Farewell to Fantoft

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

<3

To djervt go where I've been trying to go all along

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!!!

At Internasjonalen next day

Argh.

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!!!!!!

My sanity hurts.

Let's hear it for Dimmu Borgir!

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

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

<3 :D

A visitor

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 :)

Rubbishy video - enjoy :)

<3

Midnight sun

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.

Eurovision with the rest of Europe

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!

Marina & the Diamonds @ USF Verftet

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.

Waiting...

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 is nigh

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 :)

Taken from the roof of the gym

<3

Nordnesparken

It was nice and sunny at the beginning of the week, so I decided it was high time for me to put down my books and remind my skin what warmth is. I went for a walk through Nordnesparken, a nice little park not that far from the city centre that I still hadn't seen for some obscure reason. It's reeally nice, and they have a sea water swimming pool out there that I'm really looking forward to trying when the parentals show :p

Mwaha.

I need a hobby

Accidentally revealed how boring my life is today in my Old Norse class. The lecturer reminded us that we don't have any classes next week because it's the Easter break, and I went 'AWW..' reeeally loudly. On the plus side, brownie points for enthusiasm? :)

So I have noo idea what I'm doing next week. I thought I might set myself some kind of schedule so that I don't spend half the time asleep and half the time bored out of my skull. I'm going to start revising for my exams, but I also need some fun activites. So... what do you think I should do? (Read: what do you want to have to read about on here? hehe)

x

Fjorden baby!

Norwegian band Fjorden baby! just released this video for their new single Himmelen. It gives a very interesting overview of Bergen as a city. VisitBergen should be paying them.

Oh, it's on!

:O !!!!!!!!

Keep Of Kalessin @ Buddys in Drammen

On Thursday I got on yet another plane (I’m looking forward to a month with no travelling), this time to Oslo, from which I caught the train to the capital of Buskerud, Drammen. Drammen’s one of the smaller cities in Norway, and although I’d passed through it many times before, I’d never actually stopped to have a look at it. I didn’t do much looking this time either, to be honest, because it was snowing like hell and I’d kind of hoped I’d put that kind of weather behind me for just now. I’m glad I didn’t go to university in Oslo – east country weather/temperatures suck. By the time I’d trudged from my hotel to the place where Keep Of Kalessin were playing I’d turned into the abominable snowwoman. It was even lying on my face and not melting, which I didn’t think could happen.

Now, I’ve seen Keep Of Kalessin play in some of the smallest, darkest, dingiest venues know to man, but this was really taking the biscuit. The fact that it was above ground level and had windows was a small mercy. However, this meant that I spent a brilliant evening getting a little more up close and personal with the band than I had initially intended.

Over the course of the evening, I was continuously whacked in the face by their hair, not to mention once by the pointy ends of a guitar and a microphone respectively. At one point I even managed to hit guitarist Arnt in the face with my own hair – an inch closer and I would have probably headbutted him. And I ended up so close to vocalist Torbjørn’s face at one point I could not only smell his breathe but taste it (beer, ew), which to be quite honest was borderline weird. It may please some of you to know I resisted the urge to pinch his cheeks. Just. He takes a horrendous photo, but in reality I swear he’s just adorable.

Arnt Grønbech, purveyor of extremely pointy guitar necks

Vyl aka Vegar Larsen, drummer extraordinaire

Torbjørn Schei, in another fabulous elbow shot (gonna stand the other side next time)

It was an amazing gig, but I felt rather short. I think they played about 10 songs. They were having problems with their backing track for the newer songs, which meant we got treated to more old material than they’d initially planned, but I think it might also have been the reason for them being finished quite early. I’m going to see them in Bergen next week, so I hope everything’ll be all fixed by then.

Drammen never struck me as being a particularly industrial town, and maybe it’s not, but that’s certainly the feeling I got from it when I was walking home from the gig. And the light pollution was eerie as hell, but also kind of beautiful in a I-shouldn’t-find-this-so-fascinating sort of way.

View from a bridge which connects the two halves of the city – light pollution abound!

Drammen train tracks running under the bridge

Rammsund @ Teglverket

Last month I went to see a Rammstein tribute band called Rammsund, who have translated a number of Rammstein songs into nynorsk (New-Norwegian). It was a great night, with the whole crowd singing slightly different lyrics as we all quickly translated from the German in our heads. I guess you could say it was one of the most linguistically challenging gigs a lot of us had been to in a while, and there was a good deal of heckling when the band had changed the words so much that they just weren't what was said in the German at all. The vocalist in particular was extremely entertaining, and everyone in the room had to constantly swivel round as he climbed up the rigging and onto the balcony, or swang from the ceiling etc. After one song he was left hanging upside down from the rigging, and there was a lot of sniggering as he mused 'dette var ikkje særleg gjennomtenkt' ('this wasn't particularly well thought through'), not helped by him shrieking and flapping his arms as people tried to help him down.

Rammsund on stage (didn't get a photo of him hanging upside down, was too busy laughing)

This Is Norway

They showed this video to the new international students when they arrived in January. The guy speaking in it has one of the strongest Norwegian accents I've ever heard (at least while speaking English). Watch and have a giggle :)

Slithering through Sør-Trøndelag

This weekend we had a reading week, so I took the opportunity to go and have a look at Trondheim. I read some stuff when I got back though, I promise!

View over Trondheim, with Nidarosdomen and Nidelva

To my dismay, I got off the bus in the city centre to discover that Trondheim is in fact one large skating rink. Not an ounce of grit to be seen anywhere. It's strange really, considering the trønders seemed to be having as much difficulty staying upright as I was, with the exception of one teenage boy who strode past me playing a gameboy (show off).

After I managed to windmill my way up the hill to the youth hostel (consider the flailing arm movement employed by many when trying to stay upright walking on ice), I had to leave again straight away because I had a ticket to see Et Dukkehjem (A Doll's House) by Henrik Ibsen. That's right, I am THAT obsessed with the theatre. However, I've never had the chance to see an Ibsen play performed before, so it was quite special. And it was REALLY good. I especially loved the woman who played Nora - it was like the part was written for her.

Next day was Sunday, which in Norway means everything's closed, and it being March meant that there were no touristy things on offer either (this has become my new argument for revisiting places in the summer - you can actually do things!). However, Trondheim being home to the most famous cathedral in Scandinavia, Nidaros, I decided to go to mass.

Nidaros Cathedral

It was all very grand and... echo-y, because there were only about 60 of us in a church the size of... something very large, but it was a nice mass with some baptisms thrown in. I was quite glad when it was over as well though. It was a bit too much like being back at primary school sometimes, especially when they all trudged up to get their wafers and I just got to sit there and wave at them.

Me being arty-farty :)

I have to admit that I've left it a tad too long to write this, because I've forgotten a lot of the details. I know I ended up back at the youth hostel for a couple hours that afternoon, then I decided to go and see The King's Speech. There was a good crowd at the cinema that day. They all laughed a lot and made it a really nice evening. Good film too ;)

Next day I went for a walk around the city. My original plan was to climb up to Kristiansten Fortress to get a better view over the city etc, but all the paths were solid ice. Instead, I slithered down the hill and then up round towards the university.

Nidaroselven

Houses/restaurants on stilts, view from Gamle Bybru

Gamle Bybru

NTNU, Trondheim's university

'The Last Viking' - I thought he was quite cool. Very solemn.

Later I found a road that went up round the back of the fortress that wasn't quite as icy, so I jogged up that, flinging myself into the bushes at the side of the road whenever a car came along, which I think just bemused most of the drivers because they're so used to people walking on the roads when the pavements are so iced up. Anyhoo, finally I made it. It was totally deserted, and it looked like they were in the middle of renovating it a bit, but it offered the view I'd been searching for.

Obligatory photo of a canon, with more of Trondheim rising up in the background

That evening I went to the theatre again, as I do. I saw a really cute little production about people misinterpreting one another. It was very funny, and my seat got upgraded because there were so few people in - win!

________________________________________________________________________________________

Me slobbing around the youth hostel

Arches of Gamle Bybru at night

'No to the sale of Norway - No to the EU and EEA'