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Norge! rn, o k r e f f e f leen P igar and r a M , l l unne Anna Kr gbolten B a s s i r Ca a Höcklin, r at Kjera Lariss n Rasenberge Katri
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first troll
Nearly 4 months are over and soon plenty of international students are going home again, as am I, making space for new international students and tell my friends and family back home everything about my time in Norway. So I thought about what of the good and bad things I experienced here I am going to tell them. First I will tell them that Norway is absolutely beautiful and that this semester was worth every minus on my bank account. That it was worth it to leave Germany to see it from a different angle and to appreciate cheap prices, dark bread, clubs that are open till the sun rises again, less rain, a bottle of wine you can just buy in the supermarket without looking on your watch all the time, large beds and being closer to friends and family. I will tell them everything about all the trips we made: The crazy trip to Kjeragbolten with my ladies, that we did even though it was foggy, rainy AND windy. The trip with ESN to Preikestolen and Stavanger, which was also foggy but still fun and amazing, the trip with the volunteers from Østsia and Pir6 to Skagen, which was just INSANE, and the weekend trip to Tromsø with plenty of snow and sadly no northern lights. The boat trips we made, the hiking tours we survived and the really mad camping when it was around 4°. I will try to tell them how the Norwegian people are and that they’re kind of crazy and that is maybe because of all the bad weather, the darkness, the
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thin air here in the north or just because they are great-great-great-grandchildren of the vikings and just drink too much. But they are also trustworthy. Cars are stopping when you cross the street, people leave their stuff somewhere without watching it and that’s just because they don’t have to worry about it, everyone is the same and is safe. Of course I will tell them about the university. That they take care of every student and want them to enjoy studying. The Norwegian way of studying is just different to the German way I am used to. In my opinion the Erasmus semester should be about having a lot of spare time and a lot of traveling, having fun and enjoying life. So the plenty of free time was just perfect to sit around at Østsia, our secret living room, go on trips, go to the gym, party, just watch series after series or in general just enjoy your short time in Norway. Second, I will tell them about the bad experiences I made. Mostly it is about our housing organization, SiA. In general it is a good organization with nice dorms and they also take care of the people that are living there.
But there are some things I don’t understand and I don’t like either. Once, some friends of mine had a little party in their common room. People were sitting around, playing games, talking and all listening to music. At some point a Securitas man came and told us to leave and end the party. He first left and then came back again and threw everyone out. After that my friend had more trouble with SiA because they said the room wasn’t clean enough. My friend checked it again but there was nothing to clean. Afterwards SiA closed the common room for all the other students and my friend got a letter from them containing that my friend is doing something like that again they will end the contract. I don’t understand why students cannot come together and have a little party together in their common room. I think that is what it is for, right? To get people together in a larger room than their own dorm. We are students, in a period of our lives where we like to meet other people, where we learn a lot about ourselves and in another country about other cultures. We should be able to have a place where we can just meet up, get
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y L a t t i r B nd a n r o k r e f f ! fe Marleen Pready for hallloween to know each other and have fun together without being forced to go to a club! Why is there a problem with that? What exactly is the point of closing down a common room for a whole building? The next thing I don’t understand is about the general cleaning when you move out. Why is it not possible to get someone to look into our rooms and tell us if it is clean enough before we leave? Seriously that takes 5-10 minutes when the person knows how they want their cleaning to be done. I understand that SiA wants it absolutely clean before the next students are moving in, but why are they not giving us a real chance to clean it up on our own? When I am leaving in the middle of December, I, of course, have to clean my dorm. I have no problem with that. But SiA says they can’t check it before we leave because they don’t have our key. Here is another interesting point about it: I know that SiA has more keys to every room and dorm, than the one we have. Our lock broke so we got new keys because the technician didn’t find the problem in the lock. Same lock, different keys and they can’t get in our dorm without our key? They will charge
everyone with 75 NOK per square meter when it is not clean enough and we are not able to clean it again, but how could we when we are already home? It seems to me that they just want to make money out of everything and that makes me really angry. If anyone knows why they’re doing it like that, please tell me! So, anyway, that is probably the only thing that kind of destroys the general amazed resume I had about all my experiences, but still I do love my time in Norway and I will truly miss it. At last I want to say “tusen takk“ to all the friends I made, to all the crazy Østsia/Pir6 people that welcomed us so nicely in their volunteer group and helped us with Norwegian homework, to ESN for taking care of us all the time, to Unikum for letting me write my first articles ever, to the friendly Norwegians everywhere, og generelt tusen takk, Norge, for at du er så nydelig og beruset, og takk for et språk som alltid får meg til å fnise.
in Pir6
rn, o k r e f f e f leen Pa Krigar r a M ith and Ann w g n i k r Wo a Höcklin Lariss TEXT Marleen Pfefferkorn marleen.pfefferkorn@unikumnett.no PHOTO Katrin Rasenberger Ingo Pfefferkorn Britta Lya
desember 2012 unikum nr 8
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