Oslo

The first stop on our marathon of a journey was Oslo, the main port and capital of Norway.  A sleek, clean city that has recently revamped its downtown area and public transportation system, Oslo is a center of scandinavian culture and art that is easy to navigate and explore in a short time.  Because we were organized before arriving (we had bought a guide book and looked around online for a bit), we were able to explore nearly all of the city's major museums and monuments in just two and a half days.  

The trip itself was a bit of a project.  We took the subway from Hillhead Street to the center of Glasgow (Buchanan Street) and nearly missed our bus to Edinburgh after taking money out from the bank and trying to find a travel guide in a bookstore.  We arrived in Edinburgh with about an hour until take off and hastily flagged down a taxi to drive us twenty minutes outside of the city where the airport was.  Thankfully, we had no luggage to check and the security line was short.  We made it to our gate with nearly a half hour to spare.

A snapshot from the taxi of Edinburgh Castle

The plane ride was a fiasco.  Ryanair deserves some credit for being on time and (truly) quite cheap, but the pilot on this flight must have been asleep at the wheel or something.  After about an hour and a half of violent turbulence, we made our descent into Norway perhaps a little too fast.  I say this because, for the first time in nearly twenty years of flying, I experienced an acute pressure headache that made me want to jump out the window.  It was a growing balloon of pain in a spot on my forehead just about my right eye, and it grew until I literally couldn't keep my eyes open.  I mention this flight for two reasons: 1) because my headache would continue to haunt me on the bus ride into Oslo and nearly every descent of my four flights to follow.  2) because the same violent landing popped Jon's ears so badly, and so painfully, that he still cannot hear out of one ear after nine days.  Yikes.

So the trip didn't start out so well, perhaps.  To top everything off, it was about 10:30 at night and quite cold--probably somewhere in the high 30s.  We left the bus station and trekked across a deserted city center to find our hostel, which was thankfully not far from things. It proved to be quite a classy establishment, as it turned out: a buzzer, a locked door and two floors separated the lobby from the street.  Our room sported a sink, a desk, two bunk beds (four beds total) and a TV.  The price was a little steep, but it was just about the cheapest thing we could get in Oslo.

Morning view from our hostel's window

This brings me to a major note one should take before traveling to Oslo: be prepared to spend a lot of money.  The Norwegians are not part of the EU, and thus do not use the euro.  Their kronin is about one sixth of a US dollar in a straight exchange rate.  However, nearly everything in Oslo is 1.5 to two times as expensive as it is anywhere else.  A quarter-pound hamburger with fries, for example, goes for about 100 kronin, or around seventeen dollars.  That's grand larceny for two hostel-hopping students, especially when drinks around town are nearly 50 kronin apiece.  Any more time in Oslo and we would probably have run out of money before the end of our trip. 

A sculpture outside Oslo University 

The way we got around the offensive price of everything was something called an Oslo Pass.  It was a ticket you could buy at any tourist center at a student discount that gave you free public transportation (bus, tram, train and metro), free entry into all museums and monuments, and 20% discounts at a few local restaurants.  With the discount it was 270 kronin, which was expensive but which paid for itself nearly twice over by the end of our trip.  And to make sure we were getting the value out of them, we used our passes as often as possible.  We visited anything that normally had an entrance fee, bus and tram hopped constantly, and ate at a scandinavian pizza joint called Peppe's two nights in a row.  By the end of it all we were pretty satisfied with our touring work of the place.

The tram stop in front of City Hall

Oslo is covered in Museums, sculptures and churches.  There are no major tourist attractions that compare to the Eiffel Tour or the Roman Forum, but there are castles and palaces and a general architecture that is impressive enough to see.  The town itself is very well-laid out-- oftentimes you can get to one place using multiple forms of public transport, including ferries.  One of the spots Jon and I traveled quite a bit to see was the ski jump at Hollenkamp, the site for the 2011 world ski championships.  Located on a mountain overlooking the city, it is a dramatic, steep ramp down into a large arena of seats.  Once construction is finished, a rotating cafe and ski simulator will be open at the top for all tourists to visit.  Currently, it is the most popular visitor destination in Oslo.

The Hollenkamp ski jump on the mountainside

The Royal Palace

A Norwegian cathedral

My favorite museum we visited was the National Gallery located behind Oslo University, which held numerous works from famous Norwegian painters such as Dahl and Munch, but also a few scattered works of interest such as one of Van Gogh's self-portraits.  The most well-known painting in the gallery was Edvard Munch's "The Scream."  

The Scream

We also visited the Nobel Peace Prize museum (the award is given and celebrated in Oslo), which was in the process of a private exhibition opening for the Norwegian royal family.  There was a red carpet and cameras at the entrance as we went in.  The museum itself was having an exhibition on Nelson Mandela and apartheid art, which was both impressive and quite disturbing.  

The Nobel Peace Prize museum

The waterfront across the way

Other visits included a historical museum, a modern art museum, a viking ship museum (very cool), a folk museum and period village park that featured early Norwegian-style log houses and a 12th century church, a castle, a palace, and even a herpetology center located in the basement of some apartment.

  

A 12th-century church at the folk museum

By the end of it all, we were pretty tired of fold-out maps and tram schedules.  But we were happy and satisfied.  More than anything, we were ready for some warmer temperatures and cheaper dinners.  We got up early that Saturday morning and took a seven o'clock bus to the airport, where we caught a flight to the enormous, quirky city of Brussels.  It was not long before I realized that I had no idea what the name of our hostel was, or where it was, or where to find a map, or where the Brussels train station was...

A viking ship

Oslo's Rating:

3.5 out of 5 stars

Pros: 

- Perhaps the most northern place I've ever been (in other words, a unique area of the world worth visiting)

- Incredible number of impressive museums 

- Easy to navigate/well-centralized

- Friendly, English-speaking people

Cons:

- Very cold and dry climate in October

- No national monuments that took my breath away (the top of Hollenkamp was closed)

- Too expensive for students

To be continued...

A view of the city from the base of Hollenkamp