Until now I have not made it a priority to fix this due to the low level of comments my blog gets anyway, but now I finally found the time to upgrade to the newest version of Movable Type and it's superior spam blocking functionality, thus getting rid of MT-Blacklist and once again beeing able to recive comments and trackbacks on all entries. Enjoy!

The market area was spread out through all the streets between Grand Place and Place St. Catherine where there even was a carnival sporting carousels, an ice-skating rink and a ferris wheel! We just had to go for a ride on the latter to see the view of the Brussels skyline from the top of the wheel, and we could even see all the way to Atomium. Other things of note at the market was the very detailed and beautifully lighted Jesus-crib with live sheep at Grand Place and a very large breathing blow-up ice-monster that kids could enter to get a scare. Last but not least were the Tallinn Christmas Village, a set of market-stands with thematic Christmas foods and decorations from Estonia to celebrate the city of Tallinn being this years guest of honor. Have a look at some pictures here!

As the day passed we started craving more wholesome foods, so then we found ourselves another market specialty; cheese-boiled potatoes&ham. While it was good food both filling and hot, it was a tad too fatty and making me nauseous. Combined with our arms tiring from all the gifts we bought early on we decided to head home to rest for a while and to leave all our heavy bags behind so we wouldn't have to drag them around all night too.
Then after spending a few hours at home waiting for the daylight to fade, we headed back downtown to have a look at the spectacular light-show and the beautifully lighted Christmas tree at Grand Place. After enjoying the show we walked back through the markets to see the new stands that had opened, as well as seeing the spectacle of lights from the carnival while snacking on some delicious popcorn and cotton-candy. There we just had to go on another spin in the ferris-wheel to get a birds-eye view of the city by night. Being full from all the snacking we ended up with just having some classic Belgian fries with curry-ketchup and mayo for supper before heading home for the night.

Sunday was as usual a day to relax, so we just went to an Italian restaurant in the neighborhood for dinner and otherwise just hung out in the apartment before I had to leave for my evening flight back to Oslo. For killing time on the flights this time around I plowed through the Orwellian classic 'Animal Farm', which shouldn't need any further introduction in its criticism of utopian equality among people. I also read Kate Wilhelms cloning dystopia 'Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang', which gives a chilling vision of a future where humanity itself is poisoned through environmental disasters.

After a couple of hours on the road we made a stop in the very nice town of Arlon to have lunch, and got ourselves the best curry-chicken sandwich from a local bakery. We then walked around the city center a bit before rounding of with a few pralines from a nearby chocolatery and heading on towards Luxembourg. We set the GPS for Differdange and arrived in a small industrial town with nothing much to show for itself, so we didn't stop but drove on towards the canton capital, Esch-zur-Alzette. This was a really cozy town and we spent several hours walking around the shopping district, which among other things sported a Villeroy & Boch brand store where we saw lots of really nice stuff, but expensive too. Our next stop was supposed to be Dudelange which was just another town similar to Differdange, so we decided not to waste our time there and quickly set course for Luxembourg City. After checking in to our hotel we went out to take a walk around the city, which was a bit off as our hotel was not located on the main hill. On our way we found a very nice restaurant and had a really good dinner before walking around and taking in the sights by night. However it had been a long day, so we headed back to our hotel and turned in early.

Saturday: The heart of Luxembourg
We woke up early to a slight drizzle and hurried out to explore the city in daylight. Our first stop were the Casemates, a 23km series of medieval defensive works and tunnels built around the edge of the main hill of Luxembourg city. I ran around all over the place to see every bit of the narrow tunnels deep underground, an amazing achievement to have been built by hand, earning the city the name "Gibraltar of the North". I really love all this old medieval stuff :-)

Afterwards we wandered around the city to get some more photos in daylight and to buy some lunch before heading south to the district of Grevenmacher to see the Moselle valley. Our first stop was in a small town of EU-fame called Schengen. First we took a wrong turn and ended up in France, and then another taking us across to Germany, all within less than a kilometer. It was strange how French everything became just across the border in Contz-les-Bains, despite the towns being separated by just a few kilometers, and similarly was everything really German in Sehndorf in Germany, just across a short bridge in the other direction. With a population of just above 400 there were not much to see in Schengen other than taking the tourist photos of the plaque where the agreement of the same name was signed, so while there we barely left the car before starting up along the Moselle river.

The next place about 5km downriver was the village of Remich, a very picturesque town known as the pearl of the Moselle. Here we stopped for a while to walk around and find somewhere to have lunch, but the entire town seemed to be closed so we had to settle for the nice views before heading on. The Moselle valley is famous for its wineries, and in the small town of Wormeldange we happened upon the Caves des Vignerons, a winecellar for sparkling wine in the Vinsmoselle group. Here we first tasted a few select wines in the bar, and afterwards we bought so much in the shop that we almost couldn't carry it all before going after the next winery on our itinerary. This one was supposed to be in Grevenmacher city, but both wineries there were closed when we got to them. But since we were going on holiday in late October this was a calculated risk on our part, so we didn't get too bummed and went to find some lunch instead. However due to the low population density in this area, we found no open restaurants, so we ended up just getting some snacks from a local supermarket instead.

Our last destination this night was the city of Echternach in Mullertal, an area known as "little switzerland" from its many rock formations and small streams. The city itself still held the true spirit of medieval Europe, but the real gem was the amazing landscape surrounding it, completely different from that in the rest of the Benelux area. I would have loved to spend more time there, but as it was getting late it was time to head back to our hotel in Luxembourg city. Despite having spent a full day through various landscapes getting to Echternach, the return trip took us just above half an hour when going the short route back, a testament to the greatness of little Luxembourg. After refreshing ourselves in our room we headed out and had another very good dinner in the city proper, and then being tired from the days events we once again headed to bed early despite having planned to check out the Luxembourg nightlife. Oh well, it will have to wait for another occasion.

Sunday: Castles and ruins
Waking up on our last day in Luxembourg we first went out to see a bit more of the city. So we walked around to the main square and city hall, as well as getting breakfast and shopping for some souvenirs, which we should have done Saturday since most places were closed now, but we still got ourselves a set of nice fridge-magnets and some other thingies.
When the clock turned 10 it was time to head out and start our tour of the northern Luxembourgian countryside and its castles. Our first stop was the castle Larochette, also in the Mullerthal, a set of partly restored ruins of an 11th century fortress on a rock over the town of the same name. It was a tad to ruiny for my taste, but still a beautiful place with its history.

Heading on we followed our GPS through a series of backroads through the countryside until we suddenly around a turn came upon the Castle Beaufort down in a narrow valley. It was an amazing castle-ruin, with remains of a moat and many buildings still intact, as well as a few exhibits of reconstructed instruments of torture and kitchenware. After following the marked trail through the castle, dungeons and towers we were on our way out when we discovered that they were selling Cassis, a castle branded locally made blackcurrant liquor, and after tasting we just had to buy a bottle. Now thats what I call a good souvenir :-)

Next we headed across the countryside towards the town of Vianden on the German border. Coming up the Our valley we could from far away see the large majestic Vianden castle towering on a hilltop over the town, a truly spectacular sight of one of the most beautiful castles in Europe. The drive up to the castle was no less through the streets of a medieval-era town where time seemed to have stood still. The castle itself has been fully restored and decorated with an impressive collection of artifacts from throughout its history. If you are going to visit just one castle this summer, make sure it is this one!

After spending too much time in Vianden we had to press on to make our other scheduled stops, and headed on towards the Bourscheid Castle in the Ardennes. When we got there a bunch of other tourists were hanging around outside the gates, and we soon found that the castle was closed despite the times mentioned both on the door and in our brochures. We pondered about what to do and called the Luxembourg turist office who didn't know of this, but after a while they found out that the janitor had never shown up to open that morning. We didn't want to waste any more time, but I really didn't want to miss out on this castle either. Walking around the wall to see as much as possible I found a spot where the wall was just 3 meters tall, so I talked Carina into helping me scale it. After climbing up I squeezed through a gap at the end of the fence and suddenly found myself inside the castle walls!
First I tried opening the gates from inside for Carina and the other tourists, but the bolts were secured with a padlock so instead she handed me the camera through a crenelle in the wall and I ran around taking pictures on my own. I can honestly say its the first time I've broken into a castle by scaling the wall, but it was totally worth it as the castle ruins were awesome and among the coolest I've seen, and there were no other tourists to disturb the mood! I'd really have liked to spend more time there, but with Carina waiting outside and me trespassing I just looked over everything once before heading back out and getting back to our car.

With the evening setting in it was far past time for lunch, so we headed into the city of Diekirch where we had a quick dinner at a small Italian restaurant. After eating it was getting late and we figured that we only had time to see one more thing before darkfall. I wanted to see more of the town, but but since most of it was Sunday-closed we left and headed north for Clervaux instead. We drove into the valley while it was still light, and found a beautiful white chalked castle standing in the middle of a pittoresque little town. The white walls and current use of the castle really made it feel as a living part of the city compared to the sense of history that follow most castles.
Also our haste to leave Diekirch was rewarded when we made it to Clervaux castle just a few minutes before the Museum of Models were closing. It holds a grand collection of model replicas of almost all the Luxembourgian castles and palaces, an astonishing piece of work that let us enjoy viewing the many castles that we did not have time to visit on this trip. On permanent display in the castle was Edward Steichens photo exhibition: "The Family of Man", which Carina really enjoyed. This was a really fulfilling end to our tour of Luxembourg, and driving out of the town we even got an amazing view of the lighting of the white castle by night. And with that view we left the Grand Duchy and set a route back to Brussels where we returned the car at Midi station before heading home to Carina's apartment in Ixelles.

Monday: Waffles in Brussels... again
To get the most out of our weekend in Luxembourg I took both Friday and Monday off so that we didn't have to stress around to get time for everything, and since I wouldn't make it back in time for work even when taking the morning flight I stayed in Brussels until Monday afternoon. After sleeping in until noon we took the metro downtown and walked some around the city again, checking out Manneken Pis and the book-selection at Waterstones, and of course having another one of the delicious chocolate covered Belgian waffles that I just love so much! Then in the evening I as usual took the 17:30 express train to the airport, spent an hour looking at delicacies in the tax-free stores, and walked the mile to the furthest gate where the Oslo-planes are always located, to be arriving in Norway and enter my dark apartment a few hours later, after having spent another wonderful weekend away!

After work on Tuesday which was just more of the same there was no packing to be done however, as the company was throwing a get-together for all the new employees so that we all could get to know each other and some of the management. We were served Tapas and beers and had a great time at various bars until quite late, and it was all on the company. Awesome :-)
The rest of the week I simply spent getting settled, both at home and at work, and I got both my stove and a newly bought washer/dryer in place, so that on Saturday I invited Marthe, an old friend of mine, over for the first real dinner in my new home. On Sunday I could finally relax so I spent the day at the Norwegian Space Center, who were having open days this weekend and happens to be located just down the road, before initiating the oven to its first frozen pizzas along with Arne Cato.

During the next week work started to get more interesting with me getting to work on an internal intranet-related project, and as a result I didn't really do much at nights except joining the company floorball-exercise on Tuesday. There I even managed to sprain my knee, but that gave me a good opportunity to try out the massage therapist who visits at work every Wednesday, and she did a really awesome job so my knee healed right up.
On Thursday however, I did get the biggest surprise of my life. I had planned my housewarming-party for Friday night, so to be able to be there with me Carina had traveled home without telling me right out of the blue, and just after I got home from work she was standing at my door looking cute :-D <3 I was at a loss for words, but it really made my entire weekend! The party was great fun too of course, with Marthe, Marco, Bjørnar, Jan-Helge and Alexander beeing able to come even at short notice.
Then with Carina there we went to see her sister for cinnamon-rolls on Saturday, and then all of us went for dinner at her mothers, and on Sunday we walked downtown and had a Vienna Chocolate at TGI Fridays and some snacks from Deli De Luca. The weekend passed all to quickly however, and already on Monday morning I had to see Carina off again and start on another week at work, during which I got my DSL-line installed by NextGenTel, but no modem delivered along with it so still no Internet other than through my 3G-phone.
Also I got assigned to my first external project and today I had my first day at work in the offices of the Norwegian Food Safety Authority, for whom I'll be part of the team developing the web-solutions for their new case-management system. Exciting stuff :-)

Tuesday 19th: Daytrip to Antwerp
While Carina was still not feeling her best, we had planned on going to Antwerp one of these days and this day seemed as good as any, so in the morning we headed down to Brussels Central to catch a northbound train. The trip took just over an hour from we left home, so we got there quite early and headed into the shopping area where Carina insisted on checking out almost all the clothing stores. I went along with it as Antwerp is also the location of the Guylian Cafè that specializes in treats based on Guylian brand chocolates, so in return I insisted that we had to stop by for a snack and a cup of hot chocolate. Yum!
We then we went through some more stores until we arrived at Grote Markt, the main city square, where we sat down at a pizzeria for dinner. After dinner we walked around checking out some the city sights for a while, amongst them Steen castle by the river as well as several medieval churches, before it was time to catch a train back to Brussels and go home. On our way back to the train station we stopped by H&M to buy a few of the things Carina had been looking for, but since the store was closing they actually threw us out instead of helping us find the correct size! It's shocking how bad some people are at basic customer treatment...
A trip with the amount of walking that we did obviously didn't make Carina feel any better than she did in the morning, so to remedy that we stayed inside all of Wednesday relaxing and watching TV-series. We also had our first home-prepared meal in the apartment since we moved in: boxed spaghetti.

Thursday 21st: Atomium, Galleries St. Hubert and a night out
After spending all of yesterday inside Carina was finally feeling better so we wanted to explore a bit more of Brussels, so in the morning we caught the Metro all the way to the other end of the city to see Atomium, a 103 meter tall magnification of an iron-atom built for the 1958 World's Fair and one of Brussels major landmarks.
It's quite a sight, but besides the view from the top the exhibition inside was a tourist trap and not worth the time or effort, especially if there is a line.

Afterwards we headed back downtown and walked through the shopping street Rue Nueve on our way to the splendid Saints Michel et Gudule gothic cathedral, before heading over to Grand Place through the oldest shopping mall in Europe, Galleries St. Hubert. At Grand Place we met up with and had a few beers with my parents and my sister who had come to visit us while they were in the area on a wine-tour of the Mosel valley. We gave them a few pointers on what they should check out downtown while Carina and I went back to her apartment to freshen up and get dressed for dinner, which all of us enjoyed together at the Aux Armes de Bruxelles restaurant, supposedly one of the better places to eat in downtown Brussels.
After dinner my family went back to their hotel, while Carina and I met up with newly arrived Jordan at Grand Place, and caught a taxi with him to the bar La Phere in Ixelles where most of Carina classmates were hanging out as there was a BSIS get-together there. The others had been there for a while already and wanted to check out some other places, so we joined the guys from the other night as well as newcomers Chris, Peter and Justin (all americans), british Lucy and Aoufe from Ireland in walked over to The Waff which is just by Carina's apartment. There we found some excellent spots on the roof terrace there and had a great night out with more of the excellent Belgian beers!

Friday 22nd: Last day in Brussels
After I have now stayed with Carina in Belgium the past two weeks, yesterday was the final day of both my stay and my family's visit, so we started out by meeting them downtown for lunch, and ended up at a nice Italian restaurant at Place St.Catherine. After saying goodbye to them, Carina and I took another stroll around the city to shop all the stuff I wanted to bring home with me, including lots of chocolates, beers and waffles. After packing all my bags (again), we went out for dinner at the restaurant Enigma right next door, and it was simply amazing! The food was really great, the decor way cool and the service excellent, and it was still quite cheap! Without a doubt the best restaurant I've been to for its price range at ~15-20€ per person.

And that experience concludes my first visit to Brussels, but what a great couple of weeks it has been! I got the chance to enjoy plenty of my favorite Belgian chocolates Cotè d'Or and Guylian, and also to discover several new ones like GoDiva, Jacques, Neuhaus, NewTree and Galler. I've also been wallowing in chocolate covered Belgian waffles and I've tried more than 40 new kinds of Belgian beer! My absolute new favorites are the range of wild-fermented Lambics, and then especially Lindemans Faro and Gueze, but also other special kinds like the Chimay trappist and abbeys Leffe and Grimbergen. Carina also really liked Hoegaarden Blanche, a type of white beer, and the blonde ale Duvel, both of which have less particular but more refreshing tastes.

But all good things must come to an end, so this morning I caught the train to the airport, and after the seemingly never-ending walk through along the rollers of Brussels International Airport, I got on my flight back to Norway with a suitcase full of Belgian specialties, ready to settle down in my new apartment in Oslo and get started in my first real job. That too will be an experience I guess, so we'll see how it turns out :-)

Monday & Tuesday: Tourists downtown and drinking beer
After getting a good nights sleep we took the Metro downtown just after lunch to see Grand Place, the main square of Brussels, and the surrounding shopping area and the world famous tourist attraction, the 30cm tall Mannekin Pis statue. We also sampled our first Belgian waffles and by chance ran into Davina, a girl from the states that will be studying along with Carina at BSIS. After walking around downtown for a while and having another waffle, we headed back to Grand Place and had dinner at a "Greek" restaurant there. It was quite far from beeing genuinely Greek however, and it was definitely overpriced like everything in the main tourist area, but the food was still quite good.
After returning to the B&B we sampled some more of the beers we'd been given on our terrace in the fantastic sunny weather, and then headed out to meet Davina as well as Amber, Jake & Charles at Place St. Antoine. There we first sat down at a bar, and then at another bar, and then yet another. At them all we tried more kinds of Belgian beer, mostly just Stella Artois, into the wee hours of the night and had a great time!

As usual this caused us to stay indoors and in bed most of the next day. We only went outside twice that day, first to get some Fries and Pittas in the morning, and then back to Chao for dinner in the evening. It is a really excellent yet cheap Thai restaurant that we found during our walks in Ixelles on Sunday and really liked due to its modernistic and stylish yet classic Thai decor both inside and outside, as well as the food and service beeing excellent, so it is well worth a visit!

Wednesday 13th: EU-district and the ponds
When we got back on our feet after another night of rest, we started out by going to the Belgacom shop down the street to order an Internet connection for the apartment Carina will be renting. However their earliest availability to install DSL was in 3 months, which was totally unacceptable, so instead we went
down to Avenue de Louise to locate the offices of ClearWire, a WiMAX based ISP that gives you a wireless broadband over most of Belgium. No installation required, and after running to a post office to get cash for the deposit we got the "Internet box" immediately. Afterwards we found a Deli where we got ourselves lunch, and then we headed past the Ixelles Ponds and Flagey Place to see the European Union headquarters and the beautiful Cinquantenaire park with the Belgian Arc De Triomphe. It was a much longer walk than we expected so we ended up taking a taxi back to the B&B, but we didn't stay there long but headed over to a nearby Italian restaurant and had pizza for dinner before calling it an early night.

Thursday & Friday: Trip to IKEA and cleaning the new apartment
And then our stay at the B&B was up and we had to move all our luggage down the stairs again and head over to Carinas new apartment in Avenue de La Couronne. This place at least had an elevator, so we quickly got our luggage inside and then walked down to the Metro station to visit IKEA. I really don't like IKEA as they appear to never have any staff available, and when you finally locate someone they are unable to help you anyways, and just like in Norway and in the US, this was true in Belgium. But after some hassle we got what we came for, had dinner in the warehouse restaurant, and found a "merchandise-taxi"-van to take us home. After getting everything inside it was once again straight back out to buy food and cleaning aids at the SuperGB grocery store nearby, and then after getting most of the new IKEA things assembled it was cleaning time. The apartment was horribly dirty, some parts had obviously not been touched with soap and water since the place was built, so we spent all of that night and the better part of the next day cleaning and scrubbing every inch of the place, and then we still had the kitchen and bathroom left... We couldn't be bothered to do them too, so for the time beeing we just ignored them and instead readied the main room so we at least had one likable room to stay in, and when it was clean and tidy it was was actually a pretty good apartment! Small, but very nice and with large wall-to-wall windows. Not bad for renting an unseen apartment :-)

Then the next morning it was up at 7a.m to go and pick up the keys to the garage from Tore, and then loading all my stuff both from my dad's place and the garage into the trailer. It was a good thing I had rented the largest one available, for the smaller ones probably wouldn't have held everything. When we were done I headed back into Trondheim to pick up a few items that Carina and I had left in the storage shack at Lerkendal student village, before going straight back the way I came to Oslo. Now with the trailer fully loaded my car had a real load to pull, and at some of the mountain passes I actually wondered if it could take it, but as the good Toyota it is it pulled through perfectly and I arrived on schedule at Skøyen where Arne Cato soon showed up to help me unload. After we finished it was getting late, so I headed back to Carina's place in Lier and went almost straight to bed after two exhausting days. On Friday I took the opportunity to sleep in a bit before Carina and I went back to my new apartment to clean, unpack and organize my belongings so that the place would be livable when I returned from Brussels. Afterwards we had a nice taco dinner with Carina's sister Hanne before also spending most of today unpacking before we had to start packing our bags for our morning flight to Brussels instead.
I almost feel like I'm not doing anything but moving stuff in and out from bags and suitcases these days...

Then on Sunday afternoon the boat returned to Risvær to pick us up and take us back to our car that was parked in Øksneshamn. Then it was the three hour drive back to Harstad, so we were home again around 9ish and went almost straight to bed. On Monday I again returned to my grandmothers house to mow the lawn and to bring her over for dinner. My mom thinks we aren't having fish for dinner often enough, so she had prepared an oven baked salmon with a new kind of spice mix that a delicacy shop in Harstad has started making. It was so good that I actually bought a few boxes of the spice mix for myself when I was taking my grandmother home later that evening.

However that very same night I also got a phone call from my mothers 'friends' where I put my furniture in storage over the summer. We had originally agreed that I could keep my stuff in their basement until winter, but for no good reason they suddenly needed me to move my stuff out within a week. I had planned on relaxing in Harstad for almost another week before flying to Belgium where I will be staying for two weeks with Carina as she is moving there to study. However to accommodate the changing whims of others I had to move my departure up by several days to be able get my stuff in Trondheim and drive it to Oslo. Luckily I found and have been promised that I can rent an apartment at Skøyen, so I just hope it is acceptable because I won't have the time to find anything else now. While this messed up my relaxation plans after having had a very intensive year, at least I were able to spend most of my final day at home in peace by having waffles for lunch at my grandmothers house and then dinner with my mom at the Bertheus J. Nielsen restaurant before once again packing up my stuff and getting ready to leave again...

Tuesday:
As usual I spent the tuesday morning on Skype with my girlfriend Carina. Due to the time difference and me having had Tuesdays off all summer it has been a suitable arrangement. Afterwards I headed out again, this time alone, to check out the museum at NASAs Ames Research Center which is just up the road from Park Place. As there are two Ames-museums, one for NASA and another for the U.S. Air force, there was some initial confusion about where I was going and they let me into the base to drive around by myself, believing I was looking for the Air force museum. However that one was closed (which I knew) so I ended up driving over most of the base looking for the other one, which was actually located just outside the gates. I found it eventually, but it was in a tent and kinda small, so not very exiting despite a few good exhibits. The one at Cape Canaveral is heaps better, but at least I got to see the base itself from the inside :-) Afterwards I headed towards the Intel Computer History Museum, but it was more of a play-and-learn area for kids, so not very interesting for me and again with only a few good exhibits. At least both of them were free of charge. By now I was quickly running out of time, but with my trusty GPS guiding me I decided that I'd try to reach the U.S.S Hornet at Alameda Point before the closed for the day. It is a floating museum of a highly awarded WWII aircraft carrier that also took part in recovery of the Apollo missions, a truly immense sight even if it is just half the size of todays Nimitz class carriers. Since it was getting late I only made it in time to join the last guided tour of the command tower, but I got to walk around quite a bit on my own as well. When the ship closed at 5p.m I considered going into the city and visit the Norwegian Seamens church, but in the middle of rush hour and with the Oakland Bay Bridge partially closed, I decided that it would probably take too long to get there as they close at 6p.m, so instead I headed along the northern coast of the bay and got stuck in traffic there as well. Since I hadn't eaten yet I stopped by Denny's Diner for dinner on the way, and it was I good thing I did, for it took me almost 2 hours to drive back to Park Place because of the traffic and roadworks. Because of this I got so tired that I just spent the rest of the evening at home.

Wednesday:
By now most of the people away on trips last weekend had returned, so we all just ended up laying around the pool area most of the day. Then that evening the girls were having a girls-only dinner at Cascals, where Dankert and I joined them a bit later on. There girls were not done chitchatting however, so Danker and I continued onwards to Molly Magees to have some beer and shoot some pool, and was joined there by the rest of the gang later on and stayed until quite late. It was sort of a goodbye party for most of us and the final time some of us would meet before going back to Norway.

Thursday:
About an hour south of the Bay area lies Santa Cruz, a small beach-town with a famous classic boardwalk/amusement park. Most of the others have been there several times this summer while I've been doing other things, but I couldn't leave without even going there once, so on Thursday I headed south to spend a day on the beach. On the way there I also stopped by 'The Mystery Spot' where "unexplained" physical phenomena make balls roll uphill and people slant on level ground. In reality it is just an optical illusion of course, created by building a slanting house on a very steep hillside, but the effect is quite cool and ingeniously created, and especially fun for kids I'd imagine.
Afterwards I headed straight down to the beach to work on my tan before returning to Norway, and when the sun started weakening in the afternoon got up and walked a bit along the boardwalk were I had dinner and tried some of the varous snacks they were selling, including some really good cinnamon roasted pecan nuts and frozen chocolate covered bananas. It was all awfully overpriced of course, but I just had to try it once...
On my way back to Mountain View I got a call from Gloria who had some extra tickets to a circus show in the San Jose HP Pavillion stadium. Since I didn't have any plans I thought that would be cool, so I just stopped by Park Place shortly before picking up Eivind and Gloria and going to see the Ringling Bros. "greatest show on earth". It was nothing of the kind of course, mostly just a bland and uninteresting show performed with american bravour, at least until the finale where they had a dozen guys on motorbikes driving at the same time inside a quite small round steel cage... it was truly amazing how they managed that! (See
this bad video that I shot with my mobile phone)
On our way out some Mexican tried an insurance scam on us, making a ruckus and claiming that our car-doors had scratched his car, pointing to what was a pair of barely visible marks in the dirt on his doors. After figuring out what he was on about (luckily both Eivind and Gloria speaks Spanish) we ignored him and just drove away as he wrote down our license plate number, calling it a night as soon as we got home.

Friday:
After catching a few hours by the pool first thing in the morning and stopping by Bjørn to say goodbye before he left, I drove down to San Jose to visit the Winchester Mystery House that Øystein and I drove past with Armin during our first week in SF. The house is a large 160-room mansion constructed continuously for 34 years by the crazy widow Mrs. Winchester with the money she inherited from her husbands firearms-industry. While the tours were expensive and the house are in somewhat bad shape, it is a really amazing place, but the super-sized souvenir-shoppe and especially the well kept gardens make it worth the trip by themselves. Then just as I was leaving the house I noticed that the Santana Row shopping mall was just across the street, so I decided to check it out as well as I haven't been there during the day before. It wasn't really all that much interesting there, mostly ladies shoppes, but I ended up buying another Oakley t-shirt there anyway, after all it will be a while until I get a chance to get any more of them for a decent price. Then I headed north along the bay and stopped by the Stanford Shopping Mall which I hadn't been to yet either. It on the other hand was pretty good, with lots of gadget-stores like Oregon Scientific and the Discovery Channel store, as well as several candy shops and of course lots of clothing and apparel stores. I bought a t-shirt here too, this time from Abercrombie & Fitch, as well as some gifts for the people back home before continuing over to the Searchforce offices for a last visit to say the final goodbyes and play a few more rounds of foozball. I ended up hanging around the offices for a few hours until just before it got dark so I could head up to Skyline Boulevard and get a panorama view of the bay area by night, but it turned out to be all foggy and impossible to see anything from up there. Instead I headed back to downtown San Mateo where I had dinner at the L&L Hawaiian BBQ fast-food joint, and afterwards I found myself a nice cafè/winebar on B Street where I had a cup of hot chocolate before heading back to Park Place for the night.

Saturday:
Another day, another morning by the pool. And today it came time to find a ComCast-office and pay the final bill and cancel our cable and broadband subscriptions. When all such practical details had been handled I headed back out to Stanford to get some extra video of the campus area there, and discovered that there were an outdoors art and wine festival going on all along University Drive in Palo Alto. They had lots of cool things there so I ended up spending several hours walking and looking around, but due to the problems of getting stuff home in one piece I eventually decided against buying anything. That most things were quite expensive as well also helped reach that conclusion... Afterwards I took the I-280 straight into San Francisco to finally visit the Norwegian Seamens church. There I met Lisbeth, our program coordinator from Innovation Norway, and also several other of the people working there. When they closed down at 6p.m I headed down to Union Square, the main shopping area in downtown SF, to purchase a few more gifts and visited both and NikeTown and several other clothing stores. I also had dinner at a thai resturant there before going home. When I got to Park Place some of the others wanted to see a movie, so we ended up making it just in time to see "John Tucker Must Die" at the Redwood City Century cinema which was the nearest place that movie was still showing. Thank god for TomTom or we wouldn't have made it at all, and even if the movie wasn't all that good it was at least entertaining and a nice way to round off this evening before heading to bed.

Not all of the students were present either, as Bjørn and Cecilie had gone to Mexico, and Carina (the one in my group here at Gründerskolen, not my girlfriend in Norway) took off just before the event to spend a week at the Bahamas. For me this was a good thing as she let me use her company rental-car during her absence, a pretty nice Nissan Altima. From Searchforce the three of us had only gotten one worn-out Ford Taurus, and while it wasn't a problem sharing it over the summer, I'll be free to go anywhere whenever this week without having to check with anyone about the car :-)

Then this Friday was our last day working at Searchforce! It's incredible that the summer has passed so quickly and is already at an end. I actually haven't really said anything particular about the work in my blog so far, so I'll try to give a little recap here.
Most days we meet up by the fountain at Park Place around 9a.m in the mornings and carpool the 30 minute drive out to the Bay View building in San Mateo. We often stop by the Deli on the ground floor to get some coffee or breakfast on our way in. Office space is at a premium so we have our desks located in the main hall, and to make it easier both for ourselves and for the company we bring and use our own laptops. Most of the other people usually showed up sometime before 11a.m, but we still head out for lunch just a little after noon. We've been trying out different places like SubWay, Fresh Choice and Taco Bell as I've previously written, but we mostly end up going to the local Deli in the building which is very clean and has great food and nice people. After lunch people get a bit more productive and most often work quite late, but we also take quite a few breaks to snack and play foozball, and we've been kicking Lawsons ass since the first day :-)
In the beginning we usually kept at it until at least 7p.m every night before heading home, but as we wanted to catch some sun by the pool this summer too we started leaving earlier as the weeks passed and have ended up going home around 4p.m lately. It's still a full days work (unlike some of the others!) and our tasks have been quite varied. Marthe has as a designer been making new logos and interface designs for the software and website, while Arthur and I have been doing some testing and development work on various parts of the software, as well as other supporting engineering tasks. Before he changed to another internship, Eivind was also doing both engineering work as well as working on the company strategy and business plan.
And after doing this for almost three months now it was suddenly our last day at work this Friday! It's been a lot of fun, but it will also be interesting to try something different when I get home and start at Computas. But there was no slacking even today, as it has been spent finishing up our current projects and detailing their status to the others. Marthe and I also had a nice goodbye lunch with Tejel at a Chinese restaurant just a short walk down El Camino, and then we had a few more hours before the time came to play some last rounds of foozball before we said our goodbyes to everyone.

Afterwards I took advantage of having my own car for once, and headed to the Great Mall shopping for a suitcase to get all my new stuff back to Norway. Since I was already there I just as well had dinner in the food court before heading home where Øysteins buddies had just returned from an excursion of their own. We were all pretty tired so for once the weekend was spent relaxing completely. Just sleeping in before spending some hours by the pool, and then crashing on the couch for some more hours watching TV and perhaps a movie. I even got started on watching The O.C season 1 that I've had on my hard drive for several years now. Only tonight did we actually hang out with someone else when we stopped by Tom's place for a final BBQ and said goodbye to Øystein and his buddies who are taking off on their big road trip throughout the western states and Mexico tomorrow morning. This is really the good life... and its actually quite relaxing... so now I'm heading to bed!