finally home. i arrived yesterday. packed out my things and fell a sleep...spent all night organizing the many many pictures i took at the fantastic trip. seriously...it's been the best study trip i've ever been on (although new york city was great as well..but it was far from the same). it was the best hotel, the beautiful nature, the coolest people and the many lectures and stuff that made this trip worth remembering.

friday i started out waking up with the greatest hangovers after only 2 hours of sleeping. baked some bread and packed the rest of the things. toke came by picking up his stuff and then we walked together down to the bus. it was a very long drive to lund. especially with these hangovers. in lund we met some swedish students. they study danish as well...the only difference is that they are studying the language and not the literature as we do. anyway do you know how hard it is to understand swedish when you're still a bit dizzy ?! haha. we had to go around in lund for a guided trip by these students and talk with them. it went well until i got tired of this boy who constantly talked to me and asked me the weirdest questions about the danish language, politics and so on. afterwards back at the university, we had a swedish lecture about examinations in communications in the nordic languages. i didn't understand a thing and almost fell asleep. so although lund is a very beautiful town and the people were very kind...i was happy to sit in the bus again.

the way up through sweden felt like an eternity. my hangovers had disappeared i was just very very tired by now. but couldn't settle down in that bus. so i decided to stay up all the way. which made the arrive at the lovely 5 star hotelextra pleasant. mmm.

saturday we started out with a lecture by the leader of the hotel about norway and norwegian. after an abundant lunch (which included way too much delicious cake). we had yet another lecture, this time about modern norwegian literature. it was boring and i didn't understand her, so i disappeared in the break and spent an hour on my own in the hotel room listening to ed harcourt and sleeping a bit. after the lecture we had to go down to oslo 'cause we were going to the theatre to see the play "the eye that see" ("�yet som ser") based on a brilliant short story by lars saabye christensen. it was very great although we had difficulties understanding all that was said at the stage. afterwards we went to a caf� and had a beer before we went back to the hotel having a late dinner.

sunday some of us tested the swimming pool. had an abundant lunch again. and went down to oslo again to see the vigeland park. which was build over 40 years by the artist, gustav vigeland. afterwards we went to see his little brother, emanuel vigeland's museum. what a beauty. unbelievable sight. you'd have to go see for yourself to understand why. afterwards we got back to the hotel to have a meeting with the author nikolaj frobenius. it was a bit boring but exciting as well. at the dinner later that night he was my dinner partner. that resulted in some weird conversations. hehe. he was nice.

monday we met the author erlend loe. he was a bit weird but it was very cool. it took some time for me to get used to his way of thinking. i ended up sitting beside him at the lunch as well. it was very weird. i had nothing to say to him and he had nothing to say to any of us around him as well. he just finished his lunch, got some cake and hurried home. hmm. in the afternoon some of us went down to oslo to shop. i bought 2 books;
"fakta om finland" - erlend loe
"oscar wildes heis" - lars saabye christensen. after the dinner back at the hotel i went swimming again. for myself. it was lovely.

tuesday we packed our things. checked out. and went down to oslo university to have a lecture about the author dag solstad. afterwards we went to nasjonalgalleriet where i amongst other big things, saw the original "scream" and "madonna" by edvard munch. i also discovered this lovely painting by him as well... "the dance of life" which i had something about back in primary school but had forgot. i think it's my favorite painting by him. the rest of the time in oslo i spent on the harbour in the warm sun together with a couple of the others while we were waiting to enter the ferry. it was lovely.

here's some pictures from the trip:
(there's more to be found here)

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