Of Krauts and Kats

So it's been a lot longer than I realized since I last made a post here. Partly been quite busy and partly settled into a bit of a routine over here. Winter is coming into force (i.e. sunrise at 8, sunset at 4.30, ice cold temps, etc.), lax practice continues and work has been taking up more of my time. That's not to say I haven't been enjoying the surroundings (all work and no play make Seabass something something...), just nothing particularly post worthy. I've been dabbling in the restaurant scene, making Norwegian and Danish friends, going to more opera and even some travel for work.

So first off, we had our first snow here last week (October 21 to be exact).

This was from when I got out of Marriage of Figaro last thursday, a beautiful and pleasant surprise out on the stone walkways surrounding the operahouse.

More importantly, there is a new member to the family, my cat Clementine :)

I rescued her from a dude who's allergic girlfriend is moving in and if they couldn't find someone to take care of the cat they were going to kill it! I mean what the fuck?! Chick gets the sniffles and the cat has to die for it because they don't want to deal? I wasn't about to let that happen so I adopted her and that's that.

She's adorable and super friendly. Her coat is nice tiger stripes but she also has orange splotches all over her like someone spilled orange juice all over her. Hence Clementine instead of her old stupid name, Rosita. What is she, a Mexican housekeeper?

Now some random pictures from my business trip to Germany. In 3 days we hit up 4 cities and 5 companies including 3 of the 4 largest utility firms in the country. In my mind I thought that added up to 19 of awesomeness, but in reality it was just a ton of meetings and travelling. Didn't get a chance to really see any of the cities but here are some random pictures I collected.

I know that's kind of a jumble but let's just call it a stream of conscious replication of my trip experience. Yeah I'm gonna run with that.

Next on the schedule is our first lax tournament this weekend. I think we're gonna be in good shape and all the boys seem stoked. Pictures from that will definitely be up on here. Also I'm heading back to the states next week for another business trip and will be palling it up with all my old friends in NYC as well as visiting the family for a bit. Again pictures. Ok then that's all, I'm out.

Krakow

Had a great weekend in Krakow with family and friends, always great to see some friendly faces in a foreign land! This story is best told through pictures, so I will start it up.

Outside Wawel

A memorial to Katyn

The old town square Cloth Hall

The famous church, Kościół Mariacki

Another view of the church, well known for it's hourly trumpeting

Then there was the farm in the hills outside of Krakow that we visited for a day. Lots of food was grilled and eaten, sleeping in the car followed.

That was a truly awesome day. I even got the chance to pick wild mushrooms in the forest, which we then grilled fried up.

Lastly, a couple shots from a nice restaurant we went to called Gruby Ryby, literally translated into "fat fish". Tasty to say the least.

I also learned the old Polish recipe for moonshine, 1410 based off of the Battle of Grunwald, 1kg of sugar, 4 liters of water, 10 deciliters of yeast. Yeah baby, time to start some home brewing! That recipe will give me about 2 liters of Spiritus (190 proof) which I can mix with honey and some other stuff to get some old fashioned Mioldowka!

Lax is also going really well, the team has progressed remarkably over the past 3 weeks. We have our first tourney in Kristiansund last weekend of October, so we're gonna have a sweet road trip with the team and our cheerleaders. Also in second week of October I'm going on a business trip to Germany visiting Hamburg, Frankfurt, Karlsruhe, Essen, and Dusseldorf. Lastly, I started up my Norwegian language tutoring, hopefully that starts paying dividends soon. God dag alle sammen!

Visiting Poland

I'm taking a flight to Krakow today to visit some family there, should be a great time and I will be sure to have some good pictures for Monday. Also, I am typing this on my cell phone and it wont let me make new paragraphs for some reason. In other news, lax practice continues well, there is one dude who is a sick athlete, he will be the cornerstone of our D. I also attended a bar social event with the team last night which was a college wide thing. College!!!! Norwegians get REALLY drunk, it is a heckuva good time. The past couple weeks have been filled with several conversations on cultural differences between and the natives, I will broach those when I get to a real keyboard. Hooray mobile blogging...

Opera

Had my first experience with the relatively new Oslo Opera House this weekend when I went to see Tosca. It was the first time I saw that particular opera and it indeed lived up to all the praise I've heard about it. The opera itself was great, performances overall very good, the only downside was that the woman who played Tosca was kinda fugly. Eh, they can't all be winners. Below I'm putting some pics and a quick panoramic video I took of the outside. It's got an iceberg/ice cube theme going on and has won several big (apparently) architectural awards over recent years. I was pleased.

Lacrosse practice also is proceeding in earnest, these guys may have some potential. I'm trying to do my best Mike Murphy impression to turn em into a legitimate squad. Decent athletes with no game sense or stick skills = strong defense. That's the plan anyway, hopefully we'll patch together some offense along the way. All in all, it's a great thing to be a part of and they seem to be having fun getting yelled at and doing stick drills so far.

Have another!!!!

Lax in Oslo

Last night I had my first meet up with the local lax bros and to paraphrase the immortal words of Brian Cox from The Ringer, I looked like freakin' Carl Lewis out there. To be fair, the most experienced players at the "tryouts", including the members of last year's squad, have been playing for less than a year. They let me skip the tryout part of the session, which was nice, and it's now looking like I will be the coach as well as a player.

Even though the competition isn't exactly strong, I am very much looking forward to the experience. We have a squad of solid athletes and if I can pass along at least a few of the lessons acquired via the "Mike Murphy Insano Training Regime", then we could be possibly the best team in Norway. I am very excited for the opportunity to build something here, this could be my Norwegian legacy!

Additionally, they had a bunch of girls out who may end up being the first girls lax team in Norway, which would be awesome on so many levels. As a fall back, they said if they couldn't get a team together they would be our cheerleaders, so uh...yeah, win win.