Mai 1st - Pickanick at Vaulen

May has a ridiculous number of public holidays. It all starts with May 1st - Labour day. A group of us rode our bikes loaded with picnic food and beer to Vaulen which is a beautiful park on the edge of the fjord between Stavanger and Sandnes. We played a game of Swedish bocce with a group of Aussies, Swedes, and Norwegians. The game is called Kubb (pronounced like "book" backwards !?) but essentially it involves throwing lumps of wood at the opponents teams wood! Lots of fun. Anyway here are some pics.


Here we are gorgeing ourselves on food!


Emma with the fjord in the background.


Emma cooking polser a la Noggie style - on a cheap polish throwaway BBQ grill thingy - burns the crap out of the sausages!


There was a nude bathing area just across the water from us - seemed to be a lot of lurkers around there!


Some of the locals went swimming in the fjord - NUTS!


Ryan didn't go in.


Everyone was out enjoying the weather. Even when the weather is "less good" they are out amongst it.


Here we are playing swedish bocce. From left: Ulf (Swede), Mari (Noggie), Simon (Aussie).


Kev - another aussie. You have to try and knock down the oppositions little towers.


An action shot of Mari. I think everyone managed to knock down some towers so it was a fun game that everyone can play.

Be so good!

Mai 17th

Hi,

It was May 17th yesterday - Norway's national day. Would love to write a wordy detail of the day but won't. Instead will do a picture narrative. As such:



Ryan, Åsmund (host of lovely breakfast in his traditional Bunad) and me all suited up in the garden of Åsmund & Marieta's house.



Couple of lovely Norwegian friends of Åsmunds - in Bunads.


Noggie flags were out in force yesterday!


Local kids out in the street for the parades - Ice Creams and Hot Pølsers were the way of the day.


The "Russ" parade was interesting where all the year 12's finishing (most of them were drunk) paraded down the street - massive crowds attended this and every parade on the day.


More intersting Russ characters!


Typical of crowds on the day - all this in little Stavanger!


All of the Russ's give out these cards with their photo on it and a little message (often crude) and all the kids clamour for them. Emma actually got one from some hunky Norwegian 18 year old!


This was one of the old police cars (an old Volvo) that was part of the start of the "People's" parade in the afternoon - although I wasn't quite convinced that it wasn't still in service!


Part of the peoples parade - cool helmets hey!


Very cute kid in a rat outfit in the parade!


One of the only specimens of the rare Norwegian camel.


More cute kids singing - check our the hair on the kid to the left - i think he might be a baby troll!


Usual marching bands were in attendance.


Fancy meeting this ice-hockey team in a dark alley?


Even dogs were in the parade.


Smart-a$$ 8 year old!!!!


Emma and I at the parade.


Even had oil company bands (Conoco-Philips).


Wearing proper PPE (personal protective equipment) of course - ear plugs and all.


They had the rugby club ...


... and the rowing club (tempting to join actually).


I think this was a demonstration of Laerdal's latest stretcher technique!


And finished with a skydiving display ...


... into ...


... the lake!

We had a great day for our first Mai 17th. Incidentally May 17th celebrates Norways signing of the Constitution, and I think it is where they stole a Danish Prince (not crown prince and I think Denmark was happy to be rid of him!) to be their King. Ahhh ... Scandinavian rivalry!

Gratulerer med dagen!

Joel's Birthday

Its been a while between posts, but that doesn't mean we've been twiddling our thumbs! I had a work trip to New York (upstate, Wappingers Falls and Fishkill, 1.5 hrs north of NYC). It was a productive work visit and great for the website I have been working on as project manager. Its launched now, you can take a look http://simulation.laerdal.com if you're interested.

The weekend before I went away was Joel's birthday, so we hurridly put together a party. Invites went out by email on Friday for a 'do' at our place on Saturday night. We had a great turn out, around 15-17 people I think, which was plenty for our tiny flat. People were sitting on milk (aka beer) crates and brewing tubs as we had a shortage of chairs! We ran our music through the speakers on the tv (!) so while it was a bit haphazard, it was still a great party. Everyone sang happy birthday in English, then in Norwegian which was pretty cool! Joel's homebrew was very popular with our guests and I think helped get things going!

At about midnight we all headed down into town (5mins walk) and went to a bar/club called Arkivet (Archive). Very groovy decor and fantastic music! The DJ started with stuff from the 50's (think Dirty Dancing soundtrack - sorry if thats not a helpful reference for the boys but the chicks will know what I'm talking about I'm sure!), then moved into some classic 80's stuff, Prince, Madonna etc etc. Really fun and everyone was up dancing. We dragged ourselves home at about 2.30 (actually Joel dragged me home, I was having a great time and didn't want to leave!), as Joel was going sailing the next day and needed some sleep. I have to say I think it was the best 'night out' I've had in Stavanger so far, being surrounded by great new friends was what made it so good.

So we are treating that as a very good practice run for our housewarming in June some time (date TBC).

The weekend just gone (happy mothers day Mum!) was great, we were invited to a cabin in Josenfjord by our friends Mari and Kev, Josenfjord is a little town on a fjord about 2hrs drive from Stavanger. Joel, Ryan and I headed up on Saturday morning. I won't write too much as Joel has photos and will be able to write a little more, but it was so lovely, waking up in a cabin 2m from the fjord with the sound of water lapping and birds chirping floating in the open window was absolutely perfect. We did some fishing, Joel can tell you about the 80cm Cod that got away ;).......

Missing you all :)
Emma.

Blog

Hi all,

Sorry about the lack of updates lately. Emma and I have been flat out with work! Emma is also in New York (as Jan points out this should really be called Ny Jorvik!) this week (which means I will be eating baked beans and toast for dinner all week) so I guess there will be little update from her also. I was in Oslo and another coastal part of Norway last week for work called Sandefjord. Both beautiful places. We also have some pics from our hike to Månafossen with Mari and Kev which is the highest waterfall in this area of Norway. I will hopefully post some pics and a proper update later this week. Bear (bare?) with us!

York

I had a 2-day work visit to York in the UK last thursday and Friday. One of the nice things about this is I had only really thought of this in terms of the work I needed to do, so was pleasantly surprised at how lovely York is! 2 colleagues and I flew into Leeds-Bradford airport and had a 1 hr drive through the countryside to York.

It’s the middle of Spring here, the English gardens were in bloom - cherry blossoms everywhere, and little lambs and calves chewing on the new grass. Everything is so green at the moment. I know there has been some much-needed rain in Oz lately (at least in VIC), but the countryside surrounding York was still unlike anything I've seen in Oz for a very long time.We completed our workday and I had a couple of hours spare, and so with minimal time I was looking for the maximum bang for my sightseeing buck, so I jumped onto a double-decker bus touring around the city with a commentary on all the sites.

I'm no historian, but can tell you that York (formerly Eboracum) was a bustling walled Roman city, and was later invaded by Vikings, so there are many Norwegian links. In fact the name York comes from 'Jorvik' - the viking's name for the city. The tour was very interesting - I learned where the term 'daylight robbery' comes from - in 1696, William III of England introduced a type of property tax that required owners of houses with more than six windows to pay a levy. This tax apparently persisted up for over 150 years until 1851. Those that didn't pay the tax had their windows bricked up! You can still see the bricked up windows on quite a lot of old buildings today.One of the highlights of the city is the amazing Minster, a beautiful cathedral whose towers are the highest building in the city. Spectacular. Here are some photos. Not the best quality as they were taken with my phone, but you get the idea!

Fodball og Seiling i Norge

I joined the company (Subsea7) football team the other night for my first game of Football (no one calls it soccer or wogball here). Our company sponsors the Stavanger Vikings who play in the Norwegian league (3 draws from 3 games so far this season) so our uniform was also the Vikings uniform - very flash!

As would be expected, my football skills are Ok when it comes to Aussie rules footy, but come up lacking when playing 'Euro' Football. However I managed to score a goal in our 4-4 draw and had a lot of fun. We played on Grus (pronounced Groose) which is a gravelly tennis court style surface. Plenty slippery and rips the hell out of you if you fall over, but with the amount of rain we have it would be a pretty good drainage system to maintain a good grass pitch. It was a warm 18 degrees when we played!

I'll try and play regularly but I think football occasionally clashes with some of the sailing races that I plan on taking part in of a Wednesday evening this summer. This will be on board 'Salt' which is a beautiful yacht owned by a husband of a lady Emma works with. I have been helping him out a little with some of his repairs and maintenance and he is a lovely guy who lives just up the road from our new house so it will be nice to race with him (and other crew) of a Wednesday evening in Stavanger.

Emma gets back from London tonight so we may head down to the Vågen for a beer if she is not too tired. The weather today and this weekend is meant to be perfect. See link to the right. Have a good weekend everyone.

Skiing videos from Easter

Here is some video footage that I took whilst skiing at Lillehammer with Emma, Mitch and Ryan. Enjoy.

We also met with the bank last night (Nordea) to set up our accounts and things. She wondered about my middle names (I have two of them). She said I sounded very royal to which I replied and convinced her that I was an Australian Prince! I even suggested that she should refer to me in all communication as His Royal Highness!

Ahhhh ... what fun!

Hellestø again

The weather last week was certainly very interesting. On Thursday I rode to work in the rain but as the day went on it started blowing harder and harder. I thought that would make the ride home tough, but then it got stronger again and then started snowing!!!!! In my 30-odd minute ride home I contended with Hail, Rain, Sun, Snow, then Hail again! I also had to lean on about a 20 degree angle as I rode over the bridge on the way home due to the wind. My bottom-bracket on my bike which has been loose for a little while now also started making some noise and got looser - luckily I made it home. I have now ordered another bottom-bracket from Bjarte at my local bike store Sykkelzentrum. Should be here by Wednesday and then I can get back on the bike again - at the moment it is the bus.

On Saturday morning Emma, Coobs and I went to Hellestø beach again. Emma hadn't been there before so this was a pleasant journey. Cooba also made friends with a lovely SAS airline hostess who strangely didn't mind having her entire face licked by Cooba (weird!).

Here are some pics from the beach.

We also had Mari and her Aussie boyfriend Kev over for a meal on Sat night. It was lovely and we had mussels for entre, veal scallopini (and mushrooms) for main, and double chocolate brownies for main. Very lovely. Sunday was spent walking 10km around the Stokkavatnet lakes where we stopped in at the rowing club (Stavanger Roklubb) for a nice varm sjokolade drikke!

Dusavik Arbeid

I got given some pics from a guy at work from when I was out at Dusavik. Dusavik is one of our vessel bases where our vessels come in to get fitted up for different jobs. This is called mobilisation and demobilisation (for when we 'mob' a vessel for a new job and 'demob' it when it is finished.

Anyway I thought some of you might like to see what I have been up to at work (particularly Jenny Guala who just loves oil rigs and ships (I think she must be the only female who does).

I am now back at my office in Tananger working on a tender so will be pretty busy over the next 3-4 weeks. Emma is also flat out with her work over the next 2 weeks so poor Cooby may get a little neglected.