The winter reached Trondheim before I did. When I think of all the rainy winter days back in Germany or Poland, the snow is far more then a compensation. It is considerably colder then in Britain – but it’s fun.
caption: “The fun is over. Back to working life!”
Saturday: Around 17:30 we arrived in Dublin with a delay of approx. 2 hours. This time Ryanair couldn’t play its’ “the on time airline – trumpet fanfare”. Welcome back to Eurozone – hurra! Everyone complaining about expensive cigarettes should go to Dublin: 8.05€ per box! We took the bus downtown for 1.90€ (well, that’s a good price) and found ourselves in a totally crowded city. No wonder we weren’t able to find a host here for the weekend: football game Ireland vs Poland took place on Wednesday just here and many people seem to have stayed until the weekend (Dublin is sometimes called as Little Krakow, because of the amount of Poles living here). The city was so crowded that one could barely walk. We managed to hide inside an internet cafe. After desperately trying to find a CS host, we switched to hostels and found everything totally booked – some places asked up to 43€ for a place in a 10 bed room!! We decided to move and started examining the bus and train station regarding its’ lockers – oh yes, the issues of a real bummer. We decided to leave our stuff in the locker at the bus station and make the investment of 1.90€ to enjoy the luxury of a sleepover at the airport. But before getting us some 16 inch pizza and local beers – to complete the picture. At the airport we immediately started looking for opportunities. Like vultures, that circle round the dead – people on airports around that time usually start circling round the seats of Starbucks, McDonnalds and FoodExpress. Especially at Starbucks, with the clearly most cozy seats, you would find people with bloodshot and puffy eyes next to dozens of paper cups on a table – fighting for every second of comfort. We picked our spot at FoodExpress where nobody made a serious effort to move us and slept there until 7..
Sunday: ..and took the first bus back to downtown. Henrique would need to catch his flight at 14:00 and therefor leave at 12:00. After checking some hostels in the Temple Bar area we eventually found one for me right next to the bus station.. I would stay a day longer. We picked up our luggage from the bus station and took it to the hostel. Now we would have time for some sightseeing and pictures. I dropped off Henrique at the 41 bus stop around 12:00 and headed straight to the hostel.. being so tired that I slept until 17:00. There was still one attraction on my list, but I would keep it for the after. Now is time to relax. I ordered a Gammon Steak and a pint of Guinness at O’Sheas Hotel nearby (43€ of saved costs from the night before minus 15.45€ makes still a tasty surplus of 27.55€), took a walk and spent some time reading papers and watching TV at the hostel lounge.
Monday: I got up at 8:00 for the hostel breakfast, left my bag at the reception, signed up for the free airport bus at 13:00 and went on to see “Ireland’s No. 1 international visitor attraction”, the Guinness Storehouse (watch out for brewing no. 4387). At the airport right while standing in the queue for check-in I met a Spanish girl from Trondheim, that I would meet again on the train from Oslo later. As the train from the Sandefjord Airport, Torp to Oslo was late I met a girl called Rikke (still wondering about interesting Scandinavian names once a while) who just started studying and would have the same connection to Trondheim. Everything went well although the train was really late and as soon as I helped Rikke with her luggage into the train, Anna – a Polish/American girl with whom we were on a cabin trip some three weeks ago – appeared inside the wagon. She spend the weekend with some friends in Stockholm and had some Swedish beers in her bag so we started chatting and making fun. After a while someone came claiming his place, causing me moving to my own seat no. 42.. which would lead to the last encounter for the day and eventually the whole trip: a Norwegian girl called Maria being on her way back from Berlin…
Andrea, our host in Manchester, when picking us up at the Piccadilly station couldn’t believe in the first place (we were still in the brand-new kilts), then started laughing and kept on doing so during the whole way to the bar where we should meet her friends… in the gay quarter! Ok, breathe deeply.. two guys – in Scottish skirts – in a gay bar.. Happy birthday!
We survived, there were still some girls around whistling. After a couple of beers and some wine we found ourselves in a Taxi with Andrea and her friend Tammy on the way home. Andrea would need to leave on the next day for a trip to Wales (I mixed up a bit while sending the requests on CouchSurfing and wrote her we would leave on Friday) but Tammy being her flatmate would take care of us so we could stay both days – very nice.
Friday: We got up at 7 and left the flat all together as our hosts were both working that day. We decided to meet Tammy at 14:00, to take a bus trip to Liverpool with her and said good bye to Andrea. In meantime we visited the Manchester Art Gallery, the John Rylands Library and the Museum of Science and Industry. The bus connections are amazingly cheap in England (and on the British island in general – to be honest everywhere, except Germany) so for the tour way and back to Liverpool we payed 6.40£ each! There we took a nice walk enjoying the architecture, at the Clayton Square Shopping Centre and along the Albert Dock. At the dock we jumped into the Tate Liverpool art gallery and the The Beatles Story shop. On the way back to the bus station I bought me a T-Shirt: shopping spree still not over yet – UK is good for shopping. Back home we got a bit lazy, talked untill 3 and I got some classes about meditation from Tammy.
Wednesday: The sleep mask kindly provided by ScotRail and the beers barely improved the sleeping situation and we arrived somewhat in a coma at Glasgow Central 7:32. Waken up by a guy stating the train would soon go in the opposite direction we seized our bags, crashed off the train and into Cooper’s Bar in the main hall for a local breakfast and half a liter of coffee – each. After revitalization we headed to the tourist office, then the cathedral and Necropolis. Necropolis is an old graveyard on top of a hill behind the cathedral – placing the dead above most of the city. The overall impression of Glasgow, supported by the cloudy weather is foggy and wet. After spending some time in an internet cafe we visited The Lighthouse containing an exhibition dedicated to the Scottish architect and designer Charles Mackintosh and I bought me a truly Scottish cashmere scarf (I lost mine on the N8) and visited the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. After taking some more time off at the easyInternetcafe we took our train from the Queen Station to Edinburgh and arrived 19:47. Just to mention, from the concept of corn, salad, sausage and sauce wraps from the past travels we moved to sandwiches.
Edinburgh is fun. When we arrived at our hosts place with a couple of beers we found a dark entrance door of a recently completed building and a girl with a bobble cap jumping out of it. She asked if we were from CS and whom we were visiting. The girl says the light in the stairway got broke and took us upstairs. She is half Hawaiian half German, living in Hawaii on a trip through Europe now. We explained her our similarly mixed roots (Brazilian and half Polish/half German while studying in Norway and Spain) and she brought us Nacho – our host. Nacho lives with 3 other people this flat which is in walking distance to the central station. The apartment is divided into 2 floors with the living room, the kitchen and a nice terrace upstairs and the private rooms downstairs. I really like it. We will sleep in the living room. Just after a quick shower we changed T-Shirts and rushed into a bar while the match Scotland-Argentina (or shall I better say Scotland against Diego?) was still ongoing. Imagine your luck coming form a country with 5£ (50 kr) par pint and at least 7£ (70 kr) per shot to a country with 1£ per pint and 1.5£ for a tasty shot of Jägermeister. We were – let’s call it – delighted. After talking to some Spanish (they are everywhere – find a party and you will find Spanish people) and Germans (thea are everywhere too) – Diego won 1:0 in meantime – we moved on to a club (Henrique moved home) and spent the rest of the night there.
Thursday: Woke up a bit dizzy at 10, ate some remaining pasta, took a shower and headed towards city. As our train would leave again to Manchester at 17:52 we went straight to the tourist information office got us a map and took a walk around the Princes Street Gardens to the Edinburgh Castle. Edinburgh as a city is somewhat rough although it has some very nice spots, the castle for example: we spend some 2 hours learning about the Scottish culture and their martial history. Very nice to mention is the One O’Clock Gun shot fired at precisely 13:00. After leaving the castle on the way to the St. Giles’ Cathedral we occasionally stepped into a store called Heritage of Scotland selling kilts. The plan was to put them on and grab some nice pictures – the plan didn’t work out. After donning the kilts we went crazy – the salesman, a Pole living in Scotland for about 14 years appeared to be very good in his job – we tried to escape into the cathedral but it was too late. With a big grin we ran back to the store and got us the complete package: Kilt, Shirt, Sporran, Belt, Buckle and a Kilt pin for around 100£ and some discount each. As the whole dressing took so long we wouldn’t have the time to see anything elese – but that didn’t really matter. After returning to our hosts the girls literally forced us to put them on and wear them on the road. Haha.. what a fun! Even in Edinburgh people kept on looking and girls sitting at a bar would look up and smile! A promotional team for Baileys immediately wanted to take pictures with us when we arrived at the central station. The train towards Manchester Airport (we would jump off at Piccadilly) was a bit late but we had fun and the older mr sitting next to me (Mehman was missing so we had 3 places reserved) assessed the quality of our outfits and gave us some hint how to communicate the picture to our host in Manchester, Andrea. The final short message would be: “The train is arriving now. We are both with white shirts and have no pants on.” Amazing fun!
Saturday: Since I stayed in Oslo downtown I just needed to walk over to the central station to get my train to the Oslo-Torp airport. Everything was arranged so far and I arrived twenty to nine in London. After taking the Stansted Express I met Henrique with his friend Marcela after a while at the London Liverpool St. station. As McD was the best alternative within eyeshot we rushed in before proceeding to Heinhault to meet our CS host Sarah. Sarah is living with her 3 kids Lewis, Weljah and Abigail and moved to London some years ago to study, she is a very kind person with a passion for cooking and baking. We have to promise to cook something from our region.. I am going to cook Nkoedel then – my mom will go crazy 
After some chat with Sarah and her friend we went to sleep as it already was half past one.
Sunday: We got up at 9:30 and took the next train downtown with the dayticket we got us for £5.40 and started our trip collecting sightseeing pictures at St Paul’s Cathedral. We moved alongside the River Thames getting us some food, see the Parliament, the Buckingham Palace and heading to Piccadilly then – to check the Starbucks next to the the Covent Garden market square where Marcela is working. She would need to work untill 19:00 so we moved on to see the London Tower and the Tower Bridge. In the evening we went to a Brazilian bar called Guanabara with some friends. After getting me a Caipirinha and a Brazilian beer (to fit culturally – you wont believe but there are still people around thinking me & Henrique are both Brazilian) I decided to write Davina from CS. Davina hosted my friend Irini before and we already talked earlier the day as she wanted to go out with other CS people somewhere around Holborn. The funny thing about that meeting is that it was moved to Guanabara around that time we got there – Davina sitting at an edged bar with us straight behind. You can imagine the amusement of the discovery! After food and few more drinks we completed the day in a bar at the Covent Garden where a surprisingly refreshing Karaoke session took place.
Monday: The Monday started very lazy: instead of the planned 9:30 we got up at 11:00. As we promised to serve diner at 6:30 we started the cultural sightseeing at a local supermarket, getting us the ingredients for Kartoffelklöße – then moving our shopping spree downtown getting new footwear and tickets for a Windsor->Stonehenge->Oxford tour the day after. Cooking went very well with the lovely kids forming the klöße – very cute. After diner I was able to check mails and Facebook for the first time since the beginning of the trip and learned about the troubles with the demolition parties in Berg during the weekend and consequences. We spend the night in the TigerTiger club, taking the longes busride back ever with N8 nightbus.
Few scenes of the bus travel remained in my mind when we got off in Oslo at 7:30, they consisted of alternating tunnels, slowly driving cars slippering on white roads and a construction site with a positioning car leading the traffic from one side to the other. We took the bus the night before to arrive in the early morning, just in time for the first interview at 9:00.
All interviews happened seamlessly because of the preparations and our beloved friend Google Maps we didn’t had any troubles finding the locations and were always on time. All in all they revealed why communication is so important for management: for technology acquisitions there is nothing so important as the right way to communicate requirements, changes and specifications. To store them and make their updates available on time and visible for all involved parties. The Interviews show that Microsoft Word is still used as the main tool to store these information and that everyone involved is not quite happy about it and the resulting distribution and storage process. One of the few additional software packages mentioned is JIRA, something really might be worth looking at (comments from former working mates highly appreciated here..
As my flight to London would leave the day after I decided to stay in Oslo asking Nico Mendoza to host me, a guy I know from the open source project AROS before. Nico finished his degree at NTNU and moved to Oslo to work with Opera Software. He lives with four other guys in a nice place not far from the Royal Palace. The guys were preparing for a party on the following day and already hosted two more friends and I called Sixpack, buddy from the good old scene days in Haujobb who would appear later. While some of the guys stayed in the living room we would go out later for some local bars and fun in the city.
Ok, the time has come – I just prepared the schedule and we are going to do the interviews for the technology aquisition project in Oslo on Friday. It took Mingyi and me some good time to get in contact with aquisition managers for the EMV and BankID projects (although we had a really good starting point to find those people: company presentations here at the university – all linked to a diner ), but we managed and are going to talk to people from BBS AS, DnbNor and the NordeaBank. The interviews will be related to two big aquisition projects in the Norwegian banking sector: the iterative emigration of bank cards to the EMV standard and the implementation of the new identification system BankID, enabling transactions from mobile phones. The first interview is scheduled for 9:00 so we will leave Trondheim already by Thursday night, and hope to be finished at Friday around 16:00..
And that’s where the fun starts: Since our UK trip (London -> Stonehenge -> Glasgow -> Edinburgh -> Manchaster -> Dublin) starts the day after and my plane to London departs from Oslo, I will stay there with a friend. Looking forward to the interviews and the trip, watch out for updates!
During the weekend we went for a so called cabin trip.. uhuuu.. what is that? one might ask. Cabins are small, roughly built cottages usually with a wood exterior. A lot of people here in Scandinavia own such typically in rural areas placed holiday homes – in Sweden about 50% of the population. So does the NTNU.. the university owns approx. 25 cabins which can be rented for only a few Kroner (30 kr = 3.5€ per person/day). Most of them equipped with a gas stove and running water, but some also with a sauna and/or canoes.
The Agdenes cabin is placed about 100 km from Trondheim at the coast only few hundred meters from the waterline. The trip was organized by Mario (the Italian guy with the green scarf next to me on the picture) who had his sister in Trondheim for a visit (the Italian girl right in front of him). We had a pretty nice international group consisting of 15 people (7 Italians, 4 Germans, 1 American, 1 Brazilian, 1 Dutch and 1 native Norwegian… now try guessing who is who.. hehe) and spend two relaxing days on the countryside, hiking and chatting.