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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
