Norwegian Saga

The latest news is that the I received my residence permit and that’s a relief for me. I had started to have visions of getting dragged out of my abode by Norwegian police officers.

Another bit of news is that I’ve got my bank account. I have a student bank account (no fees) for five years. I guess every student gets a five year account even if they’re not doing a five year program. When they asked me when my program ended I told them June of 2010 which didn’t seem to affect the term of the account. This is unlike in Canada where yearly I had to humble myself and reaffirm to TD that I was indeed a student for that year.

I’ve taken to hiking around the city a bit. It’s incredibly relaxing. On my hikes I’ve learned that I don’t really mind being lost in a city just as long as it’s got public transport. Two of my walks, each of about 2 hours, took me to two different parts of the city.

The first included a nice subway ride up to the highest station in Oslo. (The Frognerseteren station and a few below it are actually under construction so I didn’t really take the sub all the way, halfway up we had to switch to buses.) From there I hiked a bit farther up the hill to the highest point on which sits a lovely (read ugly) radio antenna. There was a wonderful little lake there and in the middle of the forest a ski jump, which to me seems really out of place nevertheless this is Norway and people actually do that here.

The second walk was simply through the city from one subway station to another, Ulleval to Sinsen.

Yesterday was my first payment for food from my bank card. The process is much more streamlined here in Norway. You don’t have to wait for the cashier to do anything you can just swipe the card at any time during the transaction, even when they’re still scanning your items through, it’s weird.

Two more pics from Frognerseteren. One looking inland and one out to the fjord, and yes those are all sailboats, there was a regatta going on.