Loki in play mood

(just a video of our little chihuahua being in play mood)

Cold and wet

No real difference compared to the last year in Regensburg: cold and wet weather :(
I hope that changes soon, I want some real snow finally!

I'll visit my parents around Christmas and plan to cook for them. Just another year with traditional German food would be to boring, so I thought I cook some traditional Norwegian Christmas food: Pinnekjøtt (short english version)
It translates to something like "stick meat" and is very salty lamb rip. It needs to get watered for several hours before you start to cook it. It's not really cooked but rather steamed and usually served with mashed red cabbage or mashed kohlrabi.

Hackaton, class reunion, Christmas

Hackaton
From 05.11.-11.11. we'll have a Hackaton week at SIM.
The idea is to gather all developers from all offices in one place and let them focus on 2 or 3 problems for this week, implementing new features or fixing nasty bugs.
I'm currently preparing the technical part of this event, packing cables, switches and a temporary subversion server. Friday next week I will drive up to Gran (a small settlement 80km north of Oslo) where the Hackaton will take place and prepare everything.
Helgaker Gård

class reunion
On 22.12. we'll have a class reunion in Wittenberge, my home town. 10 years are over since we left school, so it will be interesting to see how everyone is doing. Seems barely anyone is still living in or around Wittenberge. The majority is spread all over Germany and even the world, as far as Brazil and Australia.

Christmas
We'll have a split Christmas this year.
Cass will probably travel up to her mom and I will fly to my parents until the 26th (including the class reunion on the 22th). The 2nd half of Christmas and new years day we'll travel to Bergen, to visit Cass' daddy.

And yes, I will start taking pictures again and post some here. :)

Another week alone ...

Cass is currently in Amsterdam with a friend to take some days off and relax a bit from annoying me. The 2 furballs are super happy whenever I come home. It's quite fun to see them nearly rolling over when wiggling their tails. :P

On Friday I was visting the "Rock In", a rock/metal pub. I really like it there.

Alone ... for a week

Cass is visiting her mom to celebrate both their birthdays together while I stay in Oslo. Got loads of work to do and 2 furballs to take care of, so no real danger to get bored.

Work permit gotten

After more than 3 months of waiting I've gotten my general work permit, valid for 5 years.

Loki is in Oslo now!

Finally, after more than 3 months of waiting I brought Loki to Oslo last weekend. He was shaking quite some during the flight, being scared of the noise and the generally unknown environment, but everything went well.

First Wiggles and Loki barked at each other but now they are friends again, playing around and having fun.

So the whole "family" is together now. :)

Summer is over

Temperatures are dropping (below 10 degree partially, currently around 6) and today was the first time that I had to use a pair of gloves while going to work by bicycle.

Just got to know that the last night was the coldest in august for 20 years.

Norwegians are much more relaxed than Germans

Generalizations are difficult, I know - but it seems to me that some of those well known stereotypes really do match.

The average Norwegian seems to be relaxed, happy and generally open minded. No matter if it's a 6 years old kid or a 70 year old grandma, they appear to be really warm-hearted. Noone was ever looking strange at me for not speaking Norwegian or being a foreigner in general.

What I've also noticed is that people are really calm and relaxed. Even when discussing very intense everyone stays polite, noone starts yelling or even insulting each other. But what I've also noticed is a tendency to be a bit careless. While Germans tend to be cautious about everything what they do the Norwegians do not bother about thinking each and every possibility of what might go wrong. When they pass the road then they expect the cars to break for them. When someone empties the dish washer and a glass or mug is dropping down - so what? it happened, not a big deal. There is a server running beyond its technical specifications, in danger to crash - fix it if you have time, but no worries!

Oh, and another very convinient specialty: noone cares about formalities. Just got told that even the prime minister is used to be called by his first name. Imagine calling the German chancellor and starting the talk with "Hi Angela, ..." - it would definitely cause a strange face on the other side of the line at least. This is not a lack of respect here, it's a more pragmatic approach to handle your life.

It's new to me but I like it.

my better half is continuing her studies now

Cass started her studies yesterday. Quite a change for her to get up early I guess. ;)

Time goes by ...

wow, another month is over, almost 3 months gone from Germany already.
I still don't have my offical work permit but according to the responsible police department that shouldn't worry me. My documents were ok and it's just a question of time until I get the official permission.

Apart from this there is not much to tell. I enjoy the not-so-hot weather with sun and 20-25 degree. The nights are finally getting bit longer. I have to admit that it was confusing to have 3 hours of real darkness only.

My Norwegian didn't improve much (yet). Everyone from 4 to 94 is speaking fluent English, so there is little to no pressure to learn Norwegian at all. But I'll learn it sooner or later. Written Norwegian is kinda understandable for me already but I still have quite some trouble with spoken Norwegian - especially if it's some strange dialect. ;)

the last month ...

Family, family, family - now boths our parents and Cass' brother visited our new home. Quite some people for a 52 sqm appartment - glady they weren't here at the very same time but kept us busy anyway. :)
So we went to visit Akershus, Holmenkollen, rådhusplassen and some other places of interest during that time. The exhibition of Steve Bloom near the rådhus was quite amazing.

Additionally we took care of 2 other Chihuahuas for 1 week. So you can imagine that (apart from such things like working, etc.) we didn't have much spare time left.

The appartment itself is looking much nicer now too. Some decoration and plants, a new carpet and finally a TV set - so our Wii is now working again. My cute Nabaztag is up and running as well (even though Cass hates it).

On Friday night we went to the cinema and watched the next Harry Potter movie. Die Hard 4 and Transformers are still on the "to do list".

Norwegian Wood

Cass bought tickets for the Norwegian Wood concerts on Friday. Warmup at 7 with Evanescence and at 9 Korn will rock the house! :D
And the best part: it's right around the corner in the Frognerparken, barely 3 min. away.
Update: Damn cool concert!
Korn live is really something special and the 950 NOK were a good investment.
Quite nice interview with Korn's bassist right before the concert.
And pictures from the concerts on Friday (Enslaved, Evanescence, Korn)

Back from Trondheim

After 3 days of condensed information about servers, network and security I'm now finally back in Oslo.
Trondheim is a really beautiful city, I like it a lot.

Alone, at last!

No, just kidding. But today Thoralf left for Trondheim, and will be gone for 3 days or so which leaves me to do.. Well pretty much nothing ^.- I will be meeting a friend today, and drag him along to my second chihuahuameeting, this time a bit bigger than last time, I expect 8 chihuahuas to be there, give or take a few. Should be interesting :) Pictures later!

1st day at work

Friday at 9 my I started to work at SIM. Funnily my new laptop arrived just in time. So I spent most of the day installing my laptop, setting up accounts, etc.

Not much work relevant things happened execpt the usual "get to know the environment" activities. Oh, and I'll fly to Trondheim next Tuesday to work in the office there for 3 days (returning Thursday evening).

I didn't want to use the shipped Windows Vista crap, so I downloaded Fedora 7 and spent the whole Saturday (took the laptop home) trying to get it up and running. The wireless card drove me (and Cass) nuts. I finally managed to get up and running but noticed that there were more issues left to solve - so I kicked it off the hard disk again and installed Ubuntu 7.04. It worked quite ok, less troublesome than Fedora and somewhen on Sunday I even managed to get my G15 keyboard and the Logitech Revolution Mouse with all its functions (14 buttons!) up and running. :)

Wiggles in Frognerparken

Our chihuahua enjoys Oslo as much as we do. Today we met 2 other wawas in the Frognerparken right around the corner and let them play for quite some time.

Now Wiggles is sleeping like a baby - really exhausted but happy. :)



The next meeting with even more chihuhuas is scheduled for monday evening.

Another new experience: reindeer meat

Seems my beloved one wants to test out my flexibility some. ;)
Well, today we had reindeer meat with rice in some brown sauce. It did smell rather strange when uncooked, a bit like dog food, and it also looked like dog food - but when cooked it smells fine and tastes really good. Couldn't figure out any taste that is similar yet.

No more Nutella ...

It's empty - and I failed to find any Nutella in Oslo so far. But I've found a worthy replacement: sjokopålegg - cheap (8kr=1€) and really tasty.

Shrimps

Barely a week in Norway and guess what - I had to eat shrimps!

Well, they are damn tasty. :D

Our new home

A living room with kitchen, a sleeping room, a bathroom, a hallway, a biiig balcony and a fine backyard - that's our new appartment in Majorstuen, central-west-Oslo.
Right around the corner we have a super market, a chemist's, a zoo shop, 2 banks, a bus station, a tram station, a rapid-transit station, a cool cinema and everything else that we might ever need - simply great!



NextGenTel fixed our internet access today (that's why I'm writing all the new entries now).

Yesterday and today I had some runs to the public authorities (6h at the aliens department are not to much fun) but now everything is solved. I'll get my important "D-number" within the next 2 weeks and then I can fix a bank account as well. Will probably choose Nordea because they are the closest. :P

Done!

Finally it's over!
The last travel up was a bit more exhausting than the 1st one - pentecost travel drove me from traffic jam to traffic jam and the car from Sixt was just a crappy VW Sharan (no navigation system, no speed control, no proper foldaway of the seats) instead of the much bigger and better Ford Galaxy the week before.
But after ~8h we've finally arrived at my brother's house, unpacked everything (he suddenly decided that he wants the have my old washing machine because his broke). After removing all unneeded seats we managed to pack all stuff in the car and went on with 3 ppl (my fiancé, my brother and me) and little Wiggles (one of our chihuahuas). Our other furball has to stay at my brother for 1 more month until he can follow (some rabies protection restrictions).



12 hours and a short stop at the Norwegian border for toll control later we arrived in Oslo, unpacked everything and had a 1st walk in the nearby Frognerparken. My brother took a long nap, ate some, started to drive back alone and arrived back some hours later.

Finish spurt!

The "pack the rest and prepare for departure"-day has come.
All the remaining stuff (clothes, dishes, documents, etc.) will get packed. Around 12 I'll go to get a van from Sixt again and an hour later I'll pick up a carpet cleaner from Bauhaus.

Good bye old friends!

My last day at work is now over and I got a really really hearty "good bye".
Thank you so much everyone! It was so much fun to work with all of you.

First tour successful, 23 boxes moved

Last weekend we did the 1st trip to Oslo. 23 boxes got transported and the new appartment inspected. Everything worked fine, no trouble at all. Being fully prepared with long and detailed lists of the boxed stuff was very helpful (obviously). Even the weather was on our side, no rain until the car was fully unpacked.

Status: 18 boxes packed ...

and a lot went into the dustbin.
Guess we'll end up with ~30 boxes in total plus a few items that cannot get boxed properly (e.g. snowboard). So I'm quite positive that we'll manage to get along with 2 van-tours.

Myhammer.de

Next Friday we'll leave our old appartment to finally move to Oslo.
To save time and trouble we've decided to find someone to paint our old appartment before the administrator checks it. So I started an auction on myhammer.de to get a nice price for that work. Currently (little bit less than 1 days left on the auction) the price is at 290€ incl. paint and other material - quite fair for my taste.

So we'll see how this turns out.

Update: Auction ended at 230€ and the whole appartment got painted on Tuesday. (Thanks to Nicole for suggesting to use that page!)

More help :)

My dad will drive down 7 hours to help me with the 1st tour (packing stuff). Thank you daddy!

Initial rent for the new appartment paid

Meanwhile the first month (May) is paid and the relocation times are set - the last 2 weekends in May.

Packing and cleanup started

Also last saturday we have started to sort and pack stuff, like books, cd and lesser important documents. A lot of old crap went to the dustbin, more to follow ... :)

Rental contract for our new appartment signed

Last saturday we have finally signed the rental contract for our new appartment in Oslo.

Rental contract for our old appartment cancelled

Due to a missing confirmation from our current landlord I've just sent a 2nd letter, this time as a registered mail, to cancel the rental contract for our old appartment.

Transport boxes ordered

On umzugskarton.de we have ordered the partner set to prepare everything properly. 90€ incl. shipping sounds like a fair deal for 23 boxes and several other useful items.

Transportation plan b fixed

Just in case that something screws up the plan to carry everything up to Oslo with Smacks' help - we've got a plan b: renting a Ford Galaxy from Sixt over 2 weekends and driving up twice with my brother's help.

A little less comfortable but still ok.

Still waiting for the rental contract

Seems the Norwegian postal service screwed up the delivery and returned the letter to the landlord. Hope the next try will end up a bit better.

Transportation problems, solved

Seems even this topic has been solved now: a friend of mine offered to help us bringing all our stuff to Oslo. So no need to deal with Sixt & Co. ...

Thank you Smacks!

New appartment found?

Seems we were lucky and already found an appartment in Oslo. At least via telephone we already got the "ok". So we are waiting for the contract to be delivered via snail mail now.

The beginning

my new working contract has been signed (starting on june, 1st 2007), the old one cancelled (ending may, 31st 2007), my girlfriend is searching for an appartment in oslo and both we are writing on our to do list.