Oslo, Noway

Just got back early this morning (around 1:30am) from Norway, but we had an amazing trip to Oslo and Larvik. I’ll break up the post between Oslo and Larvik for easy reading and pictures.

We left Canterbury by taxi a little after 7am on Friday morning to get to Stanstead airport for our 10:35am flight to Torp, Norway. Surprisingly there was no traffic on the way to the airport, normally at the time the M2, M25 and M11 are packed, especially because of construction, but we had a straight shot all the way there. Our driver was nice and interested in why we were going to Norway and only for the weekend. The flight was a little less than two hours and we were in Norway, where it was a lot warmer than we expected it to be. Once we got through customs (where I was informed I was not wanted by the police by the really nice customs officer :)) we had to find the bus that would take us to the train station, where we would then need to get on the train to Oslo. We asked at the information desk and were told that the easiest and cheapest thing to do was to take the bus directly to Oslo. We got tickets and got a hold of Mona to let her know that we would be arriving at the bus terminal, not the train station. The bus took about two hours and we were able to find my mom’s friend Mona after a quick call to tell her what platform we were on. For those of you that don’t know, my mom studied in Oslo for a year with Rotary and while she was there she became friends with Mona. Her and her husband, Jens-Henrik, came to our house in 1990 when I was one year old, so it had been a lot time since we had seen each other. We were staying the night in Oslo at a really nice hotel downtown called the Hotel Royal Christiania. We dropped our packs in our room before we went out for a night tour of the city. We got to see the government buildings all lit up and the harbor with the fortress on the other side lit too. Around 6pm, we ate at this Italian place near the harbor called “Eataly.” I thought it was a pretty clever name. The food was really good and we sat and talked there for about two hours. Went to bed pretty early because we were going to have a big day on Saturday. The next morning we had a wonderful and HUGE breakfast at the hotel. There was all of this wonderful and warm bread with loads of raspberry jam. Needless to say I ate way too much and wasn’t hungry until about 4pm. Our first place of the day was Vielandsparken, a sculpture park that we got to by cable car from downtown Oslo. It was an amazing park with all of these human sculptures. All of the figures were naked and the detail was amazing, especially the faces of the different figures. My favorites were the ones of the couples, especially the one where they had their noses and foreheads together and then there was one of this little boy throwing a fit. It’s pretty famous and the detail of the face was just so alive! We took lots of pictures, because there were so many different statues! It was a great day to just walk around and enjoy all of it, especially since the weather was so great. The cable car got us back downtown again and Mona showed us were the Norwegian Resistance Museum was on the grounds of the fortress in Oslo. She left us there to catch a train back to Larvik so she would have time to get ready for her mother’s 70th birthday party. We went through the museum and we were very impressed. There were a lot of original artifacts and very interesting exhibits which were thankfully in English as well. After the museum, we walked around the fortress and had a great view of the other side of the harbor. Once again, the weather was perfect, even though it was quite chilly and the pictures came out great! We found our way down to the harbor where we were the night before and then walked around the downtown area. Since it was a Saturday there were a lot of people about, but it was still fun to see the city life. We figured out what train we need to go to Larvik that evening at the train station and had a while to wander some more in the dark before it left.

The train was packed when we finally got on and we each had to sit separately. I ended up sitting next to this young Norwegian guy who was very friendly. We ended up talking the entire two hours from Oslo to Larvik about everything. He told me about his job at a refugee camp outside of Oslo, his wife and son and we talked about what it’s like for Christians in Norway. Christians, like Muslims here, are the minority and they are really looked down on by the general public, not taken seriously as he said. It was really interesting to be able to talk to him about all these things and before I got off we exchanged e-mail addresses, hoping to maybe stay in touch. I just thought that was such a neat experience to meet someone, randomly on a train like that, just added to the fun of everything. We got to Larvik around 8pm and took a taxi to Mona’s house. They were gone at the birthday party, so we had to let ourselves in. Mona had left us some snacks (which we devoured) and pizza was supposed to be coming at 8:30pm. After the pizza came we sat around, talked and I tried to get caught up on my journal. Mona and her family got home close to midnight and we stayed up talking for a while. It was so neat to get to talk and share stories with someone that I didn’t really know, but I still had a connection with. We got to sleep in until 10am on Sunday morning, because we were all tired out from the day before.