Oslo, Norway weekend (March 2-4, 2007)

Last weekend I flew from Glasgow to Oslo, Norway, on RyanAir for a low-budget weekend adventure. I didn’t plan much in advance, except for booking the flight and reserving a bunk at a hostel somewhere a few miles outside the city.

I arrived at Torp Airport in Sandefjord, Norway, on Friday afternoon, and took a 2+ hour bus ride into Oslo. The sky was blue and bright, and everything was covered with snow. By the time I got to the city, it was dark and cold, but a twinge of exhilaration hit me as I walked out of the bus station – I was wandering around an unfamiliar European city with just a backpack and not much of an idea of where to go. Fortunately most of the locals spoke excellent English, so I didn’t notice much of a language barrier. Eventually I found my way to the hostel, a sprawling building perched atop a snow-covered hillside northeast of town.

Saturday morning I visited a bit with my roommates – a diverse bunch from Slovakia, England, New Zealand, Norway and Brazil – then took in the breakfast provided in the hostel cafeteria. At first I stuck with the recognizable bread with jam, then realized I’d need a bit more protein for the day so I decided to partake in the traditional Norwegian fare. I tried something from a bowl consisting of cold and apparently raw fish chunks (herring) and onions, as well as slices from a thick brown cylinder of what looked and tasted like strong peanut-butter flavored cheese (brunost, maybe?).

After breakfast - despite a nasty cold - I bundled up for the sub-freezing temperatures and ventured outside and back down the hill, making my way back to the city center. I wanted to do some authentic Nordic (cross-country) skiing, and it turned out that I didn’t have to look very hard for the opportunity. Once at Oslo’s Downtown Sentralstajion train platform, I just followed the locals who were carrying ski gear onto a particular train headed northwest of the city. After the train wound its way up a mountain, I got off at Voksenkollen near the end of the line, and soon found a chalet where I could rent gear. The stations are perfectly located for winter activities – most of the locals clipped their skis on as soon as they stepped off the train and sped off into the snowy wonderland. Even little kids were skiing, although several of them had heavy-duty metal sleds that were built for speed and looked really fun. Within a few minutes, I was alone skiing a hilly trail that wound its way through dense forest.

I skied the rest of the day, returned my gear, and rode the train back down into the city. Before it got dark, I was able to enjoy the sculpted column and bronze characters lining the bridge at Vigelandsparken. For dinner – I’m embarrassed to say – I had a couple McDonald hamburgers. At equivalent US $3.25 each, that was the only ready-made food I could find in the city even remotely affordable. For the curious, they taste like the same cardboard they taste like in America. In general, I’d say prices in Oslo were about 20-30% higher than in Glasgow, where the US dollar already doesn’t have much purchasing power. Beers were about $10/pint, so needless to say, I didn’t do much drinkin’.

For the most part, I avoided the normal “touristy” things in Oslo, but on the last morning I did make a run out to the grounds of the Royal Palace to look around and take some pictures. I skipped the Munch Museum (art gallery, not a food museum) and Viking Museum during the trip since I wanted to spend most of my time outdoors.

Sunday morning was bone-chilling cold and windy, and by the time I coughed and blew my nose through the 5-hour bus-airplane-train journey back to Glasgow (my sincere apologies to my fellow passengers), I was eager to get back to my warm flat, take a hot shower, and rest before going to work the next day. Unfortunately, when I arrived at the entrance to my apartment building, I was greeted with a memo on the door noting that the gas main to the building had been ruptured by [careless] excavation during the weekend, and that it would be several days before service could be restored…that meant no heat, no stove, and no hot water. Although I wasn’t as comfortable as I could have been, it was still nice to come home, wrap up in a blanket, and watch the wind and rain pound the river below instead of me.