As I've already written earlier, only four days after the New Year's invasion had ended, my sister arrived in Norway. Unfortunately she had to explore Oslo by herself on the first day while I had to work. The next three days however were spent pretty close together – snowboarding in Hemsedal. Whoopee!

After a four hour bus ride – we had the thing almost to ourselves – my sis, my flatmate Magnus who spontaneously joined in, and me arrived in that small town halfway between here and Bergen at around 2 on Friday. Due to an idiotic rule we weren't allowed to enter our cottage until 5 though. After killing some time by walking to town and eating pizza, we settled into our small but cozy apartment. Half an hour of chilling and then we already had to get dressed to hit the slopes. Yupp, night snowboarding! Seriously, it was killer! I had never done that before, and even though there were only three pistes open / floodlit it was heck of fun. The Austrian and Swiss skiing areas should definitely offer more of that.

Despite being feverish and sore after that night for the rest of the weekend, it was still great to be riding again – the last time for me had already been a year back. On Saturday we had clear blue skies and a lot of icy patches and on Sunday gray skies but perfect snow. So a little bit of everything I guess. We arrived back in Oslo on Sunday around 9 and continued with what we had been doing the past days besides snowboarding – stuffing ourselves with junk food...

On Monday my sis and I went on a quick and unsuccessful trip up to Frogneseteren (stupid fog) before she was off to Germany again. Altogether, good seeing her again and definitely a cool time up north!

Deep Breath. One, two, three – go!

Okeli dokeli, with a two week delay here finally a roundup of the time from pre-Christmas–Copenhagen until last weekend. I've been meaning to post the 'happenings' earlier but like I stated before, I'm pretty much exhausted at the moment. Words can't describe how much I'm looking forward to a weekend of complete and utter nothingness. No work, no going out, no stress. Just 48h of sleep, maybe a movie or two and some relaxed drawing. Hhhmmmmm.

Aaaanyways. The landing after my chaotic leave from CPH marked the start of ten semi-relaxed days at home. I say semi because certainly the times of just kicking back at my parents place with no to-do-list in my head and being a total slob for a week have long been lost since high school anyway. But especially so when I haven't been home in over four months.

So there was family business to attend (with my dad dropping an average size bomb by telling us he maybe wants to sell the house), Christmas to celebrate (with a whole day of gift-wrapping prior to that), friends to visit (with our traditional Raclette feast, which was again awesome! Thanks guys!), my favorite jogging route to run and some sleep to catch up on. Unfortunately and even though I did want to chill as much as possible, I didn't get to see the Erlangen crew as much as I would've liked due to different schedules and sickness. Still, it's always good to be home, see some familiar faces and spend time in well-known surroundings.

On the 29th I was off to Norway again. After landing and having made my way to the apartment, I had exactly half an hour of chilling time before having to head back to the train station to pick up the Darmstadt mob.

Damn, it was good to see the guys again! Some of them I hadn't seen for a whole year, some almost two. Within minutes my room was a mess, the kitchen was a mess and the first shots of vodka had been drowned. Yes, as promised, they had brought a huge friggin' array of alcoholic beverages :) . Falko popped the champagne bottle and some big news, we had a nice improv-dinner and a whole lot of catching up to do. It was a bit weird to see all these guys together again – in my Oslo apartment – but fuck yeah, it was just as cool :D !

The next days were spent with lots of fun fun activities. Exploring the city with dawn always on our heels (getting up at two, when the sun starts going down at half past three ain't the smartest idea). A quick tour of Bleed. Picking up the missing crew member. Buying 'condiments'. Drinking. Cooking. Cuddling. More drinking. Making fire. Gambling. Chilling. Snoring. And of course: celebrating New Year's Eve with a nice big dinner, indoor skateboarding, standing on a smoky hill, losing that crew member again, dancing, crying, freezing, hang-overing and puzzling. But that's a whole different story...

At the very 'verstrahlt' morning of the 2nd of January all except one already left the building again. And on the day after that I had the apartment (almost) to myself once more. Sniff. Took the Sunday to relax, then three days of work and then my sister was already waiting at the airport to be picked up. More about that some other time.

For now just two pics and some big shout-outs to my boys. Thank you guys so much for getting your shit sorted, actually making it over here and spending some quality time! So good to see all of you! Much love.

And next time around we'll get the other Korean to come as well... ;)

That I still haven't been able to blog a somewhat longer entry lately, I just can't seem to find the time since Christmas. Been keeping very busy for almost over three weeks now and I'm just plain exhausted. Today I'm off to Hemsedal to go snowboarding with my sis until Sunday. But I promise, I will update more starting next week.

Hang in there people, shitloads of pics and sheer endless lines of text are to come soon... ;D

Ho-ho-ho.

Ok then, I've decided not to write so much about the trip after all, but instead show a couple of more impressions from the road.

After leaving at 9 in the morning on Saturday, we drove over six hours through beautiful scenery and weather – blue sky all the way – to our cottage in Aurland directly situated next to the fjord. On our way we encountered, besides Norwegian back country at its best, freezing temperatures as low as -15°C, dozens of tunnels, a town made for short people and two very laid back truck drivers. And at some points we felt very lucky our rental had four wheel drive...

At our destination awaited us a luxurious cottage with breathtaking view. After enjoying the hypnotic effect of the fireplace and a hearty dinner, we let the night drown out with a couple of drinks, some relaxed card playing and a good movie. Rise and shine the next morning at 8 and all the way back again on a slightly different route.

Sounds cheesy, I know, but what do you expect to happen in surroundings that Bob Ross himself couldn't have done better :)

Last weekend three friends from Germany and I went on a short road trip into the Norwegian back country. I'll write a bit about it later, but I think the following images should rather be enjoyed without much talk – they speak for themselves anyway.

Just for all you Google Maps geeks: Hemsedal, Mørkedalen, Lærdal Tunnel, Aurlandsvangen, Aurlandsfjorden.

Went to see the premier of the new Quiksilver movie That's It That's All this night – already posted the trailer here a couple of weeks ago. Well, actually I went to see The Baader Meinhof Complex with Fredrika and Øystein first, which was somewhat weird – seeing an undubbed German movie in a Norwegian cinema, I mean. Anyways, it was perfect timing. Left the first movie at 11, stood at the very end of a huuuuge queue and still somehow managed to get one of the best seats in the whole damn cinema all the way in the back, central position. It was also kinda funny to be sharing an entire theater with no less than 500 other, very stoked riders.



This show was basically the very last stop of a ginormous world tour that started over three months ago (!) in New Zealand, to promote a film that took over two years in production time and which many critics believe to be the best snowboarding movie up to this day. Director Curt Morgan and rider/producer Travis Rice as well as a couple of other pros were actually present but obviously very tired from the long nonstop trip and only dropped a couple of lines and threw out some giveaways – among them one of Travis' old boards – to then sink back into their seats. They looked so exhausted, I'm guessing they didn't even attend the afterparty.

But, oh yeah, the movie. I must say, after having seen the truly amazing teaser at least fifty times, I was, well, a little disappointed. It is definitely a great and clearly very expensive snowboarding movie – most of the material is shot in HD from helicopters – featuring some amazing rides, spectacular tricks and beautiful scenery, which has probably never been captured in this way for that kind of film. But like in a lot of good action flicks, sadly, the best scenes are already in the trailer. Don't get me wrong, it might very well still be the best of its kind up until now – but if you expect to be completely blown away and end up being more like "Yeah, cool.", it somehow isn't very satisfactory.

What also made it kind of awkward to watch, is that it was very evident, the makers had been watching such great surfing documentaries like Riding Giants or Step Into Liquid one too many times. It seems they tried to make their film in a similar style, with deep, meaningful interviews and the attempt to give snowboarding the same spirituality as surfing ("It's not a sport, it's a way of life..."). But it just didn't work. For one because the concept was copied very inconsequential, but also because the two sports just don't compare. Snowboarding simply lacks the depth, strong history and steep progression that surfing has. Let's be honest, as much as I love snowboarding, even the steepest slope, longest drop and sickest trick don't compare with the raw force of nature that is a 30 foot wave. Then trying to mold Travis Rice into such an icon, such a legend, as Laird Hamilton is, didn't work out and the relatively bland choice of music wasn't a great help either. Even the Norwegian warm up movie Ponytale, which is by the way free for download, had better stuff.

But hey, I'm gonna stop nagging now. It is, after all, a way above average snowboarding movie that you should definitely go see, if you come across it. Just don't let the trailer fool you into way too high expectations... ;)

On a regular Thursday night.

I've been working on a project for the clothing brand WeSC for the longest time now, doing the interior graphics for their new store here in Oslo. Today was the day the people from the company were finally gonna see the results. In other words, my first really big client meeting.

In my opinion, we should've had this presentation a long time ago as it's only three weeks left now til the opening of the shop. The interior architects, who designed the store and who I'm actually working with/for, only told me last week that they hadn't shown anything to WeSC yet! Still don't know why. Maybe because they weren't comfortable with the work up until now, who knows. In either case, this was risky business for them and us. Love it or hate it, take it or leave it. Due to lack of time, actually more of a 'Take it, you don't have choice anyways'.

At 2:30 today, Nikki and Myrna, the architects, came by and we quickly went over the presentation. Ten minutes later the WeSC guys and girls arrived. Damn! Instead of two, like I was told, it was an entourage of four and they were just the ubercool, stylish, good-looking young people with that air of importance, that I expected them to be. I've seldomly been so intimidated in my life.

And they were so friggin' hard to read! They didn't show any emotions! All I got was some laid back nods, hu-hums, ok's and blank faces. Didn't exactly help my self-esteem – actually thought, I totally blew it. Then they started discussing in Norwegian and I was on the verge of losing it. Fuck, fuck, we're screwed! The longest minutes ever.

As it turned out though, I must've gotten it completely backwards. My project manager and Nikki were totally stoked after the meeting, said the WeSC squad was really happy and gave us the ok to continue. The quick chat with one of their girls and a couple of friendly goodbyes took away some more of my concerns. And eventually the fact that Svein overheard them talking very positively about my work in the hallway lifted that last huge load off my shoulders.

Still, those one and a half hours managed to completely drain my energy resources. This is definitely not gonna be my favorite part of the work as a graphic designer...

Yesterday, Frederika and I went to see the new Bond movie Quantum Of Solace at one of the local cinemas called Colosseum. The movie was good but the really impressive thing were the huge dimensions of the theater. The place – over 80 years old and supposedly the world's biggest THX cinema – can pack almost 1000 viewers and one sits underneath a huge dome, like in an observatory. Pretty cool actually.