First night in the new flat :-)

The plan for the first evening was to try some norwegian beer while watching the Lord of the Rings.
In the end I watched Vicky Cristina Barcelona and had a cup of tee.

Why?
Tee: You cannot buy any alcohol after 20:00 in the working days and after 18:00 during the weekend! I was at the cassa at 18:10!
Vicky Cristina Barcelona: In order to see some sunny place (Barcelona & Oviedo)!!!
Have a look at the weather forecast here in order to understand...

Busy days...

Last days were pretty busy, but fortunatelly there is also some progress:

Norwegian ID number:
Today I have received my temporal ID number (D-number). Only 5 working days when I was told to wait 2-3 weeks. Well done!

Bank account:
The magic D-number gives me a possibility to open a bank account!!! Not everywhere of course, and not in the bank that I would like to choose, but at least I have a possibility. And it will take only 10 days to have it working (wrr)!!!

Tax card:
I was kindly informed that I will pay 36% of my salary to the Norwegian state. Fortunately the Norwegian State does not want all my spare money and it decided to give me a discount on the taxes in the first 2 years. So the effective tax to be paid is ~32% ...and believe me, I dot earn SO much!
These numbers are very motivating to use my full rights to the unemployment benefit and the maternity leave at the end of my contract (yes, this time I will!).

The flat:
- our new flat seems to be fine and big enough. I probably on write so because I do not know the neighbors yet and the flat is almost empty (the truck with our inventory should arrive in some days),
- on the next day after I had signed the rental agreement, the Best Boyfriend Ever (tBBE) found an advert of a furnished flat in a good location, generally looking twice better than ours and only slightly more expensive,
- I asked tBBE not to show me these kind of things anymore ;-)

Final removal:
- Mrs. Mariola, our contact point from the removal company, has a 3weeks old baby and she is forgetting some things, even the important ones (like should we pay the VAT or not),
- tBBE is very happy - all the new toys that we bought arrived on time (the last one only today!) to be packed on the truck on Monday, (well done!),
- we both hope (me and tBBE) that Mrs. Mariola will not forget where to send the truck ;-)

tBBE:
- looks great via skype videocall :-),
- is tired and stressed (no progress in his PhD for last ... days),
- between 1st and 16th of Sept will travel more than 3400km,
- will hug me in 18 days!!!

First visitor !!!!

Sunday passed definitly too fast!!!
This was mainly because of the great company of Lo :-)



On the way from the local attraction - acquarium, I discovered that me name is not unique in here:

Ufff, probably we have a flat!

Yes, yes, yes!!!!

Most probably we have a proper place to stay for the next years!

Ufff, I feel much better now... and Lorenzo is coming tonight – just perfect timing for celebration!

Definitely, I like Saturdays!!!

P.S. I have seen a lot of different types of rain in here, but I discovered today that there can be a beautiful sunshine and pour rain at the same time :-)

Public data

Everything is public here!
I have entered name of one of my colleagues and added "Bergen" in google search engine. Result: a point on the map indicating his address together with his home and mobile number!!!
After several minutes of searching I was also able to find out how much he earns.

That is scary!!!!

Anyway, probably this is the reason why you have to wait 5 months in order to get the residence permit - they collect all the data and enter them into google databases ;-)

One of the sunny days!!!

I hope it was not the last one this month ;-)

I took the opportunity to walk a bit around and actually I felt kind of weird wearing a jacket when most of the people around had just T-shirts on them.

The photos below were collected during the walk and thay are not showing any posters or postcards. (Yes, there are some flowers here, Mom!)

First day at work ...

...was very positive ! Ufff :-)

I received a resonable dose of the administrative information and will get quite strong support with fixing all the formalities on arrival: registration on the police station and the request for the tax card. The laptop together with all the accounts were ready...
Really well organised...

As I was told, representatives of 27 different nations are working at CIPR. Including myself there are 1.5 Poles... I haven't met the 0.5 Pole yet ;-)

Reactions on the fact that 'Ola' is a shortname from 'Aleksandra':
* 'Ola'? It sounds rather Spanish...
* 'Ola'? What does it stands for?
* 'Ola'? Oh really? We use it here as well ... for males!


About the weather:
It is very difficult to decide whether it is still summer of already autumn:

But actually it is not important, you will get wet anyway ;-)

Here I am!

It is pretty difficult to call it a 'warm welcome'...
On the other hand it can only be better ;-)

Norway... already tomorrow!!!

Wow! Time is flying!!!! Tomorrow I will already be in Bergen!

The bags are ready: almost 20kilos of the over-luggage...

The last beer on our terrace tonight, tomorrow slow breakfast with the view on the lake and...

here I go Norway!!! :-)

Last days, last flight...

I managed to fly twice more :-]
And even made some photos during the flight...

I still cannot convince myself to leave the stearing handles during the flight in order to take some good photos thus the photos are... well, pretty bad...

On the last photo, belive me or not, it is me :-)

Flying again :-)

Yes!!! The weather was just perfect - two flying days in a row.
BTW: This will probably never happen in Bergen ;-)

Anyway, flying here in Italy could be very difficult in August since all the people are on holidays!!! Chiuso per ferie!!! Thanks to Karin, Wim and their jeep we manged to reach the top of the Monte Nudo anyway! Thanks a lot!

Thursday's flight: the highest point was around 1400m this time :-)

The Friday's flight was pretty turbulent... I had the biggest closure ever: according to Rafal only 1/3 of the wing was flying... I must admit, I got scared... but just for some seconds ;-)

Lago Vinnano

We had a great pleasure to admire the Nature in Piemonte in a great company!

We started with a bit cloudy weather:


but after heavy sweting we were awarded with some goregreous views:

View on the Lago Vinnano


If you only want - the distance doesn't matter!!!


Flowers look better in the nature than in the vase :-)