Campus Tour and After, Lunsj

After almost over three months of being here, I will finally give you a tour of my campus and some surrounding areas. So come along and follow me, let's go for a walk around the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, or as it's known to the locals Universitetet for miljø-og biovitenskap.

It's fall now, almost winter, so most of the trees are bare but just last week we still had some color.


The rows of small yellow trees are part of the campus apple orchard, from where I got the apples for the giant apple pie I made a few weeks ago. This hillside also has a pretty good view, but it gets better up the hill from the church. I don't go up there much except on my jogs.



We have a nice book store, or Bok Smia as it says on the sign. It's not cheap but it's close, and sort of looks like a farm building that they maybe used as such when the university was first founded. It is still very much an agricultural university, but with newer departments in the environmental, developmental and ecological disciplines.



Here's our Agricultural Museum, that I haven't been in since the first day but I always see the Ås locals hanging out here. It's like the Sunday meeting spot after church or something. Inside there are exhibits of Norway's agricultural past, including milking parlours, some of the first machinery, and even a replica of the spoiled first son's room, who was treated specially because he would take over the farm one day. In my jetlagged state that first week I fell asleep during the movie they played for us at the end of the tour.

Across from the Landbruks (Agricultural) Museum, there's the school duck pond.


You may notice the little house on the island. The UMB fraternity, the Hankatter (Tom Cats in English) have a tradition of keeping it painted red and white. I'm not sure if they do anything but party and watch this house to make sure no one paints it different for long. Others try, but very soon it is back to red and white.

Next we have the student center, SiT (student informasjons torg).




This is where I got my health care coverag figured out and teared up, and before that actually cried in Vilma's, one of the school's administrators, office. What is up with this building and me and crying. Oh, they have a cafeteria on the top floor with the most delicious pastries, I almost cried it was so good.

Across from that is my department's building, Noragric (I forget what it is in Norwegian! And I can't find it on the website..) which is the Department of International Environmental and Development Studies.



The master is split into Env. and Devel. studies. Haha mine's first in the title!



As I said, it's and agricultural university primarily. One of my roommates and another friend are in the horse training and breeding program. These people might just be locals though.

I have many classes in this building, the Tower Building. Not sure what the tower part is about. It is five floors of hard core economics, including my Political Economy class. And for some reason my Socio-Ecological Resilience class.

Nearby there are some really nice boreal forest fragments, maintained by the campus and local organizations. I took a walk in a new one last weekend, and was pleasantly surprised by this hand-drawn diagram of the geological history of this area:


So there was an iceberg here! In the picture it's the "isbre". After this picture is nice forest walk with many trees labelled. No English but I can figure out more things now that I know more words. There's a lot of campfire spots I see in the forests here.





People just feel free to use whatever forest area is around. Socialism.

And that's the end of my UMB special magic campus tour extravaganza! Hope you enjoyed it. I'll just finish with another food item I've been enjoying recently, the smørbrød, or open-faced sandwiches:


I put mayo, smoked salmon, cucumbers, and hard boiled egg over some whole grain brød, I mean bread. The one in back has kaviar from a tube, seen in a previous entry.


It's part of this complete lunsj, with tea and broccoli and mackerel paste salad, also from a tube. The mackerel, not the broccoli. It's good, I swear!