Saturday, November 24, 2007


Aside from the cold, Norway is a nice and quiet country. Particularly, the train journey from the capital Oslo to a more picturesque Bergen was relaxing. You can also order some food and beverages while enjoying the scenic view of snowy mountains and beautiful lakes sliding on the window by your side. After spending night and day on the train, I finally arrived in Bergen, a small town located in a scenic gulf surrounded by mountains which overlooks the small but friendly town. Most teenagers come here for skiing, but I am too old to get excited over the sports, so I was wandering around the town looking for something to eat and ended up having a piece of waffle in a shopping mall. I like it very much, the best waffle I've ever had! Though not so many, Thai restaurants can still be found in almost every cities I have been in Scadinavia and in Bergen alone there are two. The food was so good, if you don't mind paying almost 1,000 Baht for a bowl of Tom Ka Gai while in Thailand you can get the same thing in the restaurant for less than 100 Baht!

Here I visited the University of Gergen and met people who are behind the construction LOB (Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen) Corpus and COLT (Bergen's Corpus of London Teenage Talk) corpus as the research center of the two corpora is here. After a night here in Bergen, I headed back for OSLO, the capital of Norway, which is a little less attractive to me, so I did not spend the night here. Instead, I booked a train to Copenhagen in Denmark via Goteborg in Sweden.