A touch of rain...

Put on a raincoat! Maybe some rain pants too. Wellingtons wouldn't go astray. Find that super strength umbrella too. You'll need it!
Well OK, I wasn't quite so well prepared, but I did at least have a raincoat and a small collapsable umbrella. But then again, in Australia we don't have this thing known as rain.

So by the time I'd walked into the city on my way to work, my legs and feet were already well on their way to saturation. And then I made a big mistake. I did that which one just does not do, at least not in a rainy flooding town. Yes my friends, I did, I walked along close to the roadside. And as can be expected got completely soaked down my left hand side by a passing car. And then I realised I had left my wallet at home. So i turned around. And promptly got soaked down my right hand side by another passing car.

Yes, well I've now got it - Bergen is a rainy place, and you get wet no matter how much goretex you have between yourself and the elements! I just haven't quite got the handle on how to deal with it on a day to day basis. And another thing I haven't quite got yet, is how to dress with any sort of style in this chilly snowy/rainy weather! There go the Norwegians, beautiful and stylish; their blond hair flowing out from under their beanies, the cheeks flushed, radient yet comfortable in their jackets, luxurious scarves draped around their necks, elegant gloves adorning their hands, skipping along the icy paths on their way to work and school. And here comes the Australian, clomping along in his boots that look more at home in the mountains, his jeans, wet and muddy around the bottom, his two size too big red raincoat hanging off his shoulders (and looking much like a skirt if I draw in the stretchy elastic thing around the waiste), his home made crocheted beanie with it's practical ear flaps poking out from under his raincoat hood (which for some stupid reason was designed to come only halfway over my head!), slipping and sliding, his arms windmilling to keep his balance on the icy paths. The Norwegians watch on in slight disbelief - is he a street performer putting on some comedy act in a funny costume? Ohh ok, he's Australian, that's alright. They're a little bit strange from down their.

Fish, guns, pintails, mini-mals... What am I talking about, I can hear you thinking. Well, I have decided I am destined to ride the barrel, hang ten, and become a pro surfer. All based on two days of surfing on a sprained ankle in 2 degree water on the west coast of Norway. And these, my friends, are just the beginning of the bewildering range of surfboard flavours. From your smallest, lightest fibreglass dainty, to your mammoth 9 foot malibu for easy crusing.

So I off on the trail of a sweet surfboard to kick of my surfing career. The problem is, I'm rather stingy and really don't want to pay much for a board at all! But of course I still won't settle for anything but the best. A rather tricky dilema I'm in.

So hopefully in a short while this blog will be filled with thrilling recounts of my surfing adventures alongside my trusty Norwegian viking on his equally cheap but top quality board.

See you on the water!

The Journey Home

There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home! I'm clicking my heels together many more than the prescribed bare minimum three clicks, but it's still not working! If only it was that simple. Instead, I started my journey a good 19 hours ago. You see, I didn't put faith in the ability of Heathrow to effectively shuttle passengers through customs and so on, so I gave myself a good 3 hours leeway at the airport. This plan backfired somewhat, and after a hearty meal at an Irish Airport pub, I still had a good 2 hours to while away before boarding. Now as I'm sure you'd agree, airports aren't the most conducive to time-whiling-away. Partly due to the ear-piercing squeal which is the Heathrow public announcement sound effect. Partly due to the brain function impeding, odourless gas which they release into the air in airports. Now this makes any attempts at concentration longer than the time taken to open my book to the current page impossible. So I have become quite adept at opening and closing my book to page 147.

Well, after whittling away the hours, I decided it was soon enough before boarding to take a swig of my cough medicine to ensure a cough free flight to Hong Kong (free from coughing myself that is - you'd be hard pressed to board a flight full of Hong Kongers without having at least a handful of old chinese ladies attempting to cough up their spleen onto your shoulder). Reading the bottle label I was not really all that surprised to see that it may cause drowsiness, as just about everything from baby food to suncream may cause drowsiness these days. So sitting down in my emergency exit seat, provided with ample leg space, I was ready to knuckle down to a good few hours and maybe a film or two, before restless, broken sleep would perhaps overtake me. So you can imagine my surprise, when alerted by a cool patch of drool spreading over my left shoulder, I awoke to find the plane air born and climbing up through the clouds. What is in this medicine! Incredible. I didn't even recall taxiing out, or taking off. Well I proceeded to make the fateful decision to accept a bit of dinner, despite the fact I wasn't too hungry (you see I suffer from hungrophobia - terrified I will become hungry without easy access to food), certain I would regain this drug induced slumber immediately afterwards. A tip to air travellers in hindsight - once you accomplish the feat of falling asleep - DO NOT SURRENDER IT FOR ANYTHING! Not for conversation, not for money, and definitely not for lukewarm doggy plane food!

Sheep, rain and guinness

It's a lovely land, this little island tucked away in Europe. There's
lovely sheep here. Some lovely cows too. And you don't ever need to
worry about going thirsty, because they have a decent supply of rain as
well. And if you get sick of that watery taste, there's no problems in
finding something a bit thicker, a bit darker, a bit blacker. Just turn around,
head into the pub behind you and order a pint of the black stuff -Guinness. And yes, it does taste better in Ireland.

Now you see I've been a bad Croft. I've been a rebel Croft. I have thrown caution to the wind, and blatantly disregarded the unspoken Croft law. I have been on a tour. A touristy tour. Now this is a crime punishable
only by some very bad punishment. But you know what - it was actually
not too bad. A decent bit of fun really. I don't think I would
otherwise have had the experience of cooking authentic tortilla patatas - Spanish omelet
with a fellow Australian and two Spanish girls, in a hostel called "The
Randy Leprechaun" in a sleepy country town secreted into the wild west
coast of Ireland.

Well that's all I can squeeze from my brain frizzled from a long bus ride back to Dublin for now. Sleep tight my lovelies.

The clothes of the vikings

If you want to attract a bit of attention around the streets of London, all you need to do is put on a pair of fluro green jeans and waltz along without a care in the world. Walking toward Covent Garden today I attracted the attention of a charity money collector. I was all prepared to let rip a yell of fear and anguish, trip him up, and make a helter skelter dash away down the street. Covering my ears with my hands and squealing like a slaughtered pig (or really, a pig that is being slaughtered), I only just managed to lip read, and discover that, no, he wasn't trying to extort money out of my dieting wallet to feed some half extinct tree gecko species, but was, in fact just asking where I'd bought my jeans. I took my hands away from my ears, and stopped scaring the passing tourists with my animal noises, and managed to splutter out that I had bought them in Denmark, and that they were developed from the original battle design used by the vikings when the raided and plundered the English coast.

Well I continued on down the street, a spring in my step, confident in the knowledge that lime green pants, despite being physically impossible to colour coordinate with anything - i mean, they are LIME GREEN! - have the ability to make one noticed in the world, to attract attention, be it good or bad.

Bubble baps for lunch

I thought I'd arrived in the wrong city when i stepped outside Stanstead airport in London. There were patches of blue in the sky and the pavements were bathed in warm sunshine. I was expecting floods, overflowing sewerage, third world conditions of disease and army drops of water and supplies.

It didn't take long to be reminded that yes, I am indeed in London, England, despite the lack of flood induced chaos. It seemed to me that London doesn't need weird and wonderful weather conditions to nurture chaos, it just lives in a perpetual cycle of chaos regardless. Just the trip from the airport to the city by bus took something over 2 hours, due to closed tunnels, road works and blocked up traffic. We even managed to cross the Themes two times before arriving, and I certainly received feelings of deja vu driving along various streets.

I arrived eventually, my throat parched, my legs wobbly from lack of food, and stumbled to a bagel shop in the nearest food court. I fluttered my eyelashes, and charmingly asked the lady for a bacon and cheese bagel, and if she would so kindly top up my water bottle from the tap. Now my degraded level of English (resulting from my year with the vikings) may be to blame, but I was rather surprised when she smiled sweetly, took me water bottle, and tossed it neatly into the bin beside her. I like to think it wasn't my poor English that caused the misunderstanding, but instead that she became light headed and confused as a result of my windswept looks and charm...

My reintroduction to wonderful London would of course not be complete without a journey on the reliable and fail proof London underground. A lovely journey 5 stops down the line, a relaxing 15 minute wait on a motionless train (due to radio failures), a lovely journey 5 stops back up the line (due to those radio failures), a handful of trips up and down the never ending escalators and eventually and almost an hour later I had completed my journey of a few kilometers. I at least got my recommended daily intake of Picadillys, Waterloos, and Elephants and castles.

Oh, and I had a bubble bap for lunch.

København, Malmø

First for a little photoblog tour around København!


A windmill..... somewhere near the little mermaid!


Den lille havfrue herself, watching the storm roll in.


Some mythological character rides her steeds through the foam and spray.


Nyhavn in spectacular weather.


Anyone fancy a beer? you have over 16000 to choose from... Carlsberg brewery.


Eat your heart out Papa :P

And now a little tour around Malmø - a nice little Swedish city


Lovely colourful streets in Gamle Staden.


There were flowers over all.


Some swedish architecture.


Bam!


Now that's a little cuter


One of the artists


The swedes in Malmø use bikes just as much as the danes in Copenhagen.

Here come the photos...

Roskilde
First, an introduction to the weather conditions...


Wind power, and water.


Good luck mate!


Stuck in the mud.


"Don't worry about the mud - have a nice cold beer to quench your thirst!"

Now the people and the music


Please meet Frank. The ambassador to Camp Frank.


Veronica is ready for the Ark, Ivår is hiding, and Kari is downright sick of waiting for them!


The Ark, waiting, waiting,


And there he is, that Freddie Mercury inspired entertainer!


We sat down, Heidi reflected on the days at Roskilde...


Me and Heidi,


They were mud resistant - I swear!

Life after Roskilde

Life after Roskilde is remarkably free of mud. Free of rain, filled with sun. Copenhagen is sparkling, offering up its sights, sounds, and glorious pastries to me!

The last night at Roskilde took off. It was fantastic. The weather turned beautiful - dark blue evening skies with an occasional faint star poking through. And there was such a communal feeling of happiness, and sadness that the festival was coming to its final, glittering, dancing end. The last concert of the night was one not that many people hand much experience with - Basement Jaxx. We all knew a couple of songs of course, but we didn't know how they would turn out live, what performance they would give. Well, they gave us a darn good night! Never before have I danced so much. Congo trains spiralling through the crowd, people young and old, male and female throwing their bodies around in fits of uncontrollable dancing. The music was infectious, it found it's way into our blood, it entered our souls! A blend of house, salsa, disco, it was a perfectly crafted concert - a gem of organisational genious.

It came to a glittering, firework filled close, and as the organisers said thankyou and goodbye, they had tears in their eyes, reflecting those in ours.

Well life after Roskilde. Life after Norway. Life without people surrounding me, people there at both sides to talk to. I found yesterday tough - i was exhausted, and alone for the first time in almost a year. But wherever i turned i would see people with their Roskilde bracelet on, and have a feeling of kinship wash over me. I chatted to a old version of David Brent from the office, was bored to death with talk about his life working at a aluminium pressing factory, and his life making small computer programs to calculate the most efficient production methods. But I was saved by a fellow Australian who had been at Roskilde too, and chatted to him about our experiences together.

But now I will leave my friendly readers, to continue my explorations of lovely Copenhagen. Possibly tommorow I will take a trip to Malmø in Sweden, On Thursday visit the Helsingor castle, and then take a trip around the Carlsberg factory on Friday. Who knows :)

The Great, The Good, The Bad, and The Red Hot Chili Peppers

The great - "The Flaming Lips"
The good - "The Who", "Thomas Dybdahl"
The bad - ...
The Red Hot Chili Peppers - "The Red Hot Chili Peppers"

The Flaming Lips. Wow. People who had never heard of them confessed of nearly breaking down in tears during their concert. Those who had heard of them came away speaking in tongues, touched by the hand of Wayne Coyne. They have played at Roskilde five times, the first time before I was born, in 1987, and I can't imagine they have lost any of their touch with age. A whirlpool of imagination, colours, and fantasy creatures, they are not only spot on musically, but they know how to entertain.

And then there was the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Not worth talking about. We were all falling asleep with boredom.

Roskilde

The inuit have 17 different words for snow? The arabs 10 words for sand? Well well, those in Roskilde have at least 50 words for mud. Sloppy mud, thick mud, stuck-in-the-mud-mud, water on top of mud, mud with hidden holes, muddy mud, concert mud, tent mud, clothes mud, leg mud, mud inside the sleeping bag, mud on the inside of the concert tent roof?!, mud that makes dancing impossible (you dance inside your gum boots - because they're stuck fast),mud under the fingernails, mud in the hair, mud inside of my knee high gum boots, mud that makes sucking sounds, mud that makes slurping sounds.

It's incredible! I haven't seen so much mud in my lifetime. And I'm quite proud to say that I am surviving the wettest Roskilde festival in history. Yes, EVER! Apparently before the main festival started, Roskilde had already recieved more rainfall than during the whole week in previous years. So it's a muddy paradise here.

But we survive. We've got a pretty darn good tent site - it's not down in the swamps, but on slightly raised ground thank god. Those poor folk with tents sitting over 10-15cm muddy water.

But as for the music. My highlights so far - a Swedish band called The Sounds - great dirty female vocal rock. Bjork was fantastic. Completely strange as usual - dressed in a rainbow dress, with the Icelandic wind quintet backing her up. She did a great performance of trance affected electro rock??!! A lot of fun dancing around in the mud to that. Arcade fire was good as well. The Killers dissapointed a bit - bad sound, and just not all that great. Tonight is the night to top them all though. Big bang followed by The Flaming Lips, then The Who, topped off with The Red Hot Chilli Peppers. A killer line up - all at the same stage. So I think it's just down to getting in early and nabbing a good spot.

Possibly the one band I'm looking forward to most - The Ark - The Swedish winners of Eurovision for a couple of years ago - are playing tomorrow, 2pm. It will be fantastic :) Glitzy glam pop-rock - tacky, tacky, tacky, but oh so fun!

Well that's my festival so far :). The weather is improving - no rain for the rest of the festival supposedly - we'll see :).

Regardless of the weather it's great to be at Roskilde!

Norway has been named the most peaceful land in a recent study. Now you would think in such a country, crime rate would be next to zero. And it is. But this isn't what people need to be afraid of. No no. It's the town council itself, turning our sense of what is normal and usual right around, inside out and on it's head.

Now you see, I had ridden my bicyle in to town. My chunky, beefy, indestructable black bike lock was sitting in my bag on my back, ready to serve its job in protecting my bike from Norway's mean, nasty non-existant theives. So I reach town, the main street. I found a nice, thick and strong white pole sticking out of the ground and thought, "Oh perfect, a nice, thick and strong white pole is sticking out of the ground and I can lock my bike to it". So that's what I did. My faithful chunky, beefy and indestructable black bike lock purred in the pleasure it felt serving its noble bike-protecting duties.

So i left my dear bike, content in the thought of its safeness, and skipped through the shops, not a care in the world. At the end of my great shopping spree (in which i bought nothing - it's all too expensive), in my carefree state of mind, I managed to forget that I had cycled my bike in to town. So I walked home instead. My subconcious was content that my bike was still be protected from the non-risk of stealing in the centre of not-unsafe Bergen. So I left my bike there for a few days.

A few days later, I walked down to our cellar where I normally keep my bike. It wasn't there! But of course!, it's locked up being protected by its faithful lock in the city centre. So in to the centre I strolled. I couldn't quite remember where I had locked my bike up, but the centre of bergen is not a big place, so it couldn't be far. I wandered the few central streets, spiraling away from the main street, looking for my bike on every pole. I must admit I began to worry a little. The further I got from the main street, the more certain I became that I had locked it up IN the main street. So back I went. Up and down the main street looking for my bike. There were lots of bikes their, old and new, big and small, locked and unlocked. But my poor little yellow bike wasn't among them! The panic and fear for my bike rising up in my throat, I tried to calm myself, and remind myself that this IS Norway, the most peaceful land on earth. I stepped back and viewed the main street. Where could my bike be, there were so many possible thick, strong poles to lock a bike to. Then a thought hit me, like something hitting me...

there were lots of thick, strong poles, but there were no thick, strong, white poles

The thick, strong, white poles, flag poles, that had lined both sides of the main street, were gone without a trace, and my poor bicycle gone with them!

Oh how I cried for my bike, the tears soaking through my clothes, running in rivers down my cheeks, filling up the streets, gushing in torrents into the harbour to mingle with the tears of the others who had lost their bicycles to the same sneaky town councilers who had taken down the flag poles, and removed the bicycles securely locked to them.

A thick, strong, white pole is a pillar of safety, a foundation to lay your trust in, something to hold on to in cyclones, to hide behind from feral dogs, to hug and recieve comfort from after a rough relationship breakup. In other countries you can count on them to be there in times of need, never falling, never swaying, never rotting, never hiding. Never being taken down for storage!

Saturday night at the bakery

Customer 1: Eeeer why do you guys have so much food made with bread?
Me: Well..... we are actually a bakery.....

Customer 2: Do you folks sell ice cream?
Me: No, we sell bread. We are a bakery. But you could try your chances at the ice cream shop next door.

Tap on a tube

I did something pretty silly at work today. A real Norway´s Funniest Home Videos moment. Ok, so at the bakery I work at, at the sink we have, what I like to call, a "tap on a tube". Just like a garden hose really. The handle sticks up out of the sink top, and when you lift it up, the tubing follows it. It´s quite a clever system, thats linked in with the normal tap on the sink. You turn the normal tap on, then squeeze the handle of the tap-on-a-tube and so the water gets diverted and comes out there instead. Well, you see, what I did was this. I turned the normal tap on, then went to pick up the tap-on-a-tube. But this is where I went wrong. Instead of picking it up, pointing it downwards into the sink, and then squeezing the handle, I instead sqeezed the handle WHILST picking it up. Now this sent a lovely powerful squirt of cold water RIGHT into my eyes and face. My "fight or flight" reflex kicked in, and I thrust my hands down to disarm my attacker, in doing so directing the water flow from my face, down my neck, over my shirt and down the legs of my pants.

All of this happened in what, 2 and a half seconds? I just stood there dripping and stunned for a good few minutes afterwards.

Crawling with tourists

Bergen it seems, has opened its floodgates now to the summer tourist flock. Germans, Frenchies, Americans, Brits, Dutchmen, eastern europeans, and the occasional Australian. I was offered up a soup of nationalities and nationality stereotypes yesterday at work. The spanish tourists -"Español, Español!", the rigid unsmiling Russians, the camera toting, tourist headphone wearing japanese, the frenchman in his see-through green mesh muscle shirt which shows off his upper body muscles, but sadly reveals his lack of abdominal muscles and rather fleshy stomach, the enthusiastic American´s who asked me "Snakkar du engelsk?" (if there was really any chance that any Norwegian wouldn´t´speak English), the pensionist Brits who commented on how good my English was ("Oh really?! Do you think so? Thank you! I´ve been practicing hard since I was about 1 year old!"), the bank teller lady from Perth who just complained about the lack of accomodation, the expensiveness of Norway, George Bush, and Bill Clinton (who is visiting Bergen right now), and the nice Norwegian bloke who I chatted to for a good while at work about friluftsliv and the various hiking trips we´ve been on, and the various hiking trips around Bergen I must do whilst I´m here. Oh and the old Germans who speak at me in a babble of German thinking I understand whilst I stand there vaguely nodding my head with a bemused smile painted across my face (I meantioned the war a couple of times, but I think i got away with it!").

Complete lingual confusion

I have reached complete lingual confusion. I know this because I started speaking broken Norwegian to a British customer today, promtly turned around and spoke broken English to my Norwegian colleague. Needless to say, neither really understood what i was saying.

Add to the mix a blending of german, spanish, japanese and dutch speaking customers. I am stuggling to pull up a few basic words in German that I remember from school. Basic, such as zwei and danke shonn. It´s crazy how much german I have forgotten in just a few years. Hopefully I´ll start picking some up again.

Well, tomorrow I have my first horror day. 9am to 3.30 at the flower shop, then 4 till 8.30pm at the bakery. 12 hour day. Lot´s of money though! And i get a free dinner at the bakery. And a free loaf of bread to take home so I´m not complaining! And tomorrow night should be fun. The 16th May. The day before the Norwegian national day. The last day of "russ" celebrations. A night of partying, drinking, and foolishness. I´m quite looking forward to watching the russ on their last night. It should be, well, interesting to say the least!

Wish me luck....

How to spend 23 kroner to walk through a city

First. Ask a friendly Norwegian bus driver which bus to take. They may seem friendly, but really, they´re all plotting and scheming to send foreigners astray, waiting to laugh evilly at their fate!

Second. Ask a friendly Norwegian bus driver which bus to take to Haukeland. Pronounce it not Haukeland, but maybe Hokeland, Håkeland, høkeland, Howkayland or some vaguely related version!

Third. Think that a sykehjem (sick home) and a sykehus (sick house) are one and the same, ending up at Haukeland sykehjem, not Haukeland Sykehus! Just using a hospital as a landmark in the first place is stupid. They´re cities! They go on for miles and miles, you can start in one town at one side of the hospital and end up in another!

Fourth. Use the Haukeland Sykehus as a target, when really it isn´t all that close to where you want to go!

Fifth. Mistakenly think that a graveyard is the dead centre of the city (hohoho). There ended up 3 graveyards within a couple of kilometres from eachother sending me round in circles!

So yes, I ended up exploring bergen a little bit more, using 23 kroner on a bus which didn´t take me exactly where i wanted to go! Always nice to see new things though!

The one-time-grill phenomenon

I have discovered the key to Norway's economical success. It isn't its oil, no no. It isn't its cheese. Nope. It is the small, unobtrusive (but ingenious) engangs grill, or one-time grill. This little piece of convenience comes loaded with coals, fire starters and metho, meaning that it can be ignited by every incompetant light or fire stick wielding maniac. And the moment spring sticks it's head out of ground, these engang grills sell like hot cakes.

Well I was a engangs grill virgin up until last week, when I finally consumated my marriage with my dear land Norway. You see, the weather was fine, we were by the sea, and really, who wants to eat dry bread for lunch when you can grill! So after buying the compulsary pölse, spröstekt lök and ketchup, we sat our self down,, surrounded by groups doing just the same by the harbour of pretty little Karlvårg and spist our grilled sausages in the sun.

Now this trip was filled with new experiences. Firstly the engangs grill. Secondly, I caught my first fish in my life. That was a great feeling. Thirdly, I ate the fish i caught (grilled on an engangs grill in fact!).

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Broken English, Spoken Perfectly

"The Town Hall is closed untill opening. It will remain closed after being opened. Opened tomorrow."

600m of ice straight down. 487 square kilometres of ice. The largest glacier in Europe - the Jostedalsbreen.

And we (almost) walked the whole length of it last week. Not quite though. Almost. I stress the word almost.

I can't say we had the best weather really. Well, as a matter of fact we had pretty terrible weather. Windy, blizzardy, not much sight - a complete whitout for almost the whole trip. We did get an hour long religious-sun-shining-through-the-clouds-choir-singing-moment when the clouds parted, the sun came out and we got the feeling that we were actually on a huge lump of ice, looking out over a quilt of snow topped mountains.

I thought it was a great experience. If you ask some of the others who was on the trip, you may get some different responses! One of my friends expresses it like this: "Jeg hate Jostedalsbreen! Jeg håpe det smelte!" (I hate Jostedalsbreen, i hope it melts!)

So my experiences:

Best Experience No 1: Realising that, even though my sleeping bag was completely soaked through, it was still warm. And having a great nights sleep. (Thanks to my earplugs I couldn't hear Öyvinds commercial-plane-with-engines-at-take-off-thrust-volume snoring.)

Worst Experience No 1: Knowing that, after having been on the go for 13 hours, that my sleeping bag was completely wet. Having a broken primus stove and having to wait for another tent group to finish before we could borrow theirs (we ate dinner at around 11.30pm). After this, staying up another half hour to melt enough snow for drinking the next day. Then crawling into my wet sleeping bag, in a tent filled with three snoring sleeping people who had left me with roughly 13cm of space to sleep in.

Best Experience No 2: Reading the book "Broken English spoken perfectly" and laughing my head off with my tent group.

Worst Experience No 2 (or stupidest thing i did): Falling through the front of our tent into the culdegrup (the space in the foretent where you dig down into the snow maybe 1.5 to 2m - it traps the cold air so the sleeping area stays warm) ripping part of the tent off in the process.

Best Experience No 3: Seeing the schools minibus driving through the valley 600m below us to collect us from the trip. Getting to the bus and sitting down. And taking my beanie off for the first time in 4 days.

Worst Experience No 3: Taking my boots of after walking down the mountain with my heavy sack (with skiis attached), and feeling the excruciating pain in my toes as they were freed from my boots!

Best Experience No 4: Doing 2 successfull telemark turns down this rediculously steep hill.

Scariest Experience: Skiing down the hill i just mentioned. Very very steep (avalanche risk steep). Complete white out with no sight and very flat light meaning you couldn't see where the snow goes up or down. Add on the fact that i have a 20kg sack on my back, am not very good on skiis, and am on stupidly thin cross country style skiis with flimsy leather boots!

Tastiest Experience: Eating my turbröd (trip bread) for lunch. It's increadibly heavy and packed with nuts and lots of tasty things. Then eating some turkake (trip cake). Supersweet and chocolatey brownie cake packed with eggs and suger and fat and all things good!

Most Cramped Experience: Fitting 24 people into a 4 man tent.

And now for some photos. You may think me stupid whinging about the bad weather when you see these photos! But remember, the only times i pulled out my camera were those seldom occasions with sun.

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Way up on the fírst day. The sun poked through the stormy clouds!

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Cramped situation.

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Öyvind taking a scenic leak.

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Very descriptive of the weather we had.

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An inventive way to dry out a wet inner tent.

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Lille Kristin enjoys the fleeting sunshine.

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Our hour of fine weather.

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This is what i mean when i say flat light.

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The first lunch off the glacier.

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Carien savours her turkake.

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The last march down.

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Slippery in parts.

Det luktet vondt her! Fy søren!

Three weeks living intensively in close contact with a small group of people can come to be very trying and tiring (especially in the company of a certain rather special girl with special quirks and personality traits!)! But in no way has it been a bad three weeks, I'll just be happy to have a week and a half easter break, time to rest and relax away from the stress of well, resting and relaxing at an outdoor life school.

It's also given me time to really appreciate the dynamic qualities of Norwegian nature. Last week we were up in the Sunnmøre Alps, skiing down mountainsides. This week, just three or so hours from Sunnmøre , we were surfing, and relaxing on the beach wearing nothing but board shorts in 15 or so plus degrees. It seemed to go from winter to spring in the space of half a moment.

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But as for our week in Sunnmøre. Fantastic. Helt nydelig vær - blue skies, sun, snow. The first two days we recieved a dump of maybe 50 - 70cm new soft fluffy snow. Then the weather cleared up, culmunating in a mind blowing last day, with air temperature of about plus 10, windstill, blue skies - just perfect. Skiing up a mountain wearing next to nothing. Looking out over the Everest-eske views - nothing but snow drenched mountain after mountain. Another clash of nature - you could see the ocean peaping out between some of the peaks in the distance. Very strange being on a snow covered mountain and seeing the sea (especially when I associate sea with 30 plus degrees!).

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Coming down from the Alps we drove into spring. Back at school the spring flowers are starting to bloom, the grass is turning green. And the roads are dry! For the first time in months. Such a lovely feeling - I now understand why Norwegians have an almost holy relationship with the start of spring.

And then to the beach to surf. But it played with my core foundations! In my experience, if it's warm enough to lie on the beach just with shorts on, then it's warm enough to swim just with shorts on! But no, we had to struggle and wriggle and fight our way into 7mm wetsuits to brave the couple-degree-above-zero water. Warm beach, cold water. I hated getting into that wetsuit. It felt like a days work in itself. I was comepletely and utterly exhausted after fighting my way into it for 15 minutes. And what made it worse was thinking that back home i could just run into the sea naked if the thought possessed me! But apart from my now newly developed wetsuit phobia, it was a fantastic week. Perfect waves mostly, and beautiful sunsets every night. Summer style barbeques for dinner - sitting out in the sun. And lazy times reading and chatting and lazing around.

The mountains around Stadt - where we were surfing are spectacular - rising almost straight up from the sea. Jennifer and I walked to the top of one - a hefty hour hike up very steep terrain. We decided to try and find an easier way down... without much success. We had to slide down on our bums for much of the way, it being so steep. And we were never wuite sure if we would get to the edge of an impassable cliff.... Quite exiting exploring like this. But we made it down eventually.

Some pictures for your viewing pleasure :)

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I'll go off and try and pack for my easter holidays - the plans stand as of now - drive to bergen and stay with asgeir for a couple of days, then head down to haugasund - stay with Markus for a bit. Maybe visit asgeir's family in Hjelmeland, maybe visit May Sissel's cabin. Who knows what might happen!