Oslo

We arrived in Oslo via the magnificent Oslo-Bergen Railway. This is something that everyone should do if they are ever in Norway. The trip winds past snow covered forests, gigantic and steep fjords cut into the landscape like a knife through butter, barren arctic tundra with no trees in site and beautiful mountains. It really is breathtaking and almost impossible to tear yourself away from the window for even a second. Getting to Oslo much too late to do much of anything, we decided to check into our hostel and go out in search of the elusive Christmas meal we never had in Bergen. We managed to find a great TGI Fridays and settled down for a good old fashioned steak. While extremely expensive, we splashed out with the help of a Christmas gift from my parents (thanks mum and dad :p) and got ourselves thoroughly stuffed. I dont think I have ever had a meal that has satisfied me as much as that. It was so good to taste real steak again! We rolled home and got ourselves ready to tackle Oslo in the morning.

Upon waking, we found out that we had the odd situation of having too many days in a city. We had been forced to schedule 4 days here in Oslo but there was simply not enough to keep us busy for that amount of time. Nevertheless, we decided to start out our stay by visiting the Munch Museum. Edvard Munch used to be a favourite of mine back when I was doing art in highschool, so I was really looking forward to finding out more about him. The museum didnt dissapoint us. Much like the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, this one showed us all about the development of Munch as an artist through his very early stages, all his experimentation, and finally culminating in the realisation of a style that was distinctly 'Munch'. Needless to say, this guy was absolutely amazing. Extremely talented, he could paint in almost any style he wanted and his experimentation was exceptional. I think you can probably tell that he has now turned into my favourite. After the museum, we headed towards Akershus Fortress and Castle. It was the old Viking castle when Norway was in the middle of the Viking Era, and was also used as a german command post/bomb shelter during the war. Quite a pretty Castle, it was cool to walk around the fortifications and see how they worked. Afterwards the city was quickly becoming dark, so we decided to explore around a little bit more and see what Oslo by Night had to offer. Noticing that beers cost over 13 dollars for 330 mils, we decided to go back to the hostel soon afterwards :p.

Before I go much further, I want to first tell you about our impressions of the city. Up until this point, we were not very impressed at all. Our hostel wasnt in a great part of town, the city was very dirty, dingy and we were looking over our shoulders continuously. There were large populations of random cultures all around and there were lots of junkies hanging all around the central train station. It really didnt feel like a great city. After the beauty of Bergen and the seeming perfection of the other Norway cities, this was coming as a bit of a surprise and slight dissapointment. We werent expecting it at all!

Despite this, we were enthusiastically ready for our second day. We grabbed some fruit for breakfast and headed towards the National Gallery. Our main objective was to see Munch's 'The Scream' which has been my favourite painting for YEARS. The museum itself had some very interesting Norwegian landscapes which were quite good, especially those from the famous Dahl. The highlight though was clearly the Munch room which contained many of his really famous works from quite late in his career when his style was more uniquely his. Highlights included the Scream, Madonna and Dance of Life. They were all very thought provoking and great to look at. We both were very impressed. Following the museum, we walked around the Royal Palace, but decided not to go inside. Further exploration of the city revealed the Nobel Peace Prize Museum, which had free entry, so we decided to give it a go. We were quite pleasantly surprised! Oslo is the site of the Nobel Peace Prize, and Norway is the prize's judge. The rest of the Nobel prizes are given away in Stockholm. We spent ages touring around the museum, finding out about all the winners and how they had helped work towards peace and for the betterment of humankind. I really enjoyed all the displays on the 1993 Prize winners, Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Clerk for obvious reasons. Later that evening, we met up with Kai (our roommate from germany) and decided to take a little trip to a suburb outside f Oslo where you can climb to the top of a ski jump tower and look out over the city. Unfortunately, the tower was closed for renovations but we still had a great view from up the hill. All in all, it was a very successful day!

Our third day had left us with very little still left to do. We decided to make the trek out to the viking museum, which is a very far way to walk. Its quite close via ferry, but we don't have deep pockets and decided to just tough it out and walk the 4 kms or so. This, like so many of our decisions on this trip, turned out to be a regretful choice. It was cold. However, we made it just before our toes and fingers fell off and managed to check out 3 viking ships that were excavated in the Oslofjord area of Norway. 2 of these were extremely well preserved and gave a glimpse of how amazing the Vikings really were. These guys travelled all the way to North America and the Meditterranean in what were extremely simple, but well built, ships. We felt quite humbled at complaining about a mear 4km walk in the cold. We walked back and found that we had pretty much finished what we wanted to do in Norway so decided to go to an internet cafe and take care of some things and just talk to some guys from home.

We slept in a little the next morning and packed our bags. We decided that we would move on early to Stockholm and have an extra half day there. However, the previous night and this morning we seemed to get a different sense of the city. It must have been because people were slowly emerging from their homes from the christmas season. We sw a lot more locals around, and also walked through some much nicer neighbourhoods on our way back from the Viking Museum. Perhaps a little more like how we imagined Oslo to be. I dont know if I will ever come back, but I will give it the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe we just got the wrong first impression.