Category Archives: bergen

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Vega

Ikea is the dream of every student. It’s affordable and makes everyone’s room look like a page from a catalogue (almost). I went on an IKEA trip two days ago and came back with her:

my baby plant. isn’t she (yes, it’s a girl) beautiful? It’s a lovely ficus and I am already in love with it, so I spent a whole day trying to give it a name. Someone suggested a greek sounding name, which I liked, but in the end I picked Vega, partly because that’s the 5th brightest star in the sky. It turns out that it is also the name of a place in Norway (as well as the name of a character from Street Fighter, as Rudi pointed out) so I guess that’s a sign.

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garbagelove

okay so bergen is not quite as cool as trondheim, BUT I did go dumpster-diving with Patrick today (meaning he jumped in there while I took care of his Space Invaders backpack,..) it was fun. It was a container close to the academy, on the harbour (so dirrrty) I screamed out in excitement when I saw a bunch of coke glasses. I got overly excited at the sight of a norwegian keyboard (obviously useless to me, but I took it anyway) . They were throwing out so much stuff, P was even considering getting the vaccuum cleaner too.
afterwards some girl started talking to us, and she asked if there were any food dumpsters around there, so we said no, but asked if she wanted some food (we’d just come back from the master degree students presentations, and they had free food there so we ‘stole’ sandwiches) I had one vegetarian one but obviously it was for me (especially since the fiskekaker episode), so patrick asked her if she was a veg., and she said that she was FREEGAN, god I love that word – so he gave her the extra ham sandwich he had and she was happy.

so far, my garbage excursions have brought me way too much for my own good. I actually OWN things here now, isn’t that weird?

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Fiskekaker og Flatbrød

okay so I was convinced by a few people to try Fiskekaker, a norwegian traditional dish. I might as well, since I won’t go near a whale steak and fiskeboller are just too strange.
I stood in front of the fiskekaker selection at the supermarket for ages.

I got home, made two of them (thank god, just two) and I SWEAR it was awful. it tasted like sausage :(
So from now on the only norwegian tradition foods I will eat are vafler and flatbrød. seriously.

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Fantoft

I feel like I should now write a little about the place where I will be living for half a year.
I’m slowly starting to get used to the small dark kitchen, the big bedrooms make up for it and besides, Ana (my flatmate) and I have started a beautiful wallpaper consisting of cutouts of our favorite Flatbrød boxes. What I love most about it is that I can see Mormor from my desk if I keep my door open. Wonderful.
Since we are poor students (poor students in any other country become, by default, even poorer when living in Norway – I’m scared of one day realising I will not be able to afford food anymore and starving to death) we try to get as much free stuff as we can. We’re pretty lucky, too, because it seems like the people living in Fantoft are too lazy to walk to the garbage containers to throw stuff away – so old clothes, broken computer keyboards, etc… appear from nowhere in the staircase. It has become a habit now (and I’ve been living here for four days only!) to walk up and down seven floors to find things.
So far, I found:

  • a pair of ripped denim jeans
  • a pair of khaki pants
  • a white long-sleeved shirt
  • a lot of random midnight blue silky cloth

we also adore people who move out of their apartments and fly back to their country leaving a lot of things behind. One of those being Ana’s friend Sara, from whom I got:

  • a really cute turtle laundry basket
  • a winnie the pooh cushion
  • a neon green desk lamp
  • a permanent marker
  • a yellow highlighter
  • a set of speakers
  • a pillow! (finally)
  • fishing wire
  • wood glue

we also got all the tools to make beer (we were going to buy them in town tomorrow, but we were lucky), an extra mattress in case we have guests, a red pillowcase, and a duvet.

better than being Freegan!

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Bergen – day 01, day 02

I arrived at the Bergen airport at 7:50am thursday morning – after rushing to the gate, missing my flight by like a second (thanks to the security which was pretty tight for internal flights – I believe norwegian airport security guards have never seen an external hard drive before…) Of course, my backpack was the biggest of all the luggage on the conveyor belt. I could have sworn I saw people laughing when I managed to lift up my 25kgs to put them on my back, while at the same time balancing two camera bags on either side of my hips, a rucksack in the front and a small sport bag (mostly full of books, yay..) wherever was most convenient. When I got out of the airport bus at Fantoft, I thought I was going to die – the stop was by a highway in the middle of nowhere. I followed people who looked like students.
Fantoft is obviously on a hill – who would have thought!
It took a long time to register at the reception. On my way out I met Johannes – the only person I know in Bergen – who helped me to carry my 50kgs of luggage to the 7th floor of an amazingly ugly greyish concrete building, so I could barge in on my flatmate (Ana, from Spain) and her friend Sara. I had breakfast with them and things were a little slow the whole day.. the sun was shining, I hung around outside a bit, read a book, unpacked, settled in.
Day two – my first experience of the city centre… my headphones on my ears, walking around aimlessly until 10am, when the first informal meeting at KHiB took place. What can I say – the building for Fine Arts looks amazing, it has a kitchen and a terrace with view on the sea..