Norway Part 1: Oslo

This blogging thing is hard. I've been back from Norway for two weeks, but it's been the busiest academic two weeks of the semester. Yay midterms! But I'm heading off to Greenland on Monday, and the weather is now cold and gloomy enough to stop distracting me, so I thought I'd better put these up.
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Friday, September 27
Names are changed.

I started my travels with Lisa, who is in my Climate Change class, and Bert, whom Lisa and I met through Facebook. We left Copenhagen at 4:30 on an overnight ferry to Oslo.

There was a hot tub!

Our cabin

Goodbye, Copenhagen!

Wind turbines off the coast of Zealand 

Sunset over the ocean

I sat out on deck for as long as I could, enjoying the blue sky and blue water as I attempted to write an art history essay. Eventually, though, the wind drove me and my companions inside. We went to sleep early so we could get up in time to for the next morning's sunrise over the fjord.
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Saturday, September 28

I woke up around 6, watched the sunrise, and took a dip in the hot tub before the ferry docked in Oslo at 10. After dropping our stuff off at the hostel, the three of us walked around the main pedestrian street, saw the Munch exhibit at the National Gallery, and found an ethnic grocery store for dinner supplies.

View from the ferry

Looking down the main street toward the palace

This made me so happy. I refrained from taking all the sauces with me, but we did buy some fresh flatbread and canned hummus as a snack, as well as produce and eggs for the next day.

Whole wheat ramen (bought in Copenhagen), tofu, spinach, egg, and salmon soup powder (from CA)

We cooked dinner in the hostel with our roommate Henning, a German guy studying to be a music teacher. It was still early--we hadn't eaten a proper lunch and got hungry around 4--so Lisa and I took a walk around the hostel. We saw several cute cafes and wanted to stop for dessert, but there was pretty much nothing under $20--Norway is expensive! So we got ice cream instead.
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Sunday, September 29

Museum day! Lisa, Bert, and I got a 24-hour transportation pass so we could jump around to various parts of the city. A short ferry across the harbor brought us to these:

Model of the eponymous ship at the Fram Museum

Really old ship at the Viking Ship Museum

Back in the main part of the city, we visited the Nobel Peace Museum, walked through a medieval fortress, and went on the Opera House roof.

The Nobel Field with all the laureates

Walking up the roof of the Opera House

Dramatic view from the top of the Opera House, which reminded me of the end of Harry Potter 7 Part 1 (the movie)

These Tai Chi practitioners may have been promoting that night's Chinese culture show.

We went for Indian food in an ethnic neighborhood for a late lunch/early dinner.

Lisa and Bert were tourist-ed out at this point, so I went by myself to the Vigeland Sculpture Park, which turned out to be my favorite part of Oslo. The clouds were just clearning when I got there.

Bridge with sculptures

The fountain wasn't running, but these were still cool statues.

Looking back as I climbed toward the main sculpture.  The structure in the background is the nonfunctional fountain; beyond it is the bridge.

The main sculpture

There was still light when I got to the hostel at 6:30, and I was on a roll with all this tourist stuff, so I took a quick solo trip to the botanical garden.

Not at its peak, but still pretty!

Thus concluded my stay in Oslo. There was still much to do, but I was ready to leave; the city felt rather cold with all the new construction on the waterfront, and sad with the many homeless on the streets. On to Bergen!

Hi again

I'm still alive! Sorry I haven't been posting lately--I've been busy with classes and random activities, and the weather has been so beautiful that I'm outside whenever I can be.

My train station at 9 AM, Tuesday 9/17

I just wanted to let you all know that I'll be gone for the next 10 days, so don't expect any updates until next-next week--and do expect photos of the glorious Norwegian fjords when I get back!

Short Study Tour: Møns Klint 3

from Wednesday, September 4
first three photos courtesy of Lauren

After another delicious breakfast buffet, my class took a tour of Western Møn with a hilarious guide named Stig (Stee). 

Most of the route looked like this, though there were chard and corn fields too.

We first got off the bus to see a gravel quarry, barely used anymore and hardly noticeable in the grassy hill. Sune wandered over to a kindergarten class who was also visiting and explained how glaciers had shaped the land. Both the kids and Sune looked adorable sitting in the grass! We stopped to eat blackberries along the trail as we walked back to the bus.

See its tongue?

Next we stopped at a forest to see two models of forest maintenance. Bushes had been cleared from one section but not the other, and trees had been clearcut from one but selectively logged from the other. Coming from California, where fire is part of forest ecosystems, I was surprised to learn that Denmark doesn't have fires; that's why shrubs have to be cleared by people.

A few stops later we came to a medieval church with chalk frescos depicting biblical scenes. Stig explained some of the scenes and the symbols embedded in them, such as a dog in the corner indicating faithfulness.

The ship is new, but the murals are 500 years old (pre-Reformation). They were covered in plaster after the Reformation until the early 20th century, when they were discovered and restored. They have recently been re-restored.

After the tour we had lunch at Babette, one of the original New Nordic gastronomic restaurants. It opened in 1991 before New Nordic was a thing, as the waiter proudly told us, and the owner was involved in starting Noma. The staff served an elegant version of traditional Danish cooking. Though I had expected tiny artistic portions from such a nice restaurant, I was so full at the end that I didn't have dinner!

Here we are in our hiking clothes at one of the best restaurants in Denmark. They're serving the queen tomorrow. For real.

R: Cucumber with shrimp and cream sauce. L: A salted fish similar to herring whose name I can't remember, to be eaten with rye bread.

Slow cooked eggs (60 C) with sprouts and pickled things. Not featured: egg cake (sort of a frittata/quiche served in the pan) with tomatoes and bacon on top (easily removable), cured meats, and I swear the best bread in the world.

Cakes made of equal weights marzipan and butter, with blueberries, topped with chocolate and caramel. Not featured: brie, crackers, and chutney.

Since we were the only ones there for lunch, we also got to tour the kitchen, which was tiny for a restaurant that caters for up to 2,000 guests. The chefs were very friendly and explained what they were doing to prepare for tonight's catering: cutting white bread into tiny cubes for an ice cream topping, shaping mini loaves of bread, and skinning pieces of monkfish.

The three-hour lunch ended our study tour, and we headed back to Copenhagen. I got home around 5:30, went for a run, and read a paper about tree rings for tomorrow's group meeting. 

Study Tour: Møns Klint 2

from Tuesday, September 3

all pictures from Lauren unless otherwise noted due to my lack of foresight and my camera's battery dying

I woke up to a lovely breakfast buffet: fresh bread, butter and jam, nice cheese (at least by American standards--it included Brie and blue), yogurt, muesli, and juice. And this is a motel!

We started the day with an extremely strenuous hike to one of Denmark's highest peaks, which towers over the surrounding valley at an astonishing 150 meters (500 ft) or so above sea level.

Hiking carefully down the grand peak. Half Dome was nothing compared to this.

Misty rain + spider web = pretty

We walked through the little valley between the little hills, stopping now and then to take pictures of snails. I like traveling with scientists; we gather around critters, plants, and rocks.

Trevor's Smurf, though used only for scale, reminds me of my dad's Bigfoot.

At the end of the valley we got our first glimpse of Møns Klint. Then we entered a misty forest and walked down quite a few stairs.

More snails!

The beach at the bottom of the stairs

With only my iPhone camera, whose quality I (wrongly) doubted, I turned to my sketchbook to capture the beautiful scenery.

Photo of sketch taken from my camera

Same part of the klint from farther down the beach

At the next stop, a couple hundred meters down the beach, Sune made hot chocolate and pulled some cookies out of his magical backpack of delicious food. Then we walked a long stretch of a few kilometers along the beach. Our class of 19 + 2 profs slowly separated into smaller groups. I stayed with the stragglers who stopped to take more pictures and made a rock sign:

Eventually we had to climb back up 492 stairs for lunch (an impressive salad) at the Møns Klint Geocenter. We spent the afternoon at the Geocenter;  three hours flew by with two dinosaur archeology movies, a glacial ice movie, and exhibits on local geology and a Greenland dinosaur expedition. That was the end of organized activity for the day.

But the fun continued! Back at Stege I went out for pizza with Lauren and my roommates Audra and Brytne. We should've gone to the other pizzeria, but it was still a nice meal, and I got to practice some Chinese with Audra! 

When we got back to the hostel we found two of our classmates struggling to uncork a bottle of wine. The hostel's corkscrew was just a screw without any handles or anything for leverage; it took three of us holding the bottle and one person yanking the screw to get the cork out! 

As people trickled in from dinner, we started a game of Cosmic Wimpout, a rather complicated dice game, then moved on to an intense game of Spoons with about 15 people (including Trevor and Sune!) and two decks of cards. We had warm homemade (though rather salty) cookies for dessert, baked by a few ambitious classmates. And then we trickled off to bed.

Short Study Tour: Møns Klint 1

I've had a day to unwind after a busy three days with my core class--not that the trip was draining; in fact, it felt pretty chill considering how much we did. We learned some geology and got to see glacial effects (i.e. long hills) in person, but the trip was more about getting out of the city/suburbs, playing outside, learning some local history, and getting to know each other and our lovely professors Sune and Trevor.

Here's what we did on the Møns Klint study tour:

from Monday, September 2

a traditional Danish fishing house

looking up Stevns Klint to the church

The class met at the Geological Museum for a glacier/geology/climate lecture before departing. I arrived late even though (or maybe because) I got a ride from Ove; the traffic was horrendous. After the lecture we drove to Stevns Klint (pronounced Stewns) to see a fishing house, the K/T boundary, and an old church with chalk murals. We stopped at the K/T boundary for a while to eat our packed lunches with Sune's coffee and chocolate. Despite Trevor's constant promises of sunshine, we spent the day under gray clouds.

The K/T boundary (gray line) separates older Cretaceous rock (below) from younger Tertiary rock (above).

Next we drove to Koldkrigsmuseum Stevnsfortet and had a guided tour of a Cold War fortress-turned-museum. The fortress was quite important as it was on the front line between Western Europe and the Soviet Union. I had been expecting a small building with artifacts, so the two-hour tour of above-ground weapons (nearly all lent to Denmark by the U.S.) and underground fortress was surprisingly extensive and interesting.

the underground fortress

We continued to Kong Asgers Høj (King Asger's House), a Late Stone Age (3000-1500 BCE) passage grave that looked like a random lump in the rolling fields. I was one of the first students to enter the low tunnel into the mound. We soon realized that there was zero light inside, so I took a photo to see where we were going:

View from the entrance tunnel. The end opens into an empty
rectangular chamber perpendicular to the tunnel.

The plan had been to eat cake in the grave, but the absolute darkness and the thought of the grave's previous inhabitants didn't exactly make for hygge (huga), so we went back outside for Sune's fabulous dream cake. Our professors are so nice.

The next stop was Motel Stege, where we would spend the next two nights, but the day still wasn't over. After a short break to check in, we headed to Bryghuset Møn for dinner: salmon spread with peas and toast, followed by a celery root patty (non-vegetarians had beef) with potatoes, vegetables, and gravy that I'm pretty sure wasn't vegetarian.

Then we made a quick stop at Netto for snacks before convening in the hostel living room/kitchen for a bit of academic work. Trevor and Sune led a lecture/discussion about ice cores as climate archives to straighten out some difficult concepts. It was interesting and helpful, but we were all fading by 11 when they ended. My roommates and I went to bed soon after to prepare for another full day.

End of the Beginning

It's past midnight, and as much as I'd like to keep rolling out blog posts, it's time for bed. I've got the first week up--a week behind isn't too bad, right?

Tomorrow (Monday) morning I'm leaving for a three-day study tour to Møns Klint with my core course. We'll be touring geological and cultural sites, bonding with each other, and hopefully not freezing--autumn finally arrived this weekend. 

In my mind, the study tour marks the end of the beginning of the semester. With a week and a half of classes behind us, the campy period of desperately making friends has passed; the period of desperately searching for travel companions has begun. I'll have my first independent travel break at the end of September--less than a month away! I'm starting to make tentative plans to hike the Norwegian fjords during that week. 

Stay tuned for stories from Møns Klint!

On Uma Terrace

from Thursday, August 22

TW: blood

After a run in the forest and a dip in the sea, I joined Nina and Ove on Uma Terrace. The terrace, named after their granddaughter, is little clearing in the shrubs where they like to spend the afternoon with a cup of coffee and a paperback novel. Bella (the orange cat) was sitting on Nina's legs. I pulled a plastic chair over next to Ove.

We sat in silence for a few minutes, them reading, me listening to the ocean. I adjusted my legs so they could dry.

My chair started to tip back.

Ove shouted something and got up to help me.

Bella leaped up from Nina's legs, digging his claws into her feet, and scampered away.

Nina's feet spurted blood.

When we figured out what had happened, we all laughed. It seems to be the Danish response to everything.