out for a walk

since today is the 1st of may i had the day off and instead of studying i took the bus out to go for a walk. i wanted to explore a little and find a path up a mountain i've seen when walking there before. so i travelled light and only brought my phone as a camera. i wasn't really expecting any picturesque sceneries, because i was up on another smaller mountain last week and it was just grey dirt and rotten snow. but a lot had melted since then. i can't wait for all the snow to be gone and the trees to blossom.

i managed to find a path that went a bit up the mountain but i ended up having to walk off the trail to find my way up. it was a bit intimidating really, because the path i took was very improvised. also, i walked by some semi-fresh moose droppings (or at least i think they were... i'm no moose droppings-expert) so i was afraid i'd get eaten by walk into a moose... anyway, i didn't go all the way up because it got pretty steep and i didn't want to get lost (or eaten by moose). such a refreshing walk though, i feel like i spend all my time indoors reading or at uni. words cannot express how much i look forward to summer vacation, even though i don't have any definite plans yet. does anyone have any exciting plans for summer?

polar nights

these are a few photos i took of our view and the polar night sky while i was in tromsø for the christmas holidays (there wasn't much else to photograph). so this was the sky around noon when it was the brightest. which was not very bright, but colorful. i was hoping to see some northern lights as well, but of course it was pretty cloudy every night, and when it finally was clear enough there wasn't any northern lights to see. typical!

shoveling snow

i have honestly no idea why he does this. he loves keeping us company whenever we shovel snow and he often jumps up into the snow shovel and starts digging. findus is the strangest cat sometimes/always.
(sorry for my constant giggling throughout the clip, i couldn't help it).
also, i added labels to some older posts which might have resulted in them showing up again on bloglovin'? i'm not sure, but sorry if anyone was spammed with posts.

photo diary

this winter and last summer.


i pretty much use my iphone as a visual diary so here is a selection of a few photos i've taken since january (i've posted some of them on instagram already. my name is nikolinelr there too):


1. a statue at fengdu, 2. the crew on the ship in traditional chinese clothing (at least copies of it), 3. near the three gorges dam, 4. somewhere in wuhan, 5. and 6. somewhere between wuhan and yichang.



1. studying for midterms. it seems the weather is always perfect during exams! so frustrating. 2. one fine morning, 3. my mom visited for a few days and wanted to stay at a hotel rather than in my 12 m2 room and chaos kitchen that i share with 6 other students. i could understand that. so we got a room with a view to the city hall. 4. after sunset



1. i hung this poster on my door. i think it says something like "you can live without a lot of things, but not without cats and literature!" (any germans out there, please correct me if i'm wrong!). makes me happy every time i walk out the door. 2. i decorated my boring lab coat.



1. collecting dna from fish sperm on a stick! a bit like candy floss. 2. our first self made and self run agarose gel electrophoresis!



1. after the worst exam ever, i went down town and bought this skirt to make me feel better #materialistic. our teacher crammed way way WAY too many questions into a 2 hour exam, there was barely enough time to write something on each question, and even less time to think. hopefully they take that into account when they grade it. 2. i have no good explanation for this... the pixels are the limit?




1., 2., 3., 4., 5. and 6. findus, findus, findus... i was in tromsø for a week this easter and it snowed and snowed and snowed...


1. the bus stop near our house in tromsø, though not much compared to the piles of snow we saw elsewhere. 2. on the plane back to oslo.

china part ii - wuhan, suzhou and shanghai

after passing the three gorges dam the ship docked at yichang and we travelled by bus to wuhan, which took almost the whole day. the next day we visited the guiyuan temple and after this we took the train to suzhou. here we saw the ruiguang pagoda, the master of the nets garden, a silk factory, suzhou museum and finally sailed down the canals after dark.

after our day in suzhou we went by bus to shanghai, our final destination. first we visited the shanghai museum and then walked around the yuyuan-bazaar and down smaller streets to see how the people lived there. it was very different from anything i've seen before so it was very fascinating. we also stopped by nanjing lu for a quick look, and then went to the jin mao tower where we went up to the 88th floor to look at the view. unfortunately it was foggy so the view was a bit limited, but you could still feel how high up you were. the next day was the final day of the trip, and here we took the maglev train to the airport and back again, just to experience traveling 431 km/h (we'd be taking the bus there the next day). we also took a small trip on a tourist boat out on the river to see a bit more of the bund. it was sad to leave for oslo, i felt there was still so much i wanted to see. but i did get to see a lot while i was there, we pretty much went from one place to the next with hardly any breaks in between. i was exhausted by the end of the trip. not that i am complaining!

near the three gorges dam


between yichang and wuhan







sunrise over wuhan











the guiyuan temple











view from the ruiguang pagoda







at the silk factory



the master of the nets garden. so beautiful, but i would have loved to see it during the summer.



bonzai-tree inspiration! makes my bonsai hannibal look like a weed (yes i named my bonsai hannibal. i had an archibald too but it died)



sailing down the suzhou canals by night.











a cat at the people's square in shanghai



walking down some of the smaller streets in shanghai. someones dinner?







view from the jin mao tower



seen from the boat, with the jin mao tower in the middle



view from our hotel



shanghai by night