Transfere

This was one of those times that you start thinking: What was I thinking about? And to be honest I think my mind must have been in another dimension. I remembering ordering the tickets with the shortest travel time and that the only drawback was that my plane had to stop by Stavanger before it turned over to London. In fact I had to stop by somewhere, but not in Stavanger. I had to change plane at Billund in Denmark and I had only half an hour from the plane laded to the next one was going. The women in the information desk in Oslo told me that it would go smoothly, but to be fare it didn't. They gave us a probably helpful message on the airplane, but since I always have had a hard time understanding Danish I didn't understand a thing. So what could I do. I followed the sign saying transfer. And where did they get me? Up a narrow stair, to a closed door with a sign telling one to push a button, to call the security to let one in.... hmm.... I tried it... two times, but nothing happen. I went down the stairs again, starting to get really stressed. How should I suppose to know where to go? I asked a guy working at the custom station. He looked at me with disbelieves in his eyes. I, of course, had to go out of the airport and in on the other side. I ran out and found the other entrance. Ran even faster up to the security check; took out my PC, took of my belt and jacket and then the guard asks me for my boarding card. I showed him the tickets I got at my airport in Sandane (i got all my tickets there), but then he is telling me that I have to go down again and check in again!!! What the F**K!! My luggage was probably all ready in the plane I was going with, but still I had to run down and check in again and then go up to the security again. The guard then ask me if I got any food in my backpack and I told him I didn't. "Think again" he said firmly. And then I remembered the brown cheese I brought with me. So i told him, "it's brown cheese", in English. I had decided to speak English to him, so he would speak English to me, so I would actually understand the words coming out of his mouth. But for some reason he didn't understand, so I had to say it in Norwegian. So much for the English. I ran all that i could toward the gate, meanwhile hearing: Gate 2 is closing. After a breathing break at the pass control (that felt like forever) I jumped down some stair I reached my gate right before they closed it.

So no, not very found of Denmark

Time and food

I have been wondering for a while, if time is moving faster her in London than back home in Norway. I just can't understand how I had time for all the stuff I did back then and still study enough. Of course this is a master and it should be more work. The thing is that I have less lectures now and use that extra time mostly for reading, but still I feel I don't even have time to make myself a proper dinner each day. I think the reason is, that I am more social here, but also they are giving us a lot of tough, long-termed course works. The system of the university is also a bit strange. They postpone all the exams to the spring, so everything I'm learning now, I have to re-learn it again the month before the exams.

I mentioned the food. I haven't been very creative when it comes to dinner. For the three first weeks I only had rice with mincemeat and sauce. It is easy and it doesn't take so long time. The last weeks I have upgraded some dinners with fried potatoes, meet and some vegetables. The two last Mondays however, I have joined Arne in the hunt for a competitor to the Norwegian Kebab. So far we have had two nice (low budget) dinners, but none of them looks similar to our Norwegian role kebab. The hunt continues.

Last weekend I met some Norwegian friends of mine. First I met Marianne on Saturday. We and some other people went for lunch. It was nice.

Sunday I met some other Norwegian friend. We went for sushi. I have never tasted sushi before and it has actually been one of the few things that I have thought I don't like. Now I know it is another thing that I like. We bought three plates with different stuff and shared everything. In addition we bought Japanese beer and sake. It was a funny evening.

The last thing on the food front is that I'm thinking of making rissole in the Norwegian way, for myself and some friends. I wish myself good luck..... 

The picture below which looks like a mix of a ham burger and something els, is apparently a Donner Kebab. It didn't look like that one the picture we saw, but it was what we got. 

Hyde Park by night

After a long day of reading, Sunday afternoon, I grabbed my camera and went to Hyde park. It starts getting dark fairly early now. I went from home at 5 pm and came to the park around 5.30. By then it was dark as the night. I was a bit unsure about the safety, walking the park in the darkness. I reckon the trolls over here must be way bigger than the ones we got in Norway, since everything els is so much bigger than what I am used to back home. Take fore example this park, I sincerely think it is bigger then my home town. 

So, ah well, it was pretty dark, so i decides to walk along the car road that crosses through the park. Because, at one point this road crosses The Serpentine, which is a big lake in Hyde park. I hoped to shoot some nice pictures there.

At the bridge I could stabilize my camera so it could take in the light it needed to make nice pictures. I didn't get the focus perfect, but still I'm fairly satisfied with some of the pictures I got.

The fall has come to London as well. It was cold outside and many of the leaves had fallen down. It was really nice walking by my self in the barely illuminated park, breathing in the fresh air (as fresh as you can get it in a city of 7 million) and shooting some pictures.     

 

Wings

There is always something happening on campus, but because of all the studies I can't get to do half of it. Yesterday it was chicken wing night at the bar on campus and I couldn't miss that, could I? In the beginning three of us bought 20 wings. Oh no, that wasn't enough. When another classmate came we bought 50 more. Lovely, greasy, chicken wings. We got it served in buckets. A bit later another two people came and we ordered another 50 more wings. The price was 10 pounds. The most craziest thing was that for the price of one bier at home we got a mug (4,5 pints = 2,556 liter) here. This is probably the healthiest dinner I have ever had...... 

Festival of Light

Friday evening Jatin, a classmate of mine, asked me if I wanted to come with him to a Hindi temple on Saturday. I love meeting new cultures, so I rescheduled everything els and went with him.

On 17th of October the Hindus celebrate the Festival of Light. It is just as our New Year celebration. This was the reason for us going to Europe's biggest Hindu temple. 

We came to the temple around 3 pm along with some other Indian friends of Jatin. It was a lot of security around the temple. High walls made it hard to take a good picture of it and it wasn't allowed with cameras inside. We had to leave our bags and cameras outside, in some kind of big wardrobe. Also we had to go through metal detectors when entering the temple. Before we could go further inside we also had to leave our shoes. Not allowed with shoes in the holiest part of the temple. 

The temple was an amazing view both from the outside and the inside. The whole thing is made of marble. Italian marble brought to India to get carved, and then brought to London and put together. Inside we walked around to the statues of all the different gods. Jatin told me about the different gods, but it was too hard to remember. Later on we also went to a big prayer session, held by on of the religion's great saints. It was in a really big room, more like a hall, where everyone were sitting on the floor (the oldest people had chairs). The session lasted fore about half an hour. Some of the saints went also around tossing rice and holly water at us (symbols of blessings). Even though I couldn't understand a thing of what had been spoken, and though my stiff feet were killing me, I felt kind of in peace sitting there. It was nice.     

From 9 pm to 9.30 pm the celebration finished of with a great laser and firework show. 4000 bombs made an amazing experience which just went on and on.

I am really glade I got to experience this. Thank you Jatin! 

Pictures: The Temple, The Fireworks and Some of the people I met.

"Green Men"

One thing that is not so great about London, are the way they are handling the traffic. They have both roundabouts and traffic lights. The roundabouts are okay, but one can really go crazy when it comes to their way of using traffic lights (look at the picture).

No, but really they have a lousy system. If you are going to cross the street, you usually have to do it in two operations. They have built up small Islands between each directions of the road, so you have to wait for the green man two times. On top of this the green man is not coming by a lot. You have wait for a while each time. 

 

British Museum

So on Saturday, me and Arne went to the British Museum. We didn't have any goal or any opinion of what we should see, so we just went going around looking on everything. I'll tell you, thats not a good idea. British Museum brags about having a 4 km big museum. I think, as a physicist, thats kind of a weird way to measure a display. The thing is, they are probably right, they can measure it like they want, because this place is huge. Of course it was interesting in some kind of way, but eventually we got kind of bored. It's just too much to see everything  in one day, or even in one week. Back in the days, Britain had colonies everywhere. So they have stolen a lot of stuff from these places and put it in their one personal museum. As a Londoner you don't have to travel anywhere you can just go to British Museum to experience the World.   

The picture to the left is of one of the statues from Eastern Islands. Kind of cool. Bee neat there is one picture from inside the Museum. This was just a small part of everything. So you get a understanding of how big it is. The two other pictures are of a sculpture looking like a tree. When we took a closer look we could see that it was made out of real weapons. To get rid of all the weapons lying around in some parts of Africa (after different wars), a company made an agreement with the village people. In exchange of bringing them weapons they'll give them tools, like f. exp a tractor. Then they'll get artist to use the weapons in their arts.