Bridge up your life!

That was the title of the BEST Summer Course on bridge construction I've just been to in Trondheim, Norway. A perfect mixture of lessons, bridge building, bridge visiting :-), parties, making new friends and great fun! Take a look at these pictures to see what it was like:

With an Italian, Turkish and Greek friend in front of the Trondheim Dom. This is the most northern cathedral in Europe. It was struck by lightning and/or burned down loads of times in the course of history! Just as beautiful on the inside as on the outside by the way.

A mountain lake just outside Trondheim where we went to swim. About 22° C outside and 17 or so in the water. Refreshing ;-)

More swimming, this time in the ocean. I'm the tiny dot to the right on the floating platform.

The Norwegian fjords, scraped out by Ice-age glaciers, can be up to 700 meters deep. At the location of this bridge, the maximum water depth is 300 m. We climbed over 400 steps and some ladders to drink in the view from the top of one of the pylons. Most amazing! Beautiful how human and divine creation blend in together...

The bridge in the previous picture was a cable-stayed one. This one is a suspension bridge. Again crossing a fjord, replacing the ferries people used here in the past (and still use in numerous places). We walked with the whole group (over 30 people) to the middle of the bridge and jumped there, feeling it vibrate. I guess that counts as one of the 'accidental load conditions' the bridge is designed for ;-)

No worries though, it's obviously quite sturdy...

We also visited a 'network arch bridge'. Notice how slender the bridge is. We didn't try to crash this one ;-)

On the other hand, we tried building or own!

And buckling was never my favourite failure mechanism...

The aluminium truss bridge we built was stronger. It could carry more than 15 of us. Still the professor wouldn't let us try to jump this time...

We drove down on the weekend trip to see this bridge, located along the celebrated Atlantic Road. Really beautiful stretch of road built along some tiny islands at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.

The trip also brought us more inland. We're posing here in front of 'Trollstigen', the 'Troll's ladder/staircase', which is the name of the road you can see in the background, climbing the mountain in 11 hairpin bends.

Found a nice waterfall at the top of the Troll's staircase...

... checked if it was 'swimmable' ;-)

We had some water fun of a different kind too! The waves that day were, unfortunately, not so high (only up to 1 meter, and these fjord rafting boats can take more than 3 meters). The weather in Norway was really too good these last two weeks of August! Luckily we could enjoy ourselves jumping the surf of a larger boat, which pretty much made up for the missing natural waves :-)

More daytime fun. Crazy on the rocks =D

But also defending the Belgian colours at night!

And surviving the Viking Party. The Norwegian beer (also when home made ;-) ) is not bad. It's just that, euhm... Belgian beer is better!

But even the best party, wheter it's a Birthday, Viking, Singstar, Dress Up, Christmas or... party...

... can't possibly beat the Norwegian sunsets! We were even lucky enough to see some Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) while walking to and from the 'Studentersamfundet' (student society, and the name of the huge red building filled with discos and bars which is obviously one of the best places to party in Trondheim). By the way, notice how it's the Belgian people holding the beers...

A nice, alternative group picture to end with. And a BIG THANKS to the organisers who worked months to make this course so unbelievable!

And readers, if you're students of technology, check out www.BEST.eu.org to find out if you can also go on a BEST Course! Defo worth it!