I’m spending a few days in Bergen to fill the time between the OpenNMS users conference and the Telemanagement Forum conference. I had originally planned to fly back home, but I was only going to be there for less than two days before I had to leave again.

Alex Hoogerhuis has been supporting OpenNMS since 2003, and he is one of the early contributors to our wishlist. As the founder of Norway’s Boxed Solutions, Alex has been deploying OpenNMS all over the place, including Norway and Africa. I was able to visit once before in 2008 so I thought it would be cool to come back for a few days.

This is a fun time of year to visit Norway. The weather tends to be nice (it was sunny and warm – best weather on my trip so far) and since May 17th is the national holiday the mood is always festive.

As Alex and I wandered around Bergen, he would constantly point out places where OpenNMS was being used. One was for a restaurant chain, and using a 3G modem he was even monitoring the cash register on a cruise boat.

Bergen is a port city and seafood is a big part of that. They have a number of holding tanks for the catch, which includes crabs, cod, and lobster.

Also hard to miss are the Russ. These are students who are graduating from high school, and tradition dictates that they wear special outfits from 1 to 17 May, pretty much without interruption. They are highly customized, and students can earn the equivalent of merit badges for performing tasks, some of them outrageous (such as running naked around a large pond in the center of town). I saw a number of Russ crawling on hands and knees across the main square and was told this was one of the more common of these tasks.

Another thing I noticed was that young kids would often run up to Russ, who would hand them something. I asked Alex about it and he told me about the “russekort” which are fake business cards that the Russ have made. Apparently there is a lot of demand for collecting these cards, both among the students (who view it as a way to meet members of the opposite sex) and children.

Unfortunately I leave for Nice on the 16th so I won’t be here on Monday to watch the parades as well as partake of hot dogs and ice cream (another 17th of May tradition), but Alex did treat me to some traditional Norwegian food.

We had lamb knuckles and lamb sausage, coupled with potato balls and mashed turnips. It was very good but extremely filling.

I spent Wednesday at the world headquarters of the Sirius corporation. It was great to meet Mark Taylor’s team, and to see another pure open source company thriving.

The Rivermead House is right on the river, with a number of canal boats parked out front. It was one of the many eerily similar things between our two companies (the OpenNMS Group offices look out over two small ponds).

Everyone sits together (which is also similar to our office) and I must adopt their method for cutting down on the amount of profanity used in the workplace. They have mapped a number of common swear words to various IT vendors and products, so it is not uncommon to hear something like “that is a big, steaming pile of [insert vendor name here]”.

Later in the morning Dj Walker-Morgan arrived. Currently the editor-in-chief for “The H” (a technical website with an open source focus) I did not realize that he was also one of the early employees of Micromuse. I am hoping Mark didn’t feel too left out as we reminisced about all of the people we knew back then (and if you happen to read this, Angela, we both thought you were awesome).

The only downside was that I had to cut the day a little short to make my plane to Norway. It was a great day and I look forward to a closer relationship with Sirius and seeing Dj again in the near future.

Being the big geek I am, I couldn’t wait to wander around Cambridge. While I have been to England several times before, to be able to walk on paths that I know Isaac Newton walked was exciting.

We walked down to King’s College, only to find a sign out front that said it was closed. Since I saw a number of young people ignoring the sign, I decided to as well, even if it was just for a few minutes.

Afterward, we decided to just wander around, which is incredible fun in a place like Cambridge. You never know what you might come across.

While I was busy looking at the history, Craig was sharped-eyed enough to spot this little sign at a business park as we walked back to the B&B which seem to be the offices of RealVNC.

On Tuesday morning we woke and drove to an OpenNMS client meeting just south of Cambridge. I think it went well. Lunch turned out to be from a small but very popular deli, which was quite good. Since our meeting wasn’t supposed to last two hours, but ran four, I take it as a good sign (although most who know me would suggest that I just talk too much).

We then took off for Surrey to try to beat the London traffic. Several years ago I met a man named Mark Taylor at a conference. He runs a company called Sirius that promotes free and open source software, and while I didn’t realize it at the time, his philosophy toward FOSS closely parallels mine. Since I was going to be in the area I suggested we get together, and Mark took it a step farther and invited me to stay at his house.

Craig dropped me off at the Sirius offices in Rivermead, and I spent a delightful evening at the Taylor residence. Most of the time was spent talking about open source, but we were also watching the change of power as David Cameron became the new Prime Minister.

While I am definitely not educated enough about the issues to have an opinion of the UK elections, I have been told by several people that the Conservative Party is very friendly toward open source (and here’s a comparison of different party views). As a country that, like the US, is facing a large deficit, moving toward open source solutions is one way to both improve services and reduce costs.

Now politicians have been known to say one thing whilst campaigning and do another once in office, but let’s hope this stays true.

I spent the morning in meetings with a client. They had a very nice office with a formal Japanese Garden just outside.

I think the meeting went well and that OpenNMS will be a good fit for their needs. In the early afternoon we got back in the car for the long drive to Cambridge.

Along the way we stopped for a bite to eat and I am constantly amazed by the wonderful little pubs in hidden place one finds in England. This one was right on the canal but hidden from the road. I just happened to notice a small sign as we drove by.

We talked with the guy running the place and he produced photos of some excitement they had recently experienced. It seems that early one morning a group of men had stolen a truck full of Corona beer, but the police found out and were chasing them. The driver made a wrong turn and ended up putting the truck in the river, nearly sinking a small boat that had moored there for the night (and its rudely awakened owner). Apparently some of the thieves tried to swim for it but they were all apprehended.

Luckily we made it to Cambridge without such an incident and I’m about to go and wander the same streets as Sir Issac Newton. That, to me, is incredibly cool.

I made it to London with little issue, but before I got on the plane I stopped by the restroom. It’s part of my personal credo that I never pass up a chance to eat, sleep or … go to the bathroom. Of course I forgot that I was in a JAL lounge:

It was rather frightening when the lid rose all on its own.

On the rather short flight I managed to watch last week’s episode of LOST. All I can say about it is … damn.

My friend Martin picked me up at Heathrow and we drove off to his home in Lyndhurst. We had a delightful lunch and then walked around the New Forest. That evening we went to The Oak in Bank, which is probably my favorite pub in all of England.

Today Dr. Gallen picked me up and we drove for about 6 hours up to the northwest part of England to a town called Rochdale. We have a client visit scheduled for tomorrow, but Rochdale is probably best known for Gordon Brown’s “bigot” gaff during the election.

Tomorrow night will find us in Cambridge, long time home of Sir Issac Newton. I’ve never been but I look forward to it.

Well, my 2010 European odyssey is underway. Ben and I made it safely out of the US and are currently at London’s Heathrow airport awaiting our flight to Frankfurt.

I’m using the time to work on my presentation for the OpenNMS Users Conference – Europe and hoping I can stay awake for the rest of the day in order to more quickly get on this time.