Not having a laptop really stinks -Norway, the two days it didn't rain

I am so far behind on this blog, it's a shame. But today I'll be taking a break from the North Wales excursion and talk about Norway, since I don't have most of that written down.

Some basic facts:

1. Norwegian is almost crazier than Finnish, almost

2. Apparently I pull of a pretty good local, so many people approached me trying to talk to me in Norwegian, including people who deal with tourists daily

3. The only word I really learned was thank you -takk

4. Though one Kroner equals approx. 17 US cents, you will find nothing less expensive than 10NOK, meals cost upwards of 70 usually

5. They have really good public transport

6. A lot of my trip was me wandering around semi lost, but it was fun

So John's talked about the London experience pretty well already, so I'll pick up at the airport. Got there way early as planned and stood in line for at least an hour to get my passport checked by Ryanair. I've never seen so many people sleeping on the floor before, but there were at least 100 in Stansted. Waited in an equally long line for security. Something on me set off the metal detector and I got thoroughly frisked. Then came waiting around for my gate to be declared, which only happened about 30min before my flight was supposed to leave, a bit stressful, but I made it fine. Ryanair doesn't assign seats, which was strange. I had a nice young Norwegian girl next to me on the way there. Ryanair is extremely different than flying on any US airline. They are way more commercial, in the fact they play commercials over the intercom, have them stuck up on the luggage racks, etc. If you want anything to eat or drink you have to buy it, same for newspapers, and their own lottery scratchcards. Very hard to sleep on those types of flights, they are always announcing something or coming by selling something.

We land a bit early, I get through customs really easily, score a cool new stamp for my passport and find the bus into town. The ride is at least 1.5 hours, and I doze off again (we were up realllly early that morning, and I hadn't gotten any sleep the night before that, being too nervous about the trip). I did get to see their cool rock formations that were covered in ice and waterfalls. We get into Oslo, and the surrounding mountains and hills still have quite a bit of snow on them. I get off and try to find the bus to the hostel, but with no luck whatsoever. I wander around quite a bit, and finally find an atm (couldn't find an exchange place in Rygge, should have done it in London). I somehow end up in the middle of town (not that I knew it at the time), and spend sometime still looking for the bus (I now know dozens must have passed me), and looking at the shops. I finally gave up and took a cab that cost me 200NOK (like $30), but at least I made it to the hostel.

I checked in and moved into my room. There's four bunks, 2 of which are occupied, the room is small but clean. I put my stuff up and crash out for a few hours. I wake up to a middle aged lady walking into the room, who comes over and introduces herself as something resembling the word ostrich, I have no idea what her name actually is, but she was ostrich in my head from then on. She is from Norway (I later found out from another roommate that she is living in Sweden, but hates it and wants to come back but is having trouble selling her house there). I go take a shower, and get ready to head to the grocery store to pick up dinner (they had a kitchen).

On the way I pass this guy, we exchange awkward hellos, and I think the encounter is over. It is not. He asks me a question I don't catch and I turn back. We end up trying to talk to one another. He's from France (Nice I think) and has pretty shakey English, my French at this point is just as bad, but we muddle along. It was kind of fun. He asks where I'm going and if he can come along. I have no idea how long he's been in Oslo, but it seems like awhile (but his story seemed to change, but that could have been the language barrier), he knows the town pretty well, and buys my bus ticket for me. He takes me around and we end up in one of the many many malls where he buys me a pasta dinner from a restaurant his friends work at. Here I'm getting a bit nervous, but it seems friendly enough. It was remarkably warm. He took me through central station (where he bought me a toy moose) and down to the Opera house, which is incredible. You can walk up the side of it and look down on the fjord from the roof. I also got to see some of the cooler buildings, and where Obama accepted his Nobel Prize. The French guy, Carib, then asks me if I want to go for a drink. I am suspicious, so I say no, that I'm tired and want to go back to the hostel, eventually I get him to agree. On the train he falls in love with me. He starts trying to play with my hands, keeps telling me I'm beautiful and perfect, and trying to lean on me. I am creeped out, and it just got worse when we made it back. I manage to get him to take no for an answer after getting many unwanted advances, and adding him on skype. Turns out he's 29 and basically illiterate (though he spoke snippets of at least 4 languages). Gross. Luckily I never saw him again.

The next day I wake up early. I didn't sleep well, since Ostrich snored like a bull. Or three bulls. It was impressive. She also went to bed at like 8 at night, and was still in bed well after I left. I inhale breakfast and bolt out of the hostel (very scared I was going to run into Carib). I buy my bus ticket (confusing the driver terribly, most people don't bother, they hop on and off at will it seems, but I did get caught up in a police sweep, but I had my Oslo pass at that point). I get off in the center of town and head for the waterfront. Oslo has an amazing waterfront. I saw my first sea ice there. The fjord is awesome. I wandered along it looking at all the cool old boats they had. At some point a busker started playing the accordion, and really made the moment. Though I really think he only knew one song, and ended up moving on when someone else started rocking out on a clarinet. I ended up staring droolingly up at the Christian Radich. She's a full rigged ship, and massive. I missed SEA a lot in that moment. She might be a sail training vessel, but seemed to have younger navy guys on her.

Christian Radich

By that time (10ish) I could pick up my Oslo pass from the tourism office. It gave me free admission into all the museums I went to, as well as free public transportation. A very good deal for the money. I hopped the first bus out to Bygdoy, which took some time and much being lost. Bygdoy is a peninsula that houses some of the cooler museums. The Kon-Tiki was the only one I didn't manage to fit in. That day I almost over boated myself. It was awesome.

I started out the day with the Viking Ship Museum. It blew my mind. They have three viking ships that were discovered in burial mounds of important people. They were gorgeous. And there were a lot of artifacts (as well as horses, dogs, and in one case another person) buried with them. I took a ton of pictures. I think it's one of the coolest and easiest to digest museums I have ever been to.

The main, most intact ship. Pure awesome.

I moved on to the Fram museum. The polar ship Fram (meaning forward in Norwegian) is the ship with the record of going the furthest north and the furthest south. She is made of wood, and has spent many years frozen in both Arctic and Antarctic ice. Tons of very cool research was done on her by Amundsen and Sverdrup (!) and many others. You got to go onboard and go below. I got to see all of their equipment and their bunks etc. They also had tons of specimens that the expeditions brought back, and tons of stuffed penguins etc. I was extremely excited by it all. I also had this old Norwegian man wander up to me and try to ask me something/talk to me about something. I deeply regret not being able to understand him, I think he must have had something really interesting to say.

Part of the deck of the Fram

It was getting late, but I drug myself to the final stop, the Maritime Museum. It's not the most exciting I've been to, but offered some great views of the fjord. I also got to watch a panoramic film of all sorts of ports and small fishing villages in Norway, some of them were really beautiful. They had some very pretty paintings, and a cool collection of figure heads, as well as sample cabins from various types of ships. The coolest thing was an ancient dug out canoe they found sunk in a river dating from 2200 years ago.

The canoe

The fjord

By then, it's 4, and pretty much everything is closed. I catch the bus back to town, and another back to the hostel. I spend the rest of the evening writing postcards, catching up online (on the weirdest keyboard ever), and eating some actually delicious microwave pasta. I also got to meet my newest roomie, a 45yr old woman named Joan. She was originally from Italy, but now teaches Italian and runs and elementary school library in Berlin. She spoke great English, and I had a lot of fun talking to her and complaining about our snoring roommates (the other woman, who I saw but never met, also was pretty good at that). Went to bed semi early for another night of not really sleeping.