Stavanger!

Hey - I know it's been a while but my excuse is that I have been very busy.

The rest of the conference was OK. My talk went fairly well; apparently I seemed pretty confident and my talk was clear. Plus no horrible questions! I had one free day in Oslo on the Sunday after being busy conferencing for a week; this was a day of sight seeing so we checked out the Opera House, Karl Johanes Gate, the Palace, Frogner Park etc - the typical touristy things but all stuff I have done before.

All in all, I had a fantastic time in Oslo though, it was great to catch up with Dale, Sean, Melinda, Berit, Vegard, Ane-Sofie, and Hanne again - these are mostly people I met in Svalbard last year but also people I met whilst in Trondheim visiting Vegard last November.

After our day of sight-seeing, Vegard, Sean, Melinda and I went off to the train station to catch a train to Stavanger (south-west Norway), where we are staying with Vegard until Sunday. 8 hours, and a restless nights sleep later, we arrived in Stavanger. As we were all so tired, we didn't really do much. I should mention the fantastic location of Vegards house though; he lives right on the shore of a fjord (can't remember which one) so the views are absolutely fantastic. I am very jealous! We also went to the beach to check out some of his friends kite surfing - apparently one of them broke his arm (or leg) earlier that day - I wasn't surprised, the wind was very strong!

This is the view from Vegards house:

Yesterday we went on a trip to Preikestolen, a pretty famous tourist location about an hour and a half drive & ferry ride away - again some fantastic views on the way. Once arrived in the car park, it's about a 2 hour uphill hike to reach Preikestolen - this is basically a square slab of rock on Lysefjord. Some pictures are seen below. Twas fantastic weather (I got a sunburnt nose) and a thoroughly enjojable day. Rogier (another field school guy - a right reunion) also arrived that day. So all was well....until I got home!

After arriving home, checking me e-mails and bank account, I noticed that my Australian bank account was $1000 down - I also had an e-mail from the bank saying they had barred my account due to unusual activity! After trying to ring the bank (pretty difficult and costly from Norway), they told me someone had used my details on a gambling website. So they cancelled my card, and I had to ring someone else to start a dispute to claim the money back. This, I was told, would take up to 6 weeks and even then, there is no guarantee I will get my money back! Such a palava, especially as I'm not in the country! I was not a happy bunny!

Today, our international group headed off to check out Stavanger city itself. We had a mooch around, enjoyed a skillingsbole from godt brod (my favourite), and being general tourists. Oh, we also went to the oil museum which was pretty interesting! This evening I experienced my first fishing trip. As Vegard lives right on the fjord, we hopped in his boat, equipped with fishing rods, and went out on the fjord to attempt to catch some fish for dinner tomorrow. Everyone was being pretty successful except me - after nearly giving up and stopping off one last time, I finally caught two Cod in one go (they were fairly small) - I was extremely happy! I didn't do the killing of the fish, but once back on shore, I did de-gut it; I was quite impressed with myself.

Not sure what the rest of our plans are for the week.

Over and out