Brrr, cold!

Even by Oslo standards! The past two or three days, the whole city has been set upon by a very unpleasant snow storm, one which made hiking to the Evergreen on Friday a little trying, and briefly downed the T-bane yesterday. I'd gone downtown to do a necessary bit of shopping, and on my way back the T-bane stopped at Holstein.

For your viewing pleasure: the Oslo T-bane map.

I pretty much take line 3 for anywhere and everywhere I want to go; Mortensrud to get to campus, the Evergreen, downtown, and Sognsvann to get home. I live at Kringsjå which, as you can tell, is only one stop past Holstein. I've walked much longer distances since I've been in Oslo. My friends and I missed the last train home once and ended up walking from Blindern all the way back, and as you might recall from my blog entry at the time (or might not recall, I'm fairly certain my dad is the only one who consistently reads this thing), I had to walk from Kringsjå to Forskningsparken my first day of classes because the metro was down. Anyway, I said all that to say this: Holstein to Kringsjå? No problem.

I did not take into account the howling gale, nor the spitting, stinging snow that accompanied it. I have never before been so relieved to duck into the post box area to check my mail before, nor to immediately pop into the Kiwi shop to do grocery shopping. Anyway, I was too distracted yesterday to take any proper shots of the snow as it was falling, but here are some pictures of the snow as it has piled up on the quad outside my dorm:

A path carved into the snowdrift by one of the snow plows. That snow comes up to about knee height on a normal person, so... you can imagine how easy it would be for me to drown in it. (And that doesn't count the three inches or so you lose when your feet sink down into the snow on the path.)

Look, a death trap!--I mean, a staircase!

Good thing these exterior walls have such great insulation! ...yeah.

A shot of the snow piling up right outside my window. Hooray!

For some perspective; people chatting (and freezing) near a telephone box outside the Kiwi shop, here in Kringsjå. Yay winter! At least it's sunny today.

Anyway, after yesterday's ill-fated shopping trip, Tim and I finished off some of the left-overs from Mike's fantastic Italian cooking adventure on Friday, then had a Monty Python marathon. I also introduced him to "Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb." Tonight it looks like I might be going to Blå, that jazz club from several weeks back... assuming I can track down the right bus and get off at the right stop. We'll see what happens!