Edinburgh Exchanges

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Things have been growing increasingly cold and dark and this far-away northern part of the world, and the prospect of an isolated week in Oslo after two lovely weekends with the best of people was depressing C, my lovely fellow Edinburgh compatriot, and I entirely.  Thankfully our Austrian friend S and Australian friend E, both charming medical students, came to the rescue.  On Thursday evening (the beginning of the weekend for slackers such as we have become) we headed over to E’s, and I somehow was put in charge of making the evening meal: a very traditional Norwegian culinary delight that we had previously suggested trying partly in jest; fiskeboller, or ‘fish balls.’  The fiskeboller themselves were white and slimy and rather hideous to handle, but once plopped into the sauce I knocked up (my method of measuring is haphazard to say the very least, poor E is such a well-organised and measured young gentleman that he nearly had apoplexy watching me assemble this sauce in his kitchen in my rather relaxed, slapdash way) were slightly less horrid to look at.  With the addition of some big prawns to distract us from what could potentially have been car-crash-cuisine, we sat down to our meal with slight trepidation.  Luckily my sterling skills (miraculously) overcame and the food actually tasted pleasant!  I was truly amazed, to be perfectly honest.  Anyway, numerous fiskeboller, two bottles of red wine and a shared tub of devilishly good ice cream later we all collapsed on E’s bed together and decided that the intellectual challenge of the pub quiz was a little too much for that evening.  The boys had an early(ish) night (unlike us in the rather relaxed faculty of humanities, the medical students at Oslo seem to do a little work occasionally) and C and I continued onto an 80s themed party in the building next to mine.  Swiftly cornered by a group of truly mental Mediterraneans intent on making us the meat in their sandwich, C and I simultaneously seemed to be the only ones who fully appreciated the musical playlist: typical British dated treats like Madness, Depeche Mode et al were rather lost on those around us while we (ok, possibly rather embarrassingly enthusiastically) sang along to every word.  C picked up on something very true and hilarious upon realization though: when those without English as a first language attempt miming along to English-speaking songs, the results are often the most comic thing you will stumble across.  Keep your eyes peeled for this!

Anyway, the moral of the party tale is that Italians/Spaniards/Portuguese/Mexicans are mad when it comes to partying, and two upstanding members of the Oslo Police Force ended up confiscating the music device and interviewing those who didn’t swiftly leave the flat!  Exciting.  I have heard rumours that Oslo’s Police force is worryingly small at night, with a reliable source suggesting that only 8 officers are on patrol during the night.  Considering that 2 felt fit to visit the party that night, I think the organizers can consider their night to be some (warped) success(!)

Anyway, despite exams being just over a week off, a dark weekend in Oslo loomed, and S and E came to the rescue with suggestions of a trip over the border to Gothenburg.  We set off in S’ car on Saturday morning and arrived before noon, before exploring the city a little.  The cold was steely, but an afternoon exploring and a visit to the design museum was a pleasant way to spend the afternoon.

Also, here is a lovely and obligatory picture of C and I posing ridiculously next to a sign which references our homeland in some way, I have seen more of these kinds of things in the past few months than ever in my life, but it's just irresistable:

That evening we ate out, a complete novelty for us after months in Oslo where one has to consider selling a limb before entering a restaurant!

S and I had elk, C had some delicious potato thing and E went for the calf’s tongue (surprisingly good).  We spent the rest of evening in a bar that resembled some strange opium den with carpets on the walls, but was, in truth, cosy in the extreme and the Swedish bartender made hilarious Norway comments when we ordered our drinks (the two languages are mutually i.  The following day brought more food, some Swedish modern art and a trip to the supermarket where we stocked up on mulled wine!  Sweden is delightfully cheap.  Then the long, depressing journey home to this week’s horrible realizations of the hard revision to be done!  “Oh dear” really doesn’t cover it.

This is a re-post of a mysteriosuly deleted post, don't worry about re-adjusting your calendars!

It has been a ridiculously long time since my last post, for which I can only apologise! Semester has hit the mid-point, and my first impressions of easy-going academic life have been transformed: there is huge stress put on mid-term paper submissions which must be approved for entrance to examinations in early december, and having stuck with my rather tedious subjects this long, I have been keen to submit the best possible work in order to gain my place in the exam hall in a few weeks (as much as that obviously pains me in a way.) Despite this, my focus hasn't truly been solely on academia: what with Halloween, quiz nights (I have never been a trivia freak, but I am getting worryingly into the feeling of victory only slightly dampened by the realisation that my marvellous team of friends and quiz comrades are unlikely to beat our position of second out of seventeen teams ever again), and a trip over the border to Sweden for a friend's birthday, everything has been ever so slightly manic at my end.
Halloween, despite not being a massive thing in Norway, is inevitably growing (thanks, US) in popularity. Students, always desperate for something to celebrate, went wild on the theme here. My friends are I met for drinks at mine (very typical in Norway when one considers that buying drinks in any bar will often be cripplingly expensive), subsequently had a little fun with face paints, and headed out to the student bar in the closest student village. It would be fair to say an eventful night was had by all, and my facial pores have yet to forgive me for suffocating them with something resembling a tiger until 5am the following day (I have borrowed some of C's photos, for which I hope she can forgive me as I am ridiculously forgetful about carrying my own camera anywhere!):

The following weekend (I love the way that I skip the weekdays as if they don’t exist – they do, and are filled with very few classes, laps at the swimming pool, increasingly lengthy saunas which are my new Scandinavian vice, icy walks to and from uni, dinners with friends when I’m lucky and not very much else) C and I took the train to Sweden to visit our friend D, another charming disciple of the Scandinavian department currently studying in the city of Uppsala. Seven hours each way on the train was more than worth it for a weekend's meat feast (meant in the least crude terms, despite my usual love for that kind of below the belt humour that is so rarely exposed to anyone here for fear of being entirely lost in translation). Meat in Norway is too expensive to even consider incorporating into my diet, and so to cross the border and be presented with a dinner along the theme of ‘wholesome British’ and including delicacies such as roast beef, sheperd’s pie and stew, not to mention an array of vegetable accompaniments and topped off by flapjacks was a beautiful way to start an evening:

The following day the three of us recovered after an eventful evening with the help of burgers from Max (think Swedish McDonald’s, but 100% times better in every way, including ethically) for lunch, and a dinner of chicken curry, a skill that I never once imagined I’d see concocted at the hands of D. Over the course of the weekend we met a host of lovely people, a lot of whom strangely study at Edinburgh and are currently on year abroad (only strange in that we had to be in Sweden before meeting one another), and I made the realization that more than anything, I have missed the British sense of humour. Having spent months suppressing jokes on the basis that they are too complicated to explain to international students, or simplifying everything to the ridiculous extent of slapstick humour, the whole weekend was painfully witty, and I was genuinely sad to have to leave it behind:
On a side note, having barely slept the entire weekend, my fatigue made the following week nigh on impossible, but once again entirely worth it. An uneventful week of academia passed, and I have just returned from another very different, equally eventful weekend's "hyttetur" which I can't possibly begin to explain at this current time, but will inevitably share more details of in my next entry, the moral of the story being that I still rather love Scandinavia, despite being unenthused about the fact that the snow has (finally) melted here, at least for the time being.