We also paid Chester a visit, one of the oldest Roman cities in Great Britain. We got to see some sights and I bought myself some proper golfing clothes (trousers and polos) so that I will be allowed entrance in South Africa. Tomorrow we leave for London and the day after tomorrow, the trip to South Africa will finally begin!

Below you see a couple of shots taken with my phone (and the very cool Hipstamatic app).

The clouds making shadows between Oslo and Manchester.

Rosie playing in the bushes.

BBQ with Tom’s friends. Here: Matt, temporarily playing BBQ chef – Matrix style.

My inverted blogging continues and I’ve now arrived to the Roskilde Music Festival 2009 – June 28th to July 5th.

Cate, Geir and me arrived in Copenhagen the 25th of June. We stayed at Nina’s where Johannes and Anna-Mari also cutched for a few days.

Copenhagen is truly beautiful and we saw the little murmade, the opera and even got to see a very good Veto concert in Tivoli!

After some good days in Copenhagen we packed our bags and headed for Roskilde Saturday night (big thanks to Nina for such great preparations). The official opening of the festival is Sunday at 8 o’clock, but the fences are normally cut down a few hours in advance. We figured arriving at midnight would give us enough time to prepare for the running to get an ok camp.

Sunday night: Coffee and Irish cream (Feeney’s)

This year it was all different – the fences were cut 9 o’clock Saturday night and the camping site was practically full when we got there. We managed to squeeze ourselves into a spot in J camp, as far away from the festival area as you can get. We got the tent up in the dark and were pleased to have a slot!

Left: Beer system. Right: Happy people in our camp.

Sunday we got our camp properly together and chilled out by the tent. We did this most of the four first days, but we also listened to some of the up-and-coming bands at the Junior Pavillion.

Festival life is good!

The big names started Thursday. Kanye West did a good concert, as did Trentemøller and his friends (great show), but my absolute Thursday favourite was the danish rock band Volbeat!

No Roskilde without Tuborg beer

Friday we saw a really good concert with Negash Ali, we got disappointed by the Fleet foxes but re-energized by Baddies.

One of the main names Friday was Oasis, that we saw earlier this year in Toulouse. This time it was a lot better (a good crowd too makes a good concert)!!! We got to see Röyksopp too – but it was too crowded as they played on a stage that was too small in my opinion (Arena).

Oasis!

Saturday was a great day. We saw Lily Allen, Tim Christensen, Håkan Hellström, Slipknot and Petshop Boy.

The crowd at Gogol Bordello – best concert ever!

The American rapper Lil Wayne was supposed to have a gig on Orange stage, but cancelled and he got replaced by Gogol Bordello!
BEST LIVEBAND EVER! The ground shook underneath the thousands (20-25k) that jumped to their Balkan inspired punk music!

Gogol Bordello!!!

The last and final day we got to see Peter Doherty, Ida Maria (I like you so much better when …!), a bit of Madness and Coldplay. In my opinion, Coldplay was beaten by Whitest boy alive, who had a super concert in Arena.

I realize that this isn’t the best post ever, all I’ve done is to mention some of the bands we got to see – but hey, that’s what a festival is all about – the music and the bands!

We got on the train straight after the Coldplay concert and returned to Copenhagen. The following day I flew to Oslo and work :)

A heavy duty backpack in the chaos (bad organisation at the train station)

Roskilde is without a doubt my best music experience ever!

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!

Airshow over Porto (Photo: Unknown)

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!

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!

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!

Pont d'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!

Joao, Geir, Roberto, Kristofer, Cate and I in Marseilles

I’ve been waiting for time to post the images and stories from the winter holiday and finally I have found the time. I’m sitting outside in the Tolulouse waiting for my laundry to finish – perfect conditions for blogging!

So I’m moving back in time, to February 18th 2009, 6 o’clock in the morning at the metro station Faculté de Pharmacie where Geir, Cate, Joao, Roberto, Kristofer and I are dead tired, but ready for the winter holiday. We’re going to visit the south west coast of France visiting Marseilles, Aix-en-Provence, Avignon and Nîmes.

Ready for departure (Geir, Kristofer, Cate, Roberto and Joao)

We got to Marseilles around 11h30 and found Hostel Vertigo right away, it was really close to the train station. It was an awesome place, really cool atmosphere and nice rooms!

We got a map of the city and started exploring!

Does anybody see a big monument around here so we know where we are?

Since we only had one day in Marseilles, we figured the most effective way to get around was to take “Trains Tour”, showing us Marseilles and bringing us all the way up to Notre Dame de la garde – the church that overlooks Marseilles. We were a bit unlucky and only got 25 minutes at Notre Dame – we’re hyper tourists doing Marseilles!

We also got to see the old quarter (ok), la Vieille charité (disappointment) and La cathédrale (nice outside, too dark inside).

We went back to Les Quais, where we ate lunch when we came to Marseilles and ate proper French food …

No excuse for this in France, but it tasted very good!

We tried to find Musée du vieux ville (The “Old City Museum”) twice, but it didn’t seem to exist. None of the Marseillans we asked had heard about it. We ended the day with a visit to Palais de Longchamps before returning to the hostel.

There we ate good microwave heated spaghetti (the didn’t have hot plates in the hostel). We met three American girls that joined us in the search for a place to party. Epic fail! The only place we found was the Irish pub O’Malley’s. OK, but not exactly what we were looking for.

In bed 1h30, hopefully ready for the second day of the winter holiday!

The first week of this year’s two week Easter holiday is over. I’ve had a great week in the French Alps, more specifically in Risoul.

The short story of the week is as follows:
The bus picked us up at 23h on Friday 3rd of April. I got food poisoned by something I ate the same day and puked three times during the bus ride (9 hours), the first time after 5 minutes of driving. Great start.

The slopes were good, but the snow a bit slushy in the afternoons. We had grouped ourselves in dinner teams and it worked perfectly, good an varied food each day!

Geir got sick after 2 days with high fever and only got four days of skiing, Nina caught his fever the two last days. I sprained my ankle during snow football (which we won by the way) and missed one day of snowboarding. A bit of tape and snowboard boots stabilized the foot enough after the first day.

All in all we were a bit unlucky, but it was still a great trip. I’ve learned to do goofy and 180s properly, but I’m still struggeling with 360s. We’ve done a lot of off piste, amazing fun!

Next up this Easter is the Road trip to Spain!

The apartment for four (Nina, Cate and my head)

The dinner teams made great food! (Roberto, Synnøve, Kristofer, Tom, Cate, Geir and Nina)

Yahtzee!

View from our apartment (HDR image)

Beto won the jumping contest

Lluís with a big grab

Friday we had a common 4th floor dinner in the corridor!

Kristian attacking a steep off piste hill

Regatta in the Mediterranean with a great view of the Pyrenees 

Wow, I’ve had a few busy days, walking from activity to activity (mostly school related stuff – boring to tell about). I’m still in a hurry, as I’m heading for The Alps tonight! Risoul in the southern Alps is the place to be and we’re about 10 Erasmus students going. The trip is arranged by Ski INSA, one of the many clubs of the school.

This post is about last weekend’s sailing trip outside Canet-en-Roussillon. Fadia and Michelle (her sister), Tom and I joined FX and Pierre in INSA Club Voil (INSA sailing club) in their 35″ sailboat.

We got to the boat Friday night, slept in the boat and sailed Saturday and Sunday. Saturday we had rain in the afternoon, making it a bit cold. We had great wind though! Sunday we sailed a regatta, it was absolutely awesome! Plenty of wind to make it a memorable experience (15-20m/s wind)

A few pictures will tell the rest of the story from this fantastic weekend! Enjoy!

Something as unusual as a picture with me in it. We spent a nice Friday night in “Shoot first”, the name of the sailing boat.

Happy sailor Tom

Hapy sailor Fadia

Pierre, the captain

Lunch break on Saturday (Fadia, Michelle, Tom, Pierre and FX)

It got really wet Saturday afternoon, Pierre and FX.

Sunday = Regatta day = Fantastic day!

I wish you all a happy Easter holiday and hope to see you in blog space when I return!