Last Wednesday I met up with a few friends from school and a couple of other longboard and skateboard enthusiasts to visit a local underground car park for a late night skating session. All in all we were about 10 people speeding down the different levels of the lot or trying to perfect our sliding moves :D Great fun, especially since the entire building is heated, meaning you can skate in shorts and t-shirt while it's close to 0°C outside. I had to adapt my 'cruising' board to the needs of high speed, tight-turns parking garage riding but now I'm hooked. Can't wait to check out the other spots around town – everyone told me there's at least two equally good ones in Darmstadt. Yay!

Whoop whoop, as of today 2 p.m. my first oral exam is over! That means I'm like one tenth or something closer to my diploma and thereby being a 'state approved' Designer. Not much, but it's a first step and for the moment I'm a pretty happy camper. As a sign of my bliss, a couple of pics from over two weeks ago: kitchen rave and the hunt for Mr. X.

Finally – I've went and seen some concerts again! Was about time. So far I hadn't had the patience to look into the local scene after having been spoiled with a great selection of gigs almost every week in Oslo. Last weekend though, good friend Falko and his Safarisounds played a gig with Toni L and Torch at Heidelberger Herbst. One hell of a party, with the crowd entering the stage for the last two songs. Always good stuff even though Funk isn't exactly my thing.

Yesterday then, my flatmate and I went on a very spontaneous trip to Frankfurt in order to see Soap&Skin at Mousonturm. I had never heard of her before even though she's been so very much hyped for over half a year now. Also yesterday I only had the time to listen to half of one of her songs before we left. But damn it was worth it. Good voice, great piano play, very unique style – overall awe-inspiring atmosphere and performance. I've never really heard anything like it, even though the music of Deaf Center or Svarte Greiner might show similarities in their very dark, melancholic approach. Despite the very short set of only 45 minutes, a definite must should she ever be in your area.

Darmstadt: diploma research.
Cologne: meeting a friend from back in the States after over 11 years and a farewell party gone slightly wrong.
Darmstadt: preparing for diploma workshop.
Stuttgart: diploma workshop, lots of work and wonderful dinner.
Heilbronn: exhausted, drunk at Weindorf and late night pasta feed.
Erlangen: high rope course, beer garden and chilling.
Darmstadt: dazed and confused.

Fuck, I got so much shit to sort out! More updates soon though.

Nothing brings them warm fuzzy feelings for this town back to life like the beauty of a delicate, heartfelt little piece of art like the one below – seen just a block away from my apartment. That or the fact that people here have already discovered the trend color of over two years ago (purple) – seen in the streets everywhere. That or the cute little Nazi couple in line behind me at the late night supermarket that bought four cans of the cheapest beer around – seen last evening.

I hate to say it, but I think there are few cities in Germany that have less class than Darmstadt. Thank god there's good friends to make up for it...

I spend the last three days in my study town Darmstadt. Mainly because I had some business to take care of concerning my exchange semesters and the upcoming internship - fill out papers, get signatures etc. But of course also a good opportunity to see some familiar faces, have a few chats and last but not least see the diploma exhibition.

Had a very chaotic first evening including a race to the Frankfurt airport, a free meal at McDonald's, pretending to work until five in the morning and three hours of sleep that night. The next day was filled with organizing stuff, meeting and talking to a lot of people I hadn't seen in ages, talking to profs and planning my 'educational future'. I also went to the opening of a school exhibition on the subject of 'Risk' at the Design Haus which was quite interesting. The night came to a nice end in a local beergarden with some good ol' Äppler and again a lot of people and chats. At that point it felt so good to be back, even if it was just for 72 hours and now I'm actually quite happy to be returning for good in half a year.

The last day was basically like the first one except that I grabbed some lunch with Falko and Lukas (the guys I stayed with), watched a movie and saw the opening of the diploma exhibition. Again lots of people, lots of talks blablabla. Plus, I was heavily under(over?)dressed with my colorful shoes and my neon hoodie. Anyways, the exhbited work was kind of disappointing except for the Industrial Design stuff and 4 or 5 projects from the Graphics Department. Yeah I know, got a big mouth now - we'll see what I come up with. Finally, before taking off home at 1:30 in the morning, I payed Honey, my old roommate who'd just gotten back from Berlin, a visit for a couple of chilled out hours.

Just wanted to take a quick retrospec on the past 10 months abroad before I forget to do so and already have moved on to Norway. Also because this time has left quite an impression on my life.

First off: Copenhagen. Two very chaotic weeks in hostels in the very beginning - meeting a lot of cool, interesting and weird peole and having just as many funny, memorable and strange experiences. Had huge troubles finding an apartment and ended up in a 14m² room for 600 €. On the other hand I had 3m high walls, stucco on the ceiling, wooden floors, lot's of decadent free space and cool furnishing, a beautiful view, a Playstation 2 and with Simon and Jonathan two of the nicest and chilled out roomies imaginable.

School and language course started, my circle of friends grew bigger both through the people I met at DKDS and the friends of my flatmates which I got to know over time. My excitement about school, all the independance in our projects, the events and workshops taking place and the working surroundings changed relatively soon into disappointment due to the teachers incapability to criticize and overall chaotic organisation of school life.

Also, as few of you might know, soon after school started my mom suffered a rare and severe damage to her brain. Being so far away it never really hit me full force until I returned home for a week. Still, after returning to Denmark I continued living my life as normal as possible - also because my dad gave me the courage to do so.

And so I did. I took advantage of the huge cultural offers in and around Copenhagen - went to a lot of exhibitions and events, went out a lot (even though money was always short as this town is one of the most fucking expensive cities you'll ever visit), danced a lot, chilled a lot, slowly got acustomed to beer, increased my party smoking behaviour, did some school, did some drawing, played some soccer, learned to cook and had a lot of dinners with good friends and their families. That and hundreds of other things I'm not gonna recite here. Read the blog ;)

My mom started getting better and I started running out of time. Wouldn't you know it, half of my projects had finished, I had had my first visitor, it was Christmas and I found myself spending New Years in a small cottage in Switzerland with old friends from my hometwon, lots of people I didn't know and even half the Darmstadt connection (well, at least for a couple of hours ;)). After that I had three more busy weeks with more project finishings, visitors and all of the above. And then, just like that after 5 months - and some pretty chaotic but nice farewells of course - I was on a plane to Amsterdam with way too heavy baggage to start chapter two of this journey.

That one being Den Haag. If I'd wanna make it extremely short, I could say that my time in the Netherlands was pretty much the counterpart to my time in Denmark. Due to some lucky incidents I was spared all the chaos of the first two weeks: I landed in Amsterdam, took the train to Den Haag, was picked up by a very friendly graphic design student from the city, walked five minutes and was in a high-tech apartment wit a beautiful view. No roomies this time, but I guess they'd only have distracted me from working :D

I had arrived three weeks into the semester at KABK, meaning I was three weeks late, meaning I had three weeks less for the projects. Not cool. The workload, overall student level and the teacher's demands were about double that of the Danish school. Luckily, with my exchangie bonus I was able to split and arrange my courses in a way that made it managable. Still, I ended up going out not nearly as much as in Copenhagen and generally not doing as much 'stuff' as in my first five months abroad.

If I wasn't working on school stuff, I was sleeping. If I wasn't sleeping, I was watching TV series online or I was working on school stuff. There simply wasn't much else. Of course occasional trips to the beach, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, local bars. But still, also due to the fact that it took me a lot more time and effort in Den Haag to meet people and make friends, my cruising radius stayed relatively small. On the other hand that actually was the way I intended it to be. After all fun'n'games in Denmark I felt that I owed it to myself (and my family for that matter) to get my lazy ass going and make the most of my time at KABK. After all, it was - and is - a great opportunity and privilege to study at that school.

Besides the massive studying there were of course other things as well. Notable mentions would be lots of aberrations and confusions concerning my love life, the constant battle of withstanding the Dutch 'temptations' and a very long bike ride.

Strangely enough I had the feeling that my time in the Netherlands was going by much faster even though I was 'experiencing' much less. So the end to my stay actually came pretty quickly and, to be honest, with bad timing. I had finally felt somewhat at home - which I hadn't for a very long time - the bonds to some of the guys and girls had finally grown closer and the generally very gutsy weather was finally turning around. Then my dad came to pick me up last weekend. I guess, had I stayed longer the saying goodbye would've been even harder. But who knows, I might just come back for good...

Overall I wouldn't wanna have missed a single minute of the past 10 months (ok, maybe a couple...) and can only recommend this kinda thing to anyone in the mood for some 'change'. Now let's see what Oslo has in store for me. As long as there aren't any major private setbacks again, I'll gladly take all ups and downs.