My Apologies

The three posts below this one are meant to be read starting with Røros and going up to Kristiansund. It was my hope that I could write them in order and then try to publish Kristiansund first so it would be at the bottom. Alas, technology wins this round and now you must play the game of scroll down and read Røros first. It will probably make more sense.

Think of it as a digital adventure, that doesn't involve mystery but rather a two second click to the scroll bar on the side.

-Buhr

Kristiansund | Costal Town

Our last stop on the wanderlust journey with school was to Kristiansund, a fishing and oil town on the west coast of Norway. To get there we took a four hour ferry ride from Trondheim. The trouble was that it was a stormy day and we got to experience some fun waves. It was the best towards the end of the trip. There was a couple times where it felt like my ass left the seat in the moment of going over the wave. IOt was almost to much fun, but I know that some other passengers did not fare so well and well... you get the idea.



Our place to stay was a campground. Not in the familiar sense of tents and all, but rather cabins. Of course we didn't really get cabins, but instead two mobile homes complete with (amazingly) three bedrooms, living room, kitchen, toilet, and a shower room. For as tiny as that place was it was impressive how much they fit in there. Adding five guys to the mix though made it a cramped, but homely stay.



Our tasks of the town included a visit to the media house, a tour of the oil drilling museum, a visit to the vice mayor of the town, a tour of the subsidised opera house,and an invitation to hear the the Kristiansund symphony play at their final rehearsal before their performance on Sunday.

Kristiansund was a fun town, but because it was at the end of the week it was also very tiring. The weather was also rainy so we had to figure out how to deal with the spare time in free sheltered places like the church or a small art gallery. The town had the feeling of coastal business with a harbour for ships to restock and repair in. It is also a hub for the regional oil drilling in the North Sea.


The drilling exhibit was actually really interesting for me because I have gained this perception of the evils of oil thanks to Bush and his fellow oil ties. The thought of oil just makes me cringe sometimes. The exhibit was biased towards oil drilling though and provided a matter of fact way of telling about how the process of drilling happens. It was a good tid-bit of info to learn even if it was sometimes hard to swallow. They didn't seem to care to much about the short term availability of oil, but rather that their technology allows them to squeeze out more oil than before. When a spot dries up they can just drill in another area and it wouldn't be that big of a deal at all.

It's a good thing to think about though because so much of Norway's wealth comes from the petroleum fund. So whether or not I like it Norway has saved up $359 billion USD due to oil. At least they have an ethical committee attached to those funds so that business like Walmart that support unethical treatment of humans can't touch any of it.

Overall the trip was grand. It was great to get out and see other parts of Norway and be able to come home to Hamar and to feel truly at home.

Trondhiem | Big City with a Small Town Heart

The next stop on the wanderlust school adventure was a city by the name of Trondheim, a bustling urban city with a population of about 170,000. Out of the three cities we visited it was Trondheim that was my favourite by far. If I could, I would think about living there.

We spent the first full day in Trondheim walking around and getting a tour of the city from Inger. She showed us the military fortress that had been a staple of defense for the town back in the day. We also got a tour and history lesson of how a majority of the housing came about in the 1920's and is quite dense. Just after lunch we got, yet another, tour of the Nidaros Cathedral, which was started in 1070 on top of the Norwegian Saint, St. Olav's grave. 300 years later the church was completed, but with Danish rule over Norway the church fell apart. It was reconstructed into what it is today in the early 19th century.

The church was amazing to see and walk around in because I have always read so much about the Gothic churches and I have seen pictures of them, but to see and be inside one was crazy. I could point out all the Gothic features and say thank goodness I had that art history class. There is also a sense of history that just doesn't happen with American architecture.



Along with the church we got to go see the Archbishop's palace which included the royal jewels in a cellar under a guards eye. It was a good history lesson to walk through the museum in the Archbishops palace.

After that we had the afternoon off to take a much needed nap before for going out to a restaurant called Dolly Dimples for dinner. It was a lot of delicious pizza for dinner, almost to much I would say. After dinner we walked around town for a bit and settled down at a pub near the old shipyard before we called it a night.

The next day we talked to the director of urban development and as well as a lady from the Socialist Left party. The speech given by the urban development planning director was incredible. I must give a preemptive warning though that I am quite the sucker for environmental urban planning talk, which is just what he did.


One of the main points he made in his speech was that the way Trondheim was going to help do their part in climate change was by making it a pain to drive the car, but easy to take a bus or ride a bike. Indeed there were a lot of bikes everywhere around town. It was amazing. They even have the worlds only bike lift in town. Ha

Some of the ways the director had mentioned to make it harder to drive a car was by decreasing speed limits, giving a lane to just buses effectively leaving the cars in jams, and moving city employee offices into downtown where there is not a minimum parking space requirement, but a maximum! That was music to the ears when I heard that because I know one of the problems Seattle is having is that building the of massive condos and ugly mass apartment buildings requires a lot of parking space. All the parking lots take up sidewalk space and create a giant boring urban canyons to walk through. Those of course don't exist in Trondheim because the don't seem to build any buildings over ten stories. Most are just around of five stories or so.


The city also has a student population of about 25,000 so it had a vibrant youthful feel to it. With the encouragement of bikes and a dense city layout it would be easy to live a good life at the uni in town. In short, Trondheim was awesome.

Røros | The Mining Town

To kick off the week of wanderlust traveling, the class took a train four hours north to a town by the name of Røros. It was a small, cold town. In fact it was shockingly cold for the time of year it was. I did not expect to get off the train into 3C weather. Left in the cold the group had one task for the night: find the hostel which we had no clue where it was or what is was called, with out the help of the teacher who was on the next train north.

Thankfully people do exist during the night in Røros and with the help of our Norwegian student Kjersti we eventually wondered around enough to find it. Once there, we cozied up for the night and got prepared for the big day out on town.

The next day's activities consisted of a guided tour around town (it's small enough that that takes a morning) and then a tour of the mine that makes the town what it is today. It was quite fun and interesting to walk around the chilly city and see what a traditional Norwegian mining town looks like.



It was also somewhat frustrating to me for a reason I could not pin-point. I think it may have been the fact that it is on the UN heritage list and because of that the town now relies solely on tourism and preserving the history. It felt like a town that had died and been injected with enough preservatives to make it profitable. There was building restrictions on everything for the main part of town. Houses had to look a certain way and could only be painted with certain colours which back in the day use to be the crap paint you could make in your house. There was also a giant pile of slag, or smelting rubbish, that was a declared monument and couldn't be touched. I guess its just the way it must be sometimes because although I hate things being sold as tourism, it does happen. It's also important to preserve the history and the town doesn't have a lot of other income since the mine shut down in the 1980's. Alas, sigh, I am a camera touting tourist out to rule the world one click at a time.



This is not to say that all in town was gloomy and depressing for me, because I did in fact have a good time learning about how the mining effected Røros and Norway. It was also fun to go to a town with a much different and older feel than Hamar. It felt much more European almost.



I would say one of the best parts of the town was going down into the copper mine that started the city. The mine starts off by walking through the original mine started in the 1600's and then down another 10 meters to the more recent mine. It was impressive to see what people in the 1600's had the ability to do. It was also fun to see a copper mine and be able to compare it's similarities to the iron-ore mine that I went down into in Minnesota. Our tour guide for that portion was quite entertaining too with his random awkward pauses where he would just put on a crazy smile and ask "Any Questions?"



After the mine we hopped on a bus to take a four hour ride through the mountains to Trondheim. The ride wasn't bad. I slept for the first part and then watched all the picturesque mountains pass on by for the latter part.

Travel Time!

This week our class is going on a week long excursion so I thought I may provide a map with my very childish hand writing (finger pads and I don't mix always)to point out where the class is going.

The first stop will be in Roros then to Trondheim and finally to Kristensund. So I wont be blogging at all for a week (gasp).

I have to go catch the train so enjoy the map.

Eidsvoll and the Constitution.

On Tuesday we took a day trip down to Eidsvoll were the Norwegian Constitution was formed back in 1814 on Mai 17th. It was a fun day adventure to help give context to something that is always hard to fully imagine. Stepping into history with little blue plastic socks helps really give context to the whole situation.

To give a short boiled down version of the history I'll start off by saying before 1814 Norway had been under Danish rule for quite a long time, some 300 years in fact. Denmark lost a squabble with Sweden and as repayment Denmark gave Norway to Sweden. This of course pissed off some people and the Danish prince saw that he could use this to help give Norway independence thereby having his own country. So in Eidsvoll he gathered a bunch of men for a couple of weeks and held a meeting in the unfinished ballroom of the house. After a couple of weeks they came out with a constitution which didn't give Norway full independence from Sweden, but was in the right direction.

The house (rather mansion) where the constitution was made was out in the middle of a small farm town and it reminded me a lot of Minnesota. Just erase the nice rolling hills in the background and you have central MN. Maybe that's why there's a good little pocket of Norwegian heritage there. Uff Da!

Smart Design?

Which one's the road and which one is the bike/walking path? It's nice to see a somewhat comparable status for the non-oil dependent transportation. Looks like the sidewalk is meant to be used just as much as the road.

In the US it's been a long standing tradition for cars to take more importance than other forms of transportation. The US cities and suburbs are built for the modern car. Here in Europe, more specifically Hamar, there is a hint that walking and biking is just as easily available and encouraged as alternate forms of transportation. It's nice to not be just about the car. Lots of people ride their bikes and plenty people walk because it's an easy thing to do.


In fact the main shopping street in town is exclusively for walkers and bikers alike. Take that America! Something to think about next time you're wondering down a main street. Smarter community and urban design isn't painful if you try just a little bit.

Wake up Call

Yesterday morning I arose to a loud clatter outside my window at 7:58 am. I got up and walked into the living room only to see a giant scooper right outside my window tearing up the sidewalk and dirt. As I got ready I would hear the scooper scrape against the wall trying to dig up the dirt right in front of my window. I was wondering if I had almost been selected for that Extreme Makeover show, or if I was just going to have to deal with a giant hole in the wall.

After our excursion to Eidsvoll to see the birthplace of the Norwegian constitution (pictures will be a post later) I came back to see the construction workers had now split the red sea so to speak. I got the lucky front row seats to. Woot!