Aluminum Recycling Conference Kickoff!

It has been another week in Trondheim, and not too much has happened, I think I have pretty much adjusted, although not to the food situation yet(twice as expensive and not that good :( ) See below, never before did I know that you could buy prepackaged, frozen pancakes! So I bought some, very tasty!

I had to cancel my trip to Trollveggen due to bad weather, cause its not good to climb a mountain in the rain, and not that much fun. But it didn't turn out too bad, I started the weekend off with a couch surfing BBQ at a nearby surfers house.

It turned out to be really successful, about 15 people showed up, which is quite a lot for a couch surfing event. I remember at least nine different countries represented there, I'll see if i can list them off. Canada, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Macedonia, Portugal, Cambodia, and Samba, maybe more. But it was really cool and interesting to talk to all of these different people about their cultures and preconceptions and stereotypes and learned that I really don't know that much about other countries. But an important thing is that I am going to have to get very good and quickly and effectively explaining the difference between Canada and the States, cause I heard a lot of "but they are pretty much the same, right?" uhhh

And to bring in the title of this post, today was the social event to start off the conference on aluminum recycling. It is in Norway because there is a huge aluminum industry here due to the large quantity of cheap electricity available here. How they do it is to drill up into a lake from underneath, because they have so many high lakes, and then build a hydro station underground, so all that you see is a tunnel and power lines, and there you go, cheap power, and you don't even have to build a dam!

The social event was a little tour through the old part of town, starting near the wooden palace and ending at the docks.

Our tour guide with his two dogs, this guy was hilarious, knocking the evil Swedes and the capitalists from Oslo! His dogs loved eating aluminum foil they found on the ground, which was quite a hit with the aluminum recycling crowd...

The oldest remaining building (brown one) on the riverside. I think it was built in the mid 1700's, there have always been houses and things on the river, but they have a tendency to burn down, and there have been at least 29 major fires where a large portion of the town burns down! :)

Then we got a boat ride out the to old prison/monastery/WW2 gun station island in the middle of the Fjord.

The entrance tunnel to the island fort, I guess they needed walls this thick to keep out cannon balls.... yah ok.

The build circular prison building on the island, I didn't get a good look, but I'll be back to snoop around ;)

The meal was free (pretty awesome) and we had served beer and wine, and cognac after dinner (more awesome). And I got to learn about some Norwegian food culture, like having to clean your own shrimp, which is really time consuming, messy, and kinda made me not have any shrimp tonight ;)

Our dinning room in one of the old buildings on the island, very rustic!