11/13/2005
Oslo, Norway
Well we are on the second leg of our little tour. This is me in front of City Hall overlooking one of the harbors in Oslo, the capital of Norway. We (Julie and Duane, who I work with) left Salt Lake on Tuesday. We arrived Wednesday afternoon in Copenhagen, Denmark. We spent Thursday and Friday training in the Copenhagen office. There wasn't a lot of time for sightseeing, and the weather wasn't too cooperative. We left Saturday morning for Oslo and arrived an hour later.
The Oslo airport is probably 20 miles outside of the city. They have a train that takes everyone to and from the airport. As we rode into the city I was amazed at how much the county looked like Montana. Lots of hills and mountains, nothing real majestic like Utah or Colorado. Lots of pine trees with a few birch trees. The city is like most European cities, lots of old buildings, winding narrow streets, and lots of cobblestone. Oslo doesn't have as many bicycles as we saw in Copenhagen. There seems to be more public transportation, maybe something left over from the winter Olympics that were here in the early 80s (?).
Today (Sunday) we were going to try to do some of the tourist things, but everything seemed to be closed. All of the tours are done for the season. So we decided it was best just to wander about on our own. We ended up and the primary cathedral and ended up going to most of the morning mass. It was quite interesting, especially because I didn't understand anything. Well, I take that back. At the end they had a choir sing a song and it was 'Till we meet again' sung in English. It was more of a contemporary rendition with the music provided by an electric synthesizer, guitar and drums. It was very different from the Latin masses I attended in South and Central America. There was a lot of singing; most of the sermons were given by women; and there wasn't the overbearing emphasis on the Virgin Mary. There are still images and figures of Mary, but nearly as prominent as what you see in Latin America. There was still the traditional organ (beautiful) that was played throughout the mass.
We happened to walk into the National Gallery of Art, mostly because it was raining and we needed a place to warm up. We hadn't planned on going because we thought it would just be a bunch of Norwegian art we wouldn't recognize. To our surprise they had a wonderful collection of Picasso, Monet, Van Gogh, Munch, Rodin, Degas, and Matisse. It was really wonderful with a lot of famous paintings that many would recognize.
Tomorrow we start another training at 8:30am and then head to the airport Tuesday morning around 5:30am heading to Brussels, Belgium. We'll be in Belgium for 3 days and then to Frankfurt Germany for 2 days and then finally back home.
For those who are wondering what it is I do that they send me all over the world, my team is in charge of most of the software that the employees use in each of the offices to support our distributors and customers. Most of the trips involve training the staff on how to use the software to be more productive and efficient. Sometimes our trips are more investigative where we are designing a new set of software and we need to observe their processes and make sure that we are developing something that will benefit them. Usually a couple of days face to face with these employees saves us weeks and months of conference calls. -Until next time...
The Oslo airport is probably 20 miles outside of the city. They have a train that takes everyone to and from the airport. As we rode into the city I was amazed at how much the county looked like Montana. Lots of hills and mountains, nothing real majestic like Utah or Colorado. Lots of pine trees with a few birch trees. The city is like most European cities, lots of old buildings, winding narrow streets, and lots of cobblestone. Oslo doesn't have as many bicycles as we saw in Copenhagen. There seems to be more public transportation, maybe something left over from the winter Olympics that were here in the early 80s (?).
Today (Sunday) we were going to try to do some of the tourist things, but everything seemed to be closed. All of the tours are done for the season. So we decided it was best just to wander about on our own. We ended up and the primary cathedral and ended up going to most of the morning mass. It was quite interesting, especially because I didn't understand anything. Well, I take that back. At the end they had a choir sing a song and it was 'Till we meet again' sung in English. It was more of a contemporary rendition with the music provided by an electric synthesizer, guitar and drums. It was very different from the Latin masses I attended in South and Central America. There was a lot of singing; most of the sermons were given by women; and there wasn't the overbearing emphasis on the Virgin Mary. There are still images and figures of Mary, but nearly as prominent as what you see in Latin America. There was still the traditional organ (beautiful) that was played throughout the mass.
We happened to walk into the National Gallery of Art, mostly because it was raining and we needed a place to warm up. We hadn't planned on going because we thought it would just be a bunch of Norwegian art we wouldn't recognize. To our surprise they had a wonderful collection of Picasso, Monet, Van Gogh, Munch, Rodin, Degas, and Matisse. It was really wonderful with a lot of famous paintings that many would recognize.
Tomorrow we start another training at 8:30am and then head to the airport Tuesday morning around 5:30am heading to Brussels, Belgium. We'll be in Belgium for 3 days and then to Frankfurt Germany for 2 days and then finally back home.
For those who are wondering what it is I do that they send me all over the world, my team is in charge of most of the software that the employees use in each of the offices to support our distributors and customers. Most of the trips involve training the staff on how to use the software to be more productive and efficient. Sometimes our trips are more investigative where we are designing a new set of software and we need to observe their processes and make sure that we are developing something that will benefit them. Usually a couple of days face to face with these employees saves us weeks and months of conference calls. -Until next time...
# posted by Jared @ 7:21 PM 
