Letters from Trondheim

Dear Blog, once again I find myself having to apologize for not keeping faith with the set schedule of writing one update per month. The fact is that you turn around for a second and 4 weeks have flown by! As usual very busy days, especially weekends that are now full as hard boiled eggs. But let's try to proceed with some order. Snø&Ski March was the best month for skiing. A LOT of snow came down during this period and I got the chance to attempt very though challenges with a guy that turned out to be quite on the same page as me in terms of 'take the challenge or die trying' (D if you are reading this: "are you fit?") We declared the ski season over with a nice 50Km (now I make it sound easy, but the last ~10k was just so painful) in which we got the full weather spectrum: sun, storm, snow storm and so on. That was fun. I don't think I have to mention that when I came back home I ate every single comestible thing I was able to find.   This is how I used ...

Dear humans, with a very big delay and a sadly short post, here are the updates of the past month.  I have been crazy busy at work, and on the weekends as well. Plus I am studying Norwegian, which turned out to be all but easy, especially the speaking, so I have full schedule most of the time. Safe Zephyrus This giant  highly advanced and efficient DP3 semi-submersible ASV was 4h drive from Trondheim and we got the chance to bring our robots in it to get some data. This thing is MASSIVE! And it's essentially a floating hotel, it can host up to 450 people. 2 amazing days in the Kristiansund area, very good beef burgers and super nice people. Skate&Beers On Friday night, until the ice lasted, we used to go ice skating and have some beers afterwards so we called this gang accordingly. At the beginning it was just 2 people including me, but it turned out to be a pretty cool activity and many others joined. Here's a pic of the crew. Cabin Trip We also spent a weekend in a beaut...

Dear humans, unbelievably I am writing a post on time. This morning I woke up even earlier than usual and I thought "shooot we are already in Frebruary!" and here we are. Cross-country skiing This is probably one of the most common activity of trondheim-borgere  to do in winter. And since these days  it snowed a lot, the conditions are perfect. Just to give you an idea of the amount of Km one can potentially do in one single training session, checkout skisporet . Not only you have the complete ski tracks map but also an almost real time update of the status of those. Really well done! I need to mention that from the city center there is a lovely and quite characteristic wooden tram that can take you to the closest starting point in less than half an hour. Ah: the tracks are all free-to-use, of course. Last weekend we had an easy 20Km session, with mandatory stop at  Elgsethytta  for waffles and hot chocolate. Ice skating Probably the second most popular act...

Dear humans, With a little bit of delay, here's my updates after one month living in Trondheim, Norway. This month has been simply amazing. The people, the city, the culture, everything seems to work simply great. As usual, here's the list of cool/interesting stuff happened during this period. Inner city Trondheim is beautiful, even in strange times like the ones we are experiencing. I will not make a trivial list of things that can be done in this city, the web is full of them. But I can guarantee that it is a city to be discovered. Every time I find myself walking through its tiny streets (remember, I'm still US-calibrated) I discover new details: a singular rooftop, a bright color, a delicious perfume coming from a Bakeri... (aaah I missed Europe so much! ok, I will stop saying that, I'm boring). Checkout this terrible collage I made with some photos taken around the city: it can't even remotely hold a candle to the real wonder of the place I've ended up! Out...

Dear humans, As promised I am going to start a new blog after my transfer in Trondheim, Norway. In case you do not remember, I have been living the past 14 months in Reno, Nevada. The change was quite brutal: switching from the one-day-of-rain-per-year, the desert, the guns, the land of freedom, the super sizes to the Norwegian culture will take some time.  Someone could ask "what the heck are you doing near the North Pole?" - I will continue my PhD in aerial robotics at the NTNU (which is Hogwarts). So far I'm shocked. I will make a clear example that reflects how the things are going here. On the 14th of November, the day I landed in Trondheim airport, on the way home I noticed a bike dropped on the ground nearby my house. Well, guess what. After 11 days the bike still there. Nobody took it. Insane right!? People here are extremely honest. They follow the rules (as an Italian, this is unbelievable), can you imagine that? I spent these past 10 days of quarantine training...