This year we cannot complain about a grey November, nor a grey December. Although the days were way too short in December, they were at least mostly filled with sunshine.
On the shortest day, December 22, the sun rose at 9:18 and set at 15:12 - making the day 13 hours shorter than on the longest day in June. Also, on such short days the sun makes it just so above the horizon - on the 22nd, it rises only 6.59° high. A normal house within the city is enough to shade the entire street even during noon.. .
Have a look at this graph from
sunearthtools.com, which shows the vast difference between the summer- and winter paths of the sun:
November was still very much like autumn. Colorful trees, first frost, but no winter-atmosphere yet.
Even by mid-December Oslo had seen only a handful of cold days - enough though to form wonderful ice crystals on our windows, and a thin layer of ice on the marka lakes. We forced some winter-atmosphere and Christmas-vibes by putting out the seed-feeder for the resident birds, visiting the classic Christmas-ballet 'Nutcracker' in the Opera, and preparing advent calendars.
As the lakes are not properly frozen yet, we tested our ice-skating skills on the big artificial ice rink in Majorstua. It was a lot of fun until Heidi's knee experienced that ice can be damn hard... . I hope she will be recovered and up for more ice skating as soon as the lakes are frozen. ;)
We also got to see a concert of
AURORA, a 19 year old Norwegian singer-songwriter from Bergen. Her debut album is scheduled to come out in March, but she already has a great selection of songs, and she provided a fantastic show during her concert in Drammen.
Just in time for the longest nights, we left Norway for a short Christmas trip down south to Germany and Switzerland. We squeezed in two days of delicious Ticinese pizza and excellent granite bouldering in sunny Cresciano. Hach... such a wonderful place to be!!
In Germany, we followed the standard Christmas-family protocol (driving between lunch and dinner appointments with different parts of the family), but added some unusual sightseeing side-trips, to show Heidi the main attractions of southern Germany ;)
For example, one of the largest Baroque palaces, the Schloss Ludwigsburg:
Another highlight was "Rome 312", a 360º panorama exhibition of Rome in the year 312, just after Constantine’s victory over Maxentius, by
Yadegar Asisi:
And of course, the beautiful spring (?) weather with flowers, butterflies, green hills and endless sun...!
