The report on „The Blue Trip Norway“, 6th - 9th May 2015
by Barbora Hazuchová & Ján Šebo
from The M. M. Hodža´s Secondary Grammar School in Liptovský Mikuláš.
Our school has always supported ecology and environmental activities and recently joined the project of ’’Blueschools“. With enthusiasm , we set the team and started to implement our plans. We´ve been happy to hear that 2 students with the teacher can travel to Norway. It was a problem to choose the most active students, but finally, Barbora Hazuchová and Ján Šebo could celebrate and enjoy the trip with Mrs. Anna Ďaťková.
On the first day we arrived to Oslo airport at 12:50 pm. A bus brought us to a hostel where we were accomodated for 4 days. That day we visited the Ambassador of Slovakia in Norway, Mr. František Kašický. He had prepared a short presentation of the main tasks of the Embassy and about all interesting things, habits and attractions in Norway. Later, it was time to get familiar with all the Slovak students and teachers. We had a nice evening getting to know each other while watching ice hockey match between Slovakia and Norway.
The 2nd day started in Nansen Park, which is a park rebuilt from Oslo’s old airport. Two nice and wise employees of NVE guided us and showed us the park. It was a wonderful park dispite of unpleasant weather. I think that during summer it must be a perfect place for families and children. They built artificial streams, lakes, wet lands there and the if there´s too much water from rains, this system helps to prevent Oslo from floods. More over, it is becoming an exclusive neighbourhood due to its nice and calm atmosphere. Then we were invited for lunch in the city centre by our guides from NVE. After lunch we continued in museums. At first we visited The Fram Museum which is a museum of Norwegian polar expeditions. It was nice experience. We could see original ship which was used for these explorations. Subsequently we were at The Kon Tiki Museum which is all about the Kon Tiki expedition which was also filmed as a documentary film. I really enjoyed the route from the museums back to the city centre because we took a boat. It is common mean of transport in Oslo. Then some of us went to see several sights in Oslo and after that we got back to our hostel and spent the evening with our new friends.
On the third day we were invited to NVE (Norwegianwaterresources and energydirectorate). There we could see a presentation about water management and flood protection. In fact, Norway has problems with floods, so they are trying to invent and improve new measures and solutions how to retain large amounts of storm water. We had learnt a lot about how it is possible to prevent floods in country. For example we can set rain water collectors undertheground and use water for garden irrigation, rain gardens, rain ponds, plant trees or create green roofs which can absorbup to 96% of rainwater.
Then we´ve been given an opportunity to present the presentation about us, about our work that we´ve done before and about things which we are going to do in the near future. After that we went to their hydrological institute resident in the same building where we could see many types of maps showing the current weather situations in Norway. Then we went to city, where showed us many places and are as with antifloods adaptation masures.
On the last day we had to leave our hostel at 11am. So we checked out from the hostel and a bus drove us to the airport. Oslo’s airport is very nice and modern building. We waited for our flight and then boarded the plane bound for Vienna. After getting our luggage we rushed for taxi and then we got on to train in Bratislava. We came home at about 11pm and greeted with our parents.
After these 4 days in “Blue Norway trip“ we realised how necessary is to direct our interests and targets to the protection of water and its further secondary use. More over we had learnt much new information, improved our communication skills in English language and last but not least we got lots of new friends.
It was short but amazing trip and it gave me a lot of new knowledge connected with ecology and I enjoyed every moment in Oslo. It is the breath taking city and the green ways of living are very important there. Although its high living costs, it is a perfect place for living. We have been inspired by your beautiful green and blue capital.
