It has been a couple of days since my last post, but nothing too extraordinary has happened; as predicted, my final exam on wednesday was none too difficult (in fact, even easier than the chemistry one). Since then I have effectively been enjoying a holiday. Getting up late, doing nothing that could be called work in any way. That is not to say that I waste my time. I have finished two books since wednesday, as well as a lot of newspaper articles. I have seen movies and anime of rather good quality; in short, I have been keeping my mind busy and well-fed.
To add a little daily spice to life, I have subscriced to the [url=http://www.mathekalender.de new=true]mathematical advent calendar[/url] of the German Research Society. The idea is simple: One daily exercise for twenty-four days, each published at 18:00, with time counting from six hours later. Due to various destractions, I have not finished all exercises in time, but I have confidence in my solutions. Since I do not in earnest expect to win any prizes, that is quite good enough for me. The wonderful thing about those brainteasers is their variety, and the flexibility of the approaches I can see to them. There are some real beauties; I particularly like the one on the third of december.
The major social event of the last days was the Aks christmas party yesterday. We were over twenty people and had a lot of fun. I had promised to make Bratäpfel (roasted apples, quite common in Germany), and I decided to make twenty-four. So, I went out and looking for the right kind of apples. You see, the recipe requires sour, red apples of a variety called Boskop. Unfortunately, completely unknown here. So, I settled on a compromise: I made twelve Granny Smith, which are sour, but green (looks weird), and twelve sweet, red apples (looks right, tastes weird). Prepared them all at home by removing the cores and filling them with a marzipan-sugar-almond-raisin mess I had stirred up. Then I carried them to the house were the party was, to be baked at a later time. We started the evening of with a nice round of hot gløgg, the Norwegian equivalent of Glühwein. The interesting thing is that it is completely non-alcoholic, like a very sweet and spicy grape juice. Connoisseurs of Glühwein may claim that the alcohol is the whole point, and I would have to partially agree, but the Norwegians have their own way of doing things when it comes to drink. The gløgg was followed by grøtt, which is just like milk rice. Since it’s quite heavy on the stomach, we passed the next hours talking and playing a christmas carol guessing game. Surprisingly, the norwegian christmas carols are very unlike the german ones; I did not recognise the melody in 90% of the cases. They are usually more cheerful than the often melancholic german songs (one could also say “more obnoxious” without losing veracity). Shortly before midnight, we decided to bake the apples. Everything went well, and we had a great meal of roasted apples and vanilla ice cream, although consumption was hindered by the fact that the peel proved surprisingly tough. I ascribe this to the unsual apples; I do not recall ever having problems that the roasted apples were too firm with Boskop apples before. Since a few people had left earlier, we ended up having eight apples too many, which I took home. I am going to stage a roasted apple eating tommorrow afternoon with some of my friends in Moholt.
To refer back to the title, “in the warmth,” what that is supposed to mean is simply that the Trondheim weather has once again decided that expectations exist to be broken and has after a night of rain that washed away most of the old snow, climbed to a leisurely +9 degrees today. It is still overcast and rather wet, but very different in character from the winter we had before. This actually feels extremely like german winter, to the point of making it feel out-of-place in Norway. We shall see what the next days will bring. Sunrise is currently 9:40, sundown 14:40 or something close. I am not noticing any particular effects from the lack of sunlight, other than maybe a slight lethargy. That could just be the holidays though.
On a more serious note, something has caused me some concern. One of my family members has recently developed quite serious health problems; I won’t elaborate further here, but final diagnosis is still outstanding and we are all a little bit on edge. On the other hand, we can’t really do anything about it. So, well, hoping for the best.
