picked up at the hotel and driven to the theater… Because of all the traffic it took some time, and we could have walked there faster :).

On arrival, the first thing they did was leading us into the souvenir shop, where we had to wait for all the other people joining us in our tango course. Once there, they kindly pointed out that it was much better to buy something right away, because after the tango show there would be way-too-many people shopping. Quite funny really, as long as you don’t have to put up with it for too long. Learning some of the basic tango moves was a lot of fun. We were in good company of many middle-aged ladies that seemed to have started the party early, laughing hysterically and going bananas!

After the lesson we went to the show room and had dinner. Although Argentina is famous for its meat, which it produces in humongous quantities, I have never ever eaten that bad meat before; I could hardly bite through it… At least the show was really good, and we definitely had fun, but both of us are convinced we should stay away from organized travel groups. :)

The Other Side of the Delta

At the end of the first week, we took the boat over the Delta to Colonia, Uruguay. Its newly build departure port looks a lot like a mini-airport, with security checks, gates and, unfortunately, queues. Partly because of the sunny short-sleeves weather, this was probably the best day we had. Add to this the many friendly loose dogs in the old city centre, and you get an oasis of peace and silence contrasting the busy and car-flooded Buenos Aires. Something that we had never seen before, was the possibility to rent a golf cart.

Unfortunately this was also the day that my mum and dad had to put Bastian to sleep… I was devastated. It was hard to not be able to say goodbye to him, but on the other hand, I think it would probably have been worse if I had been there. At least here I could try to focus on something else. So it was a beautiful day, with a lot of tears :(.

Puerto Madero

As Georg sot sick before I did, I had a few days to myself. One of these days I walked around Puerto Madero. This is a newly developed waterfront district with a lot of restaurants and bars, right next to a big nature park. A lot of people walk and run in the park every day. It is huge with its small lakes, and it stretches out to the sea. It was an invigorating walk, refreshing to get away from the city and the noise for a short time. I walked around for a bit and ended up on the docks with ice cream. They have the best ice cream here. Never had a better one than the one I have tasted here. Ice cream is as big here as it is in Italy, which is because of the Italian immigrants. They have this ice cream that tastes a bit like caramel called “dulche de leche”. It’s very South American and they are very proud of it, for good reason, as it is the best ice cream I have ever eaten. And it had few calories! It really was a nice day :).

San Telmo and La Boca

One of the days we visited La Boca. We started our day in a historic museum in San Telmo, which I had looked forward to seeing, but which was very small and only in Spanish. This was a disappointment, to say the least. Then we walked towards the big football stadium in la Boca. Since it was full of football fans and tourists, we didn’t spend much time there and took off towards the centre of La Boca.

Or so we thought. We managed to walk in a totally wrong direction and headed right into the slum of la Boca. La Boca is an old neighborhood of Buenos Aires, and it is also very poor. That’s why the guide books warn you against going outside the tourist areas in this part of town. And this was of course exactly what we were doing now. We felt that this part was getting unfriendly and very poor. But luckily it was mid day and a lot of people were out. We are also fortunate that we do not look that much like tourists, being frequently taken for being Argentinean, and being careful about when to take out the camera and map and when not. In the end we found the centre without being robbed or anything, lucky us! The centre is beautiful and colorful. Even if the houses are not expensive, they have painted the houses with pretty colors to brighten them up. Unfortunately this is the day that I got sick. It felt like I was getting the flue and we had to take a taxi home early.

Many Argentineans look very European, maybe a bit Italian or Spanish, but some could easily have been British or German too. So we tend to blend in with the people. There are also parts of the population that do look very South American, but I’m not sure if they are Argentinean or just moved to Buenos Aires from Peru or other countries. In the suburbs, on the other hand, most of the people look very South American.

The next week we had planned to travel a bit around Buenos Aires, but unfortunately we both were ill with a fever and a bad cold – so still not well – and we kept within Buenos Aires so that we could sleep in and take it easy.

The Market of Mataderos

The last Sunday we went to one of the suburbs called Mataderos. The subway did not go this far so we first took the subway and then walked the last bit. The problem was that we didn’t have a good map of the location, only in the direction we should walk. We walked about an hour or so, through kind of rough neighborhoods, which seemed to be very poor. We had to stop and ask for directions but in the end we found it.

We also had a bite at a bakery nearby. The Argentineans love cookies, chocolate, ice cream and pastries. So not very healthy, but of course we had to taste. Then we headed off to the market. It was a very nice and cozy market with a stage with people singing, people riding horses while standing on top of them, lots of food to try and of course arts and craft. I bought this amazing purse there… so pretty! In the pubs people were dancing, old and young together, they were crazy, and had so much fun. It was a great day, that ended with a quiet night with pizza in bed :).

More pictures here.

2008-03-10T20:21:00.015+01:00

Visiting Margit at Svalbard

Last Tuesday we went to visit Margit at Longyearbyen, Svalbard. We were very close to canceling the trip, as Georg spent the night before and the following morning throwing up. But we decided to go for it, and we made it. There was a lot of snow and it was very cold, -19 degrees Celsius. First Margit drove us around the city showing us where everything was, and then we went home to her place where we met her dog Ravna, a very cute and cozy dog! Georg was still not feeling well and spent the rest of the day in bed, while Margit and I took the scooter to the other dogs and went dog sledding. It was so cool! I could do this every day....

Wednesday morning Georg, who was feeling a lot better, and I went to Coal Mine 7. It is the only coal mine still active in Longyearbyen. Being inside the mine was fascinating and a bit scary. Because of all the coal dust in the air we had to wear masks. On top of that the air was a lot thinner, and this was hard to get used to. It was interesting to see how they operate. Very exciting! We also got to see the famous footsteps of a prehistoric mammal, a Pantodont. On a previous tour, some American wondered how come the animal walked on the ceiling (although because of the presence of Americans he kindly lied that the person was Swedish). When we got out we were all covered in coal dust and looked very pretty.

When we got back we went sight seeing in town, shopping and then went to the Svalbard museum. It was a pleasant museum and we learned a lot, but I got so tired and almost fell asleep:) When Margit came back from work we ate some food and then came with her to the Northern light observatory, where she does some of her work. To get there we first had to drive for about ten minutes by car, and then drive a caterpillar vehicle the rest of the way. It was completely dark and we could see nothing but snow. On the top there was a building, almost not visible because of the snow and the dark. When opening the door to the building there was a long white and clean corridor with dark doors, like in a new office building. Coming in from the snow and dark and into this building was strangely surreal. It could easily have been a scene from Star Trek or, even more striking, from "Brødrene Dahl". Could this corridor lead to a space ship, an entrance to a secret spy station, an alternate dimension or even better to offices with nerds and big toys:) On our way down I got to drive the caterpillar vehicle, and it was amazing! In the evening we went to the local pub to eat, drink and meet Margit's boyfriend Urban, from Sweden. After this exciting and packed day, we went to bed quite early.

On Thursday morning Georg and I went on a dog sledding trip up a glacier to an ice cave. We got to saddle up the dogs and of course cuddle with them:) It felt incredible to stand behind them as they were running. We went quite fast! Visiting the ice cave was also amazing. The icy corridors and narrow passages was something we had never seen before, and I so want to do it again! The whole trip was one of the best trips we've ever had. We were also incredibly very lucky with the weather, it was sunny and not too cold, relatively speaking of course. In the evening we went to the pub again, naturally. :)

Friday morning we totally relaxed and slept in. Later we went shopping and walked Ravna. After Margit came home from work we met up with Urban and went on a scooter trip to a cabin called Bikkjebu at Kapp-Laila. It was an amazing ride to Kapp-Laila. When we got there and fired up the oven, Margit started cooking dinner while the other three of us fell asleep. We were just too tired. After eating dinner we played some cards but couldn't keep our eyes open, so we went to bed quite soon after that.

We took it really easy in the morning. Georg and I tried to use the oven to fry bacon, which worked, but took us over an hour. There was a leak in the gas-tank, so we hesitated to use it. But in the end we gave in and used it for a short period of time. After breakfast, cleaning the cabin and getting our stuff together we drove to Barentsburg, a Russian coal mine settlement not too far from Longyearbyen. Driving into Barentsburg was like driving into Russia (or at least what I would imagine it would be, since I have never been to Russia). The people were very friendly, waving and smiling to us. It was an incredible experience, just like driving into a different country. The people spoke Russian, had Russian TV in the pub, serving lots of vodka and everything looked very Eastern-European. After having a coffee at the pub we rushed home to Longyearbyen, where we had a reservation at 19:30 at a restaurant (Kroa) in town. We had to drive quite fast, it was very cool. Later we all went to "Huset", where they had a big sun-party. That Saturday was the first time this year that the sun shone on Longyearbyen, so that meant a big party. Me and Georg only lasted until 1:30, when we were almost sleeping and my back was hurting from the scooter-drive, so it was nice to get to bed.

On Sunday we ate a good breakfast at "Kroa" and then went on a scooter trip with Margit and Urban to a TV-tower on the opposite side of Longyearbyen. The weather and sun was incredible and we had an amazing view. It was the best way of ending our stay in Longyearbyen. It has been the most amazing week, and we want to come back as soon as possible.

2008-02-07T22:47:00.000+01:00

Buying a camera and Inu passing the test and receiving the bronze mark in obedience training!

A week ago we bought a new camera, a Canon 35d digital single-lens reflex camera. It is really cool. We have been thinking about this for a while. We have been in so many situations lately where we weren't able to take good enough pictures with my old camera. We love taking pictures, especially of Inu or when we travel, so we decided it was time to upgrade. So now we just have to learn how to use it:)

Also! On Wednesday, Inu passed her test for the bronze mark in obedience training. I have to say that we really didn't do a great job there, but the weather was going against us. It was cold, wet and slippery. Most of the dogs wouldn't even sit down on the ground, and who can blame them:) We were very close to failing, but we just passed. So we were very happy. So our next project will be a beginners course in agility at Stovner Hundeklubb, in April. We are very excited!

Our pretty princess!

2008-02-02T14:21:00.000+01:00

I'm healthy...can it be possible?

I have now been sick since September, been on 5 types of antibiotics + a lot of other things that I don't really know what is, and was now pretty sick of staying home. And frankly walking all over the walls and feeling quite depressed. The doctors had pretty much given up on me and said that it was a migraine or a tension pain, and that I needed to relax and not stress. After staying home so much, I haven't been able to stress. I even tried acupuncture, and I'm VERY afraid of needles:) So...I have been desperate. Even the ear-nose-and throat doctor I saw said it was nothing..maybe migraine. And he put me on medication ..that I got allergic to of course. I felt that the world was against me:) He also sent me to a neurologist with 3 months waiting time...:( He didn't find anything either, but put me on some standard pink pills. When I started using it I lost all energy and just slept (12 hours a day in the start).

But since I switched doctor I have gotten so much more help from the right people. She has been great and very determined to find out what was wrong with me and not giving up. She got me an appointment to an ear-nose and throat doctor at the hospital here in Oslo, and he looked up my nose and into my sinuses. To be able to do that, I had to take anesthesia on my nose, because I have a very thin/crooked nose wall, so it is difficult to get through there. When I got home the nose started to run...quite a lot and it felt like (and still does) like I had a big hole in my nose! And it kept running for over a week. My headache was gone. I was soo happy. It can still come back, and I'm going to the doctor again the 18th of February, and have taken a CT and MRI scan as well. He talked about operating my nose, and I hope he will, to make it more permanent. Since then, the world has been a beautiful place to be:)

It is funny because the good doctors that I have met and have gotten help from has not been native Norwegians, but the ones that have not been so nice and not been able to help me have been Norwegian. Plus all that crap the doctors have given Georg when he has been here (like, "you have to go to your doctor in Holland.."). Unfortunately we get a bit prejudiced about doctors lately, even though we know it doesn't hold for everybody. It has definitively been like this with our experience. It is funny, because it is probably the opposite prejudice than a lot of other people have:)

Me getting well happily coincided with my birthday (the 27nd of January). So we went to Dublin a couple of days to relax and celebrate. It was great! We did a little shopping, went out to restaurants, did a lot of sights-seeing and listen to a lot of live music. We had a blast! Put the pictures out here.

So now I'm back at work, and I'm really enjoying it. A bit afraid it will come back, but hope the doctor can fix it more permanently. Now we at least know what it is, and it is not just in my head:)

2007-09-26T13:34:00.000+02:00

Update..long time coming..

Hi! It’s been a long time since I have written anything, and a lot has happened.

Engaged

For our summer vacation we decided to drive through parts of Norway, being tourists for a change. There is a lot that I haven’t even seen in Norway, and doing this we could bring Inu with us. We started with driving to Ålesund visiting Kanutte and Tor helge at Kanutte’s parent’s house in Sjøholt. After a few days there, going in the mountains and visiting Molde and the surrounding area, we decided to drive the west coast back to Oslo. On our way we visited Geiranger. Probably one of the most beautiful places in Norway, and the place kanutte and Tor Helge got married. We spent a few days there and one of the days we went hiking in one of the mountains. We took the boat and then walked up to Skageflå (which is a very popular place to go to). It was raining just a bit and the sun shone through the clouds creating a rainbow. That's when Georg proposed:) and of course I said yes! Great day! We had an amazing trip driving the west coast to oslo, part from small roads and horrible drivers (not me of course..hehe), and we put out more pictures from the trip here. We also went to visit Ålesund, Nidgardsbreen, Bergen, Rosendal, Prekestolen and Lindesnes.

After the engagement we have been busy finding a place and deciding on a date. We have been around to look at several places, and have now decided on one. A few weekends ago, we went to Vikerøya in Larvik. We had already seen a place that we loved, and was sure that THAT was the place, but when we arrived at Vikerøya, we just fell in love with the place. We put out pictures of the place here (..and yes, the barn will be free from grains:)). We didn’t need to go other places to look, and booked it right away. So we will get married the 1^st of August 2009. I know it is early to think about this stuff, but next year they are almost all booked up, so to get the date we wanted, we booked right away. We also have created a wedding page, where we will put out all the information about the wedding. It is funny because I have never been one of those "wedding-girls", the ones that have looked forward to get married since birth. I actually didn't think that I wanted to get married, boy was I wrong:) I look very much forward to it..and can't wait till the day comes!

London x 2

This summer I also have been twice in London on vacation. The first time was with my mum. We decided that it was time to take a girls trip to do some (…hehe…some…more LOTS!!) shopping and also to see a musical. We hade a great time. In advance I had received an amazing and detailed guide from Milica about where to eat and shop, we followed to guide religiously. We shopped a LOT and had a really great time there. We also went to see the musical “We will rock you”. My uncle has been in London to see it over three times now, and highly recommended it. And it was totally worth the trip, a great musical, especially if you like Queens. The only thing that almost spoiled the trip was that I got some sort of stomach flue that last couple of days. I was in plain…but it didn’t stop me from shopping or from going to the musical:) More pictures here.

The next time I was in London, Georg and me went to ICPS. Klaus, Ingvild, Mateusz, Sanja and Åsmund was there as well. The conference was great and lots of fun things to listen to. And since I was in London just a month ago, I knew where to go for good restaurants and shops. It was great meeting up with all the people we usually just see at these events and catching up with all the new stuff that has happened. This was my 5^th ICPS, and this time I was not involved in any IAPS stuff and not going to the general meeting. It was quite weird being one of the oldest and not really involved in any “conspiracy-things”. We were all quite ready for this to be our last ICPS, and it was a nice conference to end it with. More pictures here.

Dog show

We went to a dog show in Lier the 1^st of September. I went to a dog show with Bastian about 12 years ago, so I didn’t quite know what to expect. We hadn’t trained on showing her off since we didn’t quite know what to practice on. We were there early on Saturday, and met Laila (our breeder), so that she could style and cut Inu to the perfect shape. I was the one to take Inu into the ring, and I was very nervous. I probably did everything wrong and got lots of comments on the wrong things…and it made me very nervous. When they handed out the first second and third place, I didn’t know if we got a price or not.. afterwards I found out that we got 2^nd place (of 3 though)! We were very happy and proud of little Inu. In spite of me, she won 2^nd place..:) We really liked it, it was social, and it was very nice to see the other dogs as well. Her father, brother and her sister (she was the one the won) was there as well. We probably will do it again. I put out picture of the show here.

Part from this we haven’t done much part from being sick. I have almost been sick a month in a row, and I’m sick of it:) I finally found out that it was some sort of sinus infection, and can get well of it now. I also might be allergic to something, and that’s why I get sick all the time. I hope that it is something like that. Just want to find out what it is so I can get rid of it.

2007-05-15T16:19:00.000+02:00

Inu

Last weekend we drove to Larvik and got Inu. She is just so amazingly cute and wonderful. We thought that the first night would be horrible, and we would not get any sleep at all. But we slept till 7.....7 wow! She sleeps about 70 % of the day, and in between pees, poos and eats. She is getting a bit stubborn and hyper active lately, but I guess she just takes after her owners:) We got her on Saturday and on Sunday she had her first real try walking in a leash. And she did great! So on Monday we all walked to the dog store to buy some new toys and some food. She did great. We walked for about an hour. In the end she got a bit tired, so then we carried her home.

We are working hard on trying to get her to pee outside. So after she has slept, ate, played and so on, we take her outside. Usually she pees just some seconds after she wakes up, so when she sleeps we sit ready to run out with her as soon as she wakes up. It is quite the show...funny! We are also working on leaving her at home, alone. And it is really working quite well. At first she was crying so much, but now we hardly hear anything from her. Today we almost forgot that we were gone open the door after half an hour... We are so happy that we got her, she is perfect for us:) We put out more pictures here.

2007-05-04T10:41:00.000+02:00

I HATE Chess.no and Posten!!!

Just need to get some frustration out! We just have needed to take a lot of crap lately...uff...! I have my mobile phone SIM card from chess.no, and they are very cheap. But there are some negative thing with having a cheap SIM card provider. I just bought a new phone, and I found out that it didn't register my SIM card. They told me that new phones are more sensitive to stripes in the SIM card and I probably needed another one, so They was gone send me one right away. It took some time, and then suddenly my old phone, which I still used, stopped working. I called them up, with my brothers phone, and they told me that they had closed the old SIM card when they sent the new one to me. They also told me that this was a normal procedure to do and that people normally went without a phone in 3-4 days while waiting for the SIM card to arrive....!!! Hallooo!! Could that BE more WRONG! So...not even an apology ....because this was the way to do it. I tried to ask if they could undo it or that I could go somewhere to get it right away, but that was impossible. So all I could do was wait...which ended up to be 2 weeks...! And I called chess again. I had gotten no SIM card and they said that they had sent it a week ago and I had to go and ask the post office...still no apology...! I finally went down to the post office, and found it there...so I have it now...but it was quite the wait..!

Not only that...but probably also the reason for the long wait, is that we don't get all our mail. We get some, but important mail like bills and stuff get sent back, with address unknown. This happened twice for the internet bill. And they called me to get the real address, which they had...! I have now called the post office twice about this, and now a week after I got my SIM card, I got two pick up slips for the SIM card, with a note on it saying unknown address, but it was crossed out. If I hadn't gone looking for it myself or called the post office, I would never had gotten it, and wouldn't have gotten any important mail. But what I don't get is that it is the right address and they are sending it back, and that we get some mail but not all...! I hate it...don't we got any rights in this system??? If it happens again, I will seriously take some more action than just call in...!! huff....

2007-05-04T10:03:00.000+02:00

Update!

We have been a bit lazy lately and not written anything on our blog, so this is a short summary of the last months.

We needed some time off work before easter so we went to Barcelona for a couple of days. It was wonderful. We had great weather, for most of the time, went sightseeing a lot and shopping big time! I bought 5 pairs of shoes..! It was the perfect city to relax and drink a lot of wine:) The only thing that almost ruined it was a football game that week, Andorra vs. England. English football supporters must be the worst of them all...they created a horrible atmosphere in the city that day..and it was cops everywhere. But to save the day we hid out in a tapas restaurant away from the city center, chilled out with food and wine. It was very nice. We went there with Ryanair, so the trip itself was very cheap. But they tricked us though! On the internet they say the one baggage can't weigh more then 15 kg. And then on the next page they say that we can check in more then one bag, but then we have to pay more. We thought then that we could have with us more than 15 kg, so we booked 2 baggages each. We told this to the person when we checked in, when she asked how many baggages we wanted to check in, because she saw that we had booked for 2 each, but didn't say anything, just nodded. On the way back we had a lot more with us, because of my shopping of course. But then they said that we had mistaken, it wasn't that we could have more kg with us, but that we had payed to divide the 15 kg on 2 bags..! We both felt tricked...and did not want to give them any more money by paying over weight, so we put away 2 bottles of wine...very cheap..and then put a lot in our hand luggage. Georg also put on 2 pants, 2 t-shirts and 2 sweaters:) And we made it...! Put out more pictures here.

We mostly worked during easter, but also found some time to go home and visit my parents at the cabin, and to see our little puppy Inu. We don't know exactly which one we get yet, but they are all very cute. The funny thing was that all week it had been the most amazing weather...! But the day we were supposed to go home, by car with summer tires, it started to snow..pretty bad. So we had to stay a day extra hoping the snow would go away, which it finally did. More pictures here.

Last week Georg's parents came and visited us here in Oslo. We also went to visit my parents in Larvik, so they could get to know them and of course see the puppy, which we will get in 8 days!! Can't wait!!!! The meeting went great! they got along, and they all had a great time. We showed them the cabin, went all around Larvik, showed them Oslo, the viking ship museum, the Kon-Tiki museum, went around the coast and up to the forest. We put out more pictures here.

Georg and Bastian

Georg's father (Ate) and one of the puppies

Our two families

2007-03-20T19:22:00.000+01:00

Learning to make sushi and other Japanese foods.

Last Saturday Georg invited people from his group home to learn how to make Japanese food. A girl he works with, Solveig, knows how to make great sushi and other great Japanese food. So we got together and made a lot of fabulous food. We had a lot of fun and had food for days after. Georg and me learned a lot and will now continue to make Japanese food... I put out more pictures here.

2007-03-20T19:08:00.000+01:00

Making onigiri!

I got some good tips on how to make onigiri from Milica, so I thought that I should try to make them on my own. They could be great as lunch for work. It was easy making them, and everything went great, part from that they tasted a bit soggy....not the best once. I think I need a bit of practice. Put out more picture here.

2007-03-20T18:21:00.000+01:00

Our Puppy is born!

Our puppy has now been born, the 18th of March. We get a small girl, isn't she cute?
We are thinking of calling her Inu, means dog in Japanese. So it's about 8 weeks till we get her. When we go home for easter we will get to see her for the first time. We are soo excited! We are now reading dog books, buying cute toys and preparing. Can't wait....

2007-01-15T13:58:00.000+01:00

We bought a new apartment!!!

We are just soo excited, I just can't believe it myself...

It was really excited. It was our 4th apartment that we went to see, and the first one that we thought that "here can we live". It is 52 m^2 and is located at Sinsen. So it is really big, pretty central and looked just amazing. We never thought that we would get it, but we just decided to throw everything in on our first try and see how it would go....and our strategy worked..we got it:) We payed 1.750 000 NOK, so it was not too bad..

See more of the apartment here.

2007-01-03T11:25:00.000+01:00

New Website!

I am now putting all my pictures and my website away from the Universities servers, since I realized that I probably won't work there forever...I should start now. I have put my website on Googlepages, here, and my pictures on Picasa, here.

2007-01-02T22:05:00.000+01:00

New Years

We spent New years eve in Holland with Georg's family and friends. Georg had not seen them since this summer, so he was looking forward to spending some time with them. We always have a nice time there, relaxing and catching up. This time was no different. On New Years eve we started with dinner with his family. I cooked Pinnekjøtt, our traditional New Years Eve food that I can`t go without, and Annamarie and Ate made Tapas.

Before we had dinner we had to go through a special Dutch New Years Eve tradition. Every year, when it`s dark, kids go around town picking things up in peoples gardens and brings it to someone else's garden (preferably very far away). Georg told me that they used to do this a lot, and it is a very loved tradition among kids. This meant that we had to clean up the garden. We had to remove everything that remotely could be moved or taken away. It was one big process, and the shed was pretty full afterwards:) It was quite funny, I have to admit.....:) Georg`s parents had a big and heavy table that they had not been able to get rid of for quite some time, and we thought that this could be the right time to set this outside. Unfortunately, they didn`t bring it with them. Probably because it was so heavy. But it was worth a shot:) When it got dark we could see kids running around outside the windows, and they got very terrified when they saw you.

After a very nice dinner we went to the apartment of the girlfriend of Sjoerd (Georg`s friend that visited us in Japan.) We had a great time there drinking lots of (fake) champagne and catching up with each others life's. We spent the night crashing on Laurens coach, where we had our sleeping bags and some clothes. I had such a hang over the next day...uff! But it was a great New Years...

More pictures from Holland here.

2007-01-02T21:26:00.000+01:00

Hiroshima

Before we left Japan, we also had a weekend in Hiroshima with Milica and Sasaki-san. It was a very nice trip and we learned a lot about Japan`s history after the war. Georg has written more about this.

I also put out a lot of pictures here.

2007-01-02T21:15:00.000+01:00

Christmas

We spent Christmas with my family in Larvik. After a very long day traveling from Japan and with an eight-hour jet lag, we mostly spent our days sleeping, watching TV (soo nice to watch Norwegian TV for a change), taking small walks, do traditional Christmas things and play with Bastian. It was very relaxing, just what we needed.

It also was the first Christmas Georg and I spent together, so it was nice showing him all of our silly traditions. We had a wonderful Christmas, even though even Norway didn't have any snow...

More pictures from Larvik here.

2007-01-02T20:29:00.000+01:00

Leaving Japan

We were leaving Japan the 21st of December, and we had to do as much as possible before that. This consisted of shopping a lot... in particular for Christmas presents :) , eating a lot of sushi (which I now love by the way... who would have known) and try the teriyaki burger at Mac Donalds, and have several goodbye gatherings.

We had a great last night out with the gang, eating yakitori, and then we went to our local karaoke place. It was a lot of fun. At work we had one Christmas party with the ICYS, with the small NIMS group we had a Christmas/Annett is leaving-party. At the NIMS party I served them brown goat cheese. To my surprise, and contrary to my intentions, some people actually liked it.

My NIMS group

It was quite sad to leave Japan. We have gotten very good friends there, and really felt at home there now. But we also looked a lot forward to see our friend and family back in Norway.

The trip home was horrible...! We were at Narita airport 2.5 hours before our plane would leave, but our queue was enormous nevertheless. It turned out that all planes to and from London was either canceled or delayed. Back then we didn`t know exactly how bad it was (mum had called British Airways and it turned out that first plane to Oslo would have been on the 24th...!), but were overjoyed when they proposed that they could put us on a plane to Paris, and then catch a flight to Oslo.

In Paris (as probably all European airports that had flights to London) it was CHAOS! That in addition to the several terminals on different locations made it very difficult to find anything. You see, we had to check out and then check in again at another terminal (we didn`t know where) and travel with another airline (we didn`t know which). But we found everything in time.

To make things worse, we had to get in touch with my family. They would pick us up at Gardermoen. My phone didn`t have any battery left (I didn`t check... not used to having a phone anymore) and I didn`t remember any numbers whatsoever. Luckily Georg had written down my dad`s number in his wallet, and we were ready to call when we got to Paris. We had no euro's, so we were hoping that we could either exchange some money, have time to take out some or pay with visa. Because of the chaos, we didn`t have time to take out money, there was no place to exchange money and the visa didn't seem to work on the phones. In a desperate attempt to try all phones that had this visa thing, we found one and we got through to my dad...!

It all ended well. But we were VERY tired after about 30 hours of traveling... Georg had a small infection under his eyes that over the course of 30 hours had gone from bad to worse, making him look as a drug addict at the best... We soo didn`t want to travel for a while now. We'll just stay in one place for a while....hehe...like that is gonna happen:)

More pictures here.

2006-11-26T13:20:00.000+01:00

Other excursions

We have also recently been to a Kabuki show in Ginza and visited Seoul, South Korea. Georg has written about this on his blog.

The pictures from the Seoul trip is here.

2006-11-26T12:45:00.000+01:00

Clubbing in Tokyo.

This weekend we decided to check out the clubs in Tokyo. Tokyo is supposed to be one of the best cities to go clubbing…so we had to at least try it once. We decided to combine it with going to the Tokyo fish marked. It is supposed to be one of the world’s largest fish markets, and arriving around 5 am is a must. Well I am not a morning person, so the only way to get me there that early in the morning is to stay up all night. So that was our plan.

(Before-picture)

Georg and me took Friday off to go shopping for souvenirs in Tokyo during the day, and were meeting Fiona, Milica and Pedro outside Shibuya station at 11:30pm. After a lot of research and some books we decided to check out Xanadu. It is located close to Shibuya station, cheap drinks and cover, plus they had a three year anniversary for the club that day. It was a good club to make the start of our evening. The cover was 1500 JYP (included two drinks, for a girl that is), they had a decent dance floor and decent music. We stayed there for an hour or so, got some drinks, and danced a lot. Since this was our first/only night out we wanted to visit a lot of clubs, so we moved on.

After some failed attempt to find a club called the Ruby room, we ended up going for a club called Gaspanic. They had no cover and the club was supposed to be a good place to go out. From the first impression the club and people seemed a bit shady, but cozy, and had only a very small dance floor. We were about to leave when some great music (mostly R&B and hiphop) came on, so we decided to stay for one drink. It turned out to be one of the best places we went to that night. They played GREAT music and were very cozy. We had a great time dancing and stirring things up. The song “get it started” (with Black Eyed Peas) and Pedro going crazy dancing on the couch will be in my mind for a very long time….hehe!!! We really got the people to the dance floor at that place.. I had forgotten how much fun it was to go clubbing. Have to do it more often.

After the Gaspanic experience, we felt very exhilarated and decided it was time to go to one of the really big clubs in Roppongi. After a short taxi ride, we ended up outside Vanilla. It had gotten good reviews and was supposed to be a big dance club. Plus we got discount because we were foreigners. It only cost us 1000 JPY (included 2 drinks), so it was very cheap. The excitement that we had felt at the last club quickly went away when we came inside. It was PACKED!! I have never seen that many people in a club before, EVER! On one of the dance floors you couldn’t more, just move with the flow. After someone tried to grab my breasts, grabbed my ass a couple of times and sleazed up next to me, I had sort of had enough. Milica and I decided to try out one of the other two dance floors in the place. We ended up on the house/dance –floor. Most of the guys was wearing suits (quite funny really), but they left us alone to dance and have fun. It was a great place with great music, and we stayed there dancing until 4:30 am.

(After Vanilla)

After Vanilla, it was off to find the fish marked. We had some small trouble finding each other after the taxi ride (two taxis, went to two different places with the same name), but we finally ended up at the fish marked. Silly me had pictured it to be sort of an entrance, saying welcome to the fish market, with stalls, tables and easy to find. Not really what met us. It was quite crazy. There was bidding for the fish that was going to the restaurants, small trucks driving everywhere (and those were quite near our feet a couple of times). But I have never in my life seen such a BIG Tuna before…..wow. There were all sorts of fish there…was quite cool I have to say. I have been talking about going there since we came to Japan, so it was nice to finally go there. We stayed there, walking around for about an hour. At that point I was so tired and hungry….so we went to McDonalds to get food. I know, McDonalds, right…but we really tried to find ramen, but all places were either full or we had to stand and eat. After the food we went home. We had a great night out, and I was asking myself why I didn’t do this before…With only a month left, I am not sure I will find the time for another night out like this.

(After-picture)

After four hours of sleep, pizza, crisps, coke and some movies, we went out again. A great jazzy/funk band called the Tengooz was playing at Cork Heads (our local Australian bar, very international). We met up with Milica and Fiona at Ninomiya house and went to Cork Heads for two bottles of red wine and some cocktails, and of course their amazing nachos. I was home at about 1 am, very tired and not completely sober….

It was a great weekend…!!
More pictures here.

2006-11-26T11:17:00.000+01:00

Kyoto, Nara and Osaka

A week ago we went to Kyoto. We took the night bus down Wednesday night, leaving at 21:00 and arriving in Kyoto at 5:30. Together, we had reserved a one person room (because everything else was booked) at a local ryokan, a traditional Japanese type of hotel where you sleep on the floor on a madras, so our whole room was a bed and we just fit in one room. The earliest we could check in was at 10:00, so we had some time to kill. We spent that time on the train-terminal floor with the other homeless people, very cozy and warm. Luckily, Japanese floors are so clean that you can almost eat off it. After some time we went towards the ryokan in search of a breakfast place. The Lonely Planet recommended a sandwich place right next door, so we went there. They had amazing sandwiches, and this naturally became our breakfast place for the upcoming days.

That day we visited a castle, the Imperial Palace Garden and the Golden Palace (Kinkaku-ji). We also wandered around the city, to see more traditional streets and places, and the sweet-stores that Lars, one of our friends from Oslo who had lived there for a year, had kindly recommended.

The next day we had decided to visit Nara, which used to be Japans first capital. Nara`s temples and shrines are on the UNESCO Heritage List as well. Georgs friend Joost, who came to visit us earlier, spent one year as an exchange student there nine years ago. He was back there now to visit them. We met up with him at Nara station, and went around exploring the city. It is a beautiful place. Lots of nature, but best of all, all around the city, palaces and shrines, deer’s are walking around free. They were very cute:)

We went around seeing the “obligatory” palaces and shrines, which were very nice by the way. One claimed to be the largest wooden building in the world…but that is largely disputed. It didn’t look that big to me. After that we went to the top of the hill in Nara, which they ritually set on fire every year (yamayaki). From there you can see all the way to Kyoto, great view. But one thing that bothers me is that all things cost something here. It for instance costs money to go up the hill to see the view…. wouldn’t happen in Norway.

On Saturday we met up with Joost at the Osaka aquarium. It is a huge aquarium, very popular (so we went there very early) and is one of the largest aquariums in the world. The big attraction is a 12-meter-long whale-shark, the largest fish type in the world. I have wanted to go there ever since we got to Japan, because I love fish (especially sharks), so I was very excited…and we didn’t get disappointed. There were all kinds of fish from cute seals and sharks to monster crabs from outer space (well it looked like it…). We had such a fun time exploring the fish that we came out three hours later pretty dizzy... After the aquarium we went on a ride in what was until the birth of London-eye in 1999 the largest Ferris wheel in the world. It was a nice way to see the city.

We didn`t have much more time to explore the city (apart from a short while through some shopping streets in central Osaka), because we had plans visiting Joosts host family. Georg really looked forward to practice his Japanese, I on the other hand was VERY nervous. Both Joost and Georg speak Japanese FAR better than me, so that just makes me even more nervous. But we had a great evening and the family was very kind and welcoming. The family made us Japanese pancakes, stuffed with vegetables, seafood and meat, it is very good. On top you have mayonnaise and some kind of caramel sauce.

On Sunday, our last day, we tried to see the temples and shrines we had left on our list. Unfortunately it was raining, and the “rest of Japan” had also decided to go out that day to see the same temples, so we only saw the silver temple (Ginkaku-ji) and Kiyomizu-dera, but both of them were very beautiful. Afterwards we got something to eat and then took the Shinkansen back to Tokyo (took us only a little over two hours!).

We really liked Kyoto. It was very different from the other cities we had seen, much more cozy, but still eventful with lots of history. Hope we get the chance to get back there someday:)

More pictures here.

2006-11-20T14:14:00.000+01:00

Nikko

In the end of November we went for a weekend trip to Nikko. Nikko is a couple of hours north of Tos and shrines on the UNESCO World Heritage List. It is mostly famous for being a Buddhist tempkyo and has templele place. It was also the home of the BIG War-Lord (before the Meiji period), very “sympathetic” as he killed his wife and son because it looked good politically! Nikko was also the home of Meiji during WW2. So it is one of THE places to go to in Japan. This means that everyone is there too….lots of people. This month the leaves were starting to change color, and that is a good reason to go to Nikko, since it lies in the middle of a national park and has very beautiful surroundings.

We arrived late Friday evening in Nikko. We had learned from our Kamakura-Prince-hotel experience and booked a cheap hostel which seemed pretty good, had great reviews, and had available rooms. The hostel was a bit far from the station, so we had to take a taxi, but the room was very cheap, nice, clean and they served us very good breakfast. They even had a toilet-paper roll holder with music…. drove us crazy though.

Saturday we had our temples and shrines day. We tried to see as much as we could of all the shrines and temples as we could. They were very beautiful and a bit different from the ones we had seen previously. Nikko is also famous for its many wild monkeys and a shrine (or something) with three monkeys on them, probably seen them before.

After seeing all the shrines and temples, we took one of the walking trails around the city and the parks. It was very nice and relaxing to get away from the people and walk in the nature. We also saw some funny looking figures with red hat and napkin around its neck. After asking some Japanese people (in Japanese..!) we found out that these were supposed to be baby Buddha’s and the area around was a ruin of an old temple.

In the end of the walking trail, we had a “brilliant idea”. It was only about 16:30, so not dark quite yet. Nikko is also famous for all the water falls that there are in this neighborhood, and we thought it would be nice to see one that happened to be very near by……well the map showed about 3km, but the text called it a three-hour hike. We thought that we are much faster than the normal Japanese person, so we started to walk, almost run, uphill. After about 30 minutes (and it was getting darker by the minute) the signs pointed into the woods (or at least that was what we thought). We kept on going for a while longer. Pretty exhausted we met a dead end in the road (and it was dark!), can say we was pretty pissed off! Nothing..! We must have taken the wrong way somewhere. So all we were left with was to turn around and walk back down (what a disappointment). It was a bit scary to walk down in the dark thought and hearing monkeys scream around you…but unfortunately we didn`t see one.

Since our waterfall-excursion the day before was such a bad one, we decided on Sunday to go to one of the largest ones by bus. We woke up early and were ready to have a great day seeing the waterfall and possibly hike around a big lake. Well we couldn’t have been more wrong. The bus was totally packed, so we had to stand, which was okay since it was only 15km… that took about four hours (including a toilet break)!! It was unbelievable. During the toilet break half way, several people got of and took another bus back to Nikko (we soo should have done the same, but we thought that now we are here…so..). Two hours later we arrived at the waterfall, and at that point neither of us was very interested in that stupid waterfall. So we took our mandatory pictures, bought some souvenirs and food, and got ourselves to the bus stop to go home. This was enough! The queue to get back to Nikko was enormous, and we had to wait for one and a half hours, and it was freezing cold (Georg didn’t bring a jacket…). The bus ride back took only 30 minutes, so that was nice. Back in Nikko we took the first train to Tokyo….we wanted to go home.

All in all we had a great weekend….well a perfect Saturday and a horrible Sunday:)

More pictures here.

2006-10-17T11:29:00.000+02:00

Other trips

We also had an interesting biking trip to a big Buddha "near by", but Georg has written about it on his blog. Georg has also written about our trip to Tsuchiura to see the fireworks, that turned out to be an interesting trip as well, as it usually is with us:)

2006-10-16T15:29:00.000+02:00

Our life in Tsukuba so far

We have now lived in Tsukuba for about 2 months (half way through), and we are finally settling in. Apart from some nasty cultural differences, we have had a lot of fun here and now started to get to know a small crowd of people. I have finally gotten my alien (!) registration card, so now we can finally rent movies (100yen/6Kr pr. movie for 1 week). Not that I at all dislike Japanese TV, which is very funny, but enough is enough. I didn`t think that I would miss TV so much (which I don`t), but I miss chick-flick series, movies and magazines in English sooo much. I missed them so much that I had to start reading chick-flick-books (which I never ever do). But yesterday two girls I met and me rented a movie (Singles), ate chocolate, chips, ice-cream and milkshake. It was great!

Apart from work (which isn’t going in the speed I was hoping for) I have started my Japanese class. I have joined the intermediate course, not the introductory or the beginners, but the intermediate..puh! So it is quite some work. All the five people in my class have done a lot of Japanese before, except from me, so I have to work hard to stay up-float. The grammar is not too difficult, it is just that I don`t know so many words and I am not too comfortable speaking yet. But I am practicing:) And it is a lot of fun!

But I do miss home, and am now looking forward to going home to Norway, eat Norwegian food and see things that I understand:)

2006-10-16T15:28:00.000+02:00

Akihabara and Asakusa

This week Edwin and Sjoerd (Georg’s friends from Holland) were visiting us, so we decided to see some parts of Tokyo that we hadn’t explored yet. Akihabara is the electronics-part of Tokyo, and has all the “must haves” and the newest gadgets. It has also quite some shrines, restaurants and shopping streets around for us to see.

The next day we went to Asakusa, and that was a much more exciting part of town. This part has one big temple and some smaller shrines. It was also one of the “happening” places in Tokyo after the war, when they got their first movie theatre in Japan. We had a great day there browsing around all the souvenirs and shrines and eating some very bad curry (got quite sick), and ended the day eating yakitori at a small Japanese pub with lots of beers.

I put out more pictures here.

2006-10-16T15:20:00.000+02:00

Trip to Kamakura

A couple of weeks ago we went a weekend to Kamakura. Kamakura used to be Japans capital from 1185 to 1333, and has tons of shrines, zen-temples and one big Daibutsu (Buddha). It is said to be one of the must-sees in Japan, and luckily for us, not very far from Tokyo (a bit more to the South).

Georg had managed to reserve a hotel room over the phone (in Japanese!), a pretty expensive hotel as well, but since we were just staying one night we thought we could indulge ourselves in a bit of luxury. The name of the hotel was Kamakura Prince hotel….hehe.

We took the train to Kamakura Saturday morning and went around seeing the shrines we could see before it got too dark. They have a lot of interesting shrines and very beautiful zen-temples where you can see people meditating in small buildings. They were very beautiful, but when you have seen ten to twenty, you have seen quite enough.

We went to try to find the hotel in the evening, and that wasn’t as easy as we thought. From the pictures we got the impression that the hotel was lying directly on the beach, or at least right next to it. On the contrary, it was lying on top of a hill on the other side, and quite a walk it was. Then we discovered that they had given us a twin room, not a double, and told us in a rude way that we were NOT able to switch…..hmm….we had to do some reorganization of the room.

A “bit” stubborn and very hungry, we didn`t want to give them any more money, so we went out to Kamakura centre to find some food. In Tsukuba we have this amazing little yakitori restaurant that is very good and very cheap, so we thought we could go for that. The food was definitively not all that, and the prize was four times what we pay at home (that is, in Tsukuba). A bit disappointed we tried to find a bar, and got help from some very kind Japanese people that guided us in the right direction. We ended up in this bar/restaurant with very cheap and good beer and food (we should have gone there in the first place). Our day was saved…and we had a great time trying out sake and a funny Korean drink, which, on the picture, looked like it had a living gold fish in it.

We ended our day reasonably early, so that we had some time for even more shrines and the big Buddha in the morning. Well, I didn’t get much sleep that night. I was totally eaten up by mosquitoes, even though Georg helpfully was trying to kill as much as he could. Also we wasn`t able to turn on the air condition…so it was very hot. The “funny” thing was that next morning when mister and misses clumsy woke up, they found out that they had forgot to close the door to the balcony, and that was the reason for all the mosquitoes and that the air-condition didn`t work….we are soooo good! Well we at least had a good breakfast.

That day we first went to see the big Buddha, which is very famous. Near the Buddha were some small shrines in a cave (very cool!), with lots of small statues of some kind. In the Lonely Planet we had read that there was supposed to be a Daibutsu-hiking trail, and we thought that sounded like a lot of fun, even though it was raining and we only had sandals...yeah. Only a short while after starting on the hike we started to think that shoes would have been a good idea on this muddy road, but we decided to continue anyway. Even though we both are very clumsy, we didn`t get that dirty, believe it or not. And we saw a lot of nice and cozy shrines and a lot of nature. It was definitively worth it. After the hiking trail, we found this small curry restaurant where we sat and dried up and got ourselves some food, for so going home. We had a lot of fun, and a great deal of laughs that trip, especially in retrospect:)

I put out more pictures here.

2006-09-18T12:40:00.000+02:00

First week working at NIMS

I have been working at NIMS for a week now, well mostly been shown around and had a couple of days training at the TEMs. It has been very nice, and they have been taking good care of me. They have two microscopes that I will use as much as I possibly can: one or two times a week probably (they have a lot of users). They have both the instruments and the software we were lacking in Oslo, so now I can do some EFTEM-SI…yeah!! I will have my first presentation of my PhD-project for the group tomorrow, so I hope they think that the project is interesting and want to help me with it.

This is my office. I have this BIG room all by myself (room for about ten people). The building seems pretty new and is a bit like MINAlab… it is big and has sort of this empty feeling, even though it is not empty at all. And since there hasn’t been anyone else in the office, and I haven’t had that much to do, I have been a bit bored. But this week two new interns are arriving at NIMS and will be in the office, so that might be nice, and I will probably get a better working moral. Part from that, the group has a coffee break every day at 15.30, an hour, to mingle and chat. That has been very good, and I have met most of the group on these occasions. The group is very nice and seems very social. We met them out one night at a restaurant and ended up going out drinking with them, it was nice. But the next day I had my first day at the microscope…hehe….luckily I didn’t have a hangover (but Georg on the other hand…..).

This weekend we had three days off, Monday was a holiday. So we went around Tsukuba to get to know the area and to shop, and on Sunday we went to Tokyo to see the Imperial Palace and Ginza. The Palace was very nice, well the gardens and the ground around then. The Palace is just open for visitors twice a year. We had a great day just walking around and seeing these gardens and then exploring Ginza a bit. We went to the Sony building. It was quite cool to see what they are about to sell next.

Georg thought it was quite funny that he was walking around there with a free software T-shirt…:) (Since they have been on collision course with them on their new restricted discs)

Put out some more pictures from our Tokyo trip here,

2006-09-10T12:08:00.000+02:00

IMC16 in Sapporo

This week I was in Sapporo for the International Microscopy Congress. I arrived on Saturday morning by plane. It was a nice plane trip and hardly any clouds, so I could see most of Japan as we went over. I was pretty tired when I arrived, from being sick all week, so that day I mostly spent in bed. The next day I used to do my sightseeing, and take my tourist pictures. I went to visit the Eiffel tour of Sapporo so I could see most of the town and the surroundings. Then I saw the clock house (not extremely interesting), the old parliament building, the botanical garden and the university. After taking soo many pictures with no people on them I started trying to get in the picture myself, which I had a lot of fun with (no…I did not loose my mind).

Yes, I am not extremely fan of cactuses.

In the evening I went to the welcome party at the conference. It wasn’t so much fun, 2000 people trying to mingle and talk to the people they had met before, and me not knowing anyone, resulted in going home early. The conference started on Monday with presentations, lectures and posters. Except from visiting some talks, not much happened on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday after lectures there was a conference ceremony with a classical concert. At the ceremony, which was pretty boring, the Emperor and Empress of Japan were present (..pretty cool or what?). He himself actually used to be an electron microscopist. Wasn’t aloud to take any pictures though. After that we went to a beer party (free…!!). There I met these three guys below, and we went out to get more beer and sake. Well….the sake was a bad idea, I was sooo hung-over the next day that I slept until 14.00.

Ivo (Holland/Kyoto Univ.), Francis (Scottland/Strathclyde Univ.), me and Anjan (India/Singapore/ MIT).

Thursday evening it was the conference dinner. All of these parties are the same, food and drinks on a few tables with peoples walking around and talking. Not always a good thing, often too little food and loooong queues. Afterwards we went out to drink some more at another place, but we all went home pretty early due to the hard night the day before. On Friday were the last lectures and MY poster session (put out my poster here). It was very interesting, and I got some feedback and contacts. After the sessions was the Farwell party. As before, there wasn’t that much food so Francis and I decided to get some ramen at the famous Ramen Alley. It took us some time to find it, but when we did we got our reward: 2 beers. We went through the whole street and only one served ramen (but it had a 7m long queue!). However, then we found the rest of the street (probably the old street), and there we found some ramen places. We ended up in a small place (only place for about 6 people), and it was just soooo good ramen. It was definitively worth the trip. On Saturday morning I took the plane back to Tokyo, where Georg was waiting for me. I had a lot of fun, but it was extremely nice to come home (to Tsukuba and Georg) too:)

The beer we got in ramen Alley, it was pretty funny.

I put out the rest of the pictures from my Sapporo trip here.

2006-09-01T08:25:00.000+02:00

First week in Tsukuba, Japan

We arrived in Tsukuba on Sunday the 27th of August in the morning. The plane trip went well, part from forgetting some papers concerning my visa (that I didn`t think I would need), but I could mail them the papers later…puh. At the bus station the person in charge of international visitors at NIMS (National Institute of Material Science, where I will work) met us and leaded us to the place where we would live the next four months, the Takezono House. We knew that it was the cheapest alternative they had given us, so we didn’t expect it to be “all that”. However, the apartment was so BIG! We were shocked. We got a two room apartment, with a bath tub, balcony, TV, video, fax, washing machine, dryer, air conditioning, Japanese toilet, huge fridge/freezer, internet (FREE) and a big living room. For only 6.000 JPY (42 EUR, 360 NOK), we also rented two bikes for the four months we will stay here.

On Sunday there was a City-Festival going on in Tsukuba. The streets were filled with small booths with Japanese-take away food, snacks and toys, and there was a big parade. Apart from taking the pictures below, we also filmed it… it was crazy!

We took one week off before I go to Sapporo for a conference and Georg starts to work at the University of Tsukuba. During this week we were supposed to explore Tsukuba and go to Tokyo, but then I got ill. :( Although I caught a cold, probably due to a lot of changes in temperature over a short period of time and little sleep, we have seen quite a bit of Tsukuba already. It is a very nice and western like city, very international. It is a small, planned city just north of Tokyo, with just under 200 000 citizens. The city is called Tsukuba Science City and was founded in 1987 in order to move some of the big research companies and institutions into the vicinity of Tokyo. It is really a more quiet and peaceful town than we expected, and I already think we will have a hard time leaving in December.

I put out more pictures here.

2006-09-01T07:58:00.000+02:00

ICPS 2006 in Bucharest

Romania

In August Georg, Sanja, Dina, Mateusz, Nicolay, Klaus, Ingvild, Yngvild and me went to Croatia for a beach holiday and then to Bucharest in Romania for this years ICPS. We had a very interesting and fun time. Georg has written something about Croatia, so I won’t mention much about it here, but we had a lot of fun.

Romania on the other hand was more an “interesting” experience. I expected that the country was poor. What was waiting for us, however, was not what we expected at all. It is not that I expected the people there to be extremely nice to us all the time, but here the people were often directly rude, impolite and if you expected people to smile back… think again. For instance at restaurants, waiters were standing behind you ready to take your plate the moment you were finished. Sometimes they did the same when we were not even finished yet. We got very tired of being treated like this all the time. But in the end we did find a couple of good restaurants with good waiters. We once spent the whole day there… It was our little refuge.

Apart from the people, the Romanian culture and language was very interesting, and we both felt that we wanted to learn more about it when we got home – this never happened, because we immediately had to start preparing for our trip to Japan. They are really proud of their Roman heritage and show that in every way possible. Commercials show Romans, buildings have Roman-like architecture and they still got their roman language (very much like Italian). It is also very interesting to see how much Romania wants to be a part of the EU….it is a LOT!! You see EU flags everywhere. If there is a Romanian flag somewhere, next to it is always an EU flag. It is a bit too obvious…:)… fast cash.

We also went to see the parliament palace. It was HUGE. It is the second largest administrative building in the world (just after the Pentagon). No wonder Romania is poor after building this enormous thing.. Wikipedia writes the following: ”Effectively, the building, due to its immense size, cuts the city into two—an urban planner's nightmare. Constructing the Palace and the Centru Civic required demolishing about one-fifth of the historic districts of Bucharest. The neighborhoods and churches that were razed to make way for the behemoth are remembered to this day.” The guided tour through the palace we took was very interesting and rather honest though.

During the ICPS we got to see some of the countryside of Romania, and that was a lot more beautiful and calming. If we will go back to Romania, this is where we will go. We went to visit two castles, among Bran Castle where Dracula was supposed to be living according to Bram Stoker. But in real life Vlad Dracul (Vlad the Impaler) was there for only two weeks for refuge. And no vampire stuff either. We expected to see blood and vampire stuff…boy were we disappointed, nothing more than an old castle. Furthermore there was a huge queue, and when we were out of the queue, we were out of the castle…

The ICPS was a lot of fun, a bit chaotic though, but with the amount of struggle the committee had been through the last week they managed to do a great job. Can`t be easy to live in a “democratic”(……ehh) country. The Republic Party took away all of the student dorms set away for the students at ICPS a week before the conference, because the organization for physics student refused to join their party in return… horrible. But we had a great time, with lots of parties and meeting new people….and we are now looking forward to next year in London…bound to be good. At least in London it won’t be 46 degrees Celsius in the shadow….puh…that was HOT!

Fore more pictures look here.

2006-07-16T21:17:00.000+02:00

Home at our cabin and participating in”Trytefestivalen”.

Georg and I went home a few days to rest at our cabin and to participate in “trytefestivalen”. This is a small fishing contest, trying to fish the largest “Tryte or Abbor” as some call it. My father was the “Trytekongen” last year (got the largest Tryte) and we desperately tried to keep the title within the cabin. My father, mother, brother and his girlfriend Tina, Georg and me tried to win the cabins honor. But….we didn`t win this year. This was the first time Georg tried to fish and he caught 3 fish. I`m very proud. He even put on the worm on the hook, killed and prepared the fish himselves….:) We had lots of fun even thou I got a bit sick in the end, stomach flue.

Georg`s first fish!!

Dad and my brother Gaute fishing

"Trytefestivalen"

2006-07-16T21:08:00.000+02:00

Out climbing

We have had some very nice and hot days in Oslo lately, so using them climbing is perfect…but extremely exhausting. Some pictures from the climb is presented bellow.

Georg "in action"

Kanutte securing someone, in skådalen.

2006-05-19T11:50:00.000+02:00

17th of May

On Wednesday it was the 17th of May, our national day. This is the day that Norway got its constitution. This is highly celebrated in Norway, kids walk in parade with marching bands, everyone is dressed up in nice clothes or in their national dress and there is lots of barbequing and ice crème- and hot-dog eating. Last year we escaped the craziness bu going to my parent’s cabin, but this year we had to go. After all this was Georg`s first 17^th of May, and he had to experience this crazy Norwegian behavior.

Fist we met up with Kanutte, Tor Helge, Ingvild and Klaus to watch the children’s parade and wave to the King and Queen. Then we went down to Aker Brygge to eat hot-dogs and ice-crème. Afterwards we went home to change and then go barbequing at Kanutte and Tor Helge`s. Since the weather was crappy, we had to barbeque on the balcony, but it was very cozy. In the evening we played Settlers. So all in all it was a great 17^th of May, but now that Georg have experienced it, we probably will run for cover next yearJ

Georg and me at the parade. I have on my national dress (Vestfolds bunad).

Tor Helge and Kanutte in their national costume.

I put out more pictures of the day here!

2006-05-07T17:18:00.000+02:00

First barbeque and outside climb of the season.

Part from Georg being in Holland (..and I miss him so much), the last days here in Oslo have been amazing. We finally got sun and the temperature has been up to 20 ^oC. So yesterday we were out barbequing all day and today we went out for our first outside climb of the season. It was great. The sun was shining and the climbing trails were amazing. It was cool to see how much we have improved with climbing inside since last summer. I can`t wait till next time....

Below is a picture of me (almost) on the top…..it was sooo cool!!!

I also put out some more pictures here.

2006-04-20T14:43:00.000+02:00

First rejection!

Around Christmas I sent in my first ever article to a journal, from my Master thesis work. I kind of knew that it wasn’t my best work ever, since it is my first ever real research, but I was hoping. So today I got the rejection mail……And it was a harsh one. It is amazing how much they can hurt you in so few words…..so today I am wallowing in my own misery. Guess this is something I have to get used to, but I have to admit, it does hurt.

I will send in my first article from my PhD work this summer, and now I am twice as nervous……..Uff….

2006-04-17T00:10:00.000+02:00

Easter with the family

We just came home from spending Easter with my family. We went by bus home on Thursday, because it was cheaper. Yes, the Dutch spirit is rubbing off on me. Well, those who know me are well aware of my motion sickness….so yes, the buss ride was very “interesting”, and so was the rest of that day:) Well, we finally came to Larvik and that evening we celebrated dad’s birthday (even though it actually was on Saturday).

On Friday we met up with my Uncle Ivar, Aunt Irene and their dog Kajsa, to go for a hike by the coast. It was the most beautiful day….

On Saturday we went to visit Gaute and Tina’s apartment and in the evening we went to Bjørnar’s birthday party. It was very nice to see a lot of my Larvik friend’s again. I haven’t seen them in such a long time. So the party was great…

But, now we are home again, couching in front of the TV with Chinese food. We love it!

I have posted more pictures here.

2006-04-03T11:12:00.000+02:00

He finally moved in..!

A couple of weeks ago we borrowed my parent’s car and drove to Holland to get Georg`s stuff. We took the boat Oslo-Kiel, which was fantastic by the way, and then drove to Groningen. It was nice going to a country that already has spring….I am so sick of snow, rain and slush! Most of the time in Holland consisted of packing and moving things out of his old apartment, and help him prepare for his final Master-thesis-talk. He was a little nervous about it, but it went GREAT!! Afterwards we went out celebrating with his friends….I soo need to learn more Dutch, but I am concentrating on learning as much Japanese as I can before we leave for Tsukuba.

Before we drove back we went a couple of day to visit Georg`s parents, that was very nice. The day before we went home we woke up at 6.00 and went biking. Crazy or what? Well, the reason was that the next day we had to wake up at 4.00 and drive for 5 hours to get there in time for the boat. So we were trying to turn the time a little. Well, it was a fantastic bike trip. It was still dark when we went out, so we saw the sun rise and the birds was singing…ahh…amazing we have to do that again..:) And then we went back.

I can say that I am definitively not a fan of driving on the highway in Germany…They are horrible! One car was driving for 30 min in 120 km/hour 2m behind our car……2m!! We tried to lover the speed, drive a little to the side, but no…he wouldn’t pass…. Luckily a police car came after some time and only then he passed us. I so hope he got pulled over somewhere. But part from that the drive went ok.

So now we are both living in my apartment till the summer, I love it! But I will sellthe appartment before we go to Japan….and then find a slightly bigger apartment after Christmas. We soo need that...hehe....I`ve got a LOT of stuff:)

I have more pictures from the trip here.

2006-03-05T21:32:00.000+01:00

Hi!

Just made my first blog!! Well, Georg helped me of course..:)
Lying in bed sick...so I had to find something to do.....I am soooooo bored. It is just that much you can stand of "These are the days of our lifes" and "Glamour", which I hate by the way...! And I think Georg is pretty tired of watching "Sex in the City" again...hehe...but I love it though. Hope to be able to go back to work tomorrow.....back to my exciting life, so I will have something more cool to write about.