OSLO, NORWAY

2015-12-15, 11:31, JASON

STAY: KAROLINE'S HOUSE

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A good pal of mine, Karoline, from LSHTM, is Norwegian. She oozes Norwegia. That's not a typo, I just made up that word to mean "the essence of Norway." So, she's pretty fucking Norwegian, but it's great. She brought brown cheese once to the school, and I've been in love with that ever since. She carries a chic, simple Nordic-style Norwegian passport. She's blonder than Barbie in appearance, not smarts. She's Norwegia.

She invited me to stay with her at her place when she returned after the program at our school finished, so I took her up on the opportunity. This is the first solo trip I've done in a while, as she was working, but it was a treat to get to go, with included housing. Flying down, you get a view of the Norwegian landscape, and it's stunning. Probably one of my favorites. Just alpine realness. I can't stop saying "Rygge" (the name of the airport, pronounced like ree-guh) in a silly Norwegian accent. When I arrive, I do some sightseeing. The pictures are noticeably less interesting since there's no one in them, so they might as well be taken from postcards. I go visit the Oslo Opera House, constructed in a modern style, and you're able to walk on the ceiling and 'explore' the building as opposed to just listen to music in it. It's bordering along the Oslo fjord and so it gets a nice breeze as well while you're walking. Afterwards, I make my way to Akershus Fortress, also along a body of water, to explore the grounds. Probably built for some protection against some war at some point. Wikipedia will do a better job than I ever will.

After the fortress, along the other side of fjord is the Nobel Peace Prize museum. It was closed the day I went there so I decided to go the next day, but still got a picture. Actually, walking down parallel to the fjord, there were some nice bars and open places to eat. It was kind of like a mini-pier of sorts, and had that kind of outdoorsy vibe you usually get with cities built along some body of water.

An interesting thing in Oslo (and, from what I've heard, other Nordic countries) is that their metro systems are 'free.' What I mean by that is, the barriers that usually open upon tapping of a card are always open. But, the barriers are there, just not functioning. Everyone still buys a ticket though. It's kind of a social-upstanding citizen program, whereby people are expected to pay, but not enforced to do so. I could never imagine anything like that sliding in the U.S. 

Anyway, it's getting dark, and Karoline tells me to meet her so we can go for some sightseeing and Norwegian food. She takes me to the Royal Palace, whereby just a few months before a bunch of Norwegians got together to celebrate Norway and things. She also took me to the Storting which was the Parliament house. Super cool building. Apparently, she was telling me the translation just means round thing. Practical, and efficient.

We ate some yummy Norwegian food. Couldn't tell you what it was, don't remember, honestly. It was good? Yes, I'm sure.

The next day, I decided to take a boat across the way so I could see the Viking Ship Museum as well as the Museum of Cultural History. Normally, I'm not a huge fan of museums, but this one you got to take a boat so, why not. The ride was relatively short, pretty easy to get across. The whole journey, I felt like I needed Enya playing in the background man. The museums were hard for me to find. People just disembarked and starting walking up a hill, so I did that, and they all were just as lost as I. So it took me a while to, you know, read a map and find where it was. It's funny, because I travel with Thorin so much, and recounting this now, I could've sworn that he was there the whole time, only, he wasn't. Too inseparable. I'm going into a bit of a withdrawal at this point (not really) looking at viking ships without someone to bitch about them with.

After, I take a bus outside of the museum and head into Vigeland sculpture park. This one is really good if you want to appear art-douche in front of your friends. It's a long stretch of park with sculptures spread throughout, designed by Vigeland, who was also the designer of the Nobel Peace Prize medal. The statues are funky, but they're probably commentaries on something, after all, what is art but commentary on a medium? See - douche fodder. You can appreciate weird sculptures, take pictures of them, and then make silly comments like I'm going to do now:

After the park, I went to see the Nobel Peace Prize museum and it was just a bunch of old people winning awards. I'm sure they all did great things.

Anyhow, it was a treat to get to see Karoline and the capital city where she spent some time. After stuffing my face with more brown cheese, it was time to go back to London. Credit to RyanAir for making this possible.