Oslo, Norway

I only had a few hours to enjoy Oslo during a stopover on the way back to Munich from Svalbard, but I made the most of it and got a chance to tour Vigeland Park, a huge park and outdoor gallery of bronze, granite and wrought iron sculptures from Gustav Vigeland, depicting life, death, anger, joy, love and movement.

From the beautiful…

to the bizarre.

The focus of the park is on the 12 m monolith with 121 human figures intertwined in the background.

One of the first days of spring in the park.

I also had a chance to see the Harbour area filled with boats, sculptures, and people sitting around the wharf and on benches reading in the sun.

For those who know about my sign collection, I found another interesting addition. Caution, fat pigeons?

I really liked Oslo and it was one of those rare places I could actually picture myself living. It has a relatively small population of ~600,000, interesting architecture with balconies jutting out, lots of coffee shops and green space.

Paganello (Rimini, Italy)

This is the mecca of ultimate beach tournaments and the perfect way to spend Easter away from home. Italy was definitely a shock to the system after a few weeks above the arctic circle! We had four days of blue skies, cappuccinos between games, and wonderful Italian pizza, pasta and wine in the evenings, not to mention the parties every night. Unfortunately I forgot my camera and so these pics are from the Paganello website and my teammate Katrin.

Opening ceremonies on Thursday evening complete with men on stilts wielding burning branches.

Maitotytöt from Finland. They dress all alike with matching wigs making it impossible to match-up on defence….

I played with DNT (a mix of women trying out for the German national team) and we came a respectable 4^th out of 22 teams in the women’s division. One hard-core girl broke her nose two weeks before the tournament, but got this mask made so that she could play anyway. Her phantom-of-the-opera-look successfully intimidated the other teams.

The stands and other miscelleanous.