A Busy Weekend

The last weekend has been full of very fun stuff. It started on friday, when I finally decided to go down to the Realfagbygget and ask about getting liquid nitrogen. You see, we had a lecture on superconductors on tuesday, and of course Prof. Fossum couldn’t resist showing us the Meißner-Ochsenfeld effect (the one where a magnet hovers over a superconductor), using a high-temperature SC and liquid nitrogen. On request, he mentioned that it was possible to get some liquid nitrogen from one of the lab technicians. I wrote him an email later on, and his replay told me to just drop by his office, which I eventually did friday morning. The technician, a guy named Rolf Dahl, turned out to be very friendly and cooperative. Not only was he perfectly willing to give me some liquid nitrogen free of charge, he also lent me a container for it, saying that the half liter I could keep in my thermos bottle would evaporate too quickly to be much use. So I eventually walked back up to Moholt with a two liter thermos can that looked rather like a beat-up milk bottle.
Of course, physicists like to play in groups, so I just Sebastian, another physicist from Aachen who is in Trondheim at the moment, to join me. We had prepared a number of experiments and googled some more. Mostly, they involved dipping stuff in the nitrogen and watching the reaction. Maple syrup, for example, turns into a very nifty-looking brown glass, rather like amber. Ink turns into shiny marbles, dish soap becomes whiteish-green and opaque, while spaghettis don’t change much at all. Some liquids actually first freeze into drops, which shatter after a few seconds, possibly from some interior pressure.
At one point, we had so much stuff at the bottom of our experimenting bowl that we just poured it all out, to get a fresh start. The result was steam gushing from the sink and every piece of plumbing in the kitchen. Running some hot water after it increased the effect dramatically, seemingly pushing the steam out of the tubes. Another nice demonstration of the expansion power of nitrogen was pouring some of it into warm soap water. This resulted in a cascade of foam rising up from the glass beaker, featuring unusually large bubbles which were filled with the cold fog we were already used to. So much fun has to end and some point, and eventually we were out of nitrogen. What to do? We still had quite a few plans. Well, one can ask… so I went down to Gløshaugen again and asked Mr. Dahl if he could give me refill. He actually agreed to give me a larger container too (he had offered it the first time, but then I had though that two liters would be ample). Long story short, I ended up slugging five liters of nitro back up the hill. That was a piece of work, more so since I was quite concerned about not spilling anything. Liquid nitrogen can be handled at low risk, but it very much deserves respect.
With no danger of running out again, I repeated some of the more spectacular experiments for the viewing pleasure of my flatmates. Amongst other things, we did the plumbing trick again. I have no idea if the sinks in the neighboring flats started smoking, as well, but I am not about to ask. Another fun thing was filling a balloon with water and using nitrogen to freeze the outermost layer, then pierce and drain it, resulting in an egg made out of ice.
With five liters stockpiled, I eventually ran out of ideas before I ran out of nitrogen. I left the rest standing in the kitchen for use at some later time. I considered trying a bottle bomb (plastic bottle with some water in it, put it some nitrogen, screw tight, stick in snow hill, run), but didn’t feel it was safe enough. In retrospect, that was probably a wise decision. Nitrogen expands to sevenhundred times its liquid volume when brought to room temperature, so there’d be serious force behind any exploding bottle, not to mention the danger of shrapnel.

Saturday was a quiet day that I used to get some reading done. In the evening Hanne, a member of the choir, celebrated her birthday. It was a nice party in her flat on the edge of town, with cake and drink and a round of Trivial Pursuit to give everybody a mental workout (and strut some of that know-it-all wisdom, admit it). We also had some fun with the refrigerator poetry, something that seems quite popular in Norway. You have magnetic tags on your fridge, each of which has one word on it. You then combine these to make up disjointed, but at least seemingly significant … well, poetry I guess. Lacking a lot of filler words, these poems are always rather freely associated. Among other things, Astrid made up a sequence of words that shared some common connection, some sort of associative chain. How exactly she judged which words belonged where I don’t know, nor was she able to really put it in words. But the result was appearantly interesting enough to copy it in her notebook. I wonder what she has made of it…
Concerning Astrid: I had been thinking about asking her to do something together for a while, but hadn’t found something really interesting enough for my taste (yeah yeah, wimpy, I know). Interestingly, the Trondheim Art Museum, which I hadn’t been to yet, was to have the last opening day of its exhibition “Utopia and Nostalgia: Norwegian Art between the Wars” that sunday, with a free tour. Now that sounded more like it! I eventually asked her if she was interesting it visiting the exhibition together, and she agreed.

Sunday morning came way too early. Not only had the party gone on until three o’ clock, but it was also the night of the time shift, meaning one hour of sleep fewer. However, with the guided tour starting at one o’ clock, I needed to get up at some point. At least the weather proved to be nice, making for a fine brisk walk down to the museum (which is beside the cathedral, for reference). I arrived pretty much in time for the tour, which of course was in Norwegian. But the tour surpassed my expectations. Not only could I follow almost every word, it was also very oriented on the concrete picture being discussed. No art historical excursions, no oblique references to schools or influences, just very instructive information about the picture itself, and maybe comparisons with others we had already seen.
By the time the tour ended, we had gone through seven rooms full of pictures, but only really looked at maybe a dozen of them. So of course we redid the route, this time spending some time on all interesting pictures, noting which where from the same painter, how they differed and how many different styles were present. Something rather common was the Stilleben with broken geometry – tables whose legs weren’t right, people twisting around corners – each detail was fine so long as you didn’t try to integrate it into the larger context. Appearantly, this was a technique to break the everyday appearance of things and get the viewer to really pay attention to the details.
Eventually, we finished the exhibition and apart from checking out the museum store, we left. The museum was closing anyway, and after three hours in the art exhibition, our desire for pictures was well-sated. Due to the timing of the busses, Astrid decided to walk home, and I thought I’d walk along. We ended up having a nice warm-up tea and some chocolate cake back at her place, before I thought it time to call it a day and walked home. All in all, a very nice day, and I had the feeling that she enjoyed herself as well.

Nine Days In Trondheim

It is time for me to tackle what might be the longest post so far on this blog. From March 5 to March 17, my brother Matthias visited me here in Trondheim. Nine days to show him the city, nine days to fill. Suffice to say, I had never planned a holiday before, and while I had looked up a multitude of possible sights, I didn’t have a coherent plan. Initially we had thought to spend the last three days in Oslo, visiting the Kon Tiki museum (Kon Tiki was one of my favorite books when I was little), the Vigeland park and all the other sights Norway’s capital has to offer. Regrettably, we were unable to secure transportation and stay for an acceptable amount of money, so we had to cancel the idea, leaving us with spending all our time in Trondheim. In retrospect, we managed much better than I first thought.

Since Matthias arrived late Monday evening, there was not much left of the day except take the bus home, eat and talk a little bit. We did start our planning for the week though: Which museums to visit, which trips to take and what nightlife to go to. The last part turned out to be rather disappointing; I am not much of a partygoer myself, so I was ill-informed – but the more we started digging, the more we discovered that Trondheim really is so dead that it does not have much nightlife during the week. Sure, some pubs are open… but no parties, no concerts… well, none that were interesting, anyway. I had lived rather well with that, but Matthias has different views on nightlife. We did notice an interesting jazz concert on friday. Eventually, we decided to go to bed. Sleeping in a ten square meters room with two people is an experience. Matthias took the sleeping bag most of the time, since the one time I tried it, I slept dreadfully.

Tuesday was the first full day in Trondheim. We started off with a nice breakfast, something which marked the beginning of the day for the next week. Then we took a long walk so Matthias could see the scenery a little bit, one of Trondheim’s strongest points in my opinion. He also ended up seeing one of the weaker points, since we got caught in a small snowstorm in the middle of the walk. The afternoon was spent downtown, getting a map of town (I had lent my own to Benjamin, and not gotten it back when he moved out) and visiting the Industrial Arts Museum, which turned out to be quite interesting. Artistic furniture of various kinds, weird sculptures out of horns, roughly-woven wool posters… definitely something else. For the evening, we visited a warmly recommended pub called the Mikrobryggeriet, i.e. the micro-brewery. It’s a pub that features eight kinds of self-brewed beer, seven permanent and one seasonal. Lo and behold, the seasonal beer this time around was… Altbier! Talk about coincidences… we ended up ordering the sampler, a plate of eight small beer glasses with a description of each. Unfortunately, we discovered that each of the beers had a strong, sour-bitter aftertaste. Either something was wrong with their brewing process, or their tab installation had gone bad. Either way, drinking was much less enjoyable than it could have been. One thing we did notice at the end of the day was that our legs were getting lame. With the walk and going into downtown and back twice, we’d grossed roughly eighteen kilometers in a day, in hilly terrain. This was not going to change much during the stay.

We visited several museums during the stay; most noteworthy were the Knowledge Center and the Ringve Museum of Musical Instruments. The former was actually a slight mistake; there are two museum with very similar names in Trondheim: The vitenskapmuseet (science museum) and the vitenssenteret (knowledge center). We eventually went to both, but first we ended up in the latter, while wanting to go to the former. The Knowledge Center is mostly about playful exploration; it’s a place I’d take kids from the age of maybe six to. It’s got all the common gigs: Electric stuff, pulleys, water games, puzzles, optical illusions, and so on and so forth. Most notable, it has its own orbitron. What is an orbitron, you may ask. It’s three concentric metal rings connected by rotation joints. The innermost ring contains fixtures that allow a person to be strapped into it, who can then rotate freely in all three dimensions, controlled only by their own body movements. Matthias was very enthusiastic about riding it, and had a lot of fun doing it. I declined; swinging about in simulated zero-grav makes my stomach turn (yeah, call me chicken). The Knowledge Center was oodles of fun, and passed a very enjoyable three hours. The Ringve Museum was rather more sedate, but fascinating as well. It is situated in Lade, close to the fjord, making for a long walk to it. Opened sundays only and free to enter, it was a tempting option. The botanical garden surrounding it was virtually non-existent in the snow, but what we could see showed potential. I’ll go there again in spring. The museum itself prides itself on its collection of musical instruments from all cathegories and times, presented for view in a restored barn. The museum is almost completely dark to preserve the exhibits in good condition, and the atmosphere is almost like in a church, serene and silent. The instruments are ordered by various phenomena of instrument making, accompanied by substantial explainations. These are usually for half a dozen instruments at once; individual instruments only get a small plaque each. The second section of the museum presented the classification of musical instruments in five cathegories: string, wind, membrane, self-sounding and electrical. I am a little bit fuzzy on self-sounding, but considering a xylophone is considered one, I’d say it’s solid state acoustics. Each cathegory had an instrument to try out and a selection of common ones to look at. Eventually, we finished that part too. All in all, a most recommended museum!

Of course, we did not just hang around in museums. I also introduced Matthias to the choir; we went to the usual thursday rehearsal and on saturday were invited to friends. Besides that, we attended a jazz concert on friday evening. The band Farmer’s Market, described as “psychodentic speed-boogie with cowboy chords,” whatever that may mean, showed off its impressive skills, influenced by Israeli folk. Clarinette, drums, guitar and other instruments played at incredible speed, partially improvised. The coordination between the seven members of the band was the most impressive thing about it, I think.

Monday saw us relaxing for a full day; we decided to skip the museum thing and instead go swimming. Trondheim’s pirbadet is the largest indoor bath in Norway, and while pricey enough not to go there too often, I finally wanted to check it out. Let’s say that pirbadet did not disappoint: The water slide, massage pool, whirl pools, jump tower and saunas were more than enough to have a very nice day there. The big water slide was actually kind of scary; it starts out slow, but in darkness, then about halfway it speeds you up significantly and shoots you into a spiral down to the end. The centrifugal force is actually enough to lift you out of the water. After a couple of exciting runs down the slide, we explored the saunas a little bit, and eventually ended up vegetating in the so-called “pleasure pool,” which featured warm water and massage nozzles. Ah, the bliss that is a foot massage… anyway, after almost four hours we got a little bit fed up even by this very nice bath, so we left and had a nice late lunch at a chinese place on the bank of the inner canal.

Eventually, wednesday rolled around and Matthias took the bus back to the airport. As nice as the train ride here may have been, there was no way to get a train early enough to be in Oslo in time for his plane. So, double-flight it was. And with that ends my blog post on the nine days.

Ski Weekend In Oppdal

The Aks choir has a custom of going on a ski weekend together each spring. No music is practised; it’s a purely social tour. This year’s trip went to Oppdal last weekend. For me, this offered the opportunity of standing on skis for the first time in my life (and falling off them for the first time, too).

We started on friday; one of our tenors, Morten, agreed to take me and two other people along in his car. That was a very good thing, as the bus takes almost three hours and costs quite a bit, whereas the car takes only about two for the 130 km trip. It was thus that we arrived in Oppdal early friday evening; it was already dark, but you could still see the lit-up slopes. We arrived at the house we were supposed to stay in; to my delight, it turned out to be a roomy and well-kept wooden building; somehow, we managed to talk the Oppdal parish into letting us stay at their community house. This offered us several nice rooms, a decently-sized kitchen and a cozy couch corner. We employed the latter right away to spend the evening with fun and games. Mostly a mime game called Fantasy and a norwegian version of Trivial Pursuit. I didn’t do too badly in either, although I needed some vocab explainations for Fantasy. Well, that’s only to be expected. Apart from that, the entire weekend happened in norwegian, which was a toil sometimes but was certainly good training. I am still not what I’d consider sufficiently fluent, but I am getting better. I now have a better than even shot at understanding what Norwegians are saying, and my replies usually meet with recognition, although I am still making a lot of mistakes and missing a lot of words.

Saturday was our skiing day. Most of the Norwegians seemed interested in doing cross-country instead of slalom, so I went along. We rented skis for me (not really expensive, either) and went off on a track. I did okay until we first had to go down a hill. I discovered then that while going level was rather like walking, going down required a shift of balance that I didn’t really get the hang of yet. Let it also be noted that standing up with skis on your feet is really difficult. Erling and Hilde sort of adopted me and guided me through the essentials (v-shape for going uphill, v-shape for going downhill, standing up, bending forward…). Their patience was admirable. It didn’t really bear fruit for a while, though. At some point, we decided to stop and have our lunch. For that purpose, we had brought some kindlings, which were promptly turned into a nice fire to roast sausages and marshmallows over. Definitely an experience.
On our way back, I finally managed to go downhill a little bit better (measured in metres covered before next fall). Once, Erling went beside me while I was in the track. What we didn’t know was that at one point before the end of the slope, the track was interrupted for a few metres. Of course, I couldn’t get into the track again and eventually lost my balance. For all the times I fell, I never actually took any real damage. Well, except the last one. Towards the ski centre (and loaned ski return) there was a rather long slope, which brought your speed up rather high. Then, you can’t just slow down, but you have the cross the snow that everybody brakes in, so it’s quite stirred up. I took a falling roll which bowled my face through the snow once and appearantly gave me a minor nose bleed. Well, no biggie.

Saturday afternoon was spent relaxing, and the evening was filled with games again. On sunday, we slept in rather late, then started cleaning up after breakfast. Can’t leave the parish house dirty, after all. Some more quiz gaming filled the afternoon (we were all rather too sore to go skiing again) and eventually we left. I still felt some tender spots the next days, but it was certainly fun. Now that my brother has come to visit me, we shall certainly try to go skiing in the hills around Trondheim. I’ll write more of it in the next post.