Category: Norwegen

I just wanted to post a quick update on what’s been going on lately. I finished my first exam period and I have to say that the results so far have been very good. So I guess it was worth all the pain and effort of studying hard.

To relax from all the stress, I went to Norway to meet Jan and Kristy as well as to see the country. I started meeting Jan in Trondheim and he showed me his very nice city. The highlights included the cathedral, Munkholmen (a small island that used to have a monastery on it), the TV tower, having lots beers for 6€ (thank you Jan for all your shouts) and watching discovery channel as well as some cool movies on that bloody rainy Saturday.

I went on towards Bergen travelling on the popular Hurtigruten post-ships. That was really nice and incredibly relaxing, although almost all the other travellers were German pensioners. I just sat there up on the deck and watched the beautiful Norwegian coast passing by. As it was too expensive to get a cabin, I just spend the night on a sofa, so that night was short and uncomfortable.

Bergen is a very nice city, although I was really unlucky with the weather. The weather is really weird in Norway. You can check the forecast every two hours and it will tell you something different every time. So I had a look around anyway, went into one of these very nice old hanseatic houses and went out for a couple of expensive drinks later. The next day showed some Norwegian weather again. Although the forecast was good, it was rainy again. So I decided to work on a presentation that I had to get finished before the end of my holidays. (Yeah, I know that sucks, but I couldn’t get it finished before and I promised to hold it at work the day after I came home)

In the evening I took the train to Voss, where I met Kristy. We had a quiet night, cause I was about to go on a Norway in a nutshell tour the next day. So I got up early to see all the beauty that Norway has to offer. Great fjords, waterfalls, rivers, mountains… I really had an awesome day (even weatherwise) and the scenery was stunning (I took about 400 pictures, just to give you an idea).

 

The  next day I had a look at a folklore museum, to see how Norwegians lived in the early days. Very cool! I decided to take a hike up the local mountain for something to do and because I was about a fourth up the mountain anyway, cause that’s where the museum was. Up on the top I was exhausted and relaxed watching a lot of paragliders taking off. Most of the took of and some did some exciting crashs into cows, mud or bushes. That night we had a BBQ with some of Kristy’s friends. It was cool to meet more Norwegians.

The next day Kristy took me around the area and their cabin. It is a very nice area, with a lot of beautiful lakes and mountains. Unfortunately the lakes are very cold, so I didn’t opt for a swim 🙂

That afternoon I took the train to Oslo and used the spare time to gaze at more beautiful landscape and put some more work into the presentation. In Oslo I spend the night in some weird and noisy hostel, so I was up again at about 7am. Tell you what Oslo is very boring and sometimes scary (met some drug addicts just placing a new shot) on a Sunday morning at about 8am. Anyway, the day got a little better and I could watch a speed boat race, the castle and went to the Nobel museum. All in all Norway is a great country. For another holiday however I would need cheaper transport and imported food/alcohol to make it affordable.

At the moment I am studying for yet another exam on the 10th of September. It is very boring finance stuff, but I have to do it! 😉 This will be my second last exam, so that keeps me kinda motivated.

In September I will start an internship with accenture in Hannover. I am very excited about it and I am looking forward to this opportunity to get some hands on IT consulting experience in a large IT consultancy. But I will write more about it once it started…