UNICA!

Hei everyone!
This has been a busy week.  Classes were very interesting: on Wednesday, I had a very thought-provoking and interesting discussion about historical archaeology and the symbolic meanings of consumer objects (Oh, Appadurai, I am always so confused by your writing style, but you are so interesting).  Then, in Marine Ecology, a guest lecturer showed us how to identify microorganisms found in sandy shores. 

On the top is Achnanthes sp., and below that is Navicula sp. (sp. means species-aka I can identify the genus, but after that, they all look really similar).  These are diatoms; box-shaped organisms with silica "shells". 

Wednesday was also the start of the UNICA conference: a gathering of student representatives from European capital cities.  I did not actually help at the conference until Thursday, when the Music/Quiz group entertained and educated the participants with an interactive quiz.  Questions included: What country are we in? and Are there wild polar bears in mainland Norway? (Answer-no, though there are polar bears in Svalbard-a group of islands in the far north belonging to Norway).  And my personal favorite question: True or False: All Norwegian diplomats must learn about black metal (A: True)!

That night there was a reception at City Hall for the participants, tutors, and volunteers.  Sipping champagne in a room overlooking the harbor.  Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, so no pictures, which was a real shame-especially since we were given a tour of the halls, including some huge murals.

Friday afternoon I got to help lead the tutors to the Viking Ship museum, where we were treated to a guided tour.  I've been there before, of course, but it's always a different experience when a guide is there to explain more of the context of an exhibit.  Plus, I got to wear a helmet and swing around a sword, which is always a good bonus.

Yep, I look fierce.

Also, on the way back, we saw some very wooly sheep:

That night was another wonderful evening at the Oslo Kongressenter, with great food and dancing (Gangnam style! and the Macarena).

Mmmm...pie.

 Saturday was the last day of the conference, with presentations of all the forum sections, including an awesome summary by one group to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody!  After that, the volunteers gathered to eat some ethnic food from this weekend's UiO Festivalen featuring the Norwegian group Donkeyboy.  I had lamb couscous-tasty.
Today, it's the first snow in Oslo- more like sleet, really, but still, reminds you to appreciate the wonderful weather this week!

Food and Stave churches

Wow-another 2 weeks.  I need to keep doing these more frequently, because I took 811 pictures since my last post, and this makes it so hard to choose which pictures to put on this blog!
All right, here goes:
Two Thursdays ago (before the last post), was Elvelangs i fakkellys, an evening walk along the river that flows through Oslo.  This was very cool, walking along a path lit by open lamps with groups of musicians or art pieces every few meters.  Lots of these pictures are fuzzy, but here's some of the art:

These are paper stars stuck on sticks on the side of a hill.  Why?-I have no idea, but it looked beautiful.

On that Saturday, I went on a guided tour of Akershus Slott (Akershus castle) with a group from the history faculty.  This was really cool-the original castle was built in 1299, but most of that is gone after lots of additions and construction by later Danish and Swedish kings or governors, most notably in the 1600's.  There is dungeon, secret passages, a crypt, and angry peasant ghosts though, so it had all those wonderful castle-y things.

This is the most "medieval"-looking of the rooms, since this was restored in the 1930's (I think) to what it would have looked like when the castle was new.  This is cool stuff to think about, especially with everything we're talking about in my Conservation class-how restoring something is inherently subjective, since every object (or room) has a long history during which aspects have been modified.  What is the authentic room-this imagining of the medieval past based on wall-paintings from another building, or how the room was used for grain storage for decades?  Neat stuff.
Last Monday, I had a class downtown, and since it was a gorgeous day, I wandered around by the royal palace.  There were, of course, the obligatory guards in big plumed hats, but I think something else was going on, since there was a camera/news-person section on the side.  I stuck around for a while, but left since who knows how long before-hand those people congregate.

The black strip is probably for Princess Ragnhild, who died in September.
Next to the palace are the royal gardens.  The leaves are changing color here, so it was all very pretty.

Also, you just have to love a park where there are signs like these!

Last weekend was also the Fårikålfest-a group was trying to break the world record for serving the most fårikål (a traditional Norwegian dish made of mutton and cabbage).  This meant 2 days of free meat, and dish soap!  This is what is looks like:

It was really tasty-you can't tell from this picture, but there were peppercorns tucked in those layers of cabbage, so there were spicy bites in this. 

Then, last Sunday I hosted an Apple Pie Party-basically, I asked people to bring food that they make at home, and I would make apple pie.
Here's all the deliciousness:

There were dumplings, Japanese-style curry, arretjeskake (cocoa-cake), mossakka (pancakes), and spicy cauliflower-all very tasty!  And the apple pie:

Previously that week, there had been a solar event that caused higher-than normal Aurora Borealis levels, meaning that they theoretically could be seen from Oslo, so a friend and I hiked out to try and see them.   Unfortunately, the weather decided to not cooperate and rain, so all we could see was rain and creepy shadows.
 Great weather this week, leading to pictures like this:

So, I decided yesterday to visit the Norske Folkemuseum before the weather turns.  This is a cultural history museum on Bygdøy, near the Vikingskipshuset.  It has buildings from several regions in Norway, from urban apartments to rural farmhouses.  In the summer season, there are many activities outside in all the buildings, like a living history museum, but it's less crowded now.  I took a ton of pictures, so I'll be selective and show you probably the most famous building there: the Gol stavkirke.

A stavkirke (stave church) is a special kind of architecture, based on load-bearing pillars, from the Middle Ages, and they're very rare (only 28 left in Norway).  This one was originally from Gol, Norway, but it was moved to the present site in 1885 by the Fortidsminneforeningen (a preservation society) and King Oscar II (a Swedish king who wanted to improve hist public opinion).  Then, the church became a national symbol in 1907, after Norway's independence from Sweden.It's undergoing restorations now, so one can't go inside the church, but around in the covered walkways all around the stave church.
Next week: UNICA!

Drøbak and food!

Wow, it's been a while.  I was in Drøbak (still in Norway) the week before, for a field course in biology.  This involved going out in a boat every morning, like this: 

...and collecting buckets of sea creatures, like this:

...then spending lots of time looking everything up in field guides (which is not so easy, especially when your polychaete dies and decides to scrunch up when it's dying, or when the guidebook itself tells you that it is very difficult to distinguish between two species of gobies).  This turns the bucket into this:

Awww, nicely labeled organisms!  We sampled hardbottom, softbottom (mud) and seagrass habitats.  On the seagrass day, my group caught an eel.  I have a video of this, but it makes grabbing it out of the bucket seem entirely too easy, and it was not.  Eels wriggle (a lot) and secrete slime, so I will leave you to imagine it.
On Thursday, we all went to the aquarium, to see all these sea urchins and fish we had been staring at alive and happy.  This was fun, and I learned lots of Norwegian names for things, like steinbiten (wolf-fish=very ugly), sjøpølser (literally, sea sausage-sea cucumbers), tangkutling (2-spotted goby), leirkutling (common goby), sandkutling (sand goby), svartkutling (black goby), bergkutling (painted goby)...I told you there were a lot of gobies.
Anyway, it was very fun.  I fulfilled my dream and went swimming in the fjord: now I have swum on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean!

Then it was back to Oslo, where I saw mini-quilts in the T-bane station.  Mushrooms, gnomes, and a Ruter card (very well done-it pretty much looks exactly like a travel card).

Last weekend was the culture festival, including a gourmet food fair by city hall: free samples!
I tried such wonderful things as chocolate, cheese, reindeer and moose sausage, and rakfisk (rotten fish-according to the internet, this is raw fish that is left to ferment in a brine for a couple of months).  It was salty, but really good!  As at all festivals I have seen in Oslo so far, there was the obligatory whole animal roasting over coals and vegetable sculptures.

There were also music performances and other events that weekend.  The new TV season is kicking off again, so there are ads at the train station for shows such as Alt for Norge, a reality show about Norwegian-Americans going to Norway to participate in stereotypically Norwegian things, such as skiing.  It's very odd seeing your culture through the lens of someone else-check it out!
I tried some candy on Monday-smarties (unlike those strange fruit-flavored pill-like objects that always get left behind in the Halloween candy jar after 3 years) these are M&M like: chocolate covered in a colored candy coating (say that 5 times fast!).  However, these are flattened, and the colors acutally taste different: I believe red is cherry-flavored.  It's odd that both Norwegian and American smarties are both fruit-flavored, though.  Food for thought.

Fast Food and a Scavenger Hunt

On Wednesday, since the weather was sunny, some friends and I went out to the islands in Oslo fjord again.  This time, it was quite windy.  As you sit waiting for the ferry boat to arrive, there is a building made up of maybe 6 large cylinders on the right.  I think they are open to the air on top, since there was this unearthly whistling sound like when you blow air across the top of a half-filled bottle.  I tried recording the sound, but it was too windy.
Anyway, here are some pictures of a buoy and the painted summer houses built on the islands.

 By this point, I'm getting quite chilly from standing in the wind, but luckily, the cabin in heated.  They also have lifejackets in case the boat runs into that picturesque little marker buoy.  These are more serious lifejackets than those provided on the ferry at Mackinac Island.

Earlier that day, we ate at McDonalds, because that is the cheapest hamburger you will find anywhere in Oslo.  I think McDonalds in the USA should offer curry sauce!

Finally, I enjoyed the electrified little man in a kilt on my cup reminding me to throw my trash in the garbage can.

The next day was the Scavenger Hunt-this is a different (and much more hilarious) event than during Buddy Week.  My group of 4 did many of the tasks, including sitting in a tree acting like owls, dancing, asking random strangers odd questions, crawling around a statue of Ibsen, and forming the strange Norwegian letters with our bodies.  Here is me wading into the fjord. 

If you can't tell, it is cold.  And windy.  And kind of slippery, with all that algae.  Thank you, groupmates, for saving me from sliding into the fjord!
The last task we did before the Hunt ended was a makeover of me.  Don't I look distinguished?