Norwegian Wood

OK. Yesterday we went to the gym again. This time I only climbed a tiny bit, but did a lot of strength training by lifting heavy metal weights. Today, I have a strange but intensive pain in my inner ellbow. Tom says this is normal and will be gone by tomorrow. I actually think I that I will die very soon because of this 😉

Yesterday we have been climbing. This was my first time ever and it really was fun! Today, my fingers, forearms, shoulders, and toes are hurting though! I’ll post some pictures of the wall soonish…

In other news, the last review of my doctoral thesis has finally been received by the dean’s office in Freiburg, which means that I can now organize a date for my defense. So, I am getting nervous again!

Just a quick update: This is what I see if I sit at my desk and look out of the window in front of me:

Today we have been swimming in the svømmehall of the university’s swim club. It was good to do something like this again and I my triceps already hurts like hell! I really should be doing more of this stuff!

Today I learned my few first words in Norwegian and am already able to say the following simple sentence: Jeg er et elg i skogen!

And I am now officially registered as a foreign worker here. This meant waiting for several hours at the office for foreign workers and show my passport and working contract to get a piece of paper, which says that I am allowed to stay and work here indefinitely. It also says that I am obliged to undergo a tuberculosis exam. Nice!

Tom and I then tried to get Norwegian television to work on Linux and finally succeeded. After listening to the news for some time we concluded that language understandingin the brain is governed by very strage rules. We had a good laugh about our ideas and are planning a publication on the matter 😉

My first work day only began at noon, as I really had to catch some sleep after the journey. The people in my new working group gave me a warm welcome and showed me around the different offices to get my contract signed (again), organize keys, network access, and such. I only had a short talk to my new boss about my projects, but all seems very promising and I hope the next half year to be a fun one! In the evening I went to see my new room in one of the student houses of the university. The room is really small, but there is a large kitchen and living room that I have to share with my 6 flat-share mates, of whom I only met 2 until now. After checking the flat and moving my boxes into my room, we went food shopping and cooked a great reindeer meal with chili pickles, carrots and the rest of yesterday’s pasta.

After eating we started to jam a bit on our guitars. The songs we played were Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Zu Spät by Die Ärzte. Somehow, we then talked about my really expensive (568 NOK/month) and small (~12 sq. m) room and I suggested to move into Tom’s guest room. He said that he also thought about this and we agreed to just do it! So starting tomorrow, these two guys will be my flat mates:

At about eight in the evening I arrived at Tom’s place. I was totally exhausted, as I was on my way for about 38 hours by then. Tom had prepared a delicious meal consisting of peas, fusilli pasta and salmon. Together with two beers this made me very sleepy. After a short phone call with Elena I finally went to bed and was fast asleep like a stone!

Being 9 hours on a ferry is the most boring thing you can imagine. There were gazillions of teenage kids that were on some kind of school trip or something, running around and being loud, so sleeping on a bank was not an option. The other problem was that there was no bank anyway!

Being on the boat, I was quite surprised to see that the northsea was frozen over most of the way. The ice formed very nice patterns. But see for yourself:

After a short chat with Lexi, some sandwiches and sleeping for two hours I went on the road again at midnight, this time accompanied by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Bad Religion.

For crossing the border to Denmark, I decided to listen to Volbeat, the volume cranked to the max! The rest of the journey was mixed regarding both music and weather. There was a lot of snow accompanied by the tunes of Placebo, WIZO, Rise Against, Tenacious D, and some podcasts by Deutschlandradio Kultur about alcohol prohibition and reindeer farming in Norway!

Whilst driving, I recognized a strangely familiar smell in the air, similar to the one an angle grinder (Flex in German) makes. I did not find the cause for it until I recognized the sparks created by the blade of the winter road maintenance car on the street in front of me!

I reached Fredrikshavn in Denmark at 6:07 in the morning, way before anyone else (including the ferry) made it here. The ferry arrived at 7:15 and is a pretty big boat if I’m to be its only passenger 😉

Wow! At 8:49 I actually drove onto the ferry. Meanwhile the temperature in my car had dropped to -0.8°C and I was freezing like hell. I am really not looking forward to the ferry ride as I am really tired now.

Almost as planned, I left home yesterday at 6:44 in the morning. The streets were quite snowy, but still OK to drive on. Music-wise I started with 10.000 Hz legend by Air. After that I turned to Paradise Lost and Black Sabbath for the journey to Würzburg, where I met up with Bona, Dani, and Markus for a late breakfast and some badly needed coffee. I continued my journey with some Ska by Liberator and phone calls with people I did not find the time to say good bye to. As a nice surprise Silvi answered the phone after almost 7 month of silence!

In defiance of the prophecies of doom by my family (hello Wolfgang!) I made it to Hamburg by 5 o’clock in the afternoon.