Privacy ??!!??

I knew that everything is very public and transparent in Norway, but somehow I did not think that this fact will infuence me....

Do you want to know what is my second name, where I live or what is my mobile number?

Just go to http://maps.google.com/ and search for my full name!!!

wrrrr!!!%&!!!%$£!!!!!

Caffee, statistics and a bit of luck

After very lazy Saturday morning: reading a book by a fireplace and veeery big and slow breakfast (mmmmm I like Saturdays!!!!) I met a friend in a small coffee in the centre.
They have great choice of coffee and delicious apple juice :-) Definitely something to recommend!
And I was even happier when I came back home! :-)
Why? Because again I managed not to break my leg!
The style of walking on the streets of Bergen looks nowadays more or less like slipping on banana peels every 10 steps. Ice stays in exactly the same place where it appeared more than one month ago. And so does snow!!!!
Looking at the statistics from last 30 days, the total snowfall was 35.6mm.
Most of the sidewalks look like that today:
Well, everything here takes time... There are plenty of more exciting things to do than desnowing sidewalks, I agree...
And in the same time I also hope, that my bad luck will be as lazy as my Saturday morning and the good luck will last longer than the snow and ice on the streets!!!
I still have to walk to work everyday for about 20 minutes each way...

Skiing in Myrkdalen

We went skiing yesterday, for the first time in this season and the first time in Norway.
Cold, sunny and beautiful!!!

Surprisingly my uncomfortable boots are not that uncomfortable as I expected and the red pistes are not that scary as they were last year :-)
Maybe even my style of skiing was more similar to parallel skis than to my favorite snow-plough (X style).
But, as some things never change, I managed to fall down twice: once while standing and calling The Best Boyfriend Ever (it should not really count as I was standing, not skiing, right;-) ) and once when leaving a chair lift... In fact, that one should not count as well as the man next to me pushed me!
:-)

Cold and beautiful

Norwegians say: There's no such thing as too cold, only not enough clothes.
Several days in row with -12C seems quite cold for me, but it was worth to go for a walk... It is just beautiful around:
After sunset:

Happy New Year!!!

Coming back to Bergen after Christmas was full of surprises!
Here is a list of my New Year's discoveries and challenges :

• Almost all the snow was in exactly the same place where we had seen in last time: on the streets and side walks. It is winter, I know, but it was only snowing on 19th and 20th of December. Afterwards just sunshine and cold! Anyway, this gave an opportunity to try ploughing for the first time in my life :-) I was ploughing the snowcover with my suitcase almost all the way home from the bus stop,

• Our fridge does not work if the temperature around it is below X degrees. X is still unknown but it must be >= 5 degrees Celsius since the fridge was already not working when I arrived. Obviously most of our flowers did not survived in 5C... Anyway, for the first time in my life I slept in ~7C, in the morning it was already around 11C...

• On Monday I received an SMS from the Bergen Kommune saying that I should move our car so that the street that it stands on can be cleaned. Fine! Two problems: 1. where should I move it if all the streets around looks exactly the same - full of snow! 2. the car was not only covered with 40cm layer of snow but also surrounded with snow banks created by the snowploughs that already tried to clean the street. Anyway, for the first time in my life I was digging for 1h45min to able to move the car... and I left it ... 20m further, on a kind of cleaned part of the street.
  

That is it, at least for now...

The Best Boyfrien Ever is comming back to Bergen in one week. As people say that doing things for the first time in our lives is fun, I hope that in 2010 he will get plenty of opportunities like that :-p

And of course I wish you all the best in 2010 and plenty of positive challenges and discoveries!!!!

BTW, have you seen that: