Raske Menn @ Edderkoppen

One of my main reasons for going to Oslo, at least that weekend, was to go to a comedy show at Edderkoppen Teater.

These guys make me laugh and they teach me new words and expressions - what's not to like? It was an hour and a half of pure joy. The guy next to me almost couldn't handle his joy. I wondered if I was going to have to resucitate him at one point the way he was gasping for breath.

<3

Pictures from the actual show that I stole from someone else because we weren't supposed to take pictures:

In an extreme effort to avoid my Icelandic homework - ahem - I've subtitled a video of one of their older sketches (below). It didn't take me that long, and I've paraphrased a bit in some places. This is perhaps their best known sketch, where they attempt to take us through the history of the world in five minutes, paying special attention to Norway of course. Enjoy!

For some reason, near the end, my subtitles start lagging behind a bit. Hope it doesn't ruin it.

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Outside Edderkoppen Teater

Siân's Magical Adventure in Osloland

I visited Oslo at the weekend - yay! Been a while since I was there, for me anyway, and it was nice to spend a couple days somewhere a bit different (the last thing I did before I left Bergen was to fall over in the snow and rip my hand to shreds, so I was especially glad to see the back to see the back of that). In order to cram as much as I could into a limited timeframe, I decided to do an organised tour which included a couple things I hadn't seen before.

I hopped on the bus bright and early, and greeted my fellow tourers, who were mostly Irish or German, but I also chatted a bit to a very nice Danish couple. I could actually understand them too, much to my surprise. We heard a lot of good stories from the very enthusiastic tour guide, and I heard them all three times, because she delivered them in Norwegian, English and German. So for me it was all a bit like this:

"We are about to turn onto Karl Johans gate, the main street in Oslo, which starts at the train station and ends at the palace. It's about 1km long. We are about to turn onto Karl Johans gate, the main street in Oslo, which starts at the train station and ends at the palace. It's about 1km long. We are about to turn onto Karl Johans gate, the main street in Oslo, which starts at the train station and ends at the palace. It's about 1km long."

It was mildly irritating at first, but I got used to it, and sometimes she gave extra information in one language that she missed out in another.

First we went to Vigeland Sculture Park. The park was sculptor Vigeland's life project, and you can't find any of his fascinating works anywhere else. He was particularly interested in the cycle of human life.

I especially liked the ones of children and elderly people, which means I didn't really take a lot of photos of the stages inbetween. Seriously, some of them looked like they were alive.

Next we went up the hill to Holmenkollen, the new ski jump that they're building for the Nordic Championships or something in February. It was quite interesting, but they haven't quite finished everything yet.

Next we went to Vikingskipshuset (The Viking Ship Museum). I've been there multiple times in the past, but I really like it so I was quite happy to trot round it again. They hd a couple skeletons that I'd never seen before, which were fascinating. They reburied them after they were discovered in the 1800s, but dug them up again in 2007 because they were afraid they'd completely disintegrate. There's already not much left of them because graverobbers broke their original tomb casket thingie.

Next we popped up the road to the Maritime Museum, where we saw and amaaazing film of footage recorded from a helicopter flying down the coast of Norway. It maybe sounds a bit lame, but it was well cool. Unfortunately they've got it pretty well protected and I haven't been able to dig it up online so you guys can see it :(

We finished up at the new opera house. I'd heard a lot about it from friends who'd visited it before, and from a Norwegian musician I like who cheerfully told me that 'walking up the opera house is Norway's new favourite outdoor pursuit'. So I walked up it, and almost fell down it again (it was a bit icy). Twas quite nice, but it'll be better when they've finished developing the land around it. It's kind of surrounded by building sites just now.

It's supposed to look like an iceberg..

After that (busy day, no?), I trotted along to the national gallery to have a look at The Scream. I've been trying to see it for years now, but something always gets in the way, such as the gallery being closed, or it having been nicked.

Skriken (The Scream) by Edvard Munch
I saw it - yay! It's a bit bigger than I thought it'd be.

They had a whole room of his work, including his perhaps second most famous work, Madonna. I actually wondered if I liked that better. It's quite brilliant when you actually see it.

Madonna by Edvard Munch

I also saw Brudeferd i Hardanger (below), which is perhaps the most famous painting in the whole of Norway. I had no idea it was there. It was a very nice surprise when I spotted it. It's very lovely - the picture below really doesn't do it any justice. It was painted during the Romantic period.

Susanne Sundfør @ Ole Bull Scene

On Tuesday evening I went to see Susanne Sundfør at Ole Bull Scene. I'd downloaded her most recent album, The Brothel, the previous week, for reasons I can't even remember, and I was hooked. Within two days I was happily singing along to all the songs. Within three days I was making enquiries across internetland about spare tickets, because her show had been completely sold out for weeks.

But it was well worth all the hassle. She was INCREDIBLE. One could only but stand there and gape.

Photo I stole from a review, because there was no photography allowed :)

Live performance of The Brothel on Norwegian morning television - watch and be amazed (or else)

Det snør!

It's the 21st of October.

It's snowing.

The view outside my window

Outside the back door

Argh.

Rallarvegen: An epic journey

This week was a reading week for a lot of people studying at UiB, so we decided to go hiking. What, actually read? There's an idea. Well, what's done is done, and we had a great time. Made for a good birthday as well.

We decided we were doing to walk along part of Rallarvegen, and old construction road running from Haugestøl to Flåm - 82km in total. We did 42km of it in the end, over two days.

On the first day, we got up eary and took the train from Bergen to Finse, and then walked 21km to Hallingskeid. I've made a video slideshow of the photos I took on that day below (overlaid with some nice Norwegian music):

It was a fascinating walk, very barren in some parts, and at one point we even decided it was a bit like being on the moon, with the rocky landscape and boulders strewn about in places where boulders really had no business being. We also walked past a number of small lakes that were almost completely frozen over. I wouldn't have thought that it was nearly cold enough yet.

From Hallingskeid we took the train to Vatnahalsen, where our hotel was. It was a very nice hotel, although we spent a lot of time outside in the freezing cold staring at the sky. There were no lights there, so we could see all the stars, a couple planets, the milky way etc - we even saw a couple shooting stars! It was absolutely incredible. In fact, the sky's been a matter of interest for a lot of people in the Hordaland area this week, because we were also paid a visit by the northern lights:

On the second day we walked from Vatnahalsen to Flåm - another 21km. This was a lot different from the day before in terms of what there was to see. Everything was a lot greener. Here's a video slideshow of photos I took that day:

By the time we got down to Flåm we were knackered. We'd even tried running a couple of kilometres, thinking that at least then we'd be using different muscles. All it really meant was we ended up with a second set of aching muscles, but ah well.

The funny thing about doing something lik this with someone else is you end up with loads of pictures of them and none of yourself, so below you'll find some photos of me that Sara took :)

On Flåmsbana on the way to Myrdal, where we got our train home

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A small selection of my favourite photos (of the ones I took) on the trip:

Day 1: Finse - Hallingskeid

Day 2: Vatnahalsen - Flåm







Don't ask

Tristania @ Garage

Last Thursday I went to see Tristania at the Garage. There are no words to describe how excited I was. They've been one of my favourite bands for years, and I very rarely get the chance to see them live (only managed it once before at a festival when they played a pitifully short set). I'd listened the new album to death - I love it now, by the way, you just have to look at things from different angles occasionally :) - and I was all ready to sing and scream and whatever else.

Standing at the barrier in front of the stage while everyone else crowded round the bar - I'm sensing a theme here - it was all I could do not to lose my dinner. It was like almost fainting just before Florence + the Machine all over again, except I'd have felt a lot more stupid because no one else was nearly as excited.

Didn't have to wait as long as usual considering it was a Norwegian gig. They played 12 songs, a mixture from all their albums, and it was all over wayyyy too soon.

Mariangela Demurtas - little woman, big voice

Mariangela and Kjetil Nordhus - huge man, voice of an angel

Mariangela joined the band three years ago. To do this she had to move to Norway from Sardinia. She's learning how to speak Norwegian, and I'm very jealous because she's a lot more confident with it than I am, even though I think I probably have a better grasp of the grammer and a slightly bigger vocabulary. The most intelligent thing I could think to say to her on my way out the door, where she insisted on standing and saying goodbye to all of us, was something along the lines of 'wibble'. She said 'Takk for å komme', which was a lot more coherent even though it translates as 'Thanks for to come' - so cute! :D

Early Christmas outing

Dyrene i Hakkebakkeskogen was awesome. It was like having my Christmas pantomime two months early. It was utterly ridiculous, in the best possible way, and I happily joined in shouting 'BAK DEG!' ('BEHIND YOU!') with all the kids when the nasty fox was sneaking up on the poor little mouse etc, etc.

The players were all brilliant, and I spent an embarassing amount of time giggling into my sweets, even earning a funny look from the 6-year-old (at a guess) sitting next to me. I suppose in a country without pantomimes as such, it's slightly odd for an adult - if I could be called such - to voluntarily go to a show like that on their own.

Me and the Japanese

I have a lecturer who speaks a dialect of Norwegian which takes some getting used to (of course, this meant that he was always going to ask me a question on the first day, in the first ten minutes). However, I got there eventually after some consultation with my Nynorsk-Bokmål dictionary (the two varieties of written Norwegian).

Anyhow, welcome to the story of the Norwegian 'thick l'. Oh yes. Everyone who learns Norwegian comes up against it at some point. The 'l' sound which to me sounds more like a slightly retarded 'r'. It was a good week before I realised that if I swapped all these 'r' sounds I was hearing with 'l' sounds in my head, he made a lot more sense.

A couple weeks after this revelation, I was working as shift leader in Klubb Fantoft. My co-worker came hurrying in half an hour late, bumbling apologetically. She introduced herself as Leah (to my ears) from Japan. I couldn't help but grin ten minutes later when I was looking at the rota, and noticed that her name was written as Rie. Anyway, the point of this long bumbling tale is that I totally get the Japanese l/r confusion now - and it's hard I tell you!

Body popping + Sian = not good

Last Saturday I pulled myself out of bed, slung on my joggers and a vest top, and trudged into town (looking like a complete loser next to everyone else in their skinny jeans, but never mind). I meandered my way up the hill to the student centre, blinking dully when a Norwegian who was looking decidedly too cheerful for my tastes waggled a bit of paper at me.

'Am I supposed to be able to read that from here?'

'You here for the hip hop class?'

'... yes.'

Hanne arrived a couple seconds later, yawning big, and we both sat on the floor of the dance studio, eyeing the instructor warily as he grinned and danced around the room.

The first thing he showed us was a bit of body popping. I wasn't sure about it really, because things too often go pop for me without any additional help. However, his enthusiasm was infectious, and soon he had us all warmed up for the task a hand: learning the dance for Michael Jackson's Thriller.

Supposedly I can now do this. I can do a very amateurish version of it, at least :)

It was amazingly good fun though, and he almost had me talked into taking his class this semester, but then I paid for a trip to Hardanger (which I guess you'll hear about in three weeks or so) and had to buy a couple more books for uni, so I decided I couldn't really afford to.

He taught us how to moonwalk as well! I'll have to keep practising so I can show you all at Christmas.

DNS owns, okay?

I'm getting right into Norwegian theatre. It's actually quite cheap to go here (only a couple quid more expensive than going to the cinema), and they always have quite a lot going on. I've started picking out actors that I like and checking out other shows they're in. It's quite sweet really because you do find that the same people come up again and again - it's like some sort of weird theatre family.

Tomorrow I'm going to see a piece called Dyrene i Hakkebakkeskogen, which is based on an old children's story and should be good fun. It's possibly kind of aimed at a younger audience, but I don't care - a story's a story, and at least I should get most of the Norwegian :)

Promo photo for Dyrene i Hakkebakkeskogen. This is like the cutest photo ever if you've seen Svartediket (and perhaps if you're a girl), because the guy on the left is the same guy who's playing the role of Massken (below) in that. He gets out of one show and runs off to redo his makeup for the next one.

The theatre just released this video of the two actors who are in both pieces, giving us an insight into their days. It's in Norwegian, but it's well cool, and it has some clips from the pieces. Do click the link below:

Fra Klatremus til Massken

More footage from Svartediket (including the moment which for me is the most heart-wrenching, at 03:54. Perhaps not that upsetting when viewed out of context, but it ALWAYS makes me cry):

Svartediket - the world's first black metal musical

1349 @ Hulen

On Friday night I went to see a black metal band called 1349 (and why are they called that, children? Well, 1349 was the year that the plague wiped out 2/3 of Norway's population - fun factoid for you). I went rather early because I wanted to make sure I got a good spot, but as it transpired, I could have turned up three hours later than I did and I'd still have been at the front. Made friends with a nice German guy though, and chatted a bit to some rather inebriated Norwegians.

I'd been standing in the front row for about 15 minutes (after the initial 3 hour wait when there was only three of us there, so we found a table and sat) when one of the stage hands brought out a bucket of water and plonked it on the ground in front of me. Realising what it was for, I turned to the German guy and said grimly 'If you like your eyebrows, this is probably a bad place to stand'. Sure enough, another ten minutes passed, and Frost wandered through the crowd carrying a flame torch. We watched expectantly as he meandered up the steps onto the stage and peered into a cup which had been placed on top of one of the speakers. After a moment of contemplation he took a mouthful, turned to face us, and:

It is rather difficult to take a decent picture of someone when they're in grave danger of setting your hair on fire. That flame shot right over my head, so I was ducking when I took the photo and therefore not really paying attention to where I was pointing the lens!

After that piece of fun, which resulted in myself and a couple other people being covered in whatever flammable liquid he was using/spit and therefore having to avoid smokers for the rest of the evening, the show got started.

Singer Ravn

I'll spare you all the pain of having to watch a video of them, because they're certainly an acquired taste, but the show was good fun. I feel the sound could have been a bit better, but I was in the sort of mood where loud and slightly discordant worked just fine, and I bobbed around quite happily in a not particularly black metal sort of way (my brain hurts if I headbang too much).

It finally let out at about 1am, which meant we ended up walking most of the way back home, and then doing our best to avoid the night fare man on the tram (60kr - expensive!). I saw him grin as we flung ourselves off at our stop though, because he knew that we knew fine well we would have been the next people he collected money from.