Summer in Norway.

The weather this weekend has been glorious, and combined with the knowledge that our time here is running short, we have all been madly BBQing and sunbaking.

Thursday night we headed to a bar in the city. "Drunkard" I can hear you thinking as you imagine a tale of vodka og vin and walking home in the early morning light. Well, you're wrong: we went to this bar for a night of culture.

The bar was called the Underwater Bar, and with good reason for its interior resembled a ship, complete with wooden beams and some fantastic scuba diving pictures on the wall. Themed bars in Norway are cool- they don't seem to spare kroner on making the place look authentic. Anyway, as we imagined the rocking and the creaking of a ship in the depths of the sea we heard another sound. Opera.

The Underwater Bar is host to professional Opera singers who come and perform on Tuesdays and Thursdays every week. They sing short bursts of three songs followed by a 20-30 minute gap. The singing was fantastic- in German, Italian and lots of songs in Norwegian. One of the Norwegian songs had the large crowd laughing hysterically, but our Norwegian is not quite that good yet! But I did add a new German phrase to my expanding list of German vocabulary "Ich möchte deinen Atem trinken" (I want to drink your breath). Slightly more cultured than the German pick up lines I have been learning.

Saturday morning dawned (4am) bright and sunny and after a morning of study, yearning to be out in the sun, we headed off to an island in the Oslo fjord for a BBQ in the afternoon. Wow. It 25 degrees (meaning every Norwegian was out and about) so we got a ferry there using our regular public transport tickets, hiked over the island to the perfect spot on the rocks overlooking the beach and set up our disposable BBQs. Veterans of a number of BBQs here now, we'd gone classy with grilled aubergine, chicken and capsicum skewers and potato salad. Unfortunately we couldn't find any skewers, but it was a delicious meal all told. However, the highlight was still to come as we stripped down to our bathers and went for our first swim in the Oslo fjord.

(see http://www.visitnorway.com/ProductImages/Tellus/733_23_large.jpeg for a great aerial shot of the islands)

Well, the water was slightly chillier than expected and one look at the bottom of the sea saw us wearing our thongs, but I'm glad to say I did it. The good news is that thongs float so if they get snagged on the rocks and seaweed in the murky depths of the Oslo fjord you can easily recover them. And the best part was relaxing on the rock in the sun afterwards, where we stayed for the rest of the afternoon.

In hindsight: when packing to go to Oslo, one really should pack sunscreen. Particularly if one intends to wear their funky H&M sunglasses whilst sitting on the rocks on an island in the Oslo fjord. Particularly if one does not want to look like a fool the next day with a bright pink nose and a pale line delineating the extent of the sunglasses' protection. Nevertheless, the lesson has been learnt and the warning posted to you all: now don't attempt this at home.

Heading back home, sleepy after an afternoon in the sun, we decided to stop at a supermarket in the central station to grab a few groceries before a relaxing night in. This was where things went wrong as we found ourselves in a two-aisle-long queue at the only supermarket open after 4 on the day before a long weekend. Usually, shops open until around 8, but due to yet another public holiday on Monday (and the shops never open on Sundays), they decided to close early.

However, the atmosphere in the shop was jovial as people grabbed groceries for each other and chatted about their afternoons in the sun. This is not very Norwegian, so must be a combination of a) the weather (it's well known that the Norwegians are more extroverted in the sun) and b) the fact that the only idiots trying to shop at 6pm on a Saturday night before a public holiday were foreigners. At one stage I was chatting to a British couple who complimented me on my English! I should have replied by mentioning that I'd been learning it for a long time, but instead I confessed that I was Australian and they looked even more confused.

Today was also 25 degrees- incredibly warm here. There's something magic about summer here. After a long cold winter summer seems so feminine, so doe-eyed, so dainty, so gentle compared to the brash heat of Australia. Everything is green, there are Norwegians everywhere enjoying the sun, the men without shirts on, the women in tiny bikinis sun baking on lawns, rocks, beaches. The flowers are stunning and all the fountains have been turned back on. The sunlight is just indescribable- it paints everything in a stunning way, and lasts for so long in the day.

After a morning's study we strolled up the road past some gorgeous colourful cottages to an enormous lake called Sognsvann. Surrounded by a forest of pine trees, the lake has the sun sparkling across it and dozens of little piers and pontoons for relaxing on. The atmosphere was like that of a beach- runners, little children running around splashing each other, bikinis and shirtless men everywhere, BBQers a plenty. Very few people swam and those that did simply jumped in to refresh themselves. Until the Aussie arrived.

Lenka and I set our towels on a pontoon and after a period of dangling my legs in I jumped in. To the shock of the watching Norwegians, I swam round for about 25 minutes before swimming to the other pontoon to climb out the ladder. It was so lovely with the sun and the clear brown water. And it really wasn't as cold as everyone seemed to think.

We chilled in the sun for another hour or two before returning home to eat jelly and icecream before hitting the books again. One of the Spanish girls is having a BBQ there tomorrow night for her birthday, before we commence our labour ward duties on Tuesday (after the public holiday of course!)

Anneke