MUNICH, BERLIN AND ROSKILDE

The Roskilde festival (Photo: Tao X)

Once again I’ve been very bad at updating the blog, so I’ll give you a heads up on the events of the past week.

My year in Toulouse is over, it all ended June 19th with a big BOOM! The party, BOOM Mousse (foam party) was very fun, even though I don’t really get the point of having foam in a party (messy and your shoes smell).

Before the BOOM I cleaned my apartment and will get my entire deposit back (Promologis is often hard to please aparently)!

The day after the BOOM (Saturday) Cate, Geir and I left for Munich by train with short stops in Bordeaux and Paris. We spent two days there and then we headed to Berlin where we stayed at a friend’s place (thank you Dinah!).

We then took a plane to Copenhagen where we now are staying at Nina’s. We’re staying here with Johannes and Anna-Kari who’s traveling around Scandinavia these days.

It’s been great so far and Cate, Geir, Nina and me are all super excited to go to the Roskilde Festival on Saturday!

Because of that it’ll be more radio silence from me, but bigger updates will come later!

WHERE NEXT?

Aaah! How good it feels right now. I’m tired, sleepy and have soar throat, but I’m done with the tiring period these 2-3 weeks really have been!

It’s all over now, we had our final presentation of the project that has been ongoing throughout the year. I’m not a big fan of presentations, but I guess it went ok.

Now that it’s all over, what to do next?

Well, the weather in Toulouse was yesterday, and continues today, to be really bad. It’s pouring down! That didn’t stop 21 of us to go out on a good restaurant last night as a goodbye dinner for Malena, who is leaving on Monday. It’s weird how people have been disappearing one by one the last few weeks.

It’s not too long left of my stay here in Toulouse either. To be exact, I’m probably on my way by this time (Saturday 10:30) in two weeks. That is short! Ouh. Tough to think about.

But, it’s going to be two great weeks! I have plenty of time and I have good friends here and good friends coming from Norway! First out is Eivind and Line who are coming today, and then Øystein and Christina are visiting!

And since I’ve booked great weather for the next two weeks, nothing can “ungreat” the last part of this stay!

PS. The voting for “Best international Exchange/Experience Blog 2009” ends June 7th. Thank you in advance for voting on my blog “Åsmund Abroad”!

IX09 NOMINATION

I just got back from the first three quarters of the DELF B2 test (French) and found a pleasent commentary on the blog:

My blog has been nominated in Lexiophiles.com’s Best International Exchange and Experience blog 2009 award!

I’m right in the middle of the final 24 hours of this years multidiciplinary project, so I am running short on time, so I’ll leave you to it:

VOTE FOR
“Åsmund Abroad”

You can vote several times :P

Thank you very much for voting, this will be fun!

THE ROCKS

It just rained ice cubes in Toulouse!

Crazy!

Now, who has Whiskey?

THE PROJECT

Finally, today FX and I got a short talk with our tutor concerning our project. We’ve had difficulties with programming a least squares fitting algorithm in C and needed some help (I know there are libraries that implements this functionality already, but we’re not allowed to use them).

Basically we didn’t get too much out of our tutor, but we’re seeing him on Wednesday and he gave us a few hints about how to start coding.

We’re running a bit late as the report on this project has to be delivered on Friday this week. Luckily, most of the report is done (everything we’ve done throughout the year so far), so it’s only the last part that is missing from the report itself.

Tomorrow, there are two presentations to be made, one is QSE (Qualité, Sécurité et Environnement) (Similar to “Eksperter i Team” at NTNU) and the other is Conduit de projet (“Project execution”). I think we’ll do ok on both of them, we’re quite well prepared.

TODAY'S INSPIRATION

During a pause from the studies I came across a beautiful homepage. It’s in Spanish, but it’s pretty self explanatory.

If you need inspiration or just want to see a piece of art, this page is it!
It’s definitely worth your time!

No more hold-ups, here’s the link: http://soytuaire.labuat.com/

THINGS I'D RATHER DO

I’d rather travel.
I’d rather stay in the sun eating ice cream.
I’d rather hang out with my fantastic friends!
I’d rather watch a good movie.
I’d rather play beach volley.
I’d rather play Kubb.
I’d rather read a book.

But I’m not.

At some point you get fed up. I’m currently at such a point. I’ve been working loads the past week to finish a project, to write a report about it, to prepare presentations and to study for exams. Now I’m a bit sick and tired of it all.

Moral support is appreciated :)

BREAKING NEWS!

GaAs nanowires grown with MBE (Prof. Weman, NTNU)

This is a news flash new to the entire world! (If the world is as excited as I am is another matter).

I just found out the project title for next fall’s Masters project. The title is as sexy as

“Doping of semiconductor nanowires grown by molecular beam epitaxy”

It’s great to finally know what what I’m doing the coming semester. I get to spend quite a few hours in the lab using hightech equipment such as Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE), Scanning electron Microscope (SEM) and Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM)! AND I get to work at NTNU’s state-of-the-art Nano lab!

The project is not one of the three I listed as a favourite, but that’s because it wasn’t listed on the list we could choose from (I haven’t found it). My professor mailed me just now and asked if I was interested. You bet!

C'EST QUOI ÇA?

A french man asked me on the street yesterday: “C’est quoi ça?” It’s the celebration of the Norwegian national day!

This year I celebrated May 17th in the streets of Toulouse. In Norway, everyone dresses up in their finest outfit and celebrate the Norwegian constitution (of 1814). In Norway, there are flags everywhere, people are walking togehter in parades with marching bands and everyone’s singing.

The Norwegian celebration of the national holiday is unique, and we’re not stopped by being abroad. In Toulouse about 150 Norwegians gathered on Place Capitole at noon to have a parade to Université de Toulouse 1, where we later had cake, sandwiches, drinks and games!

Many Norwegians parading in Toulouse

It was during the parade a French man asked me the question above, a fair question – it’s not often you see people in France going in parade without manifesting their discontent with the government (or something else). :)

On the evening 17th we had a superb dinner at Bistro Romain on Place Wilson. More than 90 Norwegians found their way to the restaurant to celebrate our day! Happy birthday, Norway!

Apart from the national day of Norway, the weekend has been filled with Beer World Cup, basically a second round of Beer Olympics, but with less concequences and more people! Tom and I were title defenders in Beer Pong but lost our first match and were out of the competition. On the other hand I won Dizzy bat and I had great team members in Flip Cup so we won that one too! 2 out of 3 possible!

It’s a lot of school going on, so I have to stop this post here. Later!

TEMPORARY RADIO SILENCE

Serenety by *Nikander

I have loads to do now-a-days and will have to stay off blogging for 2 weeks or so.

I hope to see you around when I return!

WEEKENDS IN MAY

They are long, specially this year.

May 1st, 8th and 22nd all count as holidays here in France, the two first are Fridays, meaning three day weekends! The last one is a Thursday, but INSA don’t give courses on Friday 23rd. How convenient!

Last weekend I visited Torbjørn in Antibes, this weekend I’m going with Juha, Cate, Geir, Tom and Roberto to Porto in Portugal to visit Joao and Tiago!

The timing of our stay is well planned as we are visiting during Porto’s student festival.

I’ve been working lots with the multidiciplinary project the past few days, now I’m off to my apartment to pack my things and meet the others heading for Porto.

50 minutes left!

WEEKEND TRIP: CÔTE D'AZUR

Nice as seen from La colline du château

This weekend I’ve been visiting Torbjørn, a friend of my from the university in Norway. Torbjørn is studying at the Eurecom institute near Antibes and is staying there for a year.

Antibes is situated between Cannes and Nice (Google Maps), which is pretty far away from Toulouse. So, Thursday afternoon at 17h I got on the train. 7 hours and a train swap (in Marseilles) later I arrived in Antibes where Torbjørn picked me up.

 
Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress, my camera and me heading for Antibes

It took 15 minutes to get to Torbjørn’s apartment near the school campus. The apartment is pretty much identical to mine here in Toulouse. Because of the bad bus connection to the school campus, Torbjørn bought a car a few weeks ago!

So, Friday morning, we got up around 8 o’clock and drove to Nice!

Torbjørn and his monster car at Carrefour

I’ve been to Nice once before, but that was during sixth form (“lycée” in French, “videregående” in Norwegian). We parked just next to the local marked, a place I visited last time as well. Nice is such a beautiful city!

We didn’t stay for a long time, but we saw the Promenade des Anglais, the beautiful view from La colline du château and we enjoyed a coffee in Place Rosetti. During our coffee I was lucky enough to get pooped on by a bird. It hit me on the head, on the shoulders and almost hit my camera. Not the most pleasant of experiences, but everything has a first I guess.

Me, Torbjørn, coffee, card writing (and bird poo) in Place Rosetti

We then headed for Cannes where we spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach, chilling out and playing beach volley.

The same night we met up with Kristoffer, the other Norwegian studying at Eurecom. We had dinner together, I had Calzone pizza for 9€, coffee for 2€ and expensive Crème Brulée Ice cream for 8€. We ended the evening with a couple of pints of Guinness the Irish pub the Hop Store. I am amazed by the number of Australians in Antibes. Surely, Antibes is a city based on tourism, but Australian-English was more common than French in some areas.

Saturday we got up late, bought baguettes and ate our breakfast on a fortified wall overlooking the crazy big yachts in the marina. We stayed there for a few hours because of the great view and marvellous weather!

Torbjørn and me in front of crazy big yachts! (Photo: Kristoffer)

After an ice cream in down town Antibes we headed for the beach in Juan-les-pins where we tried to find some friends of Kristoffer and Torbjørn’s. We couldn’t find them and ate our lunch on our own. We played a bit of beach volley and Torbjørn and I even took a swim in the Mediterranean!

Chilling on the beach in Juan-les-Pins (Kristoffer and Torbjørn)

We ate home made dinner in Torbjørn’s apartment before I took the train back on Saturday at 21h16. I left Saturday already because the two others were leaving for a one week cruise in the Mediterranean Sunday morning. It’s been a great weekend, Côte d’Azur is fantastic!

QUOI DE NEUF?

(Photo: foundphotoslj)

Or as they say in English, “What’s up?”

I haven’t blogged about everyday stuff for a long time, so I thought I should update you all on what’s happening here in Toulouse, besides not being in Toulouse (also known as travelling).

Last update from Toulouse was the fact that I’ve got new glasses, but that’s a long time ago, at least it feels that way.

So what is new?
I had two exams just over Easter, one in the complicated course Electronique du solide 2, and the other in the somewhat less complicated course Electronique. The exams went pretty much as expected, nothing truly exiting to write about.

What annoys me though is the “French way” of having exams. I say “French way”, because I haven’t heard of any other nation that allows exams in such a way as they do here in France.

The worst thing is how easy it is to ask others, share answers and in general to cheat. In the examination room we normally sit next to each other and it seems like the professors (at least some of them) don’t care if students collaborate during the exam.

Another thing I find weird is how the exercises we get was identical to a TD (traveaux dirigé, meaning exercises solved with help from the professor). This was the case of the Electronics exam where we additionally were allowed to bring all the TDs with us to the exam. So the exam was basically copy paste of something the professor had already done for us. How can we show what we know with such an exam?!

And now something completely different:
Kristian, one of the three Norwegian musketeers, has returned to Norway. We’ll miss him the last two months, but he’s in Trondheim so I’ll see him around!

Last Saturday I had a great dinner the BEE team. We ate at a nice Italian restaurant, before we had fun at Café Pop’s Farmer’s party!

 
The BEE team at the restaurant (Photo: Teddy Canadas)

Today I tried climbing again, for the first time in well over a year. It’s been way too long and I am restarting on beginners level. Tons of fun though, even if I can barely grip a bottle right now.

So that’s the past. On Tursday I’m visiting Torbjørn who is studying in Antibes, not far from Nice. Torbjørn is a good beachvolley buddy of mine and also one of my future colleagues this summer.
I think we’re going to have a great time!

WINTER HOLIDAY PART 3: NÎMES

Les Arènes in Nîmes, a very well preserved Roman arena

The third and final part of the Winter holiday is now to be covered. The first part brought my travel companions and I to Marseilles, the second to Aix-en-Provence and Avignon.

Day 4: Nîmes
We took the train from Avignon nice o’clock and arrived in Nîmes about 40 minutes later. The breakfast was made in the hotel room. As always we ate great baguettes with ham, cheese, sausages and crisps).

La maison carrée

We saw the 3D movie “Heros de Nîmes” in la Maison carrée which is an old Roman building. The movie was a disappointment because the 3D glasses we had to use were so scratched up that we couldn’t read the text on the screen.

Kristofer with a pair of useless 3D glasses

The weather was, as every day of our trip, fantastic and we strolled to Les jardins de la fontaine (The fountain gardens). This public park is according to the French brochure one of the biggest public parks, but one of the first according to the English version in the brochure (it’s maybe both?).

We had a fantastic view from the top of Tour Magne

Inside the park we saw the roman temple Temple de Diane and the Roman octogonal tower Tour Magne. We also had a pleasent lunch where we ate (again) baguettes, but this time we complemented them with ice cream for dessert!

Lunch in Les jardins de la fontaine

The highlight of Nîmes is without a doubt Les Arènes, a Roman arena (like the famous one in Rome). The one in Nîmes is very well preserved and is in use today. When we visited it was bullfight practice on the arena – fun to watch!

In the evening Cate, Joao and I ate food at the restaurant “It’s amore”, a delicious meal. The others went for a kebab and we found them sleeping when we got back from the restaurant. (Sorry that I don’t have an image of that – they were almost cuddeling).

Day 5: Last day of holiday
We slept long, too long to be able to visit Pont du Gard, yet another famous Roman sight, situated not far from Nîmes. It’s supposed to be very impressive, but as it was Sunday there were no buses going to the aquaduct. Instead we went to a free exhibition at “Musée du vieux Nîmes”. Apparently, Nîmes is known for its jeans production.

We ended our stay in Nîmes and the winter holiday at the Grand café La bourse next to Place des Arènes enjoying a good and expensive coffee!

WINTER HOLIDAY PART 2: AIX-EN-PROVENCE & AVIGNON

So the second part of the winter holiday is here! I continue where I left of in the last post.

We got up early, it was hard since we got to bed late. We took tha train to Aix-en-Provence from the Marseilles St. Charles trainstation at 09h05.

After 45 minutes on the train we arrived in Aix-en-Provence. We were heading for Avignon the same day, and didn’t have a hostel to put our stuff in. Additionally we couldn’t find ANYWHERE to put our luggage, so we had to carry it around all day. We had breakfast in front of Cours Mirabeau, the biggest fountain in Aix-en-Provence.

We continued our great hyper tourism trend, seeing everything in one day and took yet another “City tour”. (The one in Aix-en-Provence was better than the Marseille one as it only cost us 0,50€!)

 
Geir, Joao and Roberto are happy hyper tourists

 We were all kind of tired and had a coffee not far from la Rotonde before we visited Musée Granet with a free and interactive Picasso exhibition, very good.

We didn’t have time to see La cathédrale St-Sauveur properly (we passed it on the city tour), so the last thing we did in Aix-en-Provence was a proper kebab. 15 minutes on the TGV and we were in Avignon. We were met by an amazing sunset, so I had to take a picture!

The view that met us in Avignon (available on Flickr)

We met the American girls again (what’s the odds?), but this time we only had a short talk as they were leaving Avignon. We ended the evening with wine, salt sticks, chips and baguettes in the hotel room.

Day 3: Avignon
We slept for a long time in my room and the others bought food and we ate breakfast in front of the City hall (Hôtel de ville).

A fantastic baguette breakfast in front of Hôtel de ville!

 We headed for the main attraction in Avignon, Le palais des papes (The pope palace). The Pope had his head of seat in Avignon at the beginning of the 12th century, interesting, but the buildings was emptied, so there was only (endless amounts of) information signs to see, apart from the construction itself.

Palais des papes

After two hours in the palace we had incredibly expensive coffee outside (1,80€). Then we saw Notre dame des doms and the park Rocher des doms next door followed by the famous “Pont d’Avignon”, who’s real name is Pont Bénezet. Why is it famous you say? That’s because it’s only half a bridge. The city of Avignon gave up reconstructing it in the 17th century since it always got destroyed by the strong tide.

Planning in front of Palais des papes!

Again we were tired and skipped going to eat at a restaurant, instead we ordered pizza. Beer and gin & tonic made us happy and we tried to find a place to go out. Again: Epic fail! Who pays 10€ to get into a pub!? It was called Delirium, probably describes the people who go there pretty well!

In the next post, Nîmes!