This is my last article on the blog. I’m leaving Norway in 3 days. This article is dedicated to the Halloween boat cruise. During the last week-end of October, me and some friends went to this cruise. We paid 30€ for the all week-end in a luxurious boat. It was my first cruise.

The meeting point was in Bergen. We waited the boat during several hours. After 5 hours, we finally left the harbor.

Bergen is in the middle of the Fjord. To have a clear description about Fjord go back to my article about Norway and Bergen. We navigated in those fjords during approximatively 2 hours. It was wonderful: many houses lost in the middle of nowhere, some other just above the sea level, wooden cabins in little island. We also see dolphins!

For the first night, the ship company, Fjordline, had organized a Halloween party. Most of the people were disguised in nightclubs, it was fun! We also feel the North Sea’s power during the night. The boat moved a little bit because of the wages.

On Saturday, we make a step in northern Denmark. We took two trains to leave an industrial area and go to Aalborg, an important city in this country. We walked during all the day with some Erasmus friends. We discovered some nice building but not a lot and a lovely old district. We went back to the boat at 7pm. After the meal, the company had organized a second party: pyjama party. It was quite fun to see people, in this luxurious boat and nightclubs in pyjama.

On Sunday, we went back to Bergen. We saw amazing landscape during the cruise. It is an unforgettable moment.

This article concludes my contribution to this blog as an Erasmus student. I hope I gave you some interesting information during those articles. But, most important, if you are a student, I hope my experience will motivate you to go for an exchange!

Bye,

Pierre

pcottier

Hi ! Today I would like to present you the canteen of the NHH!

There are three main buffets at the NHH’ s canteen : a salad buffet and two buffets with different hot dishes. However at midday the main buffet is closed during two hours! Surprising ?! Not really..The Norwegians have a different pace of life than us. They eat only some snacks at around 11 AM and they eat their bigger dish of the day at 4 or 5 PM. This explains why the buffet is closed at midday.

One of the Norwegians’ favourite course is a kind of porridge with rice, cream, milk, cinnamon, grape and sugar. You can savor it  every Friday !

The prices are pretty expensive (Of course we are in Norway..). You decide which quantity you want and then it is 15 NOK for 100 g so between 1.5 and 2 euros for 100g !

What will I miss  ? For sure not the cinnamon that they put in all the deserts ! But probably drinking as much coffee and tea as I want ! Indeed at the beginning of the semestre you can get a flask for 300 NOK (around 33 euros). And then you can come when you want to fill up the flask “for free”. Perfect for enduring winter !

Laurene PUILLANDRE

On the previous article, I shared with you a picture of our car in the snow. At this moment, we make a step because we saw the ice on the road and we weren’t at the top of mountains. After a moment of reflection, we decided to continue, slowly, on the road:

We went to Ustaoset. It’s a small village with frozen lakes and white mountains. Houses are lost in the middle of nowhere, sometimes there isn’t any road to go to houses!

At the beginning, we have thought to go to Stavanger, a big city built thank to oil’s earnings. We already knew that it will be difficult to reach this town but with the snow it’s became impossible. Thus, we drove to Odda a city well-known for a famous hike.

We took a road and after 20 kilometers, the road was block by this panel and we eared an explosion:

It’s was not allowed to continue because they were exploding mountains to build tunnels! So, we went back and took a ferry to reach Odda. The hike was short but nice, I saw for the first time of my life a glacier.

At 5pm it was completely dark.

We went back to the city center and took a Norwegian beer in a pub without looking at the price: 31€ for two beers. Outch!

After this break, we searched for a place to sleep. We found a nice harbor to park the car in Jondal.

Last day:

After a breakfast and a hike in Jondal, we took the ferry to Tørvikbygd.

Bergen, my home town, was still far away.

We drove during several hours on wonderful and incredible roads…

After a while, we arrived in the south of Bergen:

This is the end of this adventure!

Next time I will tell you the story of a student boat cruise that we made the week-end before the road trip in Hordaland.

See you!

pcottier

Hordaland is the third largest county in Norway. Me and my friend Guillaume had plan an itinerary to do it, but some unexpected things happened and we needed to change our plans. We made it in three days. So, I will make this first article for 1.5 days and a second one to tell you the end.

First day:

We left Bergen on the first Tuesday of November with a car rent at the airport. Our first stop was Flam, a little city in the north. We decided to do a hike to see a waterfall. It was nice but instead of 1hour of hiking we made 3hours because of the markup. In fact, at the tourist information they said “you just have to follow the red arrow”. The problem was that the red arrow go to the top of a high mountain. Nevertheless, the hike was nice, we just finished it in the dark because an early sunset (5pm).

Norwegians are very fond of hike. In many cities, you have an information panel with all the possibilities to hike. I made some and even when the difficulty is green, you need to have hiking shoes. I slip down several times with my running shoes. We saw in Vandal, one black hike of 18hours!

After the hike, we went to Stegastein to spend the night and eat. Our project was to sleep in the car, we had taken blankets from our apartment.

Second day:

At 8am we discover a wonderful view without any other tourists!

After a breakfast, we drove in the direction of Ustaoset with our little Toyota. Ustaoset is close to Finse, the highest point of the Norwegian Railway System at 1 222 meters above sea level. But, there is no car road to go to Finse, that’s why we decided to go to the closest city, Ustaoset.

We discovered the city and those amazing landscapes during the path between Oslo and Bergen in train one month ago.

But we didn’t think about how the road will be. Certainly, it was magnificent in train with all the snow but in car it’s not the same:

You will discover in the next episode what we have decided to do!

pcottier

From the 12th to the 16th of October has taken place the Bergen Challenge, a student competition blending sport, animations, games and parties. The purpose of this event, which looks like the ‘Coupe de France des IAE” with more resources, is to gather several schools and university of Bergen and other cities and create 4 days of competition in a friendly atmosphere. I applied to the festival camp as a volunteer and I “worked” 2 nights and the day of the camp’s installation. I was a very funny experience and I’ve learned a lot about Norwegian culture and way of life.

The event started by a show and fireworks (that is the difference with french student events) with musical performance from a DJ.

NHHS foto – Matthieu Hupé

http://bergenchallenge.no/

Brice LE GAC

Do you know which country has an unemployment rate of 5% in 2016? It’s Norway.

Currently, in France the unemployment rate is about 10,5%.

According to a ranking made by the OCDE in 2012, Norwegians earn $6670 by month versus $3797 for a French citizen.

Living cost in Norway is very high as I can see during those months. But it’s normal according to Norwegians salaries. The purchasing power is higher here than in France. Further, Norway is well-known to be a fair country for gender equality (including wages).

Indeed, wealth’s repartition is better here. To illustrate this fact, we can use the Gini coefficient. According to Wikipedia, Gini coefficient is a measure of statistical dispersion intended to represent the income distribution of a nation’s residents, and is the most commonly used measure of inequality.

Below a World map with Gini coefficient. If the country is in dark green, it indicates one of the most fairly country for income distribution. For example, South Africa have a bad Gini coefficient. That’s mean, a few people receive the majority of incomes.

Norway is a wealthy country. Thanks to petroleum exploitation, they created the Sovereign wealth fund. This fund is managing more than $700 billions.

Wealth allows some social advantages, like long break after a child for woman and also for man. Moreover, it’s unpopular for a mother in Norway to go back to work quickly after the birth and also to go back to work full time. Actually, most of the mother go back to work for a part time schedule. This is not the same way of thinking in France.

Nevertheless, as reported by La Tribune, very high salaries can be a problem. In fact, in the last 20 years Norwegian’s wages grew very rapidly. Therefore, many people have made a choice: a part-time work. With free time, they are taking care of children, go skiing, hiking or take some rest in a cabin. People earn more and work less. The result of this is a lack of market share. But Norway is still one of the most efficient country like France.

Have a nice week-end,

Pierre.

pcottier

Today, I want to return on one of my best experience in Norway: The Trolltunga hike. Trolltunga, translated to “Troll’s Tongue”, is a famous hiking in Norway.

The mountain is located at three hours of cars from Bergen. Thus, we woke up at 3:30 AM to start the hiking at 7 AM. It is a long and hard hike of 22 kilometers. We spent around 9 hours: 4 hours to go up, 3,5 to go down and 1,5 hours at the top.This is one of the most physically demanding adventures I have ever done on in my life! The first kilometer is harsh and you are surprised when you get to the first kilometer sign because it feels like you have done a lot more than that…

But the view was worth hiking this mountain. The landscapes are just breath-taking all along the way! You will see gorgeous blue lakes and impressive landscapes that cannot be described…

And after 11 kilometers… ultimate aim:

The rock is situated about 1100 meters above the lake Ringedaksvatnet so the view was just awesome, as you can see on this picture.

It is a touristic walk but dangerous. Indeed, you should be ready! Like said our exchange students’ responsible: “Never enough food”. And you should be prepped physically! Thus, some Norwegian students at the beginning of this year organized some workouts.

Since the middle of September, it is too late to hike this mountain alone: you need a guide.

Laurene PUILLANDRE

When we arrived in Bergen, just one week before started the lecture, the NHHS organized the welcome week. The NHHS is the organization which get together all the NHH’s student associations. The Welcome week is a mix of some information meetings, group activities and (lets be honest) some parties.

L

The meeting gave us all the techical information we need. It true that when you arrived you are a little bit lost and you don’t know how will be the lecture, how to apply, and all the administration formality you can have.

After the first meeting, alle the exchange student was split in group. Each group was lead by two mentors. The mentors was some norwegian students, so they could help us if we had some questions.

The meetins was, as you can see, mostly in the morning, so in the afternoon we had some activities like the shrimping diner, which is a traditionnal diner in Norway, you eat freezing shrimps. There was the fjord cruise too, which allowed us to discover the Norwegian landscape :

kmoreau

Exams being coming, the Farewell Dinner of the fall semester 2016 took place the last week-end. The dinner was organized by the International Committee of the NHH, the association in charge of the exchange students’ events.

This event got us together, nice moment to come back to the highlights of this semester. An Erasmus semester is not only lots of fun, many trips and a great deal of English mistakes: It is a lot of meetings!

To put in the honour the big personalities of this semester, they organized an award ceremony at the end of this dinner:  The Legend, Mr and Ms. Norway, the party Queen and King, the Athlete, the strongest accent and many more. What a pride that the winner of the strongest accent was…. A Frenchman!

Other activities were organized: a video with the souvenir photos, a small concert, funny speeches, …

It was also one of the first time that everyone took off their plastic boots and  waterproof… Dress-up was the prerequisite!

This party was an opportune moment for the revelations. Indeed, the students could write an anonymous message addressed to someone else in the room.  Was there a better moment to declare your love? Hoping your suitor identified you…

Laurene PUILLANDRE