Perpetual construction

Oslo, like most major cities in the summer, is doing a lot of construction work. Right outside my building is a construction site featuring 2 ginormous cranes. The control seat of the smaller one is directly opposite my twelfth floor window, the other must be about 15 storeys high at least. Every morning around 5-6 they start working at the construction site. Even 12 floors up with closed windows they're noisy as hell. So that noise lasted from the early morning to early evening. Then there was a company repaving the road right in front of the building overnight, so they would be noisy from 9pm-3am, leaving only a few precious hours of relative quiet. I now just received an email saying that there's going to be four new single room apartments built on floor 13-- fuck. I don't know exactly when week 34 is but that's when it's going to start and it's hopefully going to be finished by the end of the year. Yayyyyy. I'm going to try for a housing transfer as soon as I'm able to in October, more because of the distance from school than the construction (since the external stuff has to end in the winter anyways), but this contributes.

Akershus Festning

Another summer undertaking that can be the bane of tourists is restoration work on historic sites. I know that this is vital work to keep our monuments in good repair for many generations to come but fences and scaffolding can ruin the historic atmosphere and make for some less than appealing photos. I went and explored the Akershus fortress grounds yesterday and found many of the exterior walls covered in plastic and some wire fences around others. The castle area was unfortunately closed for a concert but it was nice enough to look around. Great view of Aker Brygge and some of the islands in the fjord. I also walked around Aker Brygge but didn't really understand the appeal; it was just a bunch of shops and restaurants that I didn't bother to go into. A couple nice fountains/statues. Lots of nice looking apartments that must cost millions.

 Also went and visited one of my favourite spots in Oslo- Sognsvann. Took a nice walk around the lake and took tons of pictures.

 

I still need to buy a pillow so I think a trip to Ikea is in the plans soonish.

Rainy day today so I'm staying in.