Christmas market and lots of food

On Saturday, 11th of December, I went to town together with our gang to have a look at the Christmas market (and to buy some wool for my next knitting project). Trondheim really looks lovely when it's covered in snow and decorated with all the christmas lights! See for yourselves on these photos:

As it was getting dark, we went to the café Tulla Fischer where we managed to get a little room all for ourselves and enjoyed some cold and warm drinks. Tulla Fischer is a really nice café which I can only recommend to anybody visiting Trondheim, by the way!

On Sunday we had our big "official" christmas party, the "Julebord", together with the parallel semester in the restaurant Graffi where we were served some traditional Norwegian christmas food, including Ribbe, Pinnekjøtt (birch-smoked lamb ribs) and various types of sausages and vegetables. It was an absolutely wonderful evening there and I felt like being in a big family. I ate as much as I could get into my stomach and enjoyed the various performances the students had prepared.

After everybody had eaten, we went to the afterparty just a few blocks away in a bar/lounge called Kos which has a very cosy atmosphere. It was fun to see everybody from our semester all dressed up nobly!

On Monday, after having written the exam, we organised an evening with our clique and our student assistants in the panorama restaurant of the Tyholt tower for the all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. Later on we capped the evening off at Siri's place, she had prepared some Lefse (traditional norwegian round flat cakes) for us, and they were lovely! There's not many thing nicer than spending time with some good friends! :)

Juleversted, learning sessions, snow and first good-byes

On the 2nd of December I attended the Juleverksted, a get-together evening organised by the medical students' association in the cantine of Labsenteret for handicraft work and general christmas feeling. There was a buffet with clementines, pepperkaker and gløgg and the two students choirs Foetus Ex Ore (men) and Bilyd (women) sung some christmas songs for us. One of the professors was also asked to read a childrens' christmas story to us, which reminded me of ages long past. It was a really nice and creative evening.

Verena and Günther have both been learning a lot for the exam during the past weeks, and I joined them a few times to repeat the subject matter of various subjects with them. On Monday evening I took the chance to invite them both to my place so we could combine learning with a good meal which I prepared for them.

It has become a bit warmer in Trondheim recently; warm enough for it to snow again anyway. A good reas0n to take some nice pictures of snowy Moholt! The third picture shows my block of flats.

Last night I experienced a wonderful evening again - it was the final board game evening at Robert's with our language course group clique (Robert, Jeanette + Christian, Christoph and Felix). I made some Glühwein again which went down well like last time, we played two great games and I really enjoyed the nice evening. We also took some presents worth about 20 - 30 NOK with us and exchanged them (the winner of the first game could choose first etc.) - I got a PEZ dispenser and a Donald Duck book in Norwegian! I think that was a lovely idea. :)
Unfortunately I had to say good bye to some of my friends, including Robert, at the end which put me into a rather melancholy mood on my way home - I'm already dreading the next two weeks full of farewells, after all I only have about ten days left in Norway...

But I will definitely keep in contact with my friends who have become very dear to me during this semester and try to visit them whenever possible. :)

This evening I was at Pirbadet together with Hilde, Kari, Knut, Øyvind and Torstein, and Hilde taught us how to dive headfirst in different positions. She's a really good teacher (not only at knitting) and I went from the first attempts at the edge of the pool to two nice headers from the 5 meter tower in about 2 hours! I was quite proud of myself, but I am also really greatful to Hilde that she got me to do something I would never have imagined myself to do! Tusen takk for det igjen! :)

26. - 28. 11. '10: Wonderful weekend at Flåkoia

This weekend I had one of the best weekends so far in Norway: I spent three days together with 9 friends (Hilde, Marte, Sigrid, Torstein, Øyvind, Knut-Eirik, Verena, Lina and Günther) in a NTNUI-cabin called Flåkoia, about a 45 minutes car ride (30km) south of Trondheim. It is situated directly at a lake called Stordamvatnet. The weather was really nice, but the temperature outside was somewhere between -15° and -20°C. Therefore it took quite some time to heat up the cabin.

I took these first two photos from another page on the internet because I forgot to take good pictures of the cabin's interior. It is made for 11 people and has a really nice charm. There's even a small guitar (missing two strings) and heaps of song books there which were of course also used by us. After several hours of heating, the cabin had finally become warmer and we gradually took off layer after layer of clothes.

The lake was completely frozen over and the ice was at least 30cm deep, so it was no problem to walk around on it, which was fun! We made several holes to get fresh water (melting snow takes so much time!) and tried - unfortunately without success - to fish. On Saturday night I went out to the middle of the lake and had a look at the stars - no clouds in the way and no artificial light compromising the view of all those stars - and it was a really humbling experience! I even saw a shooting star and Günther saw two of them! Now and then the ice would make loud cracking noises which were also slightly perceptible through the soles of my shoes and sent small doses of adrenaline shooting through my body, but it was still safe.

On Friday evening we had a big pot of rice-meat-vegetable-stew, cooked on an ages-old primus gas cooker to warm us up fom the inside. We spent our time in the cabin chatting, reading, knitting, playing, singing and generally having fun together. During the nights we took turns maintaining the fire in the cast iron oven. It's an absolutely nice experience being together with some good friends without electricity or running water and I'll definitely not forget this weekend!!