Electromagnetic pollution: Lessons from the radio amateurs…
Recently, a study came out [PDF] that looked at the short-term health effects of electromagnetic radiation on humans (more readable version here). Subjects were exposed in 50 minute-long sessions to transmissions from ordinary GSM-transmitting stations, 3G transmitters (i.e. UMTS) and sometimes they were only told that a transmission would take place although the transmitter was switched off.
The individuals who classified themselves as being "sensitive" towards electromagnetic radiation reported flu-like symptoms and feelings of uneasiness even if the transmitter was switched off.
This reminds me of two stories related to one of my hobbies, Amateur Radio. Once a friend told me that he installed a new wire-antenna at his house, highly visible to his neighbours. On purpose, he did not connect the antenna to his transceiver and let the cable hang out of his window. He did not use the antenna for about three weeks, when during that time the first reports of feelings of "uneasiness" by his neighbours came it. After he told them that the antenna was in fact not operating yet, the critiques went silent.
I myself had some minor feedback about my antenna, when somebody complained that she could "feel the antenna radiating" and asked whether it was not a dangerous thing to use. Here as well, I had not used the antenna for weeks.
Even more funny are some mail-order catalogues, where one can buy next to products shielding you from the "evil" mobile phone radiation, other radiating products that are said to be "good" and shall increase your wellness, remove headaches and so on. Maybe I should also start selling "wellness radiation sessions"...
Fjords, Waterfalls and Rainbows: Bergen and Flåm
I finally found some time to edit the 3 gigabytes of pictures from only 3 days in Bergen and Flåm. To see the best of gallery, just click on the picture below. It is very difficult to describe the nature up there, the best thing is to go and see it yourself. In Bergen the weather can be a bit unstable or, as my neighbour put it: "In Bergen the weather changes every twenty minutes. Either the sun shines, it rains or it storms."
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Fjord close to Flåm
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Royal Encounters, Part II
Oslo sometimes can be a small city, especially when it comes to meeting people. I more or less always meet someone when I am using the T-Bane (subway) or just walk the way up to Sogn. No exception here is the Royal Family and especially King Harald. The first time I saw him was in Winter during a biathlon event. The second time, I saw him only from the distance during the 17th of May parade.
Today, and just by coincidence, I could spot King Harald and his wife at the Law Faculty of our University.
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Cars
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Red carpet
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Nice license plate
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The King
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Security detail
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Syttende Mai: Norwegian Constitution Day
Here a video from the celebrations of May 17th, Norway's national day in Oslo. In the beginning you see the children's parade all the way up to the castle (Slottet), followed by a choir singing at the law faculty. In the end, some "russ" are shown. This has nothing to do with Russia, "russ" are students who are about to finish high school.
Oslo Ghost Town
Yes, it's Easter again and what I already observed last year in Uppsala is valid for Oslo as well: everything is closed. But this is not only about shopping, also in the streets you hardly see cars or people walking around. Everyone seems to be away.
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Sunshine
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For instance, one of the major subway hubs "Majorstuen" is normally quite crowded. Today, you could only see a few people there. However, there are some places that are crowded. One of the is the Sognsvann lake. This is a place where Norwegians (and some of the students who are living close by) go out for a walk and want to explore "nature". Luckily, the weather has been really nice in the past weeks.
I now finally also have a bike, which is very handy. The distances are so short in Oslo that I'm sometimes faster by bike than by subway (T-Bane). I even biked down the "Korketrekkeren" bobsleigh track where in winter we went sledge riding.
A Short Hello From Molvania
While I was already last year in Lutenblag and I actually had not planned to go there again, the price for a flight was so cheap that I changed my mind. Since today, Molvanian national carrier Aeromolv is offering a cheap no-frills service from Oslo's main airport Gardermoen to Lutenblag airport. We went to Molvania with 5 people and paid in total only 220 NOK (about 26 Euros; bribe money for the Molvanian immigration officials not included) for all the five of us!
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Cheap, but big: our hostel (CC)
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Since radiation levels have dropped enormously since last year, we decided that is was safe to stay a bit outside of Lutenblag. Due to global warming, there is no more snow in the Lutenblag area, only mud though. We stay on the top floor of the hostel, but because of the smog we cannot see anything. I am now sitting in the internet cafe of the hostel and have limited ability to upload any pictures because the top speed that is possible from here is 9600 baud per second and the modem is getting hot already. Not to mention that the connection is lost every 2 minutes.
Tomorrow, we have a guided tour around the nuclear reactor, which is right inside the city center, and afterwards we will see whether the cable car service to the top of Lutenblag's city mountain is operating...
(All pictures of this entry are licensed as creative commons, the credit can be found as a link "(CC)" in the description of the image)
When the cat’s away…
...the mice come out and play. This cat I spotted today at the Blindern metro stop in Oslo, just outside the University campus.
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Blindern metro stop
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It was sitting on one of the benches and attracted several students who were walking by. The arriving and departing trains didn't seem to have an impact on the cat, it was just sitting there peacefully, occasionally cuddling with people coming by.
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The cat
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Luckily, I had my digital camera ready and so here are these exclusive photos. :-)
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Some students observing it
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High-Speed Sledge Riding in Oslo
Today, I took part in the sledge riding activity for exchange students. I expected something like this in Uppsala, where you just walk to a hill and go down afterwards with a sledge. But what was thought to be an activity for children, turned out to be a crazy, high-speed down hill sledging.
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The Forest
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We first took the metro until the last stop of line number 1, Frognerseteren. From there we went to a small building where we rented the sledges. The trip was actually organized by a small Norwegian family business which is run by a mother and her daughter. The daughter is roughly my age and does a "Bachelor in Outdoor Activities". While in Germany, I would have asked whether she has already a taxi for doing something useful after her studies, here in Norway things seem to be different.
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Logo of the Norwegian Skiing-School
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With her came her young brother (about 10 years old) and a friend of him who spoke English perfectly. This was so amazing! I asked when children in Norway start to study English. They told me that they start already at the age of 6 or 7. So really early!
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The Metro
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At the top of the hill, we got some helmets for the sledge-riding and by that time I knew: this is getting serious. The track itself was about 4 km long and some parts were covered entirely with ice, which made it impossible to "navigate" with the sledge. Besides that, I had made the tactical mistake of only wearing a jeans and some long underwear. This turned out to be wrong because everything became wet and some parts of the jeans were entirely frozen later on.
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One of the sledges
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The ride itself was incredibly fast. There were some bumps on the track and sometimes you were really flying through the air for a few seconds. A guy from Greece made acquaintance with a tree besides the track - which obviously hurt a bit. Parts of the track were actually quite dangerous and one could have easily slided into the abyss. This provoked the Germans of the group to complain about how "they" (whoever that would be) could allow such a dangerous track to exist.
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some of the participants...
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It was not necessary to walk up again. When we arrived at the bottom of the hill, we just took the next metro back up again and the fun could start for the next time. All in all, I managed to handle the sledge quite well. In total we went up and down for three times and I finished almost always among the first 5, so not too bad! The third and last run was the most fun and also the fastest one.
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...looked like astronauts
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Reading E-mails in the Snow
This night temperatures dropped in Oslo and finally there is some real snow.
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Oslo University
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It is now -9°C during the day and -15°C in the night. At the University campus, snow plows were deployed to remove the snow a bit. Today, February 6th, is the Sami National Day and as a result I could see a lot of Sami and Norwegian flags on the campus.
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Baby change facility at the men's toilet
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Another very interesting "feature" of Scandinavia is that they are very child-friendly. You see a lot of young couples with their children walking around; in the student area where I live there are special student kindergartens (for the children of the students that is). Child-care is not only seen as a task for the mothers, but also for the fathers. As a result, I spotted this sign of a baby change facility at the men's toilet in our library.
Communication
Since GPRS data transfer is free in the network of Teletopia, I installed Google's Gmail for Mobile and Google Maps for Mobile on my mobile phone.
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Gmail
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The programs are running perfectly fast and answering emails goes as quickly as writing text messages.
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Google Maps for Mobile
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On Google Maps for Mobile, Oslo was directly displayed when I started it (so now Google not only has all my emails, but also knows where I am!). The picture above shows a map of Maastricht.
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Satellite view
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You can even switch to a satellite view, which basically looks like Google Earth on your phone. In total, I transferred about 1 Megabyte of data, which would have cost me around 19 euros in Germany - in Oslo it is for free.
First Class With Ryanair
Last week, I flew to Oslo with Ryanair to organize my study-related stay which will start in February. I took the early flight from Frankfurt-Hahn (EDFH / HHN) to Oslo-Torp/Sandefjord (ENTO / TRF) at 6.30 in the morning. Since there are a lot of rumors about Ryanair and their service, I was positively surprised.
The plane was brand new (average age of Ryanair's fleet is 2.7 years) and was equipped with very comfortable leather seats. Not these dirty ones I encountered about two years ago where you completely sink into the seat. For a two hours flight, the leg room was sufficient as well. What made this a "first class" trip was the load factor of the plane: only 14 people out of possible 189 the plane can carry flew to Oslo on that morning. The whole aircraft was basically empty. This also affected the crew who were very friendly so that I even bought a tea for 2.50 Euros.
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Ryanair Cabin View During Flight
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The Frankfurt-Hahn airport, which is actually closer to my hometown than to Frankfurt (so I call it Dattenberg-Hahn :-) ), was easily reachable by car as well and the check-in went quite smoothly. Only the shuttle bus driver who brought me from the parking lots to the terminal was not really friendly. Originally, I had planned to fly with Germanwings from Cologne, however, they have cut back their connections to Oslo and will stop the service by end of March. The same happened to Cologne - Gothenburg already (shame on you!).
Due to new hand luggage regulations, it is not allowed anymore to carry liquids into the cabin. Therefore, I brought three empty 0.5 liter bottles, which I filled up with tap water later on. This effort saved about 10 euros as the water you can buy at the airport is quite expensive. The security personnel searched my rucksack very carefully because it seems that they cannot see on their screen whether a bottle is empty or not.
Free Internet at Torp
The Oslo-Torp airport is quite nice as well and even offers free wireless internet. Outside, the Torpekspressen bus already waited with a very friendly bus driver. The ride to Oslo takes a bit less than two hours. To sum up, flying with Ryanair is like flying with any other airline, the only thing is that you pay less and don't fly into major airports.
The flight back to Frankfurt was more crowded, but went along smoothly as well despite incredible wind speeds of about 150 knots (about 300 km/h) at cruising altitude and 30 knots cross winds during the landing. These speeds were luckily lower than on the day before where a lot of flights (including all to/from Oslo) had been canceled due to gale-force winds. Only flight attendant Agnieszka was a bit on the rougher side... ("Please take your seats as quickly as possible! I said, TAKE YOUR SEATS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE!")