Hvor er Jake?: Stavanger

We got back from our weekend trip to Kristiansand and Stavanger yesterday, and, as a side note, I figured out what the story was with the two men in rowboats on the solstice celebration. They had rowed to Denmark, but were too tired to row back. They were doing it for the 150th anniversary of his famous Ibsen poem, Terje Vigen, which is set around Grimstad.

On the first day, we took a van from Grimstad to Kristiansand to visit Aker Solutions, and oil drilling machinery company. The van driver took almost half an hour to load our bags into the van (there are 13 of us), so we were really late to arrive at the plant. Still, the tour was great, because we got a chance to look at the hardware and really get a scale for how big these things are. They have a hydraulic power unit that goes on drilling platforms and had 8 pumps, each putting out something like 30 MW (40,000 horsepower)!

The sun sets on our first night in Stavanger.

After the site visit, we continued on to Stavanger - about a 3 hour drive from Kristiansand. We got in pretty late but took the chance to walk around the sentrum (downtown) of Stavanger before retiring to the hostel. Our hostel was attached to a hospital, so we enjoyed the sounds of helicopters flying in throughout the night.

In the morning, we got free breakfast from the hostel and discovered a delicious Norwegian breakfast food. We took a small, buttermilk pancake, buttered it, put on a piece of geistost, and then spread some jordbær (strawberry) jam on top... delicious.

A man suspiciously reminiscent of Churchill
overlooks the bay in Stavanger.

In the morning, we visited National Oilwell Varco, another large oil drilling machinery company. They are actually based in Houston, but much of their controls design is done at the Stavanger site in Norway. This tour was really cool, especially because they brought in one of their engineers who gave a great presentation on how they control what's going on at the location of the drill bit. We also got to use the simulator that they train drillers on before they go out onto the rigs. The simulator had a screen that wrapped around, so you could actually look around to see what was going on. Later, we went to the oil museum, but there wasn't much to talk about from that.

We actually experienced the main takeaway from the oil museum in person! Stavanger is a very important oil city, and as such, has become one of the wealthiest cities in Norway, therefore becoming one of the most expensive cities in the world! I had hoped to get some kind of souvenir, but I don't think I saw anything that cost less than twice what it should. We still enjoyed walking around the city and having some food and a (70 NOK) beer at a pub on the bay.

On our last day, we took a boat tour of the Lysefjord. Lysefjord is one of the most famous fjords in Norway because of its picturesque beauty. I didn't stay the extra night to climb Preikestolen, but I got to see it from +600m below. Enjoy the rest of the pictures!