My 2018

Somehow, I feel like 2018 has been less eventful than the years before; on the other hand, if I think about it a little more, that's not fully true. It has been somewhat fluctuating, in some months I did a ton of things and in others less, and what did I do in November? Beats me. So, this year's summary will be free-form. Maybe I will return to the summary by months as I've always done it before, that remains to be seen.

 I have been travelling quite a bit this year, however it has all been well inside my comfort and familiarity zone. I did get some new ships done, and I'm most happy about finally getting to visit Riga and Jurmala in January, 11 years after my last time. I visited the Livu waterpark in Jurmala, which still crowns the top of my best waterparks list, and afterwards I took the Isabelle across the Baltic Sea to Stockholm, which means that I have now sailed on every ship in the Tallinksilja fleet. Additionally, I sailed on the Fjord Cat and Bergensfjord for the first time this year which means that I've also been on all Fjord Line ships. However, that is perhaps not as impressive considering their total fleet is only four (albeit very fine) ships, compared to Tallinksilja's 11 (not counting cargo or chartered ships, nor the former Superstar that I have also sailed on). I also came close to completing the whole Color Line fleet of 6 vessels, but bad luck prevented me from getting Superspeed 2, as her sister Superspeed 1 was replacing her for some reason when I was travelling.

Fjord Cat, the holder of the record for fastest transatlantic crossing (2 days, 20 hours, 9 minutes at 41,3 knots from New York to Bishop Rock in July 1998) is one of the handful of new ships I sailed on in 2018.

Additionally, Denmark got a lot of love from me this year; I cruised to Copenhagen twice, and took two bigger trips with multiple destinations. I also did a daycruise to Kiel in Germany, travelled through Sweden quite a lot, and visited both Finland and Estonia. During a nice trip to Finland that I took in December, I also got to see my favourite band Nightwish live.

As a lover of amusement parks, I had my wishes set on Liseberg because of their new rollercoaster, and Gröna Lund simply because it has been ages, but I didn't end up in either of those; instead, I visited Tusenfryd, the quite nice "local" amusement park outside Oslo, Tivoli in Copenhagen, and Legoland in Billund, and the latter two were new to me, so I'm not complaining.

A shot from Tivoli...

... and Legoland

I've also moved around within Norway a lot, mostly around the Oslofjord, and I would like to highlight the two trips to Drøbak and Oscarsborg during the heatwave in July as very, very nice and enjoyable.

Of course this epic ride being the main reason why, hehehe
On a more serious note, Oscarsborg is a very "instagrammable" fortress and I can hardly imagine a sweeter place to spend a hot summer day.

In February, I started regularly working out and trying to improve my flexibility, which I can say by now has resulted in my upper body no longer being useless, more general strength and stamina and the best flexibility I've had since as long as my age has consisted of two digits. That's definitely something I intend to continue working on, as I find it a lot of fun to actually be able to do stuff. Additionally, in October I joined the Fredrikstad Roller Derby team, meaning that I now get to rollerskate at least weekly, which I absolutely love and have certainly been missing a lot. All of that also means that I've met quite a few new and interesting people which helps a lot in a new(ish) place.

And of course, if I talk locals, I have to talk about language, too. Very shortly before the end of last year I started to learn Norwegian on Duolingo really seriously for the first time - and by that I mean daily, as the app is intended for. 

In about half a year, I completed the entire Norwegian tree (mind you, mid way through they revamped their system which slowed me down a lot as I worked on leveling up some of the earlier stuff). The English to Norwegian course is, according to all of the various statistics I looked up, their most extensive course, consisting of 117 skills containing 3265 words and some really, really entertaining sentences, for example pop culture references, puns and traps. Although I've been absolutely lousy at following up ever since and haven't done much leveling up of skills (thus the memes), it did give me an amazing start. In a year I've gone from A1 to a rather solid B1 by just that, keeping my eyes and ears open and talking as much as possible and reasonable. I'll just say that if I manage to do a similar jump to C1 in another year (probably not realistic but a girl can dream, can't she), I will be very happy (and probably have broken some records of effort to learning speed ratio). However, I do scout for actual classes and other learning possibilities as well.

New year's resolution: make the poor Duolingo owl a little happier

Generally, while 2018 didn't bring anything particularly groundbreaking for me, I did have a lot of great times. Other than the aforementioned main points, I've been trying to settle in Norway and hunting for jobs and other opportunities. I do really hope that 2019 will finally bring me some success in that field; I've also been scouting for potential future studies, but that's not a top priority at the moment; plus, all the good stuff is only taught in Norwegian, which brings me back to needing to keep that Duolingo owl happy. I also look forward to keep upgrading my body and and physical abilities next year, rollerskate my ass off, and most importantly of all, to have a good time. Afterall, what is life for if not some good fun, shits and giggles?