First snow of the year

It snowed! There has been about 6" of snow on the ground since Thursday. We thought it would be gone by Saturday but instead the sky cleared up and now it's sunny and cold.

This is the soccer field that my team practices on; practice was cancelled. Also, this is part of the path that I take when I walk to work.

This is the front of the building that I work in. Nordic uses the entirety of the 3rd and 4th floors and it recently acquired space on the basement floor as well. I sit on the 3rd floor near one of those windows.

This is my workstation. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.

I stuck my camera out of the window near my desk. This was taken in the early afternoon on Friday.

This is the path that runs behind our apartment complex.There are many paths like this throughout Trondheim.

The view from the back porch on Thursday afternoon. You can see it is snowing if you look carefully.

The view from our bedroom window.

The view from the front porch. You can almost see the tower in this picture.

Brown cheese is quite common in Norway. Especially on waffles!

According to Google the description says: "known and familiar brown cheese made ​​by long tradition, with a distinctive, rich taste of caramel."

Tine is basically a dairy monopoly as far as well can tell.

The first thing you notice is the odd, peanut butter-like texture. The taste is kind of like a sweet, nutty, cream cheese. If you have enough of it in your mouth the finish tastes like a very mild goat cheese. It is delicious.

Great success!

UPDATE:
After asking wikipedia we've come to conclusion that the variant we tried does have goat milk in it.

It has felt like Autumn here for about a month now. I snapped this photo to use as a desktop background while I was walking to the store this evening.

Those blurry pink things are berries.

Norway used to be a poor country. Although modern Norwegians are rather spoiled, many Norwegian eating habits are influenced by the country's impecunious history.

Stabbur-Makrell
Filet i tomatsaus
Den originale siden 1958

Clearly this is canned mackerel in tomato sauce. Add some hearty crackers, tomato cheese, and Scotch and how bad can it be?

This is a great snack to eat while drinking Scotch; the fact that both foodstuffs preclude interaction with the girlfriend binds them in infamy.

Scotch, crackers, tomato cheese, and mackerel.

Mmm, mackerel in tomato sauce. Norwegians will put anything in tomato sauce. Usually they will then eat it with potatoes. It smells like cat food.

Great success!

On September 29th I went for a 40km bicycle ride with Miles and a few other people from work. It took us several hours to ride around Jonsvatnet (the lake that is used as the drinking water source for the city).

We left the city by climbing a hill that alternated between dirt roads and single track. There was plenty of mud and many slippery rocks so it was interesting on a rigid hybrid bike with smooth tires.

Any land around the lake that is flat enough to grow something on is used as farmland. This photo was taken fairly close to town where the road is paved.

The lake is a source of drinking water so many activities are restricted. There are many houses around the lake but no new houses are allowed to be built.

After a little while the road turns into packed gravel and becomes rugged. The scenery is amazing on a sunny day.

A little picnic table surrounded by clean water and trees.

There are many boat houses around the lake. Motor boats and swimming are prohibited, however.

On September 25th we received our first aid package from the states. The following contents were all shoved into a $60.95 Priority Mail International Flat Rate package:

My favorite slippers, undershirts, a skirt for Becca, hard-to-find toiletries, and about 5kg of chocolate and candy.

Thanks mom!

The New Apartment

Living Room Area

Kitchen: Look counter space!

Dining Room Area

Under the stairs

Bathroom

Spare Room

Cupboard at the top of the stairs.

Bedroom, view #1

Bedroom, view #2

View from the bedroom

View from the front door. Daniel works pretty much at the base of that tower.

View from the balcony.

Moving, Moving, Moving

We were waiting all week to hear when we would be able to get the keys to our new apartment. The landlord's son had been living in the apartment but he recently purchased a house that he was moving into. We had to wait until he had all of his things out of the apartment before we could move in. We got a call on Saturday afternoon that we could come that evening to pick up the keys! So that evening, we headed over to get the keys to the apartment.

The next morning, our friend Miles came over at 7am to help us move our things. It was a very rainy morning so we were very thankful for Miles' help. We packed his car full of as many of our bags as we could and Daniel and Miles brought it all over to the apartment. After Daniel and I got home, we worked on tidying up the apartment and making sure all of our things were packed up and ready to go. We still had some of our things at temporary apartment #2. We were going to need to move the rest of the stuff via bus and didn't really want to do it in the downpour outside. We were also planning on staying there for one more night since our new apartment didn't have a bed yet.

Daniel's company lets you take up to one day off every two years to move into an unfurnished apartment. This means that Daniel got to take Monday off from work. This week is Autumn Holiday at school, so I have the entire week off. The timing of this break was great! I have had time to get us all unpacked and settled without having to worry about school.

On Monday morning, we woke up and finished taking the last of our stuff over to the new apartment. Once all of our stuff was at the new apartment, we headed to IKEA for lunch and our shopping extravaganza. We had a list of things that we knew we wanted to get eventually. There were a few key items (a bed, a couch, dishes, pots and pans) that we knew we wanted to get that day. Our friend PK was planning on meeting us there after work so we could borrow an IKEA trailer and take our new household goods to the apartment. Since we knew we were going to have a trailer, we decided to get as much off of our list as possible in the time that we had. If you have ever been to IKEA you know that upstairs it pretty much a show room and downstairs is where you find all the individual goods. It can take all day to wander through an IKEA store. We didn't have all day so we were as efficient as possible. We had already picked out the couch we wanted to get on a previous IKEA trip. We looked around quickly and decided that it was in fact the couch we wanted. We moved on to beds. They actually have quite a few options. We decided that we didn't want/need a bed frame so we concentrated on mattresses. We found something in our price range that we both liked. Once we decided on what size we wanted, we got that ordered and headed downstairs. We were able to check almost everything off of our list before it was time to meet our friend. We had a lot of stuff, so it took quite a while to get checked out. Once it was all said and done, it actually didn't cost nearly as much as I had expected. We only paid about $2000 to outfit our entire apartment!

IKEA lets you borrow a trailer for up to three hours for free! Sometimes it can take a while for a trailer to come back in so we were told it would be about 90 minutes before we could get a trailer. It actually  only took about 15 minutes for a trailer to be returned so by the time our couch and mattress had been delivered we were ready to pack up and head out. PK was super helpful both loading and unloading the trailer. With three of us, it really didn't take too long to get everything into the apartment.

After taking PK out to dinner to say thank you, we headed home assembled our bed and crashed! We were tired!

Temporary Apartment #2

The lease on our original temporary apartment was up at the end of September and we couldn't move into our own place until October 7th, so we had a one week gap that we needed a place to stay. Thankfully Daniel's company was able to put us up for a week at the company apartment. The two apartments are only about 700m apart, so moving was really easy! We put all of our things into bags and suitcases and walked over. It did take several trips but thankfully the weather was really nice.

The company apartment is HUGE! I think that it is approximately 3 times bigger than the first place that we stayed. Two bedrooms, a large bathroom, a giant living room/dining room area and a real kitchen.

We decided that we didn't really want to unpack too much, since we were only staying there for a week. So we lived for the week out of bags and suitcases. We didn't buy many groceries and kept cooking pretty simple. I didn't even do laundry that week! It definitely felt like we were in limbo but I am very thankful that we were able to stay there.

The week was a pretty normal week. The weather was absolutely beautiful for most of the week. The average high temperature for the week was about 15 C (about 59 F) with lows around 4 C (about 39 F). There was very little rain and beautiful blue skies. The leaves are all changing as well. It is definitely fall here.

In other news, Daniel and I both got our national ID cards. We now have easy to carry around proof that we are allowed to be in Norway for an extended period of time. I also got carded while buying a single bottle of beer. You have to be 18 in Norway to buy beer. When the cashier asked me for ID, I probably gave her a completely confused look. I've been told that I look younger that I am, but 18? Really?!

Apartment Hunting

Finding a permanent apartment here in Trondheim was quite an adventure.

We started looking for a place about six weeks before we needed to move. There are several sites here that people post ads to (www.finn.no and www.hybel.no), so we were checking those. As we saw an apartment we liked, we would send an email to the owner of the posting. About 75% of the time we didn't hear anything back. If we did hear back, it was usually telling us that the apartment had already been rented to someone else. Definitely a bit frustrating!

We had been told that it might help if we posted our own ad. That way potential landlords could see some information about us before they contacted us. So Daniel put together an ad for us and posted it to one of the sites. We had quite a few responses through that ad, however there wasn't anything that we were really interested in at first (an apartment on a main road in the middle of the University area, a house on the hill out of town a 15 minute drive in to town during the summer longer during the winter, a very expensive apartment, etc). So we kept looking. I was sending emails to people about apartments every day. Daniel was replying to emails we got from our ad every day as well. I was starting to get worried that we weren't going to find a place.

Then one day Daniel got a call at work from someone who saw our ad. She had an apartment very close to Daniel's work available and it was within our price range. We set up an appointment to go see the apartment that evening (Friday). On the same day, I got a reply to one of the emails I sent out about an apartment and set up an appointment to go see that apartment on Sunday.

So, we had two potential apartments. Of course there were pros and cons to both the apartments.

Apartment one was in a great location. Very near work for Daniel and a bus stop for me. Very near a shopping center with a post office and grocery stores. It had a wood stove for heating in the winter with wood provided by the landlords. It was a cute apartment, however there were a few things that I didn't like about the apartment. It had an old house smell that I didn't enjoy. I didn't like the fact that the bedroom was so small. I also didn't like the fact that the entry wasn't private, it was shared with the in-laws who had their laundry room and an office on the first floor.

Apartment two was brand new and fully furnished. I will admit that I had an idea of what type of place we were going to end up in here and this apartment was almost exactly what I had imagined. It was a great apartment but it was in a fairly inconvenient location. Daniel would have a more difficult time getting to work since he would have to go up and around a steep hill to get there. I would be riding the bus and the bus stop was not very close. Also, we were one of nine couples being considered for the apartment.

So we just had to wait. We knew we needed to let the landlady of the first apartment know if we were going to move in but we wanted to wait to see if we got the second apartment. I was very emotional during this period of time. Daniel was very supportive. I preferred apartment two but knew that we didn't have a good chance of getting the apartment. I was unsure about apartment number one (I couldn't decide if I didn't like apartment or if it just wasn't what I have originally imagined). Daniel called the landlady for apartment one and set up a time to go look at it again. That way I could have one more chance to see the apartment and we could wait to hear about apartment two.

Later that evening, we heard back from the landlord of apartment two. We didn't get the apartment. I was definitely disappointed. At least we still had apartment one. We were set to go back to look at it on Tuesday evening. I felt like we needed to take it no matter what, it had taken so long for us to find these two possibilities in the first place. Daniel kept telling me that I could say no, that he wanted to make sure that I would be happy wherever we ended up living.

On Monday evening, Daniel got an email about another apartment. It was a new listing and the landlord had just started sending out inquiries. Daniel called the landlord and set up a meeting to go see it that night. The location was great, about 1 km to work for Daniel and an easy 15 minute bus ride for me. The apartment was very nice but it was unfurnished. It also wasn't available until October 7th. The landlord was very nice and told us to go home and think about whether or not we wanted the apartment. He said that he wouldn't show the apartment to anyone else until he heard back from us on Tuesday. We didn't really need time to think about it. I loved the apartment, Daniel said he could see that right away. It was in a great location near work, a bus stop and grocery stores. So Daniel contacted the landlady for apartment one to tell her that we had found something else and we took apartment number three!

So after a long and emotional journey, we have an apartment! I am very thankful that Daniel was so supportive and understanding through the whole process and that we were able to find a place where we can both be happy.