tirsdag 11. november 2008

Back to school, but soon skiing :D

Last two weeks I have started getting back into something that can be called a study rhythm. Think it is the first time in a half year that I have felt like a real student. Somehow it feels really good getting back to school. That said german and norwegian school isn't similar. Got a big surprise showing up for my first exercise class. Normally in Norway we just need to hand in the exercise before some deadline, and show up for the exercise class if you need some help. Therefore I didn't understand much when I was told that it is obligatory to show up for these classes here. (What if I didn't need any help.) But I understood fast the first time. The classes aren’t meant for help, but discussing the exercise with a tutor and the other students, meaning that you need to finish all of it before the class. For every class the tutor even picks one student who has to present what he has done. In German !!!  

This weekend I got a visit from my parents. We did some sightseeing, some shopping and ate some german food. All over it was nice to see them again and show them what my german life is like. They even brought my skis along :D 

And it was in high time, because this weekend I am going skiing :D My brother is arriving tomorrow, and on Thursday we leave for Hintertux glacier. The weather forecast says that it is going to snow both tomorrow  and Thursday, which means it gonna be amazing. 

mandag 3. november 2008

Dresden

Hey again,
arraived back from Dresden yesterday after spending a both interesting and fun weekend there. Dresden was part of the old DDR, and that was easy to see walking around the city. Almost hard to belive that München and Dresden is part of same country today, as you could easily see the difference on the people there compared to here. No doubth the komunists left a scar that won't go away at once. 
Another intersting point about Dresden is the fact that 90% of the city was bombed into litterally nothing at the end of WWII. This together with the fact that it is an old DDR town, didn't leave me with huge expectations about the city. But that is how wrong you might be. The whole old town was rebield the way it was before, and an interesting point was that they had managed to save a considerable part of the old building material and reused it. The cool part is that the new stones were whith, while the old ones were black, which means that you can easily see how much was destroyed. 
The city center is actually on the UNESCOs list of world herritage( or whatever the name is), and that I can easily understand. Got this amazing impression of the city saturday evenig when it was foggy and the "old" buildings were bathed in lights. A musican playing piano on the city square made it all magical. 
 The pictures below credited to Henrik Nyman shows some of it.









Notice the black stones on the "Frauen kirche". It is all that remaind of it after the bombing







Had to show a picture proofing that I really was in the old DDR to. Notice the shop named Tønsberg. Somehow it has ended up ass a really popular brand for the "new Nazis." Not really good publicity for Norway.