Snowshoes

Well the Olympics in Sochi are well underway! Skiing, skating, curling are all sports that Norwegians are familiar with and like to take part in! For years though, if you haven't been able to ski or skate, the winter here doesn't offer you many opportunities to enjoy the beautiful scenery! When there is a couple of feet of snow lying around it isn't exactly easy to go out hiking!

However, it appears the Norwegians are takng a leaf out of their fellow European, and American cousins' book, and have started to import snowshoes. Of course, not content with selling them as an alternative to cross country skis, the Norwegians are using them for snowshoe racng!

In Bergen, the first snowshoe race was held yesterday up on Ulriken, the highest mountain overlooking Bergen. There was one small problem though - no snow! Hey - it is a snowshoe race so instead of wearing them on their feet the twenty or so participants had to wear them on their hands!

It's been a while ....

Sorry not to have done much blogging for a while, but I kind of ran out of steam. Then I had several weeks of working on and off at school plus my usual feeling of wanting to hibernate in the winter (not helped by a lack of sunlight and too much rain) and ....

Excuses over - I am back again. These guys look so cute - like crazy coloured zebras that have been plugged in at the mains.  This is the Norwegian men's curling team dressed for the Sochi Olympics. They deserve to win a medal just fior wearing the uniform :-) 

Now I understand why Norway doesn't really feature on the Scandi design radar. I mean I can't see this design making London Fashion Week, can you? Norway - the innovator of the cheese slice, onesie and sweaters with reindeer on them! 

By the way am using the blogger app for the first time. So if this post doesn't quite 'look' right (i.e. photo or title not in the right place on the page) I blame Apple!

How to escape from jail in Norway ...

How? Well, of course, use a wooden butter knife! Apparently the mortar between the bricks on the outside wall of Hedmark prison, built in 1863 is so fragile you can easily scrape it out, and since the inside consists of plaster board and insulation material it didn't take much for an Albanian, charged with drugs offenses, to work it out! In addition, the break out was caught on the prison's CCTV cameras, but no-one was watching at the time (well it was early in the morning!). It was only discovered that he had escaped over an hour afterwards. The police and prison staff are suitably embarrassed!

Of course, being Albanian, he probably has no idea of just how good and supportive Norwegian prisons are - he probably should have stayed inside. The following link from an article in The Guardian from February seems to confirm this!

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/feb/25/norwegian-prison-inmates-treated-like-people

Interesting reading.