Again a long time ago since I wrote, and I did not find time yet to translate the previous two blogs to English, so to keep the non Dutch speaking readers not too long ‘uninformed', this time directly in English (and I hope I will translate the previous blogs soon, and the Dutch probably need to wait long for a diehard Dutch readers version of this blog...).

Already 2.5 weeks ago I made my first real Norwegian cabin trip in the weekend. Moritz invited me to go on the trip together with a German friend (Philippe) visiting him. On Saturday they picked me up with the VW-bus, in which Philippe drove all the way from Munich. The bus brought us via a small gravel, toll (!) road to a parking spot closest to the cabin, we had to pay by putting some money in an envelope. From the parking spot we had to hike about 1 hour to Iglbu, the mountain cabin. At the final part of the hike there were no trails anymore, luckily we had a GPS, otherwise it would have been much harder to find the cabin with only the map. The cabin is owned by NTNUi, the sports foundation of the university here (for the Wageningen people, like Thymos). In total they have 24 cabins in the Trondheim region. When arriving we checked out the primitive but cozy cabin, black from many years of soot. The cabin was built by students in 1964, and the collection of cabin books contained reports of visitors since 1967 (!).After arrived we started chopping a lot of wood, much more then we would consume in the wood stove, but because it's fun (and we are men...).

After some lunch we made our first hike in the great surroundings. Via trampoline like mosses, small wild rivers covered by snow bridges and some nice lakes we came back in the cabin again. The evening we spent mainly on eating our cheese fondue heated on the wood stove and we went to bed quite early (though it was not dark at all, as the cabin had no curtains...).

The next day after breakfast and more wood chopping we made a hike to a mountain (about 1000 meter) near the cabin. The rain tried to stop us for a while, but stayed luckily some hundreds meters away, and even improved the great view from the summit by a rainbow. On the summit we found the summit book, that showed us there were people here just 2 hours before, but the whole weekend we did not see anybody else, a great experience the middle of nowhere!

On Sunday evening we drove back again to Trondheim. In the evening some time to say goodbye to Mohena, a French girl leaving.
The week after I mainly spent working in the lab, having some confusing results, but also having some success with growing my photosynthetic bacterium. On Monday I went to another goodbye party, of the Belgian guy Alexandre, he invited us for bowling and a dinner afterwards.

Tjitse invited me for another cabin trip the next weekend, we went to a another ‘NTNUi cabin', a bit more south and a bit higher in the mountains near Oppdall. (around 750 m). Together with Patrick and Tjitse, I left on Friday night almost straight after coming home from university by bus south to Oppdall. After a bus trip of just two hours (getting used to Norwegian distance standards) we arrived at the bus stop, which was still 2.5 hours hiking to cabin, at 21.00 in the evening. But the good thing, it wouldn't get dark, so we enjoyed a nice late night hike with a comfortable temperature. Just before midnight we arrived at Vekvessætra, a nice recently renovated cabin surrounded by lot's of sheep. And these sheep would wake us up again by their bells, way too early...

After refreshing ourselves in the nearby ice cold river and some breakfast, time for a mountain hike. The weather was great, and on the way down Tjitse slid down hill on a remaining snow field.

In the evening after a dinner time for the Norwegian waffle experiment, in the cabin was a Norwegian waffle iron and we brought waffle dough. Around midnight by candlelight (because the windows in the cabins are so small.) we tried 8 batches of waffles, which all more or less failed, but we had fun. On Sunday we relaxed mainly in the sun, just before leaving I even made a simple wooden bench in front of the cabin collapse, just by sitting on it (with my full backpack). We walked back to the bus stop, arriving in Trondheim in the evening.

Monday evening Barbara invited me for her goodbye dinner the day after, at her place we had a dinner with a nice group of people, a nice creative pasta (luckily no Italians joined) prepared from the leftovers in her flat. The day after I had another leftover dinner from Marie, she gave already a ‘goodby dinner' two weeks before, but was back again for 22 hours in Trondheim after travelling around Norway. And she needed some people to eat her leftover food, by a legendary lottery she got rid of all the other useful and less useful she did not manage to pack.

After all those goodbye it is getting really quiet both at the university and at Moholt (my student town), it is really holiday season now. Luckily there is still people and even some new people arriving for summer internships in either the university or companies. Norwegian students even are obliged to do 12 weeks of summer internship during their studies in total. On another goodbye party on Friday at Esther place (a Dutch girl) I met some people that just arrived for such internship.

On Saturday I went into the city centre with Tjitse, to check an interesting European stone festival (more than 100 people from many European countries, all chopping stone statues at the same time) and the finish of a relay race from Sweden.

The city centre really transformed from a student dominated city into a place crowded of tourist and locals enjoying holidays!

Sunday I also tried to act as a tourist by visiting the Natural History and Archeology (or Science) Museum in the centre. Most interesting was the special exhibit with valuable ancient artifacts from Afghanistan, an exhibit that was shown before in the British Museum and the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam. An interesting exhibition showing that Afghanistan has a rich history influenced by many surrounding ancient cultures, from the Greeks, Nomads to the Indians. In the evening I joined an international dinner planned by the ‘summer family' group. This is a Facebook group initiated by an Iranian student, Savis, who is researching the international student community in Trondheim. She created her own research group and at the same time a nice social group for the hard working ones staying in Trondheim during the summer. At the dinner we enjoyed many delicious things, and I contributed ‘appelflappen', which were a big success!

Monday it was again time for the summer family, but this time for something serious. Savis wanted to discuss with some international students about their experiences of Trondheim student life and what could be improved, as part of her research. An interesting evening, also to hear different visions about student life here, and realize that the internationalization of Wageningen University is developed quite well (internationalization policy started here in 2010...).

Tonight I played basketball outside with some ‘family members' from summer family, including three Norwegians, which is really cool, as normally ‘internationals' and Norwegians do not mix a lot unfortunately!
I still forgot to tell, that after moving to another flat I was living alone in a 4 person flat for 2 weeks. But last weekend two nice Ghanaian students moved in, sub renting just like me for the summer! So in Trondheim you are never alone...

P.s: if you want to see more pictures of both cabins trips to Iglbu and Vekvessætra, just copy the following to you browser.

Iglbu:https://picasaweb.google.com/nicoclaassens/616617IglbuCabinTrip?authkey=Gv1sRgCLviqffcj7muNA

Vekvessaetra: https://picasaweb.google.com/nicoclaassens/622624VekvessaetraCabinTrip?authkey=Gv1sRgCIO4lJXlieD3qwE