Yesterday I went on a hike up the crazy trail (called "The Bear" in norwegian) with a group of people including Nick. we were planning on going from our apartments over the peaks of the mountains to Fløyen, which is a 2 hour walk along the nice trail below. We got pretty lost at some points, just kinda looking along the cliff lines trying to figure out where we were. we even found government cabin on the mountain with a map on the wall. But we had no idea where we were on the map and continued to be lost :p .
After about 4 hours we found a cliff lookout that overlooked the groomed trail below and realized that we were only about the equivalent of a 40 min walk along it (not even half way to Fløyen) easy trail below and decided to just head back to Hatleberg (the student residence). This was ok by me because getting to Fløyen isn't the fun part, it hiking along the peaks of the mountains were most of the time there is no trail, the adventure of being slightly lost and plowing your own path. needless to say Nick and I slept like babies last night, i woke up this morning with all my clothes on passed out on my pull out bed that i forgot to pull out :p
This morning Nick and I felt amazing! no pain from the hike and no bruses from all the falls we took along the way. the deep snow made things interesting, you never knew when you were going to fall through and smoke yourself on a sharp rock. I managed to do this a few times, one time i managed to go through the snow and wedge my leg under a rock and fall sideways. I have no idea how i didnt break my leg or wake up with any bruises, perhaps im invincible (i'll put that to the test another day :)
Pics from the hike are attached to the end of the album labelled "mountain behind my apartment"
oh and i should also mention that the first video in that album showed a higher peak that then one i was at, and on this hike we made it to that peak because we started at 9am and had enough time to do so. The pic of the peak is a blurry image of a group of us surrounding a rock pillar.
pics at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonmader/sets/72157623242716276/detail/
new ones start about half way down the page
Monday, January 25, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Sorry for the long Delay :S
Ok so its been awhile since my last post, this time lag is a direct cause of my netbook taking a hard and fast swan dive into brokeness. The hard drive crashed and cost more than the netbook to replace. So good news I have a new netbook; the cheapest one in Bergen and its better than my last one. Bad news, it has a norwegian/swedish keyboard making this blog especially interesting to write and had a norwegian price tag on it, I am now poor :S
In other news orientation week was a blast and I've met a lot of new people. Beer is really expensive so i plan on making my own beer with a 2 week brewing window... im obviously not counting on good taste, but then again i've never had good taste for anything :p
I climbed a mountain out back from my apartment the other day, i stumbled upon this weird path that started with a 1ft wide bridge across a creek and then up steep ledges of rock. Eventually the trail came to a vertical rock face of about 20ft up. i had no idea how to get up there until i noticed something in the snow which turned out to be a rope! so the rest of the trail involved repelling up rock faces and climbing ladders to get to the peak. It was tiring but definitely worth it in the end for the view. Pictures and videos at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonmader/sets/72157623242716276/detail/
Classes started this week, it turns out I'm considered a masters student out here even though in Canada i'm just a bachelor. The reasoning for this is that this is my 5th year of university, and since ive been in school so long and have overloaded on courses every year I have enough credits to be nearly done my masters out here (maybe I should nag them to count me as a PHD student :p ). So far I'm overloading as usual, I'm only supposed to take 4 classes, but I'm taking more mainly because we don't have most of these courses back in Canada, at least that I know of, and I find them terribly interesting compared to the usual finance and accounting classes I'm accustomed to. So far I'm taking:
1) International Fisheries Management
2) Alternative energy sources in the physical, environmental and economic perspective
3) Design and operation of deregulated electricity markets
4) Energy challenges and energy production in the 21st century
5) Environmental Economics
6) Environmental responsibility: the role of NGO's and large corporations
7) Communicating in the energy sector
8) Norwegian Language 101
Should be a blast!
Everything here closes on Sundays, and I mean everything! so all the students tend to get very bored (and hungry if they did not pre-grocery shop) so we are starting a hiking club and hiking a new mountain every sunday. This sunday we plan on hiking from the first mountain I climbed; fjellveien or Fløyen (not sure which one is its real name) to a place called ørliken. the hike starts on the peak of fløyen and goes along the peaks of several mountains around a lake and ends at the peak of ørliken where you take a gondola down (or if we have any energy left we walk down :p
I'll be sure to post more pictures of the hikes as they come :)
In other news orientation week was a blast and I've met a lot of new people. Beer is really expensive so i plan on making my own beer with a 2 week brewing window... im obviously not counting on good taste, but then again i've never had good taste for anything :p
I climbed a mountain out back from my apartment the other day, i stumbled upon this weird path that started with a 1ft wide bridge across a creek and then up steep ledges of rock. Eventually the trail came to a vertical rock face of about 20ft up. i had no idea how to get up there until i noticed something in the snow which turned out to be a rope! so the rest of the trail involved repelling up rock faces and climbing ladders to get to the peak. It was tiring but definitely worth it in the end for the view. Pictures and videos at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonmader/sets/72157623242716276/detail/
Classes started this week, it turns out I'm considered a masters student out here even though in Canada i'm just a bachelor. The reasoning for this is that this is my 5th year of university, and since ive been in school so long and have overloaded on courses every year I have enough credits to be nearly done my masters out here (maybe I should nag them to count me as a PHD student :p ). So far I'm overloading as usual, I'm only supposed to take 4 classes, but I'm taking more mainly because we don't have most of these courses back in Canada, at least that I know of, and I find them terribly interesting compared to the usual finance and accounting classes I'm accustomed to. So far I'm taking:
1) International Fisheries Management
2) Alternative energy sources in the physical, environmental and economic perspective
3) Design and operation of deregulated electricity markets
4) Energy challenges and energy production in the 21st century
5) Environmental Economics
6) Environmental responsibility: the role of NGO's and large corporations
7) Communicating in the energy sector
8) Norwegian Language 101
Should be a blast!
Everything here closes on Sundays, and I mean everything! so all the students tend to get very bored (and hungry if they did not pre-grocery shop) so we are starting a hiking club and hiking a new mountain every sunday. This sunday we plan on hiking from the first mountain I climbed; fjellveien or Fløyen (not sure which one is its real name) to a place called ørliken. the hike starts on the peak of fløyen and goes along the peaks of several mountains around a lake and ends at the peak of ørliken where you take a gondola down (or if we have any energy left we walk down :p
I'll be sure to post more pictures of the hikes as they come :)
Sunday, January 3, 2010
FOUND MY ROOM
So i picked up my keys today. i went to the student center when it opened a the receptionist was still recovering from what was now a 2 day hangover from new years. to add to it he only worked the housing desk once a year and was very rusty. After some "manflirting" ( no, no actual flirting, just talk that greases the gears to get a good deal)and it worked! He changed my room from a 1st floor room with a view of a parking lot, to a room on the seventh floor of a building on a 100ft cliff with a view overlooking the bay. AND he lowered the price so it is less than what I would have paid on the first floor... (shhhhh dont tell anyone). Of course I knew he changed my room, but I didnt know that it was to that and didnt know he lowered the price until i looked at the contract hours later (hes getting a random hug next time i see him). so later that day i set off to find my room. I have some choice words to describe the walk there, but I will leave it at I walked along a noisy highway with no scenery for over an hour, uphill. Next time I'm taking a bus :p
But of course when i got there it was all worth it :) now i'm back at the hostel downtown because i had one more night left here and have to be at the police station early to submit my residence and work permits. also all of Norway comes off holidays tomorrow that started on the 24th, which means there are massive discounts and crowds of people at stores. It's like boxing day after a new years day that lasts 1.5 weeks :p i'm going to need to buy a drying wrack, some potatoes and laundry soap! maybe i'll find some shorts really cheap off season that i can use in the summer :p
anyways pictures of the room and the million dollar view (for much much less than a million dollars) are at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonmader/sets/72157623165920956/detail/
But of course when i got there it was all worth it :) now i'm back at the hostel downtown because i had one more night left here and have to be at the police station early to submit my residence and work permits. also all of Norway comes off holidays tomorrow that started on the 24th, which means there are massive discounts and crowds of people at stores. It's like boxing day after a new years day that lasts 1.5 weeks :p i'm going to need to buy a drying wrack, some potatoes and laundry soap! maybe i'll find some shorts really cheap off season that i can use in the summer :p
anyways pictures of the room and the million dollar view (for much much less than a million dollars) are at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonmader/sets/72157623165920956/detail/
Friday, January 1, 2010
Climb up Fjellveien part 2
Went up the mountain again today with the french couple AVEC SNOWSHOES because last time i tried to do it without them sucked a lot. Got some sweet pics at the top again and spent the rest of the day doing basically nothing at the hostel because we were all so tired from the night before. just added a video of the peak of Fjellveien at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonmader/4234227007/
I think ill walk across all the peaks of the mountain sometime this week, it supposed to take 2 hours up, 5 hours across and about 3 hours back. so i'll have to start and end when its dark, but ce la vie
toodles for now
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonmader/4234227007/
I think ill walk across all the peaks of the mountain sometime this week, it supposed to take 2 hours up, 5 hours across and about 3 hours back. so i'll have to start and end when its dark, but ce la vie
toodles for now
new years
so we had a hot smoked salmon last night with the hostel and it was kinda of a potluck dinner, then i found some 2.4% beer (woot woot) and some chocolate sauce and bread (some of the cheapest stuff in the store) it cost me about 100 NOK and we feasted and drank through the night. fireworks are really good here, there are no government ones, everyone in the city brings their own and sets them off all at once. there was an after party at a norwegians house where we drank all their beer and then found a shopping cart and had some fun. funny that the word fun here sounds very similar to the word faun, which means fuck in norsk. so i really gotta watch using that word around teachers and children. :P
4am we bedtime so 9am came early today
pics at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonmader/sets/72157623106605520/detail/?page=2
4am we bedtime so 9am came early today
pics at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonmader/sets/72157623106605520/detail/?page=2
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