NORWAY II

I've been looking forward to my exchange semester for a long time. So far I have only lived in Liechtensteinand this was the first time that I left home.! I chose to go to Norway because I love nature and the cold weather! I think I knew more or less what to expect and I tried to be really open for everything. But whatI did not expect for sure was to have the spreac of a pandemic all over the world. Nevertheless the exchange was still worth it and I would do the same thing again.
When I got to Norway it was winter. Meaning that the days were really short, snowy and cold! Even though I was prepared for that it was still quite hard in the beginning. Waking up at 10 in the morning and still having barely any light just felt weired, espacially in the first weeks when I did not really have a daily rhythm or routine. But as soon as the university started properly I also got used to the shorter days. On the other hand I tried to take advantage of the longer nights for seeing the Northern lights. Since I love to take pictures I frequently went to a beach close by to take a few shots with my camera. If only the weather would not have been that bad! It was cloudy almost every night, so it was quite hard to see the Northern lights! But I was lucky a few times and could take some pictures.

During free days I tried to go out into the nature as much as possible. And of course I went crosscountry skiing. Even though I was born and raised in the middle of the Alps I never tried it before. But what better place than Norway to try it out!? So I rented a pair of skies from the university and went to the slopes with some friends. I thought I would fall down every 5 meters but it went surprisingly well. The only thing I could not do was breaking which is a little bit suboptimal. But as long you stay in the slopes it is not really necessary to break. It was a lot of fun and I will definitely try it again this winter at home!
Speaking of fun: Of course I also went to the university in Trondheim. Coming from a small university in Liechtenstein and finding myself in a really big university was also a new experience! Over 40 000 students in a city of around 200 000 inhabitants! During the welcome week I of course mostly met exchange students from all over the world but noone from Norway. But as soon as the lectures started I met more and more Norwegians. I also participated in the Norwegian short language course for exchange students to learn the language. This was  was quite useful since the studio I took was partly taught in Norwegian! In general I really liked going to the uni! The classes were really interesting and educational, not least because of the good teachers!
During my studies I worked a lot at our beautiful dormitory. I really loved that place. It is a huge student village which is called „Moholt“. It offers living space for over 3000 Students! I was lucky and got a room in one of the new wooden towers they built three years ago. I had a room with a bathroom for myself for which I was really thankful! The room had a huge cupboard, a desk and a bed. What else do you need? The kitchen and the living area I was sharing with 14 other students. This worked out really good as well! To my advantage my flat mates were mostly norwegian. This way I could listen to thire language over and over again and learn from them! Furthermore there were a lot of offers for the students in Moholt such as the fitnesscenter, a small Asian store, a hairdresser or a place where we could rent various stuff for outdoor activities!
Sadly, when Corona hit Norway everything closed down and we all worked from home and had online meetings with the professors. And again I was really thankful to have lived in that beautiful and spacious dormitory where I also had a lot of friends. So even the time during the lock down did not get boring at all. It even was a really fun time! We cooked and ate together, watched a lot of good movies or played board games. And of course we also drank some alcohol every now and then!
I do not even know how Norway was exactly able to manage the Pandemic so well. There were only a few cases in the whole of Norway without a complete lock down. Only the area of Oslo had more cases! In Trondelag were still a lot of stores open or even whole shopping malls but still the cases of new infections remained really low, which was really good for us. Even though we took the situation really sirious we decided to travel a little bit to explore the country. Since Norway is such a huge country with only 5 million inhabitants it is quite safe I guess, espacially when you just go hiking in the nature without any interactions with others. So, when it got warmer and most of the snow was gone we went to the South of Norway to visit a friend of ours and did a lot of hikes there! It was a bautiful experience to see all the Fjords and beautiful landscapes! I could not get enough of it! But the highlight of the whole stay was still ahead of me; the roadtrip to the Lofoten! My friends and me planed a two week roadtrip from Trondheim all the way up to the Lofoten and Senja Islands and down again. So we wanted to rent the car at 8 in the morning in Trondheim but had to wait for 45 minutes and had to take the ferry from Bodo to the Lofoten at 06:30 in the evening. The problem was that it takes around 10 hours to go there, meaning that we were already to late. But we did not do a single break and somehow mamaged get there in time. After a few hours in the ferry we arrived on the Lofoten Islands. And it was amazing. Since it was summer and the Lofoten ar located above the polar circle the sun never set! So we had sunlight 24/7 meaning that we could do a lot of hikes. And we did! We often did multiple hikes in one day/night and saw a lot of beautiful landscapes and animals! We were even so lucky that we saw Orcas by chance! I will never forget that experience and I am sure i did not visit Norway for the last time!

Fabio Schoch, SS20