on travels and travails

I'm not someone who likes to travel. But I honestly don't seem to be able to avoid it, especially these days.

I moved from Australia when I was 19, to move to the United Kingdom, both because of my significant other and because I had been offered work. Thanks to her, I travel to Norway an awful lot, too, seeing as that's where she's from. We're planning on moving there this summer, too.

In addition to that, I occasionally travel places for work (I've been to Finland once this year), and various conferences, which is the 'meat' of this post. I'm attending MeeGo Conference in two weeks time, in San Francisco, and I've just booked my tickets for the Qt Contributors summit in Berlin in June.

All in all, we're only in the first half of the year, and I've already visited (or planned to visit):

• Norway
• United Kingdom
• Amsterdam (as a stopover)
• Germany
• United States
• Finland

So, as someone who dislikes travel, can I please stop doing it now? ☺

Oslo!

If you know me better, you'll know that I don't like to travel all that much. Unfortunately for me, this is a cruel irony given both that my family lives in Australia and I live in Europe nowdays - and more relevantly - that I like Norway a lot, amongst many reasons thanks to my significant other, who is Norwegian.

We tend to visit a few times a year, in particular, spending a few months there over summer - and this year is no exception.

This time, though, we decided to do something new. Believe it or not, despite having visited Norway maybe ten times or so in the past few years, I've never been to Oslo. Kamilla hasn't been there much either. So with that in mind, and the possibility to say hi to a few great people at the Oslo Qt office, we headed south for a few days.

It wasn't a pleasant trip down there, unfortunately, as NSB (the train operator) managed to screw things up pretty badly. We were delayed for around 1.5-2 hours total after the train broke down, eventually they gave up on fixing it and sent for some busses - 3 hours nonstop on a bus when you haven't eaten since breakfast is a little rough, but, we made it in the end.

(never, have I stared so long at railways as this day. :))

(off for a wander..)

We weren't there for too long, just a few days - but we got to see some nice sights wandering around on foot, I got to experience trams for the first time (and I must say, I love them), and of course, got to say hi to some great and friendly people from Qt along the way.

(In particular, I'd like to say a huge thanks to Benjamin - for both putting us up (and putting up with us ;) during our time in Oslo, to Andreas - for being a cool guy, and every inch as insane in real life as on IRC - to Thiago and Thomas for an afternoon (and night) of interesting chatter - to Bradley for finally saying hi in person after occasional chats on IRC for far too long - and to everyone else I waved at, said hi to, and otherwise distracted)

(awesome walk is awesome!)

All in all, I'm quite impressed with Oslo. It didn't really strike me as being just a city, it felt more like a town which just happened to house a few hundred thousand more people than usual. I'm not sure whether this is just great design on the part of the city or due to the geography, but the greenery everywhere, water (see above) and relative lack of noise and good public transport all helped.

(last day, shortly before heading to the airport)

I'm not a fan of cities, but I actually enjoyed my time there. :)

(myself, and our gracious host, Benjamin, after a bit of a wander

 up to the dam supplying Oslo with something like 80% of their water..)