As I think mentioned previously, we had a staff party to mark the closing of the club just before everyone started to drift off home to their respective countries. It was a great night of good food, good company, music, games and laughter :)
Klubb Fantoft staff 2010/11 (yar, I be looking awful)
Some of the shift leaders spent the whole afternoon putting together a selection of tapas for us. I wandered into the kitchen halfway through and have to admit I kind of wish I hadn't. Nerves were fraying left, right and centre. But the end result was just wonderful.
Wheeling it into the club
Mmmmmmmm.... ^^
Florian, ready to get stuck in
Asia and Zoli enjoying some Sangria
I provided pudding - WELSH CAKES!!! <3
After we'd all eaten as much as was humanely possible - ahem - well, here's a photo overview :)
Dancing
Playing Twister
Trying to stop Vegard from leaving
Back in March I tried to see Agnete Kjølsrud's new band Djerv, which also includes members of Trelldom and Stonegard (all very good stuff) and the whole thing was called off due to illness. Of course, neither of the shows either side of the Bergen date were called, leaving me feeling slightly let down, and slightly guilty for feeling let down. Therefore, I'm sure you can imagine my jubilation when they announced their album release party in Oslo the same night I was due to arrive to meet my parents, who were flying in to visit from the UK. That jubilation extended to my becoming excitement incarnate when I found out they were playing just outside Internasjonalen as part of Musikkfest Oslo the following day as well. It was like when you wait ages for a bus and two come at the same time, but x1000. And naturally, I dragged the whole family along.
Djerv really are a fantastically entertaining live band (and studio band come to that. Listen to debut album 'Djerv' today!), so if any of you ever get the chance to see them, do. DO, I SAY!
On the night I arrived in Oslo, as it was the release party, they were giving away a copy of the new album with every ticket sold. Very exciting. Perhaps more exciting, because it's not every day one of your favourite people from Norwegian metal bakes a cake and self-consciously offers you a slice, Agnete had baked a cake for the occasion. When quizzed about her cooking skills, she looked very flustered and waved away all the praise, telling us it was just one of the 'take mix and add an egg' packets, but it was well yummy.
After the show I wandered awkwardly up to the merch table and wiggled my CD at her for signing. It's not something I generally do, and for good reason because I wandered away again even more awkwardly after trying to tell her how amazing the show was and completely tripping over my Norwegian. Might have gotten over it easier as well if she hadn't waved at me from the stage the next day. Damn her powers of recognition! Oh well.
a) Is she looking right at me? Exciting stuff. b) What the fuck's going on with the guitarist? Looool!
CAKE!!!
Just had THE worst exam ever. It was the speaking part of my 20th century Scandinavian literature assessment. I went in and my teacher and the outside examiner immediately started gushing about how great my essay was - brilliant, right? Er, no, not when you've got a speaking exam to do and you're useless at communicating with people. Means their expectations of me were set wayyy too high. I've never been good at talking to people. That, and I've never been good at answering questions off the cuff, hence the essay being good, because I had time to think about that. AGH!!!!!!
I entered into a competition today to get put on the guest list for Dimmu Borgir's biggest show ever in Oslo on Saturday. They're playing with an orchestra and a choir, and it's gonna be amazing - especially because I WON!! Let's all point and laugh at the people who shelled out 1500kr (somewhere in the region of £180) for their tickets :p
I had just come in from the gym last week when I looked out my window and spotted a deer of some kind grazing on the hillside opposite. I think there's a couple of them, and they've been hanging out opposite me for about a week now. Sometimes they come right down onto the path and you see people carefully tiptoeing around them.
Grazing right down on the path. I didn't have time to go out and get a better photo because I was already late :)
I took a brief trip to Trondheim at the beginning of the month (no prizes for guessing why) and was absolutely delighted to see the midnight sun. I've seen it before, but I'll never get used to it. Even the girl who views the dark with nothing short of abject terror gets slightly confused when it's still light at 1am.
It was actually lighter than these photos would lead you to believe. A lot lighter and incredibly beautiful. Move over, northern lights, no one cares about you anymore.
I was working the night of Eurovision, so I duly painted a union flag on my face and trotted along to see what an evening of watching it with representatives from most of the rest of Europe would bring.
Ready to roll!
There were many laughs to be had. My French friend had to go outside for a smoke while their song was on. I can't repeat what she said when she got an earful of that. Never has the expression 'pardon my French' been so appropriate. Apparently their chosen representative wasn't proper French anyway, because he was from Corsica and sang using Corsican dialect. Of course, mes chéries, of course.
Watching the results coming in was probably the most interesting part of the evening. It was all one big discussion of politics, and why if one country gave another country points that we didn't expect, why they might have done that. Obviously the music had nothing to do with it. Why did Bulgaria give the UK 12 points? I have no idea. We were represented by Blue - remember them? They were bad the first time round, and the song they picked for this was worse than any of their previous efforts. I didn't think that was even possible.
The Norwegians looked suitably shamefaced when they awarded their highest numbers of points to the other Nordic countries, I'll give them that. In some ways though I thought the voting wasn't too bad. It's slowly getting more political again following the implementation of a panel of judges for every country as well as the public vote, but if you squint you can see what looks like some genuine voting for the songs.
It'll be interesting having it in Azerbaijan next year anyway. They're usually pretty good, but I wasn't convinced by the song this year. Maybe Europe's just so fed up with Europe we thought we'd have a break from us :p
I didn't actually vote in the end, but there were a couple songs I quite enjoyed, such as this one from Serbia. They didn't do that well, but I thought it was fun, and so colourful!
A couple of months ago I was happily strolling through Byparken when I noticed a poster hanging on the side of a bin that gave me a nasty fright. I promptly tripped over a dog and fell into a lamppost. I bounced up again sharpish and flounced over to the bin, earning myself some weird looks from passers by.
Isn't it just glorious?
I have been trying to see Marina & the Diamonds for ages. I think I'm quite unusual in that I've seen just about every band I like play live, but Marina was still eluding me, so imagine that she was coming to Bergen of all places! One quick flounce to the ticket shop later, and I was all set.
I got to the venue freakishly early, as usual. So early in fact that I got asked if I was one of the volunteer workers. Not on your life, pal. The show was part of Bergenfest, so they were expecting quite a crowd (choice of 60 gigs for one ticket or something, and she was one of the biggest names on the list).
When they finally let us in I planted myself firmly at the barrier, and settled in to enjoy Norwegian band Harrys gym, who I'd listened to on Spotify earlier so I knew I'd like them. Feast your ears:
By the time they were setting up for Marina & the Diamonds, I was in a bit of a tizzy. Another case of the over-excited fainting attack. I managed to meditate my way out of that with some difficulty, and then, omg, it was starting!
They played all the songs from the album except 2, plus one completely new song and an old song from her first EP. It was a lot more than I had been expecting, especially because they were a little late on stage, and it was absolutely incredible. It embarasses me slightly to say that her songs have always been very interesting and special to me, lyrically and in the way that they're delivered. To me her whole album's like a collection of 4 minute long stories, and they're all fascinating.
There was a great crowd in, and everyone seemed to know all the words. The band seemed quite impressed, and they got the house lights turned up for a couple songs so they could see us all. I had been told that she's a bit hit and miss live, but this certainly wasn't the case at this gig. The voice she's got! It's amazing, and so unique. I hope she does another UK tour in the autumn, especially now she's getting more popular on the other side of the pond. She's supporting Katy Perry on her US tour all this spring/beginning of summer. And that's like, zomg :) big stuff right there.
I have plans for new blog posts, but I'm waiting on friends uploading their photos :) I've not been entirely idle of late!
Almost finished my exams for this semester. It's kind of sad really, because end of exams means end of time at the university here. End of time at university here means I have to go home soon *ominous music plays* oh, the horror! No, really.
In other news, went out for a meal with all the shift leaders from the club the other night, which was great fun. Food was amazing, company was good, wagons were fallen off (I didn't have that much though). We're having a bigger party on Friday for all the volunteers, which should be awesome. I'm busy thinking up Scottish food I can take along. I really wanted to take haggis, but that's probably a big fat no. I might check in the world foods shop, but I know there's weird food regulations in place that makes importing haggis very difficult because apparently Scots like to eat things that the rest of the world deems inedible and/or unfit for human consumption. Wusses :p
The end of the semester is haunting just about every person living here at Fantoft - none of us want to go home! With this in mind, we decided to take advantage of the good weather and get as many people as possible together to take a big Erasmus photo :)
