This is a story about what happens when six crazy foreigners decide to embark on a journey to parts unknown. Or at least unknown to us. It's not like Oslo is some backwater or anything. I was a late addition to the group who decided to travel and was a bit hesitant throughout the whole process but it wound up being an excellent decision and as it turns out, I'm a fairly patient traveller in groups of people. We started out by booking tickets through a discount airline called "Wizzair", which is Hungarian. How did we know about it? Well, we were conveniently travelling with a Hungarian. Now, let me tell you about what happens when you book through a discount airline. First of all, you only fly on the days that are most inconvenient for you, at odd hours, to airports so far outside your destination it almost negates flying discount to start with. So, the night we left, we had a little party in Kevin's flat and then caught the last trolley around midnight to the bus terminal, "Autobussijaam". I was slightly separated from the others on the bus ride to Riga, Latvia which is where we were departing from and I think that was somewhat fortunate as we were rather rowdy and I generally feel uncomfortable when I'm in a noisy group in places where others are trying to be quiet. Like on a night bus to Riga. It was 5am by the time we got to Riga and unfortunately I hadn't slept at all and was just a delight to be around. We had six hours to wait in Riga for our flight (who planned this thing???) and so I decided two hours in to the wait to lay down and sleep. I don't do this well in places that aren't beds for one reason: I am a face sleeper. I sleep on my stomach with my face buried in the pillow near the bottom so that my mouth hangs off of it and I can breathe, with my arms tucked under my chest. It looks as awkward as it sounds. On bus rides and long flights, I pull the eating tray down, lay something soft on it and bend over facedown on it. On the floor in airports I put something soft on my duffel and lay facedown on that. I manage to get maybe a half hour of sleep at a time that way. Not effective, efficient, or any other word describing "smooth" that starts with an "e". I also get really bad indigestion when I travel and that plagued me until we landed. Sometimes I wonder if it's worth the effort.
I thankfully slept on the plane to Oslo for about two hours. We landed about an hour and a half outside of the city and hopped on a bus that would take us to the centre of town. There was nobody else on the bus so we had a lot of fun being childish and loud. The ride there was full of mountains that roads were essentially drilled through, so when we hit those we held our breath from start to finish. I won every time, me and my intense lung capacity. We settled down enough after the first hour to enjoy the scenery on the drive in. Olso is built up around Oslofjord and so, every inhabitant owns a watercraft of some sort which in the right season forces a person to stare through thousands of masts before getting glimpses of water. Once you get past the masts though, the views are incredible. Hilly with water flowing in between, making Oslo one big valley.
We had booked our hostel previous to our arrival in the city so our first order of business when we got there was to check it. Anker Hostel was a dormitory during the university season and housed weary travelers the rest of the time. When we arrived the line was huge because it was the cheapest hostel in Norway, ringing in at $50 CDN per night. Compare that with Lithuania at $7.50 CDN and you get an idea of how expensive it is to travel to Norway. My credit card is still steaming! Anyway, our room was large enough but lacked any charm or character. I was satisfied with it though, as it suited our purpose for a one night stay. After checking in, we were absolutely famished and went to get something to eat. I've never eaten so much McDonald's in my life as I did on this trip because it was budget conscious. Though I use the word "budget" loosely, as my normal nuggets and fries meal still costs $14 in Oslo as compared to $3 in Estonia (CDN dollars). Oi! So after gorging ourselves we went to look around. At this point I'd been 36 hours without sleep. I didn't really realize that I was this resilient until this trip.
Continuing on, we walked through the centre of town and looked at some shops and found the main street that would take us to the palace. This part was easy. The street was long and broad and perfectly straight making it impossible to get lost, easy to stroll and to take your time, and yet kept the anticipation high for when we reached our destination. There were scintillating glimpses of the very symmetrical royal palace lined by a large water feature, too many restaurants, the university, parliament, and these funny little gold painted men who wouldn't let you take their picture without putting a little donation into their jar. The trek took a while, but once we got to the palace we weren't disappointed. Manicured to perfection, huge and with parks all around we were completely distracted by everything until our reverie was interrupted by a disgruntled looking camera man asking us to move out of the way because we were blocking his shot. Apparently, they were filming a movie that was set to be finished in the next month or so for a Norwegian film festival. We apologetically slunk behind a statue of a horse for the rest or out viewing session. But, the camera man was nice enough to take our photo so that was nice.
Moving behind the palace, we found fountains and scenic views and all kinds of residential streets that were extremely neat and tidy with all kinds of ornate architecture typical of the Europeans. We were looking for a park called Vigelandsparken featuring 192 bronze and granite sculptures all from the same artist, Gustav Vigeland. The main attraction is a 140 foot monolith comprised of 121 people all intertwined into a column. The ground were also designed by the artist and are absolutely breathtaking with their manicured gardens, fountains, and treelined avenues. We spent a long time here just taking it all in and relaxing along the stairs leading to the monolith. Most of my photos were taken here and I seriously couldn't get enough. On the way down from the peak of the whole structure, I saw ahead of us a girl with a Canadian flag on her back and I got very excited and ran to say hello. She was the first Canadian I'd seen since leaving Canada (who wasn't an ambassador of anything) and I was anxious to see what she was doing in Norway. Coincidentally, she was also from Nova Scotia, the Annapolis Valley in particular and we chatted for a while about home and our travels. I didn't realize how happy I'd be to see someone who knew where I was from. After we parted ways, the rest of us continued on to take it the infamous "angry baby" statue that gained a certain notoriety for being very hilarious and as a result has been stolen and retrieved several time. The angry baby definitely lived up to its reputation and we left giggling at this funny little angry statue.
This was our last adventure for the evening and as we made our way back to the hostel we took in the setting sun on the harbour, the Nobel Prize building and guarding against the chill, ate supper on a park bench watching Norwegian party goers head out in all directions. The evening wasn't quite over for us either as we took some drinks into the hostel and enjoyed hot showers and alcohol before bed. It had been 48 hours without sleep and we only had one more day to enjoy Oslo. I passed out almost immediately after I showered and was out cold until the next day.
